Zork
Peony D Beckside
Illustrations for this chapter courtesy of Arizona Wanderer
Chapter Four: The Forge
The village is deserted. Some of the habitations show signs of recently being on fire. There are bodies lying on the ground.
Writings and Stories about John Norman's Gor. Based on Gor created by John Norman within the expanded world created by Emma of Gor. Liberties have been taken with the geography of Montana, San Francisco, and other places. I try to post new Chapters or stand-alone entries each Friday. See my Blog Roll for Blogs I follow and recommend.
Zork
Peony D Beckside
Illustrations for this chapter courtesy of Arizona Wanderer
The village is deserted. Some of the habitations show signs of recently being on fire. There are bodies lying on the ground.
(edited August 20th, 2026)
.Stories tie back to Stories on EmmaOfGor.Blogspot.com in particular Steel Worlds Inc by Emma of Gor and Banks of the Bighorn by Tracker, and The Paga Diaries by Arizona Wanderer. The titles in this post link to the stories
Recent Posts:
The Paga Diaries (50) by Arizona Traveller
Zork (1, 2) by Peony D Beckside
The Paga Diaries (49) by Arizona Wanderer
Anthropologist of Gro, Book 1, Preparations (3) by Tracker
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It was great to be on the back of a tarn again, though the flight from the tower to the large estate farm outside of the city is short. Once he had flown our tarn past the city walls Trem changed his usual course and flew low, along the river, following it until we reached the section of the farm where the dung was delivered. I had never been with him on this route, as it was not the most direct. We saw a barge tied to a dock on the bank of the estate and there were a dozen men unloading wooden timbers that had been fashioned into some sort of component, perhaps parts or pieces of a larger structure. They looked familiar, and reminded me of the timbers I had worked on as a sawyer in the lumberyard.
Peony D Beckside
In
appreciation of, and with thanks to John Norman for creating the wonderful
world of Gor, in which this story is set.
Chapter One: Introduction
My name is Zork. I am what you puny ones call a Kur, Kurii in plural. Actually my name is longer than that, and much more meaningful. You puny ones however cannot pronounce my full name, your vocal cords and lineaments of your mouths make it impossible. Zork then will have to do.
49. Ubar’s Paga
I stepped into a tavern before going home to Mena. Niketas hadn’t said that I couldn’t go to taverns, just that I couldn’t go yesterday on my way home from the jail. The tavern was dark and the patrons were subdued, speaking to each other in low voices and whispers. Many of them stopped speaking as I walked through the door, looking at me as I sought a place to have paga. I did not see any paga slaves and I went to the paga attendant at the bar. There was a tense energy in this tavern and I decided to leave and go to another.
The walk to Tickling Curlies wasn’t far and I decided to get a drink in its tavern since it was close. This was my second time in the paga section of the large manor and the patrons here seemed subdued as well. I sat on a floor cushion at an empty low table and immediately a large bosomed brunette paga slave kneIt next to me to take my order. Four men at a table next to mine had stopped talking when I sat down. After I ordered and received my paga, they began to speak again. I wondered how many of the patrons here were also staying in rented rooms like me. I wondered if high quality taverns like this one, which offered nice rooms, had a high ratio of guests who were not residents of the city.
Dear Caroline,
How surprised you will be to receive a handwritten letter from me., particularly since I am such a terrible correspondent even with email! You will never guess where I am! I am in the San Francisco Airport, waiting for my British Airways flight back to London. What am I doing in San Francisco, you ask? Well it had to do with Mother and her always asking when I am going to get married and do I have a boyfriend yet.[i]
Wednesday,
Jan 4, 2017.
I am waiting in my office for a call from the Remote Anthropology Foundation regarding my proposal for a year long Expedition to Gor. The Foundation is small but has money to give away. Or rather they can have access to money for special projects for dangerous expeditions to remote places that other, more standard groups won’t touch. Even more importantly, they can arrange permissions and insurance in a way that no one else can. They arranged Michael Rockefeller’s New Guinea trip in 1961 for example[i].
