The Harigga of the Tuchuks

The CLANS

"When I speak of Year Keepers and Singers it must be understood that these are not, for the Wagon Peoples, castes, but more like roles, subsidiary to their main functions, which are those of the war, herding and the hunt.  They do have, however, certain clans, not castes, which specialize in certain matters, for example, the clan of healers, leather workers, salt hunters, and so on. I have already mentioned the clan of torturers. The members of these clans, however, like the Year Keepers and Singers, are all expected, first and foremost, to be, as it is said, of the wagons namely to follow, tend and protect the bosk, to be superb in the saddle, and to be skilled with the weapons of both the hunt and war."
---Nomads of Gor, Pg. 12

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(Haruspexes)
“I heard a haruspex singing between the wagons; for a piece of meat he would read the wind and the grass; for a cup of wine the stars and the flight of birds; for a fat-bellied dinner the liver of a sleen or slave."
---Nomads of Gor, Pg. 27

 

 "The Tuchuks and the other Wagon Peoples reverence Priest-Kings, but unlike the Goreans of the cities, with their castes of Initiates, they do not extend to them the dignities of worship. I suppose the Tuchuks worship nothing, in the common sense of that word, but it is true they hold many things holy, among them the bosk and the skills of arms, but chief of the things before which the proud Tuchuk 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 that the Tuchuks pray when they pray, demanding victory and luck for themselves, defeat and misery for their enemies. The Tuchuk, incidentally, like others of  the Wagon Peoples, prays only when mounted, only when in the saddle and with  weapons at hand; he prays to the sky not as a slave to a master, nor a servant to a god, but as warrior to a 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, besides foretelling the future with a greater or lesser degree  of accuracy for generally reasonable fees, provide an incredible assemblage of  amulets, talismans, trinkets, philters, potions, spell papers, wonder-working  sleen teeth, marvelous powdered kailiauk horns, and colored, magic strings that,  depending on the purpose, may be knotted in various ways and worn about the  neck."
---Nomads of Gor, Pg. 28

 
"There were a large number of tethered animals about the outer edge of the circle, and, beside them, stood many haruspexes. Indeed, I supposed there must be one haruspex at least for each of the many altars in the field. Among the animals I saw many verrs; some domestic  tarsks, their tusks sheathed; cages of flapping vulos, some sleen, some kaiila,  even some bosk; by the Paravaci haruspexes I saw manacled male slaves, if such  were to be permitted; commonly, I understood from Kamchak, the Tuchuks, Kassars  and Kataii rule out the sacrifice of slaves because their hearts and livers are  thought to be, fortunately for the slaves, untrustworthy in registering  portents; after all, as Kamchak pointed out, who would trust a Turian slave in  the kes with a matter so important as the election of a Ubar San; it seemed to  me good logic and, of course, I am sure the slaves, too, were taken with the  cogency of the argument. The animals sacrificed, incidentally, are later used for food, so the Omen Taking, far from being a waste of animals, is actually a time of feasting and plenty for the Wagon Peoples, who regard the Omen Taking, provided it results that no Ubar San is to be chosen, as an occasion for gaiety and festival."
---Nomads of Gor, Pg. 171

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(Healers)
"They do have, however, certain clans, not castes, which specialize in certain matters, for example, the clan of healers, leather workers, salt hunters, and so on."
---Nomads of Gor, Pg. 12

 
"When Kamchak had finished he held out his right hand and a man, not a Tuchuk, who wore the green robes of the Caste of Physicians, thrust in his hand a goblet of bosk horn; it contained some yellow fluid. Angrily, not concealing his distaste, Kutaituchik drained the goblet and hurled it from him."
---Nomads of Gor, Pg. 44

 
“Free women, and even some Turian slave girls, went to and fro, bringing water, and, here and there, where there was point in it, binding wounds"
---Nomads of Gor, Pg. 263

 

(Salt Hunters)
 “They do have, however, certain clans, not castes, which specialize in certain matters, for example the clan of healers, leather workers, salt hunters, and so on.”
---Nomads of Gor, Pg. 12

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(Iron Masters)
"I supposed that on the morrow Kamchak would call for the Tuchuk Iron Master, to brand what he called his little barbarian."
---Nomads of Gor, Pg. 62
 

"The Iron Master affixed the Turian collar. He bent to his tools, taking up a tiny, open ring, a heated metal awl, a pair of pliers. I turned away. I heard her scream."
---Nomads of Gor, Pg. 173

 

(Leather Workers)
"He did not buy a kaiila near the wagon of Yachi of the Leather Workers."
---Nomads of Gor, Pg. 170

 

(Musicians)
"To one side, across a clearing from the fire, a bit in the background, was a group of nine musicians. They were not as yet playing, though one of them was absently tapping a rhythm on a small hand drum, the kaska; two others, with stringed instruments, were tuning them, putting their ears to the instruments. One of the instruments was an eight-stringed czehar, rather like a large flat oblong box; it is held across the lap when sitting cross-legged and is played with a horn pick; the other was the kalika, a six-stringed instrument; it, like the czehar, is flat bridged and its strings are adjusted by means of small wooden cranks; on the other hand, it less resembles a low, flat box and suggests affinities to the banjo or guitar, though the sound box is hemispheric and the neck is rather long; it, too, of course, like the czehar, is plucked; I have never seen a bowed instrument on Gor; also, I might mention, I have never seen on Gor any written music; I do not know if a notion exists; melodies are passed on from father to son, from musician to apprentice. There was another kalika player, as well, but he was sitting there holding his instrument, watching the slave girls in the audience. The three flutists were polishing their instruments and talking together...There was also a second drummer, also with a kaska, and another fellow, a younger one, who sat very seriously before what appeared to me to be a pile of objects; among them was a notched stick, played by sliding a polished tem-wood stick along its notched surface; cymbals of various sorts; what was obviously a tambourine; and several other instruments of a percussion variety, bits of metal on wires, gourds filled with pebbles, slave bells mounted on hand rings, and such. These various things, from time to time, would be used not only by himself but by others in the group, probably the second kaska player and the third flutist. Among Gorean musicians, incidentally, czehar players have the most prestige; there was only one in this group, I noted, and he was their leader; next follow the flutists and then the players of the kalika; the players of the drum come next; and the farthest fellow down the list is the man who keeps the bag of miscellaneous instruments, playing them and parceling them out to others as needed."
---Nomads of Gor, Pg. 153 - 154

