Greed and seflishness I now, for the first time, understood.There is more honesty in Port Kar, I thought, than in all the cities of Gor. Here men scorn to sheath the claws of their heart in the pretenses of their mouth. Here, in this city, alone of all the cities of Gor,men did not stoop to cant and prattle. Here they knew, and would acknowledge, the dark truths of human life,that, in the end, there was only gold,and power, and the bodies of women, and the steel of weapons. Here they concerned themselves only with themselves.Here they behaved as what they were, cruelly and with ruthlessness, as men,despising, and taking what they might , should it please them to do so .(Raiders of Gor Page 102)
Port Kar , squalid, malignant Port Kar, scourge of gleaming Thassa, Tarn of the Sea, is a vast, disjointed mass of holdings, each almost a fortress,piled upon one another, divided and crossed by hundreds of canals. It is,in effect, walled ,though it has few walls as one normally thinks of them. Those buildings which face outwards, say, either at the delta or along the shallow Tamber Gulf, have no windows on the outward side, and the outward walls of them are several feet thick , and they are surmounted, on the roofs,with crenelated parapets. The canals which open in to the delta of the Tamber, were in the last few years, fitted with heavy, half submerged gates of bars. We had entered the city through one such pair of gates. In Port Kar incidentally, there are none of the towers often encountered in the northern cities of Gor.The men of Port Kar had not chosen to build towers. It is the only city on Gor I know of which was not built by free men , but by the slaves, under the lash of Masters. Commonly, on Gor, slaves are not permitted to build, that being reguarded as a privelege to be reserved for free men.(Raiders of Gor Page 103)
Politically, Port Kar is a chaos, ruled by several conflicting Ubars, each with his own following, each attempting to to terrorize, to govern and tax to the extent of his power. Nominally beneath these Ubars, but in fact much independant of them is an oligarchy of merchant princes, Captains , as they call themselves, who, in council, maintain and manage the great arsenal, building and renting ships and fittings, themselves controlling the grain fleet, the oil fleet, the slave fleet and others.(Raiders of Gor Page 104)
There is even, in Port Kar, a recognized caste of Thieves, the only such I know of on Gor, which , in the lower canals and the perimeters of the city, has much power, that of the threat and of the knife.They are recognized by the Thiefs scar, which they wear as caste mark, a tiny three pronged brand burned into the face in back of and below the eye, over the right cheekbone.(Raiders of Gor Page 104)
The nearest solid land was about one hundred passangs to the north , but it was open land , and , there, on the edges of the delta, there were the log outposts of Port Kar, where slave hunters and trained sleen , together, patrolled the marshes edges.(Raiders of Gor Page 105)
The dancing girls of Port Kar are said to be the best of all Gor. They are sought eagerly in the many cities of the planet. They are slaves to the core, vicious, treacherous, cunning, seductive, sensuous, dangerous, desirable, excruciatingly desirable. (Raiders of Gor Page 100)
The caste of thieves was important in Port Kar, and even honoured. It represented a skill which in the city was held in high repute. Indeed, so jealous of their prerogatives were the caste of thieves that they often hunted thieves who did not belong to their caste, and slew them, throwing their bodies to the urts in the canals. Indeed, there was less thievery in Port Kar than there might have been were there no caste of thieves in the city. They protected, jealously, their own territories from amateur competition. Ear notching and mutiliation, common punishments on Gor for thieves, were not found in Port Kar. The caste was too powerful. On the other hand, it was reguarded as permissible to slay a thief or take a female thief slave if the culprit could be apprehended within an Ahn of the theft. After an Ahn the thief, if apprehended and a caste member, was to be remanded to the police of the arsenal. If found guilty in the court of the arsenal, the male thief would be sentenced, for a week to a year, to hard labour in the arsenal or the wharves: the female thief would be sentenced to service, for a week to a year,in a straw -strewn cell in one of Port Kars penal brothels.(Hunters of Gor Page 304)
Port Kar does not recognize the Free Comapnionship,but there are free women in the city, who are known simply as the women of their men.(Raiders of Gor Page 295)
