Tal, Goreans!

I only have one myth to investigate for this edition of the newsletter, but this particular topic has caused enough controversy over the years that it can stand alone!

Myth: When Combatant A kills Combatant B, Combatant A inherits Combatant B’s slave(s) and all other properties and possessions.

It’s easy to see where this myth got started: When Bosk of Port Kar, aka Tarl Cabot, mortally wounds the pirate, Surbus, Bosk carries Surbus to a rooftop to glimpse Thassa, the sea, one final time, and subsequently inherits all of Surbus' worldly possessions.

“Not only the ships of Surbus had become mine, his men having declared for me, but his holding as well, and his assets, his treasures and equipments, and his slaves. His holding was a fortified palace. It lay on the eastern edge of Port Kar, backing on the marshes; it opened, by the means of a huge barred gate, to the canals of the city; in its courtyard were wharved his seven ships; when journeying to Thassa the great gate was opened and they were rowed through the city to the sea. It was a strong holding, protected on the one side by its walls and the marshes, and on its others by walls, the gate, and the canals.”-Raiders of Gor

Seems fairly simple. Kill a dude, claim all his stuff. But here’s the catch: it’s only a Port Kar thing.

"After the death of Surbus, the woman had been mine. I had won her from him by sword right. I had, of course, as she had expected, put her in my collar, and kept her slave. To my astonishment, however, by the laws of Port Kar, the ships, properties and chattels of Surbus, he having been vanquished in fair combat and permitted death of blood and sea, became mine; his men stood ready to obey me; his ships became mine to command; his hall became my hall, his riches mine, his slaves mine. It was thus that I had become a captain in Port Kar, Jewel of gleaming Thassa."-Marauders of Gor

So, we clearly have two separate issues, winning the ownership of a slave by sword right vs. inheriting all other properties. (As an aside, the sword right concept applies to a Kajira Cajellne, in which one man challenges another to a fight to the death for a slave. In fact, there isn’t much of a difference between “sword right” and “Cajellne,” besides rhetoric.) To put it simply, if you challenge for a slave and win, you get the slave – that’s it. Clearly, inheriting all other properties, including any other slaves the slain party may have owned, is not common practice, because Bosk/Tarl was absolutely astonished to inherit anything else but the single slave in contention. Presumably, then, it was expected that the holdings would pass to a relative, or if none existed, would become the properties of Port Kar.

Likewise, if a person is enslaved, the enslaved party’s properties do not pass to the slaves’s owner. Rather, “following Gorean civic law, the properties and titles, assets and goods of a given individual who is reduced to slavery are automatically regarded as having been transferred to the nearest male relative or nearest relative if no adult male relative is available or to the city or to, if pertinent, a guardian. Thus, if Aphris of Turia, by some mischance, were to fall to Kamchak, and surely slavery, her considerable riches would be immediately assigned to Saphrar, merchant of Turia [her guardian]. Moreover, to avoid legal complications and free the assets for investment and manipulation, the transfer is asymmetrical, in the sense that the individual, even should he somehow later recover his freedom, retains no legal claim whatsoever on the transferred assets.”-Nomads of Gor, 103

We can therefore infer that since Gorean civic law is conducted in this fashion when someone falls slave, it is very likely conducted in the same fashion in the event of untimely death – since, again, Tarl was astonished to receive the properties of Surbus beyond the one slave woman he had claimed by sword right.

Conclusion?

Myth: Semi-Busted.

You only get the slave if you started the fight over the slave. You only get the properties, slaves included, if you’re of Port Kar and gave the slain party the rites of the death of blood and sea. Nothing is automatic; everything is contextual and highly situational.