"If a warrior leaves a homestone, is he still a warrior? Or has he broken his word. And is he there fore, denounced by his caste? cast out from them if you'll forgive the pun."
Tal,
I have not included here every reference to Home Stones. There are a few times where the importance of Home Stones are mentioned. Where, as those speaking on the topic say something along the lines of, if one has a Home Stone no more need be said. And if one does not, it cannot be explained.
But in what I have shown below, I hope I have answered your questions.
First of all, to establish, in the simplest of terms, how a Home Stone is acquired, how a city or community first finds a Home Stone is this quote.
“How does a city obtain a Home Stone?” I asked.
“Men decide that she shall have one,” said Tab.
“Yes,” I said, “that is how it is that a city obtains a Home Stone.”
Raiders of Gor Book 6 Page 251
Citizenship of a particular city on Gor involved ceremony surrounding the city’s Home Stone.
“What is your Home Stone?” asked my father.
Sensing what was wanted, I replied, “My Home Stone is the Home Stone of Ko-ro-ba.”
“Is it to that city that you pledge your life, your honor, and your sword?” asked my father.
“Yes,” I said.
“Then,” said my father, placing his hands solemnly on my shoulders, “in virtue of my authority as Administrator of this City and in the presence of the Council of High Castes, I declare you to be a Warrior of Ko-ro-ba.”
Tarnsman of Gor Book 1 Page 63
Citizenship, interestingly, in most Gorean cities is conferred only upon the coming of age, and only after certain examinations are passed. Further, the youth of Gor, in most cities, must be vouched for by citizens of the city, not related in blood to him, and be questioned before a committee of citizens, intent upon determining his worthiness or lack thereof to take the Home Stone of the city as his own. Citizenship in most Gorean communities is not something accrued in virtue of the accident of birth but earned in virtue of intent and application. The sharing of a Home Stone is no light thing in a Gorean city.
Slave Girl of Gor Book 11 Page 394
It is also evident that a Home Stone is very important to the Gorean.
In Gorean law, allegiances to a Home Stone, and not physical structures and locations, tend to define communities.
Blood Brothers of Gor Book 18 Page 474
“Perhaps, here and there, men will form themselves into small communities, where the names of such things as courage, discipline and responsibility may be occasionally recollected, communities which, in their small way, might be worthy of Home Stones. Such communities, emerging upon the ruins, might provide a nucleus for regeneration, a sounder, more biological regeneration of a social structure, one not antithetical to the nature of human beings.”
Explorers of Gor Book 13 Page 333
The sword of the warrior, commonly, is pledged to a Home Stone, that of the assassin to gold and the knife.
Beasts of Gor Book 12 Page 136
The Home Stone to which one has pledged loyalty can indeed be ‘taken away’ in the aspect of a person being banned from or banished from its location. And, in the worst case scenario, the person might even be killed.
“But when it was learned that she had been captured,” said my hostess, “she was cast off by her family, and sworn from the Home Stone.”
Mercenaries of Gor Book 21 Page 316
She had, it seemed, for whatever reason, presumably opportunism or greed, betrayed the pledge of her Home Stone. In the case of a man this can be a capital offense. She was not a man, however, but a female. It was thus, doubtless, that she had not been placed on a proscription list, but only on a seizure list. It was her sex which had saved her. Had she been a man she would have been hung.
Mercenaries of Gor Book 21 Page 141
One might also abandon one’s Home Stone and become an outlaw.
The officer continued; “Marlenus lost the Home Stone, the Luck of Ar. He, with fifty tarnsmen disloyal to the city, seized what they could of the treasury and escaped. In the streets there is civil war, fighting between the factions that would master Ar. There is looting and pillaging. The city is under martial law.”
Tarnsman of Gor Book 1 Page 102
“Then be it so,” he said, “you are henceforth condemned to wander the world alone and friendless, with no city, with no walls to call your own, with no Home Stone to cherish. You are henceforth a man without a city, you are a warning to all not to scorn the will of the Priest-Kings - beyond this you are nothing.”
Outlaw of Gor Book 2 Page 42
I thought of the magnificent Marlenus, swift, brilliant, decisive, stubborn, vain, proud, a master swordsman, a tarnsman, a leader like a larl among men, always to those of Ar the Ubar of Ubars. I knew that men would, and had, deserted the Home Stone of their own city to follow him into disgrace and exile, preferring outlawry and the mountains to the securities of citizenship and their city, asking only that they be permitted to ride beside him, to lift their swords in his name.
Assassin of Gor Book 5 Page 389
Or one can feel he has dishonored his Home Stone and then assume he is no longer worthy to be associated with it.
