(art by Le Pixx)

Here’s a question from a reader: “Do Goreans regenerate their wounds, are they immune to disease? Because that’s what everyone tells me.”

Let’s start with a simple summary: there is not a single line in the 38 novels that indicates that Goreans regenerate from their wounds or are immune to disease. Nada. There are several quotes that indicate that Goreans are in excellent health in general (we’ll come back to that), and one or two rare quotes mention that Gorean warriors are able to recover in a day from wounds that would have required several days of rest for an Earthling (we’ll come back to that too). And that’s it.

And I swear it’s not because I’m lazy that I can’t find any quotes to back up this assertion. There aren’t any! The idea that Goreans are immune to disease and that their wounds heal fantastically quickly is pure onlinism.

And it’s an onlinism that, in addition to being false, poses a problem for narrative dynamics and roleplay, which is important in the context of Gor Second Life.

1- Injuries

In terms of physical danger and bodily integrity, Gor is comparable to the wildest and most hostile regions of Earth. Outside the safety of the cities, the danger of being injured and suffering a life-threatening physical disability is commonplace.

The natural environment is unforgiving: cold, heat, aridity, natural hazards (fires, floods, avalanches, storms, etc.), and wildlife all combine to endanger the health of a traveler who has no access to any of the modern comforts of 21st-century Earth. There are almost no paved roads, no relay stations or inns with health centers every 10 or 20 pasang, no cars, no motorized boats, no sturdy, waterproof clothing made of breathable fabrics, no modern hiking boots, no GPS maps, etc.

And finally, Gor is a violent world due to its own inhabitants, the Goreans. Wars, battles, and skirmishes are widespread, duels, vendettas, and fights over honor or prestige are commonplace, and attacks by highway bandits or gangs of urban thieves and kidnappers are the norm. Yes, welcome to Gor, which would make Caracas, Karashi, or even Pretoria, the three most crime-ridden cities on Earth, seem like havens of peace.

Injuries are therefore very common. Serious injuries are just as common and are a major cause of death. What saves Gor’s inhabitants from experiencing mortality rates comparable to those of a 17th-century European in the event of serious injury is access to quality healthcare, with medicine that, while at a lower technological level than that of the 21st century, remains roughly comparable to the capabilities of mid-20th-century medical technology, including antibiotics and blood transfusions. But since not everyone can become a physician (this is the very principle of the castes in Gor), there is no doctor in every village. And health centers are not easily and quickly accessible everywhere. Well, yes… there are no motor vehicles in Gor, no telephones, no ambulances, no medical repatriation. Even slow bleeding is almost certain to result in death if you are more than a few hours away from a well-equipped physician.

Please note: I repeat here one sentence: “including antibiotics and blood transfusions.” Yes, these are readily available and commonplace in Gor medicine, but it implies that a medical center equipped with them has real refrigerators, the only means of storing these products effectively. So, players who play builders and physicians, stop thinking that this doesn’t exist. Because the fact that it does exist is entirely “Gorean.”

What about regeneration?

Goreans do not regenerate. However, those who have received the preservation serum are generally stuck at a physical age between 20 and 25, and are in peak physical condition and good health. They are therefore more resistant to disease and will heal fairly quickly if injured. But it’s not magic. Similarly, although the Goreans’ diet is supposedly healthier than that of Earthlings (Norman was American, and I don’t want to disparage that culture, but Americans tend to eat rather poorly in terms of nutrition), it doesn’t work miracles either!

A Gorean who breaks a leg or a rib does what everyone else does: they wait a month for their bones to heal. They may be able to draw on their physiological reserves to start moving a little faster than a Terran because they are healthy and in good shape, but they won’t gain more than a week of healing and convalescence. And that’s if he has access to a medical center with good physicians. Otherwise, he’s likely to take much longer to recover and suffer lasting effects.

Tarl Cabot recovers from injuries very quickly? Of course, he’s the hero of the novels, he’s extraordinary! Does a Gorean warrior recover in a day from injuries that would take an Earthling a week to heal? On Earth, in war, on a battlefield, believe me, since World War I, wounded soldiers have been treated in such a way that they too return to combat much faster than a civilian would recover from the same injury. Why? Because war is what drives medical technology forward the fastest, and war medicine is always the most effective in this field, by far. This is not an opinion, it is a proven epistemological fact.

2- Hygiene

Hygiene is not just about washing properly, having access to disinfectants and clean clothes. It’s mainly about having access to uncontaminated food and water, and that’s a problem that was only really solved in the 20th century, with resources that the Goreans don’t have.