The gruel was difficult to eat. It was a cold paste, flavorless, with no texture. There was nothing to chew, yet it was not easy to swallow. It reminded me of plain oatmeal that needed more water. The slave gruel that I bought for Mena on the street had tasted better than this. Last night alone in the cell seemed to never end. I was anxious and could not sleep. Getting gruel this morning brought back the myriad of thoughts that went through my mind the night before. Had I been given slave gruel and was I now a slave? Was it better to be a slave than a prisoner? Would I be condemned to the horrible fate of public impalement? Should I attempt to take my life and avoid such horror and humiliation? How long would I be in this cell? I was hungry and should acquire any energy I could get. I forced myself to eat the gruel, but I did not lick the bowl clean. I am not a slave.
I watch the man. I sip at the container of ‘Black wine’ in my hand, though here it is called coffee, or alternatively Café, this place having two main languages. This is poor stuff compared to the fine brews of Thentis grown beans.
A while ago, I wondered if anyone among the readers was interested in writing some adventures of Slave Viki, from On the Banks of the Bighorn. Some people wondered what was known of Viki. So here is the collected Chronicles of Slave Viki.
She is an interesting Character, but I have no time to write of her adventures, either on Gor as an agent of the Kur, or on Earth, working for General Security and Central Information.
The Slave Viki Chronicles, being the
appearances of Slave Viki, from her life as an agent of the Kur to her life as
a Gorean Slave on Earth, told in excerpts from Banks of the Bighorn.
Banks of the Bighorn Chapter 4
Thanks to Vyeh for
putting the idea forward and for giving me the inspiration to write this story.
It sits there, on the coffee-table in my sitting room. It has the menace of a hand-grenade with the pin pulled out. Not for what it is, but for what it represents. It is a simple envelope, plain, no name, no address, no postage stamp, no postmark.
Marcie was right! I thought her hopelessly paranoid, totally delusional, but she was not. I in my arrogance and distrustful stupidity didn’t believe her warning. What she’d tried to tell me was so outlandish, so ridiculous, so impossible that I could not even consider that it could be true. I’d even scoffed, likening her fears to the 1930’s scares about ‘white-slavers’.
This is a long one, I hope you like it. The theft of Juli has made Patrick introspective
The day after Shipping Day, the day after my slave Juli had been stolen away from me, was the worst day of my life. Starting in the morning, Jerry Weiss and I had worked our connections with law enforcement trying to find out where Don Emery may have fled. We had no luck. Anders was still reporting from his hidden location near Don Emery’s house that there were still a large number of Emery family people at the location. Zach Frick and Joshua of the Acquisition Team looked through data on the General Information terminals to see if there was any trace of the tedk of Don Emery. There was not. They watched and rewatched the loading of the four Ships of the Steel Worlds that left North America on shipping day. There was no sign of Don Emery or Juli boarding for Gor. Woodrow Frick consulted people he knew in Britain. The Inner Party there had no records of Don Emery of Juli being in Britain.
45. Choices
I looked down at my naked collared kajira, her body shaking in fear, the five bladed leather whip offered to me in her outstretched hands. The trembling of her breasts caught my attention. I didn’t want to whip her; she had acted on impulse, thinking that she could save my life by destroying the dangerous scrolls. But she had tricked me, creating a distraction and seizing its brief moment to toss the scrolls into the fire.
I have a friend, Teresa. I haven’t seen her for a month or so. She seems to have dropped out of sight. I have the distinct feeling that I’ll never see her again. It’s a question really of whether fiction is really fact, and whether I’m paranoid or not.
At some Universities in the United States and Canada, female students who offer themselves for auction and service ( in all senses) at fraternity 'Ancient Times' banquets are asked to leave their sororities and transfer to Kappa Epsilon Digamma.
or KEF
The two cowboys who took me yesterday
had planted an unpleasant thought in my head.
That I was not sexually responsive enough as a slave; that my reactions
to being mastered were not intense enough; that I was failing and shaming
Patrick.
I am finding it hard, even in a collar, with Patrick’s initial on my thigh, and traipsing around naked all the time to let go of my entire life since I can remember – being respectable, being contained, not over-reacting to sexual stimuli.