“Long ago,” I said, “I dishonored my caste, my Home Stone, my blade. Long ago, I fell from the warriors. Long ago, I lost my honor.”
Sarus slowly drew his blade, as did those behind him.
“But once,” I said, “I was of the city of Ko-ro-ba. That must not be forgotten. That cannot be taken from me”
. . .
“My Home Stone,” I told him, “was once the Home Stone of Ko-ro-ba. Will it be you, Sarus, who will come first against me?”
Hunters of Gor Book 8 Page 275 - 276
I, Tarl Cabot, hating myself, no longer respected or trusted human beings. I had done what I had done that day for the sake of a child, one who had once been kind to me, but who no longer existed. I knew myself for one who had chosen ignominious slavery over the freedom of honorable death. I knew myself as coward. I had betrayed my codes. I had tasted humiliation and degradation, and most at my own hands, for I had been most by myself betrayed. I could no longer see myself as I had been. I had been a boy and now I had come to the seeings of manhood, and found within myself, disgusting me, something capable of cowardice, self-indulgence, selfishness, and cruelty. I was no longer worthy of the red of the warrior, no longer worthy of serving the Home Stone of my city, Ko-ro-ba, the Towers of the Morning; it seemed - to me then that there were only winds and strengths, and the motions of bodies, the falling of rain, the movements of bacilli, the beating of hearts and the stopping of such beatings. I found myself alone.
And then, hearing still the cries, the alarms in the nigh, I fell asleep. My last thought before the sweet darkness of sleep was the remembrance that I was one who had chosen ignominious slavery to the freedom of honorable death, and that I was alone.
Raiders of Gor Book 6 Page 76
So then, was Tarl still a warrior? Yes, in the fact that his training did not go away. But, Tarl did not feel he could, in all good conscience, again were the scarlet of the warrior’s caste.
It is certain that a person without a Home Stone is looked upon as, to say the least, undesirable.
“But,” said the small fellow, “whatever you choose to call them, or however you choose to think of them, we made a bargain!”
“You have no Home Stone,” said the bearded man.
I shuddered. In such a fashion he had informed the small fellow that he was not such that one need keep faith with him. There is a Gorean saying that only Priest-Kings, outlaws and slaves lack Home Stones. Strictly, of course, that is an oversimplification. For example, animals of all sorts, such as tarsks and verr, as well as slaves, do not have Home Stones. Too, anyone whose citizenship, for whatever reason, is rescinded or revoked, with due process of law, is no longer entitled to the protections and rights of that polity’s Home Stone. That Home Stone is then no longer his. This suggested to me, again, that the small fellow might have been cast out of Tharna, perhaps exiled or banished. He did not seem to me a likely candidate for an outlaw, at least in the fullest sense of the word. Indeed, the fellows with whom he was dealing, such rough, dangerous, unkempt brutes, seemed to me much more likely candidates for such an appellation.
Dancer of Gor Book 22 Page 387 - 388
As for a person having more than one Home Stone, in other words, claiming allegiance to the Home Stone of a city and also having a personal Home Stone, yes, this is known and proper.
“In peasant villages on this world,” he continued, “each hut was originally built around a flat stone which was placed in the center of the circular dwelling. It was carved with the family sign and was called the Home Stone. It was, so to speak, a symbol of sovereignty, or territory, and each peasant, in his own sovereign.”
“Later,” said my father, “Home Stones were used for villages, and later still for cities. The Home Stone of a village was always placed in the market, in a city, on the top of the highest tower. The Home Stone came naturally, in time, to acquire a mystique, and something of the same hot, sweet emotions as our native peoples of Earth feel toward their flags became invested in it.”
My father had risen to his feet and had begun to pace the room, and his eyes seemed strangely alive. In time I would come to understand more of what he felt. Indeed, there is a saying on Gor, a saying whose origin is lost in the past of this strange planet, that one who speaks of Home Stones should stand, for matters of honor are here involved, and honor is respected in the barbaric codes of Gor.
“These stones,” said my father, “are various, of different colors, shapes, and sizes, and many of them are intricately carved. Some of the largest cities have small, rather insignificant Home Stones, but of incredible antiquity, dating back to the time when the city was a village or only a mounted pride of warriors with no settled abode.”
My father paused at the narrow window in the circular room and looked out onto the hills beyond and fell silent.
At last he spoke again.
“Where a man sets his Home Stone, he claims, by law, that land for himself. Good land is protected only by the swords of the strongest owners in the vicinity.”
“Swords?” I asked.
