100th Article, "How Goreans Mourn", by Arealius of Port Olni
This Gorean Fan Fiction and Images were generated using Microsoft Copilot.
Gor is Copyrighted by John Norman
I mark the year by the ache in my chest and the way the river light falls differently on the stones. It has been one year since the Ubara—Lady Lucy, free companion to Ubar Jarek—stepped beyond the circle of our days. The grief has softened at the edges, but it still has a center, like a Home Stone carried beneath a cloak. I have wandered since then, and, as scribes do, I have watched how the peoples of Gor mourn. Each custom taught me a way to carry her—some fierce, some tender, all resolute.
Among the balkanized river cities, mourning begins and ends with the Home Stone. In Olni, as in Turmus and the lesser towns upcurrent, it is common to gather in the square and reaffirm loyalty, not because death dissolves bonds, but because death demands that bonds be spoken aloud. Citizens touch the stone, or place a small token—a sprig of river reed, a wedge of bread, a pinch of salt—at its base. The act is simple, the meaning not: we remind the city that we belong to it, and that the dead belonged, too.
I remember when Lady Lucy commanded me to paint the leading citizens of Olni—magistrates and merchants, warriors and scribes—until the gallery’s walls were crowded like a market at high river. She stood in that press of faces and smiled: “Too many, you pirate.” She had me take them all down and seal them away. In these river cities, mourning is selective, almost austere; memory must never brag. The canvases sleep in storage, but the Home Stone remembers her better than paint ever could.
In the shadow of Ar’s towers, grief is disciplined into pageantry. Banners rise, laurel is placed, honor is spoken in measured words by men who know that even mourning is politics. Cities in Ar’s orbit—Brundisium among them—borrow that grandeur. The funeral procession is a line of loyalty as much as of love, and the speeches bind the living to an ideal. I have watched such ceremonies and felt their stern comfort: the dead are set among virtues like figures in marble.
Lady Lucy understood spectacle, but she was also a surgeon of it. When she allowed me to open the City Art Gallery where a tavern had been, I filled it with light and bold color. She paced the room and, stopping before certain portraits of women, said they were too shocking. Then, with the authority of a queen and the gentleness of a tutor, she had them painted over. More than censorship, it was calibration—mourning in Ar’s manner knows that public memory must be chiseled into form, not splashed. She kept Olni’s remembrance honest by keeping it proportioned.
Where grass is the horizon, mourning is a tent raised only long enough to share meat, song, and story. Among the Wagon People—Tuchuks and their kin—grief is communal, swift, and unashamed. Faces turn to the wind, scars are traced, names are spoken around the fire until the name sits down among the living and eats. They do not linger, because lingering sours the herd and the hunt; instead, they pour grief into continuity. The dead become proof that tomorrow is owed.
I have tried to mourn her in that way, with movement. Some evenings, in empty camps outside the city’s fallen walls, I say her name as they would: Lucy, Ubara; Lucy, friend; Lucy, gatekeeper. I think of the days we sat at the front gate, no court, no attendants, only her questions about my novels and my travels, and her patience when I had nothing grand to report. Even during my hiatus, when I would simply show up and ask to talk, she never sent me away. The Wagon People would approve of such mourning—short lament, long loyalty—because it keeps the fire lit.
The Dust Legs are quieter still. Their sorrow is thin but strong, like bowstring. Mourning there is an oral stitch: a succinct account of the deeds, a pragmatic burial or burning, and the immediate resumption of tasks. They teach that grief must not take the hand off the work. The camp must be struck, the tracks kept, the water counted.
I learned that lesson in the weeks after her passing. I found my brush again and cataloged what remained: notes, maps, names, small errands. I did not repaint those “shocking” canvases—her correction stayed my hand—but I did restore a few plain scenes of Olni’s markets, its bread ovens, and its riverboats. The Dust Legs would say that grief is proved in what you carry forward, not what you clutch.
In the north, mourning is loud, warm, and steel-edged. Pyres crackle, horns are raised, and tales of valor are told until they grow tall enough to warm a long winter. The feasting is not indulgence; it is refusal to let cold take more than it must. The dead are placed in the company of courage, with oaths sworn and debts accounted—a justice for sorrow that gives grief a shield.
She called me a pirate because of my love of maps and skills as a cartographer, though I was only a sailor. In Torvaldsland they would have liked that: a jest to turn bereavement into brotherhood. If the north had taken her, I would have stood in the hall, raised a horn, and told the story of the gate—how she listened, how she laughed, how she measured a man by his steadiness rather than his titles. I have no pyre to feed, but I have a saga small and true, which is the Priest Kings’ gift to any scribe.
It has been a year since Lady Lucy passed, and I think of how Tyros and Cos would have mourned her. Tyros would have cast her memory into the sea, drums echoing, banners lowered, the waves swallowing grief as they swallow ships. Cos would have carved her name into stone, inscribed her deeds in civic pride, and held processions along the harbor to remind the isle that its strength lies in unity.
But in Olni, she chose quieter ways. She sat with me at the gate, asked of my novels, and listened to my sailor’s tales. She called me a pirate, though I was only a sailor. Tyros would have made her a sea-queen; Cos would have made her a civic matron. Yet she was Ubara of Olni, and her mourning was ours: a blend of river loyalty, civic proportion, and personal kindness.
