Chronicles of the Collar: The Memoirs of Neeve Barbosa (Part 3)

  This Gorean Fan Fiction was generated using Chat GPT alongside a backstory I created for my character. 

PLEASE NOTE: All the information in these blogs are OOC information unless you gain them IC. PLEASE do not metagame or godmod that you know this information. 

Please note that the Gorean Saga is a fictional series, and its world, customs, and values may not align with modern societal standards or moral principles.

Gor is Copyrighted by John Norman

Entry III — The Freedom of Chains

 

Cardonicus was a city of stone and smoke, smaller than Lara but strong in spirit. Its people spoke less and laboured more; the walls bore the scars of raids and the scent of iron from the forges. There, I learned that Gor endures not because its people are kind, but because they are disciplined.

 

I served under the same woman who had drawn me from the fire. She was not my Mistress in title, but she carried the authority of one who commands without needing to raise her voice. She taught me much of the Physician’s Caste - its hierarchies, its quiet rivalries, its ancient duties that go beyond the cutting of flesh. “We heal out of compassion,” she told me, “But also out of order. A city that cannot mend its wounds cannot endure.”

 

Under her tutelage, I earned respect, not freedom. But respect, on Gor, is its own kind of liberty. I was permitted to read from the scrolls of the caste, to study the languages of plants and poisons, and to assist in tending warriors returned from the field. My hands grew steady, my mind sharp. I began to move among the physicians as if I belonged there - a collared woman among the Free yet trusted more than some who held papers.

 

Still, at night, when the brazier burned low and the hall grew silent, I would touch the iron at my throat and feel the truth of what I was. That small ring of metal held power over me greater than the might of armies. And yet, it also held the memory of every lesson I had learned: obedience, discipline, and endurance, and love. In a way.

 

In time, I was named joint First Girl of the City and was charged with overseeing the lesser slaves. I instructed them in order, cleanliness, and the humility of service. Some obeyed out of fear; others, out of resignation. But I began to notice that when I spoke softly, when I corrected without cruelty, they listened better. I learned that authority is not always a whip. Sometimes it is a gaze, a word, or the silent example of composure.

 

It was during those years that I came to know the Ubar more closely both because I was his girl to command but also, I learnt that this position that he held was one of importance. He valued usefulness above all, and although I loved him like a slave would a Master, he saw this usefulness in my soul. When plague touched the outer houses of the city, I laboured for days without rest. When it was contained, he summoned me to stand before him - a collared woman covered in ash and sweat, her hands red with the blood of her patients.

He studied me for a long moment, then said only, “A slave who serves beyond command honours her city more than some Free who wear its colours.”

That night, for the first time, I felt the stirrings of something dangerous - pride.

 

The seasons passed. I continued my duties, ever diligent, yet I began to look beyond the walls of Cardonicus. The collar no longer frightened me; it had become a part of my skin. But there was a voice within me, quiet yet unyielding, that whispered of choice - of the right to decide not whom to serve, but how.

One morning, I went before the Ubar. My hands trembled, but I spoke clearly. “Ubar,” I said, “you have known me as slave. You have seen that I obey not out of fear but understanding. I ask now to serve as a Free woman - not to flee duty, but to continue it in my own name.”

The hall grew silent. The guards shifted uneasily. I knew that a single word from him could undo me, could return me to chains or to the block.

 

At length, he rose from his seat and descended the steps toward me. His eyes were hard, unreadable. “You ask for freedom,” he said. “Do you know what that means?”

I met his gaze. “It means bearing the weight of one’s own choices without command.”

He regarded me for a long while, then nodded. “Perhaps you have learned what many Free never will.”

 

He gestured to the scribe. The papers were brought forth, sealed with the mark of Cardonicus. When the collar was removed, the air around my throat felt cold and strange, as if a part of me had vanished. I touched the skin and realized that the weight I felt was not gone, only changed.

 

That night, I walked through the streets as a Free woman. The city looked the same — the same stone walls, the same smoke from the forges - but I saw it differently. Every sound seemed sharper, every face clearer. Yet the freedom I had sought for so long did not feel as I had imagined. It was not a lightness. It was a burden - the burden of self-command.

In the weeks that followed, I continued my work in the infirmary, now as an assistant, not property. I found that many still looked at me as they had before. Some men bowed their heads slightly out of respect; others sneered, muttering that once collared, always collared. Gor does not easily forgive a woman her past.

 

I left Cardonicus soon after, not in flight but in purpose. I carried my manumission papers in a small satchel and journeyed from city to city, offering my skills where they were needed. In Turmus, I treated miners who had inhaled dust until their lungs grew black. In Hellvegen, I tended warriors frostbitten from the northern snows. In Hulneth, I studied beneath a healer of rare wisdom, a woman who said to me, “Freedom is not a gift; it is the price one pays for surviving long enough to understand the world.”

 

She was right.

 

By the time I reached the ports of Olni, I had become known to many as Kristie, the physician who once wore the collar. Some regarded me with respect, others with suspicion. But I no longer cared for their judgment. I had learned to measure my worth not by the marks upon my skin, but by the steadiness of my hands and the clarity of my mind.

Yet Gor, in its cruel balance, does not let peace endure. Freedom is a fragile thing - it lasts only until someone stronger decides otherwise.

 

And so it was, one storm-dark evening upon the river, that my past found me once more.