“Yes,” said my father, as if there were nothing incredible in this admission. He smiled. “You have much to learn of Gor,” he said. “Yet there is a hierarchy of Home Stones, one might say, and two soldiers who would cut one another down with their steel blades for an acre of fertile ground will fight side by side to the death for the Home Stone of their village or of the city within whose ambit their village lies.
“I shall show you someday,” he said, “my own small Home Stone, which I keep in my chambers. It encloses a handful of soil from the Earth, a handful of soil that I first brought with me when I came to this world - a long time ago.” He looked at me evenly. “I shall keep the handful of earth you brought,” he said, his voice very quiet, “and someday it may be yours.” His eyes seemed moist. He added, “If you should live to earn a Home Stone.”
Tarnsman of Gor Book 1 Pages 26 - 28
One’s personal Home Stone is a possession of greatest value. Even the most humble and poor quality hut or tent, if it contains a Home Stone, is then a palace.
But not only is it the case that each city has its Home Stone. The simplest and humblest village, and even the most primitive hut in that village, perhaps only a cone of straw, will contain its own Home Stone, as will the fantastically appointed chambers of the Administrator of so great a city as Ar.
Outlaw of Gor Book 2 Page 23
Whereas I was of high caste and he of low, yet in his own hut he would be, by the laws of Gor, a prince and sovereign, for then he would be in the place of his own Home Stone. Indeed, a cringing whelp of a man, who would never think of lifting his eyes from the ground in the presence of a member of one of the high castes, a crushed and spiritless churl, an untrustworthy villain or coward, an avaricious and obsequious pedlar often becomes, in the place of his own Home Stone, a veritable lion among his fellows, proud and splendid, generous and bestowing, a king be it only in his own den.
Outlaw of Gor Book 2 Page 29
I looked at the Home Stone in the hut. In this hut, for it was here that his Home Stone resided, Thurnus was sovereign. In this hut, even had he been a lowly man or beggar, he, because of the presence in it of his Home Stone, was Ubar. A palace without a Home Stone is but a hovel; a hovel which contains a Home Stone is a palace.
Slave Girl of Gor Book 11 Page 142
As long as the Home Stone survives, the city does also. The spirit and strength of the city is not its walls or armies but is its Home Stone.
I looked at my father. “I am sorry,” I said, “that Ko-ro-ba was destroyed.”
My father laughed. “Ko-ro-ba was not destroyed,” he said.
I was puzzled, for I myself had looked upon the valley of Ko-ro-ba and had seen that the city had vanished.
“Here,” said my father, reaching into a leather sack that he wore slung about his shoulder, “is Ko-ro-ba,” and he drew forth the small, flat Home Stone of the City, in which Gorean custom invests the meaning, the significance, the reality of a city itself. “Ko-ro-ba cannot be destroyed,” said my father, “for its Home Stone has not perished!”
My father had taken the Stone from the City before it had been destroyed. For years he had carried it on his own person.
I took the small stone in my hands and kissed it, for it was the Home Stone of the city to which I had pledged my sword, where I had ridden my first tarn, where I had met my father after an interval of more than twenty years, where I had found new friends, and to which I had taken Talena, my love, the daughter of Marlenus once Companion.
“And here, too, is Ko-ro-ba,” I said, pointing to the proud giant, the Older Tarl, and the tiny, sandy-haired scribe, Torm.
“Yes,” said my father, “here too is Ko-ro-ba, not only in the particles of its Home Stone, but in the hearts of its men.” And we four men of Ko-ro-ba clasped hands.
Priest-Kings of Gor Book 3 Page 304
“Who,” laughed Kamchak, “is Ubar of Turia?”
“Kamchak of the Tuchuks,” said the two.
“Bring the Home Stone of the city,” commanded Kamchak, and the stone, oval and aged, carved with the initial letter of the city, was brought to him.
He lifted the stone over his head and read fear in the eyes of the two men chained before him.
But he did not dash the stone to the floor. Rather he arose from his throne and placed the stone in the chained hands of Phanius Turmus. “Turia lives,” said he, “Ubar.”
Tears formed in the eyes of Phanius Turmus and he held the Home Stone of the city to his heart.
Nomads of Gor Book 4 Page 333
These men of Ko-ro-ba, he knew, when their city had been destroyed by Priest-Kings, had been scattered to the ends of Gor but, when permitted by Priest-Kings, they had returned to their city to rebuild it, each bearing a stone to add to its walls. It was said, in the time of troubles, that the Home Stone had not been lost, and it had not. And even Kuurus, of the Caste of Assassins, knew that a city cannot die while its Home Stone survives.
Assassin of Gor Book 5 Page 2
It is my hope that this helps to answer your questions.
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