 

(Scarers)
“When I have time,’ said Harold, ‘I will call one from the clan of Scarers and have the scar affixed. It will make me even more handsome.”
---Nomads of Gor, Pg. 274

 

(Singers)
"The Wagon Peoples do not trust important matters, such as year names, to paper or parchment, subject to theft, insect and rodent damage, deterioration, etc. Most of those of the Wagon Peoples have excellent memories, trained from birth. Few can read, though some can, perhaps having acquired the skill far from the wagons, perhaps from merchants or tradesmen. The Wagon Peoples, as might be expected, have a large and complex oral literature. This is kept by and occasionally, in parts, recited by the Camp Singers."
---Nomads of Gor, Pg. 12

 

(Sleen Keepers)
"If I were found on the plains near the camps or the bosk herds I knew I would be scented out and slain by the domesticated, nocturnal herd sleen, used as shepherds and sentinels by the Wagon Peoples, released from their cages with the falling of darkness. These animals, trained prairie sleen, move rapidly and silently, attacking upon no other provocation than trespass on what they have decided is their territory. They respond only to the voice of their master, and when he is killed or dies, his animals are slain and eaten.
---Nomads of Gor, Pg. 9

"The trailing would undoubtedly be done by trained herd sleen."
---Nomads of Gor, Pg. 145

"Go back with your men!" cried Saphrar, backing away from us a step. "I will shatter the golden sphere!" Slowly Kamchak, and Harold and I, and the sleen keeper, dragging the two sleen, walked backwards. The animals raged against the chain leashes, maddened as they were drawn farther from Saphrar, their prey.
---Nomads of Gor, Pg. 317

The Tuchuks stood about, in their black leather. The sleen keeper stood nearby, the chain leashes loose in his hands.
---Nomads of Gor, Pg. 320

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(Year Keepers)
"A consequence of the chronical conventions of the Wagon Peoples, of course, is that their years tend to vary in length, but this fact, which might bother us, does not bother them, any more than the fact that some men and some animals live longer than others; the woman of the Wagon Peoples, incidentally, keep a calendar based on the phases of Gor’s largest moon, but this calendar of fifteen moons, named for the fifteen varieties of bosk, and functions independently of the tallying of years by snows; for example the Moon of the Brown Bosk may at one time occur in the winter, at another time, years later, in the summer; this calendar is kept by a set of colored pegs set in the sides of some wagons, on one of which depending on the moon, a round, wooden plate bearing the image of a bosk is fixed. The years, incidentally, are not numbered by the Wagon Peoples, but given names, toward their end, based on something or other which has occurred to distinguish the year. The year names are kept in living memory by the Year Keepers, some of whom can recall the names of several thousand consecutive years."
---Nomads of Gor,  Pg. 12

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(Torturers)

“The Wagon Peoples, of all those on Gor that I know, are the only ones that have a clan of torturers, trained as carefully as scribes or physicians, in the arts of detaining life. Some of these men have achieved fortune and fame in various Gorean cities, for their services to Initiates and Ubars, and others of interest in the arts of detection and persuasion. For some reason they have all worn hoods. It is said they remove the hood only when the sentence is death, so that it is only condemned men who have seen whatever it is that lies beneath the hood.”
---Nomads of Gor, Pg. 9 - 10

"I feared that tuka would not run well, therefore losing us the match, that she would deliberatly allow herself to be snared. But then I realized this was not true. If Kamchak and her Master were not convinced that she had run as well as she might, it would not go easily for her. She would have contributed to the victory of a Kassar over a Tuchuk. That night one of the Hooded Clan of Torturers would come to her wagon and fetched her away, never to be seen again. She would run well, hating elizabeth or not. She would be running for her life."
---Nomads of Gor, Pg. 69

"For what you have done," he said, "it is common to call for one of the clan of torturers."
---Nomads of Gor, Pg. 142

"I noted, following me, as I had more than once, a masked figure, one wearing the hood of the Clan of Torturers."
---Nomads of Gor, page 147

"Aphris, for her part, though the quivas were still available, seemed, shortly after having begun to sleep at Kamchak's boots, for some reason to have thought the better of burying one in his heart. It would not have been wise, of course, for even were she successful, her consequent hideous death at the hands of the Clan of Torturers would probably, all things considered, have made her act something of a bad bargain."
---Nomads of Gor, Pg. 155

"A quiva flashed past and buried itself three inches deep in the timber side of the wagon. Flinging the paga bottle aside, a swirl of the liquid flying out of it, I whirled and saw, some fifty feet away, between two wagons, the dark figure of the hooded man, he of the Clan of Torturers,who had been following me."
---Nomads of Gor, Pg. 164