Meanwhile , while I had been plying the trade of pirate, the military and political ventures of the council itself , within the city, had proceeded well. For one thing, they had now formed a Council Guard, with its distinctive livery, that was now recognized as a force of the council, and, in effect, as the police of the city. The Arsenal Guard, however, perhaps for traditional reasons, remained a seperate body, concerned with the arsenal, and having jurisdiction within its walls.(Raiders of Gor Page 218)
At any rate, for the first time in several years, there was now a single effective soverign in Port Kar, the Council. Accordingly , its word, and, in effect, its word alone, was law. A similar consolidation and unification had taken place , of course, in the realm of inspections and taxations, penalties and enforcements,codes and courts. For the first time in several years one could count on the law being the same on both sides of a given canal.(Raiders of Gor Page 219)
"we are passing a market" said Samos."You had better close the window slats." I glanced outside. The smell of fruit and vegetables, and verr milk, was strong. I also heard the chatter of women. Dozens of women were spreading their blankets, and their wares, on the cement. There are many such markets in Port Kar. Men and women come to them in small boats. Also, of course,sometimes the vendors, too, will merely tie up their boats near the side of the canal, particularly when the space on the cement is crowded. The markets,thus , tent to extend in to the canal itself. The only fully floating market authorized by the Council of Captains occurs in a lakelike area near the arsenal. It is called the Place of the Twenty- Fifth of Se'Kara, because of the monument there, rising from the water.(Savages of Gor Page 60)
On the twenty-fifth of Se'Kara in Year one of the Sovereignty of the Council of Captains , the year 10,20 C.A.,Contasta Ar,from the founding of Ar, a sea battle took place in which the fleet of Port Kar defeated the fleets of Cos and Tyros. The monument, of course, commemorates this victory. The market forms itsel about the monument. That year, incidentally, is also reguarded as significant in the history of Port Kar because it was in that year, as it is said , a Home Stone consented to reside within the city .(Savages of Gor Page 61)
"I am a Captain." I said.
"But in Port Kar," He said.
"Yes," I said, "I am a Captain in Port Kar."
"but this is not Port Kar" he said.
I looked at him. "Port Kar," I said ,"is wherever her power is."(Raiders of Gor Page 184)
I passed iron doors, narrow , in the walls. These doors usually had a tiny
observation panel in them, which could be slid back. The walls were sheer
.They were generally windowless untill some fifteen feet above the ground.
Yards, and gardens and courts, if they exist, are generally within the house
, not outside it. This is very general in Gorean architecture. But there were
few gardens or courts in Port Kar. It was a crowded city, built up from the
marshes themselves, in the vosk's delta, and space was scarce and precious.
There were pilings along the walkway, to which , here and there, small boats
were moored. The walkway itself varied from some five feet to a yard in width.
(Explorers of Gor Page 46)
It was still dark along the canals. Port Kar seems such a lonely place at such an hour. I trod the walkway beside a canal, my sea bag over my shoulder . The air was damp. Here and there small lamps, set in niches, high in the stone walls ,or lanterns, hung on iron projections, shed small pools of light on the sides of the buildings and illuminated, too, in their secondary ambience, the stones of the walkway on which I trod, one of the many leading down to the wharves. I could smell Thassa, the sea.(Explorers of Gor Page45)
I had dealt Surbus his death blow, but before he had died, I had, on the urgings of the woman, she moved to pity,carried him to the roof of the tavern,that he migh, before his eyes closed, look once more upon the sea. He was a pirate and a cutthroat, but he was not unhappy in his death;he had died by the sword, which would have been his choice, and before he had died he had looked again upon gleaming Thassa;it is called the death of the blood and the sea; he died not unhappy; men of Port Kar do not care to die in their beds, weak, lingering, at the mercy of tiny foes that cannot see; they live by violence and desire that they shall similarly perish; to die by the sword is regarded as their right, and honor, of he who lives by it.(Marauders of Gor Pg 2)
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 the death of the the blood and the 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 Pg 2)
The follwing are the names of other places in Port Kar mentioned in the scrolls .
We were in the vicinty of the pier of the Red Urt .It is not a desirable district.
The praetor dispatched a pair of Guardsmen, who moved swiftly toward the Rim canal.
I was now in the vicinity of the Spice pier.
The Ribbon is one of Port Kar's better known canals.