Priests-Kings
The mysterious Priest-Kings are believed to be immortal and possibly gods. Extremely few people know the true nature of the Priest-Kings. Even almost all of the Initiates do not know their true nature. The Priest-Kings are worshiped by most Goreans, though the Lower Castes believe more in the divinity of the Priest-kings than do the High Castes. Many High Caste Goreans regard Priest-Kings not so much as masters but as potential allies. Gorean petitions and prayers to the Priest-Kings are very specific and practical. The Priest-Kings maintain their Sacred Place deep within the foreboding Sardar Mountains. The Sardar Mountains are a wild vastness, both taboo and perilous. They are dark mountains, often crowned with ice, and nothing grows on them. A palisade of black logs encircles the Sardar, with a single towering gate of black logs bound with wide bands of brass. There is also an invisible force shield that prevents all animals from entering the mountains. The force field may affect their inner ear and cause them to lose control of their bodies. Some Goreans who are old or tired of life journey there. Sometimes young rebels go there to lodge protests, but none have ever returned. Members of the Initiates stand guard at the gate to the Sardar. Male slaves must open the gate by wooden windlasses, a heavy burden. A huge, hollow metal bar tolls whenever someone enters the gate. The Initiates refuse few, if any, the right to journey into the Sardar. The path up the mountain is not difficult as there are well-worn paths and even stairs at points. There is even graffiti on the cliffs, left by previous visitors. It takes about four days to reach the primary entrance into the Sardar. This entrance is guarded by two white larls on chains. The chains can be shortened or lengthened by people inside the Sardar. A section of the mountain wall, about eight foot square, can roll silently back and upward to permit entrance. This entrance leads into the heart of the complex of the Priest-Kings. The Priest-Kings are an alien race with vast technological powers. Priest-Kings brought the planet of Gor to our solar system over two million years ago. It is alleged that their own sun was dying and they needed to relocate to survive. This relocation may have been done several times in the past. At one time, the Priest-Kings were rich and filled with life. After that phase of their existence, they entered a time when their arts flourished. Then for a long time, their only passion was scientific curiosity. Now, even that lessens and they enter darker times. There are presently less than one thousand Priest-Kings on Gor. For the most part, the Priest-Kings ignore most matters on Gor except for technology violations. They do protect both Gor and Earth from many of the predations of the Kurii. For thousands of years, the Priest-Kings have been using space ships to transport people and items from Earth to Gor. These journeys are called the Voyages of Acquisition. They have also been keeping an eye on Earth, checking to ensure that it never becomes a threat to them. They have the power to protect Gor from being observed by Earth. If Earth ever became a threat, the Priest-kings might limit it, destroy it or leave the solar system. Before Gor came to our solar system, other alien species were brought from other worlds to Gor. Priest-Kings resemble huge golden insects. They are nearly eighteen feet tall and about a yard wide. Like insects, they have six legs. Their two forelegs are lifted delicately in front of its body, almost level with their jaw, like hands. These forelegs are more muscular than its other four legs. They walk on four extremely long, slender, and four-jointed stalks. Priest-Kings move with a delicate, predatory grace. They can jump backward, up to forty feet. They can even walk on ceilings and walls. Each arm ends in four delicate, hooklike prehensile digits. The tips of these digits normally touch each other. There is also at the end of each foreleg, in a ball, a curved, bladed, hornlike structure that can spring forward. This is used as a weapon. There is also a small cleaning hook behind the third joint each foreleg that is used to comb its antennae. They have a great head like a globe of gold with eyes like vast luminous disks. The head has two fragile, jointed appendages that are long and covered with short quivering strands of golden hair. Their jaws move laterally. Their blood is a greenish fluid. Priest-Kings breathe by muscular contractions in the abdomen that suck air into their system through four small holes on each side of the abdomen, the same serving as exhalation vents. Usually, breathing cannot be heard unless you are close to a Priest-King. The eyes of Priest-Kings are compound and many-faceted, but they do not rely on them much. They are used as secondary sensors when information is not relayed by scent, their primary sense. Their antennae are their primary sensors. The antennae can also be used to detect sound vibrations but hearing is not of big importance. They do not draw a distinction between smelling and hearing. Thus they are not hampered by darkness. Priest-Kings have little or no scent of their own detectable by humans. But, there is an odor that follows them around. It is the residue of scent signals used by Priest-Kings in communicating with one another. The odor is slightly acrid, vaguely like the smell of an expended cartridge. The slightly acrid odor is a common property of all of their communications. Communication by odor has its benefits and detriments. An odor can carry much farther to a Priest-King than a man's shout to another man. Messages can also be left if not too much time has passed. A problem though is that your messages are open to anyone. The Priest-Kings have various devices to record messages for longer times. The simplest method is a chemically treated rope of clothlike material that can hold a message scent for some time. The Priest-Kings also identify themselves by scent. They wear their rank, caste and station by scent. Their specially prepared synthetic scents can last for thousands of years. Scent dots are a form of writing that is arranged in rows making a square. They