Anecdote: a few days ago, the cold chain for meat was broken in a region of France. An outbreak of Escherichia coli bacteria made 30 people seriously ill, almost all of them children. Adults were also affected, but their stronger bodies were able to withstand the shock. However, among the 30 people who fell ill, one child died. In France, in the 21st century, such an incident is so rare that it made the front page of several newspapers. Before the mid-20th century, this kind of dramatic anecdote was so common that it was practically a non-event. And before the beginning of the 20th century, so little was known about food hygiene risks that 90% of doctors did not even make the connection. It was just “part of life.”

Gor does not have widespread refrigeration for food, nor does it have sterilization techniques such as pasteurization, chemical sterilization of water, or ultra-high temperature or gamma ray sterilization. Gor also lacks effective and portable food contamination analysis instruments to equip food hygiene control services.

While diseases caused by poor hygiene rank 14th among the world’s leading causes of death, in Africa, which is very poorly equipped in terms of food hygiene, they are the fourth leading cause of death. And in Africa, they have sewage treatment plants, sterilization factories, refrigerated trucks and warehouses, although in very insufficient numbers, and domestic refrigerators, even if these are not widespread at well. But the Goreans have none of these things. If refrigeration and sterilization do exist, they are rare and expensive technologies, very difficult to access, and certainly not for preserving food.

In short, from this point of view, the Goreans are still in the 19th century. And in the 19th century, poor hygiene, especially in the food sector, was the second leading cause of death after infectious diseases (in short, epidemics: tuberculosis, cholera, typhoid, smallpox, etc.).

Are the Goreans more immune to the infectious risks of contaminated food? Considering that these risks include viruses, bacteria, parasites, fungi, and other toxins, and that Africans cannot be considered fragile in the face of these risks, with which they have lived since the dawn of time, the answer is no. Many children in the world of Gor die from contaminated food and drink, epidemics—which are mentioned in the novels, and not just in passing!—are commonplace, and even a healthy adult is in danger of death from botulism (poorly prepared canned food) or ergotism (contamination of cereals and bread by the fungus known as ergot).

Yes, so Norman’s claim that the food is healthy because it is completely natural (even though, in fact, the Goreans’ diet, with proper food hygiene, would clearly be healthy and balanced) and that this explains why the Goreans are in perfect physical shape and resistant to disease takes a serious blow. But then, among many other things, Norman knew nothing about biology, which I can understand, and didn’t bother to find out, which I take the liberty of criticizing him for, as a novelist myself.

3- Diseases

The only reference that says that diseases do not exist on Gor comes from a single quote, expressed from Tarl’s point of view:

“The result is that those susceptible to many diseases die, and those less susceptible live longer, thus reproducing themselves. We can assume that a similar phenomenon occurred with the epidemics of the Middle Ages on Earth. In any case, disease is now almost unknown in Gorean cities, with the exception of the dreaded Dar-Kosis disease, or sacred disease… “

Assassins of Gor.

And you know what? In all the novels that followed, characters fall ill, epidemics are fought, public health campaigns are launched to curb others, wounds become infected, and people die of various diseases. Yes, Norman wrote something that turned out to be false in the subsequent novels, as he often does. Because it’s a contradiction like so many others in his stories, and because he didn’t think about the narrative implications of this idea, which ultimately prevents a lot of possible plot twists and narrative twists and turns.

Well, I’ll spare you the infectious biology and evolutionary biology lecture to explain why Norman’s assertion (and here, in the diegesis of the novels, Tarl Cabot’s) is false, and I’ll summarize it here in a very simplified way:

Just as humans evolve, mutate, and adapt to their environment, including infectious risks, viruses, bacteria, and fungi do the same in an endless race. A microbial strain dies out after infecting as many people as it can, and falls dormant or disappears, only to be replaced later by a new strain that has appeared somewhere else with new characteristics that make it just as dangerous. This is the principle behind epidemic outbreaks. No disease has ever been eradicated by natural selection and, in fact, even with vaccines, no disease has been truly eradicated from the Earth. There is always, somewhere, a source of pathogens ready to wake up if the conditions are right, and then it starts all over again. The only thing that prevents us from being wiped out by ancient diseases that are still dormant is the power of our medical technology, our communication and alert networks, and international medical surveillance organizations such as the WHO. Without these, the number of humans on Earth would be reduced by at least half.

So why is this idea so widespread among Gor SL players? It’s mainly because of the website Luther’s Scrolls (now closed), which took this single quote, ignoring contradictory sources in the rest of the novels, and turned it into an absolute truth, which appears almost at the beginning of its text on Gorean medicine. A false assertion, therefore. I have enormous respect for the work of Luther’s Scrolls, but he has sometimes written some nonsense. I don’t blame him: I’m sure I’ve written some too.

