The map of Gor, by psychée

So I had fun creating a map of Gor, as artistic as it is accurate, which I invite you to discover and share.

Here is my (unofficial) map of Gor. It has a watermark because I put it up for sale on Second Life and also on the Marketplace. But I am providing you with a complete, full-size copy in PDF format below, without watermark . The map in PNG format is just watermarked to prevent theft or exploitation. Creating this map took me almost 30 hours of work, so I don’t want it to be used for free by others.

The map in PDF : gor-map-gorean-archives,PDF, 7,78Mo

And that allowed me to learn that I had said something very stupid in Gorean Archives! Considering the cultural and scientific level of Gor, I had estimated that the world population of Gor was around half a billion. But that was assuming Gor had the same inhabited continents as Earth!

However, the only known and inhabited part of Gor is a small section of a continent, which ultimately represents only a tiny area! With a little calculation and the map of Gor showing the known world, it’s actually very easy to measure: the known and populated part of the continent covers approximately 22.5 million km² (counting only land areas), which is more than double the area of the USA (9.8 million km²) and double the area of Europe (10.5 million km²).

But we must subtract from this the Tahari Desert, the Schendi Jungle, and the Great Northern Forest, which are virtually uninhabited (1 to 2 inhabitants per km²), as well as the Voltai Mountains, for the same reason. These four areas account for almost 50% of the known area of Gor, or nearly 11 million km². This leaves us with a piece of continent whose actually inhabited land covers only 11.5 million km² (with an average of 17 inhabitants per km²). Barely more than the surface area of Europe, in the end.

Here is a map of Gor on which I have superimposed Europe at roughly the same scale.

So, no, there are not half a billion Goreans on Gor! Applying the rules of the European demography at the beginning of the 19th century, there would be about 200 million inhabitants. Why this reference date? To simulate Gor’s average level of technological advancement, which is very advanced in some areas (medicine, agriculture) but relatively backward in others (heavy industry, mechanization, transportation). We cannot apply the demographics of the Roman Empire to Gor, simply because of Gorean medicine. In Roman times, one in three children did not survive their first year of life and one in ten women died in childbirth, resulting in an average life expectancy of 25 to 35 years. In the world of Gor, life expectancy is obviously much higher, at least double that (and probably even higher with the effects of the stabilizing serum). Gor’s highly modern agriculture is also responsible for improved demographics. Goreans experience very few periods of famine. Ultimately, without the incessant wars and technological shortcomings in terms of food and urban hygiene, which occasionally cause epidemics to break out, Gor would have a population of almost half a billion (similar to Europe since the mid-20th century). In fact, in demographic terms, the known world of Gor is quite similar to Europe in the early 19th century (roughly the period of the Napoleonic Empire).

So, I had made a big mistake, which I had to correct. As a result, with an average of 3 to 4% of Gor’s population enslaved, out of 200 million Goreans, that represents just over 7 million slaves throughout the known world of Gor.