With acknowledgement and thanks to John Norman for creating the world of Gor, in which this story is set.
Chapter Nine: The Pastry Vendor’s Booth.
I am beautiful! Even I have to admit that despite my Earth-girl reserve. I don’t know how this has come about. It’s not just the make-up or the new hairstyle, it’s something much deeper in me, something revealed that I wasn’t aware was in me. A realisation perhaps that I am, and can only be, one thing a woman. A woman in the deeper sense than the restricted sense of mere femaleness that most women on Earth are kept in.
Am I that kind of cruel author, who after setting up a cliff-haner with the stealing (not kidnapping, that is for free people) of Patrck's slave Juli, would made the readers wait another week for the resolution.
Yes, I am. Tale 18, A New Hope will be posted next week.
Bonus: The
fate of Nicola Van Rijn
A blonde slave knelt in front of Atticus of Ar of the Caste of Slavers. Clearly she had not been long on Gor; her Gorean was broken and halting. Outside the streets of Glorious Ar were as quiet as ever they got. It was night, the three moons were the only light, as it was so late that the lamps which dimly lit the streets were low. They had been turned down to save the use of unnecessary fuel. It was the hour of thieves and knives in the night. Men rolling home late from the taverns would be lucky to lose only their coins and retain their lives. Marlenus might be Ubar in the daylight, but under the moons, the only law was a strong arm and a sharp blade.
“What is the spirit of the bayonet?” the drill sergeant barked out loudly.
To KILL!” I yelled out in unison with the other recruits.
“What makes the grass grow?”
“Blood, Drill Sergeant!”
Lunge, parry, upstroke, butt stroke, slash, thrust!
I couldn’t get my bayonet to stick in the hard rubber of the tires that made up the target.
A Talendar for Shirley
Peony D Beckside
With acknowledgement and
thanks to John Norman for creating the world of Gor, in which this story is
set.
Much of my time in
training at the slave-house is standard stuff.
Master, when instructing me to write of my experiences and feelings
since first meeting him, has redacted anything that he thinks is unoriginal;
been written of before, by others.
Risking
him reminding me about curiosity in kajirae, I had asked him...
“I
will obey Master, but why do you wish me to write my story?”
I had hoped that in
doing so, it might indicate the intended readership. That could effect how I phrase things.
I chuckle at her question.
“It pleases me to add to the mythos on Earth about the Planet Gor, especially since whatever you write, if published, will only ever be seen as fiction, never as fact. I will be adding my own version of events. A ghostwriter on Earth will hopefully dovetail the two stories into one coherent whole. Write it from the beginning, from when you first saw me, and write it in the sense of ‘now’, i.e. that something is happening, that you are having this thought, rather than it having happened in the past or you thought it in the past.”
I have heard
the Master’s talking. Today is Shipping Day. All or most of the newly branded
girls will be lucky enough to be shipped to Gor, a paradise where a slave girl
can be openly a slave, owned and truly submissive to her Master without anyone
thinking it strange or wrong. Of course I would not want to be on Gor without
Master. I can barely stand to be out of his sight.
One thing I would want to experience on Gor is to be auctioned, sold to crowd. I would be exciting and perhaps humbling for a girl to know her true worth, and what is the
With acknowledgement and thanks to John Norman for
creating the world of Gor, in which this story is set.
Chapter Six: Reality With A Bump!
The building is solid,
almost forbidding, like one would expect the facade of one of those old
Victorian prisons. The blue and yellow
banners somehow don’t alleviate the exterior drabness. Master swings the big solid door
knocker. The sound echoes back within
the building. A man in robes similar to
those of Master opens the door.
“Is this the house of
Thromberg?”
“It is, Caste
Brother. How may we be of assistance.”
“May I speak with your
Proprietor? Assuming that’s not
yourself?”
“No, Perhaps one day I might have a house of my own. Do come in, I’ll call Stephanis Thromberg.”
I
unchain my slut, pulling her gently by her arm.
We descend some steps from my rooms.
There’s a pool in the courtyard. Not
quite a swimming pool, but more a plunge pool.