One year is not a long voyage, but it is long enough to know what remains. River stones teach loyalty; Ar’s pageantry teaches proportion; the Wagon People teach continuity; the Dust Legs teach the dignity of work; Torvaldsland teaches courage in remembrance. I keep all these lessons as if they were tools at my belt.
When I pass the old site of the gallery, I feel the steadiness of her choices. When I look toward the gate, I see two figures in the fading light—an Ubara and her pirate—speaking like equals. Grief does not ask me to live in that memory; it asks me to live from it. So I touch Olni’s absent Home Stone with my hand in the air, I speak her name in a campfire rhythm, I pare my sentences to the truth, and when the night is cold, I raise a horn invisibly and tell a plain tale.
This is how Goreans mourn, and how I do: by turning loss into allegiance, spectacle into honesty, motion into endurance, duty into making, and story into warmth. Lady Lucy is gone from the gate, but she sits in all these customs now, and so she is not far from the city or from her beloved people of Port Olni.
Editor's Notes: (My assisting scribe was MS Copilot)
🏛 River City-States (Balkanized Vosk Basin)
Home Stone rituals: Mourning often centers on the Home Stone, symbol of civic identity. Citizens may gather to reaffirm loyalty, swearing oaths or touching the stone in remembrance.
Public funerals: Deaths of prominent figures are marked by civic assemblies, processions, and offerings of bread, fire, and salt.
Private grief: Families mourn in household shrines, but public loyalty to the city outweighs personal sorrow.
Sources:
👑 Imperial Ar & Its Orbit (Brundisium, etc.)
Formalized mourning: Imperial Ar, as cultural hegemon, emphasizes honor and civic grandeur. Funerals of warriors or magistrates are staged with banners, laurel wreaths, and speeches of loyalty.
Cultural orbit cities: Brundisium and others mirror Ar’s customs, blending local traditions with Imperial pomp. Mourning becomes a political act, reinforcing allegiance to Ar.
Memorial events: Commemorations often tie into festivals or civic gatherings, ensuring the dead are remembered as part of the collective identity.
Sources:
🐎 Nomadic Peoples (Dust Legs, Wagon People)
Communal strength: Wagon Peoples (Tuchuks, Kassars, Kataii, Paravaci) mourn through shared rituals—songs, feasts, and storytelling that emphasize survival and continuity.
Scar codes: Mourning may be expressed through scars or marks, visible reminders of loss and loyalty.
Dust Legs: As a smaller nomadic tribe, mourning is tied to oral tradition and remembrance in campfires, with emphasis on endurance and mobility.
Practical rites: Death is often followed by immediate burial or burning, as nomads cannot linger long in grief.
Sources:
⚔️ Torvaldslanders (Northern Warriors)
Valor-focused mourning: Inspired by Norse traditions, Torvaldslanders honor the dead with feasts, songs, and tales of battle.
Thing assemblies: Mourning may occur at the Thing, where oaths are sworn and wergild discussed.
Funeral pyres: Warriors are often burned on pyres or buried with weapons, echoing Viking customs.
Celebration of life: Mourning is less about sorrow and more about celebrating strength, loyalty, and friendship.
Sources:
⚖️ Key Takeaways
City-states: Civic mourning tied to Home Stones.
Imperial Ar: Formal, political mourning reinforcing allegiance.
Nomads: Communal, survival-focused mourning with scars and oral traditions.
Torvaldslanders: Valor and feasting, echoing Viking pyres.
🌊 Tyros
Sea-centered rites: Tyros, famed for its fleets and slavers, often mourns with ceremonies tied to the sea. The dead may be committed to the waves, with ships lowering banners and casting offerings into the water.
Martial remembrance: As a militarized island, mourning emphasizes strength and conquest. Warriors are remembered in terms of victories, and civic leaders in terms of expansion.
Public spectacle: Tyrosian mourning is often staged in harbors, with drums and horns echoing across the docks. The sea itself becomes the grave marker.
⚓ Cos
Civic pride: Cos, rival to Tyros, emphasizes civic unity in mourning. Funerals are occasions for reaffirming loyalty to the isle’s independence and rivalry with Tyros.
Harbor processions: The dead may be honored with processions along the quays, ships decorated with garlands, and oaths sworn before the Home Stone of Cos.
Art and memory: Cos is known for its refinement; mourning often includes poetry, inscriptions, and memorials carved into civic spaces.
⚖️ Placing Tyros and Cos in the Larger Pattern
River cities: Home Stone-centered, austere.
Imperial Ar: Formal, political, grand.
Nomads: Communal, swift, survival-focused.
Torvaldsland: Valor, feasting, pyres.
Tyros: Martial, sea-centered, public spectacle.
Cos: Civic pride, harbor processions, artistic memorials.
So, the people of Port Olni mourns Lady Lucy by remembering how each culture would have honored her, and by choosing the fragments that fit her best: the loyalty of the river, the proportion of Ar, the continuity of the nomads, the courage of the north, the sea’s embrace of Tyros, and the civic pride of Cos. Together, they form a mosaic of Gorean mourning—each shard reflecting her light, one year after her passing.
Absolutely beautiful
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