Diseases present on Gor

So, I can admit that getting sick is quite rare on Gor, but it is by no means impossible or unknown. There are far too many things in nature that want to kill us and to which everyone is exposed without natural immunity (see above) to escape them. Otherwise, mortality from infectious diseases until the beginning of the 20th century would not have been so high (remember: infant mortality was 20% on average before their first birthday!), if we humans could immunize ourselves against all diseases that appear, simply through the force of evolution!

First of all, there are all the diseases caused by bacterial infections due to poor food hygiene, cleanliness, or poorly disinfected wounds, such as Clostridium tetani, which causes tetanus. There are also lots of bacteria that can cause infections ranging from painful to fatal, including urinary, intestinal, and pulmonary infections. For example, miners, charcoal burners, and blacksmiths on Gor are not immune to lung diseases triggered by infections caused by the dust they inhale. Food hygiene issues (contaminated food and drink) can cause episodes of dysentery or gastroenteritis, or even cholera, and infestations of parasites such as lice or fleas can cause typhus epidemics. And I am far from having covered everything (parasitic diseases such as malaria, transmitted by mosquitoes, ravaged Europe in the 18th century in humid areas).

And then there are the diseases mentioned in the novels, either directly or indirectly:

– Smallpox, known on Gor as the Plague of Bazi (and which is the disease that has caused the most deaths on Earth in history, after malaria. The Gorean people have a vaccine for it, but it is clearly not distributed in sufficient quantities to eradicate it).

– Leprosy, which the Gorean people call Dar-Kosis (or sacred disease)

– Cholera, which is cited as the most feared disease in slave transport, along with dysentery.

– Influenza, which is considered a benign disease, but is also the subject of great attention in quarantines between cities, as it has already caused problematic epidemics.

– Gangrene, which is cited as the scourge of the battlefield, because if not treated promptly, it leads to amputation or death (whereas today, on Earth, with proper antibiotic treatment, you have a 95% chance of making a quick recovery).

Note: Goreans know how to make vaccines and are familiar with antibiotics. These two simple but very important points explain why the infectious disease mortality rate in the world of Gor is quite low… provided you are in an area with well-equipped physicians and a proper health center.

4- The roleplay of physicians

Among the five high castes that players can embody in the world of Gor, there is the caste of physicians. So it is common to play a character from this caste, whose main function is to heal people.

Do you agree with that?

Okay… if Goreans don’t know any diseases and regenerate their wounds at lightning speed, why does this caste exist? What is the point of playing them, in narrative terms?

I could literally stop here, because the answer is obvious. But let’s expand on this a little.

The two main narrative activities of players who play physicians in Gor are medical examinations of slaves to ensure they are in good health, which is necessary in order to draw up ownership papers. And childbirth, which is rarer but still a common activity. But if Goreans don’t fear disease, if it’s not a risk for them, and if they heal at supernatural speeds, even these two activities don’t really make sense. 90% of births before the beginning of the 20th century took place at home, without any medical assistance. And that wasn’t necessarily a good idea, because it’s a very risky event for both mother and baby, with high mortality rates. But for Goreans, there’s nothing to worry about, no one dies if we stick to this paradigm!

I insist on this point because denying that Goreans need serious care when injured, and can fall ill, even seriously, simply closes the door to all the intrigue involving an entire group of players: physicians.

So if, of course, you don’t care, it doesn’t concern you. But it also closes the door to a lot of role-playing intrigue around health risks, epidemics, hygiene, dramatic scenes trying to save a character from death or a lifelong disability, etc., etc., etc. In other words, everything that players who play physicians would want to know! That’s why they created their characters! Not to spend all their time examining a slave’s teeth and stamping a paper to confirm that he’s in good health.

So not only is this paradigm false, it’s onlinism, but it also undermines roleplay and plot opportunities for players who play physicians. Oh, they’re not the only ones: the builder caste must be bored stiff on Gor, as so few people have any idea of the plot opportunities this caste offers. But in the case of physicians, it’s easy to roleplay with them and give them plots!

Get sick, feel pain when you’re injured, accept those injuries and the need for treatment, and accept that sometimes it takes more than a two-hour game scene. Create plots involving food poisoning, epidemics, hygiene issues, parasite infestations, or even rare diseases! Enjoy it, physicians are there for that, and will be incredibly enthusiastic about playing out these plots! If you don’t want roleplay with physicians, just decide that you’re neither sick nor injured, but don’t go around spreading totally false lore in front of others: no, Goreans are not immune to disease, and no, they do not regenerate from their wounds.

Thank you, on behalf of all the players who play physicians in the world of Gor.