It’s kept warm by the hypocaust[1] system. I hand Shirley a pan-like container and some
soap. I sit on a stone bench
“Wash me, girl. All of me.”
Narrative
of Patrick Masters.
I replaced
the phone in its cradle on my desk in the Library at Drysdale House. It was
really my favorite room of all the rooms in the house. It contained my books,
my father’s and grandfather’s collections, and some volumes that had been in
the house when I bought it. Juli had unpacked and shelved most of the books,
but they were in no particular order. I had planned to work on cataloguing and
organizing over the winter, but now the demands of collecting and shipping
candidates for slavery on Gor had pushed that pleasant task to the side.
“Anders reports that Jane Bennet has been confronted and agreed to accommodate us in the matter of selecting candidates for acquisition. He has made a preliminary assessment of her himself. Her responses were very good. She will bring a good price herself in time.”
I drew my gladius as Lenious stepped toward me, his sword
brandished. This was not a wooden
training gladius I held, and I was scared, realizing that this test of steel
could end my idyllic life on this exotic planet. What was I risking at this moment and why?
“Why are you following me?” Lenious snarled, stopping just out of my sword reach. I didn’t know the answer to that question, and now I wish I hadn’t followed him. I didn’t want to risk my life this way in a dark back alley. I was having a marvelous time on Gor and I regretted following him, now realizing I had made a grave mistake. I felt stupid and I didn’t know how to answer his question.
With acknowledgement and thanks to John Norman for
creating the world of Gor, in which this story is set.
Chapter Four: Bitter And Sweet Lessons.
I force myself to ignore
that burst of weakness in me, and concentrate on the practical, the ‘what’s
happening here and now’
The Rat unlocks the previous collar, the one that wends its way to the floor anchorage. Even if I could get up off my knees quickly enough without the use of my hands to escape, I doubt that I could run more than two yards before he would catch me. Then there are doors, are any locked? If I got out onto the street, where would I go. I’ve no idea as to the geography of this weird city. No clue as to who if anyone would help me. If I’m to believe this lunatic, no-one at all would. Besides, I’m naked. A naked woman in a strange place, it could easily be ‘Out of the frying pan and into the fire’.
Narrative of Jane Bennet.
I was feeling pretty good about my prospects as I walked into the Lobby of the Hathaway Building. I was carrying a cup of coffee which I had purchased next door. I was sure that soon I would be working back on the top or fifth floor, promoted out of by punishment assignment with the temporary data and exhibit clerks on the fourth. The Fifth is where the action is; where Mr Masters and the partners work and where all the decisions are made. I often work on Saturdays. I like to show my dedication to my job.
42. Risto And Encounter
I watched the small shadow racing on the ground far below me as I turned the tarn around for another pass at the target. I took my eyes off of the moving winged shadow and directed my attention to the overstuffed rep cloth bundle on the ground ahead of me. This was my fourth pass, my three previous attempts to land the capture loop on the bundle missing the mark.
With acknowledgement and thanks to John Norman for
creating the world of Gor, in which this story is set.
Chapter Three: Beyond A ‘Bad-Hair’ Day.
I think that I’m awake. I wonder if I dare chance opening my eyes? Not yet, please. There are just a few sensations that don’t seem to want to let me drift back into glorious slumber. They niggle me, needling me to investigate them, to open my eyes and become fully conscious. Leave me alone! Just let me go back to oblivion… My thoughts won’t let me.
I said goodbye to the Delegation from the First Families of America who had commandeered my house for use as an Acquisition Center for women to be sent to Gor on behalf of the Steel Worlds. I as affable and genial; there nothing to be gained by a fruitless petulant display. Woodrow Frick left in a pickup truck driven by a man I did not recognize, doubtless from the Lazy F. Elliot Emery and Robert Desjarlais left together in the inevitable black Suburban with tinted windows. Desjarlais was driving. Zach Frick went in Drysdale House. My House, still. I was not pleased with young Zach at that moment. I took a short brisk walk in Fremont Park across the street to clear my head before going home.
“I’ll make him an offer he can’t
refuse” – The Godfather
“What is a tarn”, asked Inspector Strade.
