Leaving Torcadino

originally posted February 21, 2006

It was tempting to stay in Torcadino.
The city has much to offer by way of diversity. Travelers from the south, swarthy, djellaba wearing sorts mingled freely in the open air market place with their fairer, northern brothers from far flung locales such as Ko-ro-ba and Laura. Seated in the flatlands southwest of Ar at the intersection of five major highways, Torcadino plays host to a wealth of cultures. While I knew it would stimulate the senses of all the women there, just being in another city with all of the excitement that entails, I felt the barbarians on the chain would be doubly aroused by it all. There is diversity within Ar, of course. On her chains are the finest specimens of female slave from every known corner of Gor and, I would wager, many of the civilized places of Earth. Still, I think it is one thing for a woman to hear tales of how the men of Tor or Thentis live and quite another to see that fellow for herself. Sana even queried, asking directly, about the men of Port Kar. She had heard the harshest slavery a girl could suffer was at the hands of one of her men. I wonder if she had made three of her copper coins that afternoon from such a fellow. I think, perhaps, she did. I wonder if Joy, my Sandal, found the mix of cultures similar to the places she lived before being collected, processed and delivered to her first Gorean Master. Did blonde Samantha, too, recall metropolitan New York City. It is, as I understand, one of her former world's greatest port cities. A city that faces its own wide Thassa and accept thousands of travelers through its gate each day. Many of them never leave. Jenny, too, must have felt something. She once wanted to conduct a study, an 'Ethnography of Gor', to understand the cultures of my world. Long ago, she wore the chains of a tolerant master. She has, I have noted, taken to collecting rocks that seem to delight her on the paths we traverse. Providing I do not have to rent a team of broad tharlarion and a wagon to bear the burden of this growing collection, I have decided to allow it.
We are camped tonight beside The Northern Salt Line, a highway running North and West toward the city of Corcyrus. Off on the horizon, we can see the famed Aqueducts of Torcadino. There are two, grand structures that carry water to the city. One travels into the hills to a natural spring and the other is fed by the Issus River, both more than a hundred pasangs distant. Torcadino, like all cities, like even Glorious Ar, started as little more than a village of huts. She was supplied by wells. In time, trenches were dug that reached into the Hills of Eteocles, providing a runoff for water to drink and irrigate crops. As they city continued to expand, those trenches became aqueducts. Famed for more than providing bathwater and a way to boil suls, the Aqueducts of Torcadino played a key role in the war between Ar and Cos. There are Historians far more qualified who have written about it and, certainly, Poets that witnessed what occured who still sing about it. I will just say that I find them to be a marvel of engineering, functional without ignoring aesthetics.