....we had passed several of the pasang stones that line the side of the highway without seeing anything more threatening than a line of peasants carrying brushwood on their backs, and a pair of hurrying Initiates. Once, however, Talena dragged me to the side of the road, and scarcely able to conceal our horror, we watched while a sufferer from the incurable Dar-kosis disease, bent in his yellow shrouds, hobbled by, periodically clacking that wooden device which warns all within hearing to stand clear from his path. �An Afflicted One,� said Talena, gravely, using the expression common for such plagued wretches on Gor. The name of the disease itself, Dar-kosis, is almost never mentioned. I glimpsed the face beneath the hood and felt sick. Its one bleared eye regarded us blankly for a moment, and then the thing moved on.
Tarnsman of Gor, page 113

Suddenly, to my horror, I saw the quarry of the larl. It was a human being, moving with surprising alacrity over the rough ground. To my astonishment, I saw it wore the yellow cerements of the sufferer of Dar-Kosis, that virulent, incurable, wasting disease of Gor.
Tarnsman of Gor, page 149

�There are more of these things about,� I said. �You�d better come with me. It won�t be safe here.�
The figure seemed to shrink backward and grow smaller in its yellow rags. Pointing to its shadowed, concealed face, it whispered, �The Holy Disease.�
That was the literal translation of Dar-Kosis�the Holy Disease�or, equivalently, the Sacred Affliction. The disease is named that because it is regarded as being holy to the Priest-Kings, and those who suffer from it are regarded as consecrated to the Priest-Kings. Accordingly, it is regarded as heresy to shed their blood. On the other hand, the Afflicted, as they are called, have little to fear from their fellow men. Their disease is so highly contagious, so invariably devastating in its effect, and so feared on the planet that even the boldest of outlaws gives them a wide berth. Accordingly, the Afflicted enjoy a large amount of freedom of movement on Gor. They are, of course, warned to stay away from the habitations of men, and, if they approach too closely, they are sometimes stoned. Oddly enough, casuistically, stoning the Afflicted is not regarded as a violation of the Priest-Kings� supposed injunction against shedding their blood.
As an act of charity, Initiates have arranged at various places Dar-Kosis Pits where the Afflicted may voluntarily imprison themselves, to be fed with food hurled downwards from the backs of passing tarns. Once in a Dar-Kosis Pit, the Afflicted are not allowed to depart. Finding this poor fellow in the Voltai, so far from the natural routes and fertile areas of Gor, I suspected he might have escaped, if that was possible, from one of the Pits.
�What is your name?� I asked.
�I am of the Afflicted,� said the weird, cringing figure. �The Afflicted are dead. The dead are nameless.� The voice was little more than a hoarse whisper.
I was glad that it was night and that the hood of the man was drawn, for I had no desire to look on what pieces of flesh might still cling to his skull.
�Did you escape from one of the Dar-Kosis Pits?� I asked.
The man seemed to cringe even more.
�You are safe with me,� I said. I gestured to the tarn, which was impatiently opening and closing his wings. �Hurry. There are more larls about.�
�The Holy Disease,� the man protested, pointing into the hideously dark recesses of his drawn hood.
�I can�t leave you here to die,� I said. I shivered at the thought of taking this dread creature, this whispering corpse, with me. I feared the disease as I had not feared the larl, but I could not leave him alone here in the mountains to fall prey to one beast or another. The man cackled�a thin, whining noise. �I am already dead,� he laughed insanely. �I am of the Afflicted.� Again the weird cackle came from the folds of the yellow shroud. �Would you like the Holy Disease?� he asked, stretching out one hand in the darkness, as if trying to clutch my hand.
I drew back my hand in horror.
Tarnsman of Gor, pages 150-152

In what seemed like an hour, but must have been no more than three or four minutes, I was behind the camp of Pa-Kur and searching for the dreaded Dar-Kosis Pits, those prisons in which the Afflicted may freely incarcerate themselves and be fed, but from which they are not allowed to depart. There were several, easily visible from above because of their broad, circular form, much like a great well sunk in the earth. When I came to one, I would bring the tarn lower. When I had completed my search, I had found only one pit deserted. The others were dotted with what appeared, from the height, to be yellow lice�the figures of the Afflicted. Boldly, giving no thought to the possible danger of lingering infection, I dropped the tarn into the deserted pit.
The giant landed on the rock floor of the circular pit, and I looked upward, my glance climbing the sheer artificially smoothed sides of the pit, which stretched perhaps a thousand feet above me on all sides. In spite of the breadth of the pit, perhaps two hundred feet, it was cold at the bottom, and as I looked up, I was startled to note that, in the blue sky, I could see the dim pin-pricks of light which, after dark, would become the blazing stars above Gor. In the center of the pit a crude cistern had been carved from the living rock and was half filled with cold but foul water. As nearly as I could determine, there was no way in and out of the pit except on tarnback. I did know that sometimes the pathetic inmates of Dar-Kosis Pits, repenting their decision to be incarcerated, had managed to cut footholds in the walls and escape, but the labor involved�a matter of years�the death penalty for being discovered, and the very risk of the climb made such attempts rare. If there was some secret way in and out of this particular pit, assuming it was the one prepared by Marlenus, I did not see what it was and had no time to conduct a thorough investigation.
Looking about, I saw several of the caves dug into the walls of the pit, which, at least in most pits, house the inmates. In desperate, frustrated haste, I examined several of them; some were shallow, little more than scooped-out depressions in the wall, but others were more extensive, containing two or three chambers connected by passageways. Some contained worn sleeping mats of cold, moldy straw, some contained a few rusted metal utensils, such as kettles and pails, but most were completely empty, revealing no signs of life or use at all.
Tarnsman of Gor, pages 194-196