I read from
the back of the menu.
“Tarn (n) a small
steep-banked mountain lake or pool often glacier fed, or by mountain streams.
“But in this case, it is a more
expensive private part of the Scaramouche Restaurant.”
Inspector Lee Strade opened the menu in front of him.
“Good thing I have a generous expense account. Still as funny name for a restaurant.”
A Talendar for Shirley
Peony D Beckside
With acknowledgement and thanks to John Norman for
creating the world of Gor, in which this story is set.
My name is Michalis Dundras. That’s not quite the name shown on the slim little book in the inside pocket of the jacket I wear; the booklet with the word ‘passport’ on the front cover. The ‘passport’ says that I’m Michael Donaldson. The organisation that I work for is fortunate in having someone working in the US Passport Office. The passport I have, is therefore genuine, the documentation upon which it was issued though, is perhaps less than honest.
Man makes plans,
and the Priest-Kings laugh.
*
Due to increasing difficulty in navigating image generation restrictions, all illustrations in this post are archival.
I do not scream as I awaken in this
cage. The concept of finding myself
locked in a cage is no longer so shocking, so bizarre. It’s an experience I’ve had before. I don’t like the situation. I no more want to be kept like an animal in a
cage than I did before. It’s simply not
a surprise anymore.
This cage though is in a much more dark and dank room than had been the one I had inhabited on Earth. At least the previous prison-room had fluorescent lights, here the lamps seem to be some kind of oil-lamp, with its concomitant reduction in light output.
The moon was a
ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas
It was 4AM, I was at the wheel of the Queen Conch as she plied the Pacific Ocean south from the mouth of Patroon Creek towards San Francisco. All the others were asleep; it had been a long day. Smith and the short swarthy sailor had met us there at dusk and brought us safely aboard. I had slept until just before three in the morning, when the silent sailor had wakened me to take a watch at the wheel. In the wheelhouse, he had pointed out the course and muttered that Smith would relieve me at seven.
“Brand,” Mirus said to Mena, who was kneeling in nadu next
to me. She looked at me confused and
then at Mirus.
“Must a command be repeated slave?” he asked firmly.
“No Master! This slave does not know that command.”
“Rise up on your knees, keeping them spread wide. Now extend your left leg out. Pull the hem of your tunic high up above your brand, displaying it to me,” he said. She complied quickly, following his instructions immediately as they were given.
The men are so strong. Big and muscular, brawny if you like. No sign of excess fat. I watch as two of them, under the command of the rat Kyril Flavius, remove the girl from each of the cages.
I was startled by a loud knocking on the door. I had been putting Mena through slave paces, teaching her to assume positions when commanded. I was letting her recover her breath , giving her a break while in the all fours position. Her body was flushed from exertion. I had taken my tunic off and was kneeling behind her, her ass pointing at me, inviting. I had put my finger to her wet opening when the knocking began. Mena turned her head, looking behind at me and appeared frightened. The loud knocking stopped. No one ever knocked on my door.
I’m not supposed to. Chief Brainerd had made it quite clear that I, Detective Hannah Greenwood, was to hand over all documentation with regard to the attempted abduction of Ginger Stowell, by the self-professed slave Alyena and as yet unidentified accomplices. The likelihood that Alyena’s owner is the one who gave her the order to abduct Ms Stowell and/or to collect her is strong, but not yet confirmed. Chief Brainerd also ordered me to wipe all related computer files.
With thanks to
John Norman for creating the basic concepts of the world of Gor and those who
have dealings with it. Also to Emma of
Gor for her ideas regarding the control at a distance, of kajirae on Earth,
Chapter Four
I’m used to waiting. For a slave, waiting is inherent in our lives. Masters do as they will, we must accommodate that. It is not our place to demand that Masters be at our ‘beck and call’ it is ours to be at theirs. A Master will rarely wait for a slave to do something, unless he’s feeling generous. We can never be tardy, not even in beautifying ourselves for our Master’s pleasure.
Zork Peony D Beckside In appreciation of, and with thanks to John Norman for creating the wonderful world of Gor, in which this stor...