Chronicles of the Collar: The Memoirs of Neeve Barbosa (Part 2)

  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 II — The Fire of Lara

The years I spent in Lara were years of discipline, not freedom. Yet in that discipline, I began to understand the order of things.

My Master was a physician - one of high caste and low mercy. His eyes were sharp, his temper sharper still. To him, I was not a woman, not even a slave, but an instrument. When I faltered, I was corrected. When I succeeded, I was ignored. Praise was not his way. He demanded perfection because on Gor, imperfection can mean death.

I remember the scent of his chambers - herbs steeped in oils, the sharpness of salves, the copper tang of blood. I learned to move quietly between tables of the wounded, to read the smallest shift in his posture, to anticipate the cup, the blade, the cloth before he asked. Each small act was a lesson in observation, and I learned that the eye, not the hand, is the first tool of a healer.

He spoke to me rarely, but when he did, his words were clear. “A kajira may serve, but she must also see. You will not always have a command to follow. You will learn to know what must be done before it is said.”

It was the closest thing to kindness he ever offered me.

There were others in that house - slaves whose bodies bore the lash, whose spirits had long surrendered. They whispered to one another in the night of men they had served, cities they had fled, the fleeting mercy of Masters who had died. I listened, but I did not join them. My rebellion had burned itself out years before. What remained was the calm acceptance of my place — not as defeat, but as clarity.

In time, the collar no longer felt heavy. I still felt it, yes, but it became a part of me, as the scar upon a warrior’s arm becomes a mark of endurance. I came to understand that the collar is not the enemy. It is a teacher - a cruel one, but honest. It demands that you confront what you truly are. And in that confrontation, one either breaks or becomes something more.

The first time I was permitted to heal another, it was a slave. Her back was a map of welts and bruises. My Master had refused to touch her - “The punishment was earned,” he said. “Let the girl learn from it.” Yet he let me fetch water and clean her wounds. I remember how she trembled beneath my hands, not from pain, but from shame.

As I dressed her wounds, I whispered to her softly - not words of comfort, for comfort is dangerous in bondage, but of endurance. “Breathe,” I told her. “Breathe and remember that you are still alive. So long as you draw breath, there is hope.”

Perhaps I spoke those words as much for myself as for her.

Years turned the seasons. I grew in knowledge, if not in freedom. I learned the herbs of Gor - veminium, sip root, kanda leaf - and the careful balance of mercy and cruelty in the practice of medicine. For on Gor, even healing carries hierarchy. A slave’s pain is not a citizen’s concern unless it threatens a man’s property.

Then came the night when Lara burned.

I still smell the smoke when I dream. The air was thick with it, choking, black as ink. The sky itself seemed to scream. I remember the sound of collapsing roofs, the roar of flame devouring wood and stone, the cries of the dying - Free and slave alike.

My Master refused to flee. “A physician does not abandon the wounded,” he said. I do not know if those were words of courage or madness. He entered the fire and did not return.

I was dragged from the blaze by another - a woman of the same caste, her robes singed, her eyes calm even in chaos. She asked no questions, only bound my blistered wrists and led me to a waiting galley. I remember her hands - steady, capable, commanding without words.

We sailed from Lara as dawn rose behind us, the city reduced to ash. I looked back once, and in that burning skyline, I felt something strange: not sorrow, but release. My Master was gone. My collar remained. Yet I sensed that the world was shifting - that Gor had not finished shaping me.

We arrived in Cardonicus, a city smaller than Lara but alive with the hum of rebuilding. The woman who had saved me was an Assistant Head of Caste, and she placed me under her care. “You have knowledge,” she said. “And scars. Both are useful.”

It was there that my path began to change - not through freedom, but through purpose. I was to serve in the infirmary again, but this time, I was trusted to act. I cleaned wounds without command, stitched flesh when ordered, and learned the language of physicians spoken in the silence between words.

I was no longer the frightened barbarian from a world of machines and noise. I was something else now - something Gor had made from the ashes of who I had been.

The girl from Earth had died in the fire of Lara. The slave, the compliant, I knew my place and had begun to love it.