are read starting with the top row from left to right, then right to left, and then left to right and so on again. Their language has 411 characters. Their phonemes number seventy-three while English has only about fifty. Their language is thus quite complex. Priest-Kings are usually sexless. Only the Mother of the Nest is female. In the last six thousand years, only one other female egg had been laid. The Priest-King called Sarm had destroyed all other female eggs prior to that time. A female egg resembles a gray rock, squarish but with the corners rounded. It is light and rather leathery, with a grained surface. Male Priest-Kings are only about twelve feet long, with long, slender, golden, translucent wings. In 10117 C.A., there is the first male born in eight thousand years. The Priest-king called Misk got the male egg about three hundred years ago. Male Priest-Kings have no names like the Mother, as he is seen as above such things as a name. He is not considered the Father either. There is never a Father of the Nest. Priest-Kings have eight brains, modifications of the ganglionic net. Priest-Kings learn by the use of mnemonic plates. The information is instilled into them by machines. These plates are standardized by the Keepers of the Tradition, which once was led by Sarm. The Priest-Kings have a penchant for complexity, regarding it as more elegant than simplicity. Their basic math begins with ordinal and not cardinal numbers. Cardinal numbers are viewed as more limiting. Their syllabrary and language is complex and they won't simplify it because then they might lose some beautiful signs. It is very difficult to slay a Priest-Kings with a sword. It would take many swings to do so. The best areas to strike are at the brain-nodes in the thorax and head. In the lower abdomen there is a dorsal organ which circulates the body fluids. But since the tissues are, on the whole, directly bathed in body fluid, injuring this organ would not produce death for at least a few Ehn. You must sever the ganglionic net to kill them. They can even regenerate lost limbs. Their own foreleg blades though can hurt other Priest-Kings. But, for over a million years, no Priest-King had ever killed another. This would change in the book Priest-Kings of Gor. Priest-Kings can stand absolutely still, an unnerving sight. No part of their body will move at all. Their body movements though can show their emotional states. Impatience may be signaled by a tremor in the tactile hair on their supporting appendages. Boredom or a wandering of their attention may be shown by their unconscious movement of their cleaning hooks. When they are hungry, an acidic exudate forms at the edges of their jaws. When they are thirsty, there is a certain stiffness in their appendages that is evident in their movements. Priest-Kings also eat and sleep standing as they never lie down. Priest-Kings cannot tolerate the sun. Priest-Kings spend a lot of time grooming themselves. Priest-Kings even clean each other. Their slaves may also groom them with a special grooming fork. They consider humans very unsanitary. Under the Sardar, humans are confined to certain areas of the tunnels for sanitary reasons. Priest-King slaves must bathe twelve times a day and this is called the "Duty of the Twelve Joys." They have washing booths, showers with a special washing fluid that contain a cleansing additive that is highly toxic to humans. These booths are found throughout the inside of the Sardar. It is interesting to note that the Kurii also enjoy grooming themselves. Priest-Kings have their own translators, small circular devices hung on their necks, that are more compact than Gorean ones. They can translate their language into Gorean and vice versa. Yet some Gorean words and actions do not translate easily for the Priest-Kings. Until Tarl Cabot came to the Sardar, Priest-Kings did not know what a laugh was. They now believe it may be like when a Priest-King shakes and curls its antennae. Priest-Kings don't have a word meaning friendship. There is "Nest Trust" but this is more of a communal notion. It is a sense of relying on the practices and traditions of an institution, accepting them and living in terms of them. Nest Trust means that Priest-Kings will not betray each other. The Priest-Kings use manned and unmanned spaceships for a variety of reasons. Some are used in their voyages of acquisition. Others are used to defend the planets from the ships of the Kurii. Others are used to monitor Gor and Earth. Their spaceships are different from the Kurii ships. Priest-King ships are larger and silver colored. Kurii are smaller and black colored. And, Kurii ships have observation apertures which Priest-King ships lack. Priest-Kings have a brain scanner that can record the patterns of your brain and your memories on a metal plate. It actually records three-dimensionally the microstates of the brain. If it is done well, the result becomes better than a fingerprint. They have even developed a partially gravitationally resistant metal. This is used to create transportation disks for within the Nest. The Priest-Kings even have some incredibly deadly and destructive weapons stored away. One such weapon is a silver tube that is a charged, cylindrical weapon that uses principles like the Flame Death mechanism. They had been encased in plastic quivers for centuries. But once opened, they were as ready to use as if they were new. They were used by Sarm and his allies in the Nest War. Another weapon used during the Nest War involved gravitational disruption. This is forbidden even to Priest-Kings as it could destroy the planet. That type of weapon almost destroyed Gor. Priest-Kings prefer humans to live in isolated communities. This makes it easier to observe men and prevent the development of science that could become a threat. Sometimes, the Priest-Kings destroy a random city to teach the might of the Priest-Kings and to encourage obeying their laws. The Priest-Kings also enforce their Technology and Weapon Laws to control Gor. They have a series of spaceships that monitor the surface of Gor for violations. If they locate a violator, he receives the Flame Death. A blue flame disintegrates that person. |
