Nomads.page

Nomads of Gor

The Wagon Peoples do not grow food nor do they have manfactories as we know it. They are herders and it is said killers. They eat nothing that has touched the dirt. They live on the meat and milk of the bosk. They are among the of proudest people on Gor, regarding city dwellers of the cities of Gor as vermin in holes, cowards who must fly behind walls, wretches that fear to live beneath the broad sky, who dare not despute with them in the open wind swept plains of their world. Nomads Pg.4

The bosk, without which the Wagon Peoples could not live is an ox-like creature. It is a huge, shambling animal with thick himped neck and long shagy hair. It has a wide head and tiny eyes, a temper to match that of a sleen and two long wicked horns to reach out from it's head and suddenly curve forward to terminate in fearful points. Some of these horns, on larger animals, measured from tip to tip, exceed the length of two spears. Nomads pg.5

Not only does the fleshof the bosk and milk of it's cow furnish the Wagon Peoples with food and drink, but it's hides cover the dome-like wagons in which they dwell; it's tanned and sewn skin cover their bodies; the leather of it's hump is used for their shields; its sinews form their thread; it's bones and horns are split and tooled into implements of a hundred sorts, from awls, pouches and spoons to drinking flagons and weapon tips; it's hoofs are used a glue; it's oils are used to grease their bodies against the cold. Even the dung of the bosk finds it uses on the TREELESS PRAIRIES being dried and used for fuel. Nomads pg.5

The bosk is said to be the MOTHER of the Wagon Peoples, and they reverence it as such. THE MAN WHO KILLS ONE FOOLISHLY IS STRANGLED IN THONGS OR SUFFICATED IN THE HIDE OF THE ANIMAL HE SLEW; IF FOR ANY REASON, THE MAN SHOULD KILL A BOSK COW WITH UNBORN YOUNG, HE IS STAKED OUT, ALIVE, IN THE PATH OF THE HERD, AND THE MARCH OF THE WAGON PEOPLES TAKES IT WAY OVER HIM...Nomads Pg.5

The Wagon Peoples, it is said SLAY STRANGERS...Nomads Pg.9

If I were found on the plains near the camps or bosk herds, I know I would be scented out and slain by the domesticated, nocturnal herd sleen, used as shepards and sentinals by the Wagon Peoples, released from their cages with the falling of darkness. Nomads Pg.9

These animals, trained prarie sleens, move rapidly and silently, attacking upon no other provocation then trespass what they have decided is their territory. They respond to only the voice of their Master, and when He is killed or dies, His animals are slain and eaten. Nomads Pg.9

I hope to be granted death in a battle, if death must be. The Wagon Peoples, of all those on Gor that I know, are the only ones with a clan of torturers, trained as carefully as scrbes or physicians, in the art of detaining life. Some of these men have achieved fortune and fame in various Gorean cities, for their services to Initates and Ubars, and others with interest in the arts of detection and persuasion. For some reason, they all have worn hoods. It is said they remove the hood only when the sentence is death, so that it is only the condemned men who seen whatever it is that lies behind the hood. Nomads Pgs.9 & 19

I could see he carried a small, leather shield, glossy, black. laquered; he wore a conical, fur-rimmed iron helmet, a net of colored chains depending from the helmet protecting his face, leaving only holes for his eyes. He wore a quilted jacket and under this a leather jerkin; the jacket was trimmed with fur and had a fur collar, his boots were made of hide, and also trimmed with fur; he had a wide, five-buckled belt. I could not see his face because of the net of chains that hung before it. I also noted, about his throat, now lowered, was a soft leather wind scarf which might, when the helmet wail was lifted, be drawn over the mouth and nose, against the wind and dust of his ride. Nomads Pg.10

He was very erect in the saddle. His lance remained on his back, but he carried in his right hand, the small powerful HORN BOW of the Wagon Peoples and attached to his saddle was a laquered, narrow, rectangular quiver containing as many as forty arrows. On the saddle also hung a coiled rope of braided bosk hide and on the other, a long, three-weighted bola of the sort used in hunting tumits and men; in the saddle itself, on the right side, indicating the rider to be right-handed, were the seven sheaths for the almost legendary QUIVAS, the balanced saddleknives of the prairie. Nomads Pg.11

It is said the youth of the Wagon Peoples was taught the bow, quiva and the lance before the parents would consent to give him a name, for names are precious among the Wagon Peoples, as among Goreans in general, and they are not wasted on someone who is likely to die, one who can not well handle the weapons of the hunt and war. Until the youth has mastered the bow, the quiva and the lance, he is simply known as the first, or second, and so on, son of such and such father. Nomads Pg.11

The Wagon Peoples war among themselves, but once in every two hands of the year, there is a time of gathering of the peoples, and this, I learned, was that time. In the thinking of the Wagon Peoples it is called the Omen Year, though the Omen Year is a season, rather than a year, which occupies a part of two of their regular years, for the Wagon Peoples calculate the years from the Season of Snow to the Season of Snow. Nomads Pg.11

The Omen Year, or season, last several months, and consists of three phases, called the Passing of Turia, which takes place in the fall; the Wintering, which takes place north of Turia, and commonly south of Cartius, the equator of course lying to the north of this hemisphere; and the Return to Turia, in the spring, or as the Wagon Peoples say, in the Season of Little Grass. It is near Turia, in the spring, the Omen Year is completed, when the omens are taken, usually over several days by hundreds of haruspexes, mostly readers of bosk blood and verr livers, to determine if they are favorable for chosing an Ubar San, a one Ubar, a Ubar who would be High Ubar, a Ubar of all the Wagons, a Ubar of all the peoples, one that could lead them as one people. Nomads Pg.11&12

If the isolated, fierce peoples of the south were to join behind a single standard and turn their heads northward--away from their dry plains to lusher reaches of the valleys of the eastern Cartius, perhaps even beyond them to those of the Vosk. Little would be safe if the Wagon Peoples should march. A thousand years ago it is said, they had carried devastation as far as the walls of Ar and Ka-ro-ba...Nomads Pg.13

His shield was laquered in yellow, and his bow was too. Over his shoulder he too, carried one of the slender lances. He was black. Kataii, I said to myself... Nomads Pg. 14

The rider, too wore a wind scarf. His shield was red. The Blood People of Kassar...Nomads Pg.14

I knew, though, from the belt, though I first misread its purpose, that the owner was Paravaci, The Rich Peoples, richest of the Wagon dwellers...Nomads Pg.14

On the face of each there were, almost like horded chevrons, brightly colored scars. The vivid coloring and intensity of these scars, their prominence, reminded me of the hideous markings on the faces of mandrills; but these disfigurements, as I soon recognized, was cultural, not congenital, and bespoke not the natural innocence of the work of genes but the glories and status, the arrogance and prides, of their bearers. The scars had been worked into the faces, with needles, knives, pigments and dung of bosk over a period of days and nights. Men have died in fixings of such scars. Most of the scars were set in pairs, moving diagnonally down the side of the head, towards the nose and chin. The man facing me had seven such scars, cermonially worked into tissues of his countenance, the highest being red, the next yellow, the next blue, the fourth black, then two yellow and black again. The faces I saw were all scarred differently, but each was scarred. The effect of scars, ugly, startling, terrible, perhaps in part calculated to terrifying the enemies. Nomads Pg. 16

At the time I could read only the top scar, the red, bright, fierce cord-like scar that was the Courage scar. It is always the highest scar on the face. Indeed without that scar, no other scar can be granted. The Wagon Peoples value courage above all else. Nomads Pg. 14

Suddenly the Tuchuk bent to the soil and picked up a handful of dirt and grass, the land on which the bosk graze, the land of the Tuchuk, and this land and this dirt which he thrust in my hand and I held it. The warrior grinned and put his hand over mine, so that our hands together held the dirt and the grass, and were together clasped on it. "Yes" said the warrior, "come in peace to the Land of the Wagon Peoples." Nomads Pg. 26

Here and there, children ran between the wheels, playing with cork ball and quiva, the object of the game being to strike the thrown ball..Nomads Pg.27

Tuchuk women, unveiled, in their long leather dresses, long hair bound in braids, tended cooking pots, hung on tem-wood tripods over dung fires. These women were unscarred, but like the bosk themselves, each wore a nose ring. That of the animal is heavy and of gold, that of the women also gold but tiny and fine, not unlike the wedding rings of my old world. Nomads Pg. 27

The Wagon Peoples are facinated by the future and its signs and though, to hear them speak, they put no store in such matters, yet they do in practice give them great consideration. Nomads Pg. 27

The Tuchuks and other Wagon Peoples reverence Priest-Kings, but unlike the Goreans of the cities, with their caste of Initiates. They do not extend to them the dignities of worship. I suppose the Tuchuks worship noting in common sense of that world, but it is true they hold many things holy, among them the bosk and skills of arms, but chief of things before which the proud Tuchuks stands ready to remove his helmet is the sky, the simple, vast, beautiful sky, from which falls the rain that, in his myths, formed the earth and the bosks, and the Tuchuks. It is to the sky the Tuchuk pray, demanding victory and luck for themselves, defeat and misery for their enemies. The Tuchuks, incidentally, like other of the Wagon Peoples, pray only when mounted, only in the saddle, and with weapon at hand; he prays to the sky not as slave to a master, nor a servant to a god, but a warrior to an Ubar; the women of the Wagon Peoples, it might be mentioned, are not permitted to pray, many of them however, do patronize the haruspexes, who beside telling the future with a greater or lesser degree of accuracy for generally reasonable fees, provided an incredible assemblage of amulets, talismans, trinkets, philters, potions, spell papers, wonderworking sleen teeth, and colored magic strings that, depending on the purpose, may be knotted in various ways, worn about the neck. Nomads Pg. 28

"Stand aside you fool!"cried a girl's voice, and to my astonshiment, aside the saddle of the monster I espied a girl, young, astonishingly beautiful, vital, angry, pulling at the control straps of the animal. She was not as the other women of the Wagon Peoples I have seen, the dour, thin women with braided hair bending over cooking pots. She wore a brief leather skirt, slit on the right side to allow her the saddle of the kaiila; her leather blouse was sleeveless, attached to her shoulder was a crimson cape; and her wild black hair was bound back by a band of scarlet cloth, like the other women, she wore no veil and like them, dixed in her nose was a tiny ring that proclaimed her people. Her skin was light brown and her eyes, a charged, sparkling black. "What fool is this!" she demanded of Kamchak. "No fool" said Kamchak, "but Tarl Cabot, a warrior, one who has held in his hands with me grass and earth."He is a stranger"she said. "He should be slain!" Kamchak grinned up at her. "He has held with me grass and earth," He said, The girl gave a snort of contempt and kicked her small, spurred heels into the flanks of the kaiila and bounded away.
Nomads Pg. 32