Insects, parasites and symbiates
Below you will find some of the insects of Gor. Some of which will seem familiar to you while others are exotic and unusual. Besides the ones you find below Gor also has its host of beetles, ants, spiders, roaches, flies, centipedes and other normal insect types that you would find every day in your own backyard.
Known in the jungles of Schendi as 'The Marchers'. These aggressive carnivorous insects are about 2 inches long, with a shiny black exoskeleton and two antennae. Their name is derived from their, apparently seasonal, marches through the jungle in a single column, yards wide and pasangs in length. They may number in the millions, their path widening to as much as 500 feet when they overtake, swarm over, and devour all flesh, living or dead, in their path. Their bite is extremely painful, but not poisonous. Their victims die from being weakened from relentless attack, being overcome until they are still.
The column of marchers was something like a yard
wide. I did not know how long it might be. It extended ahead through the jungle and behind
through the jungle farther than I could see in either direction. Such columns can be
pasangs in length. It is difficult to conjecture the numbers that constitute such a march.
Conservatively some dozens of millions might be involved. The column widens only when food
is found; then it may spread as widely as five hundred feet in width.
Explorers of Gor, pages, 399-403
a creature found in the tunnels of the Nest of the Priest-Kings. It is 8 feet long and a yard high with a multi-segmented body and 8 legs. Its eyes are on long stalks.
At that moment to my horror a large, perhaps eight
feet long and a yard high, multilegged, segmented arthropod scuttled near, its eyes
weaving on stalks.
Priest-Kings of Gor, page 82
biting insect; description is vague, although it is used near mention of roaches.
"That is a roach," he said. "They are
harmless, not like the gitches whose bites are rather painful. Some of them are big
fellows, too. But there aren't many around. The frevets see to it. Achiates prides himself
on a clean house."
Mercenaries of Gor, page 277
an insect roughly the size of a rhinoceros which lives in the caverns below the Nest of the Priest-Kings in the Sardar Mountains; its prey is the Priest-Kings themselves. It releases an aroma that is so compelling to a Priest-King that to die by that method is referred to as succumbing to the 'Pleasures of the Golden Beetle'
The Golden Beetle was not nearly as tall as a
Priest-King, but it was probably considerably heavier. It was about the size of a
rhinoceros and the first thing I noticed after the glowing eyes were two multiply hooked,
tubular, hollow, pincerlike extensions that met at the tips perhaps a yard beyond its
body. They seemed clearly some aberrand mutation of its jaws. Its antennae, unlike those
of Priest-Kings, were very short. They curved and were tipped with a fluff of golden hair.
Most strangely perhaps were several long, golden strands, almost a mane, which extended
from the creature's head over its domed, golden back and fell almost to the floor behind
it. The back itself seemed divied into two thick casings which might once, ages before,
have been horny wings, but now the tissues had, at the points of touching together, fused
in such a way as to form what was for all practical purposes a thick, immobile golden
shell.
Priest-Kings of Gor, page 180
beyond color, this insect is described as weighing around 4 ounces.
A grasshopper, red, the size of a horned gim, a
small, owllike bird, some four ounces in weight, common in the northern latitudes, had
leaped near the fire, and disappeared into the brush.
Explorers of Gor, page 293
described as rubbery about 4 inches long; it attaches itself to plants in the marsh or float free in the water, waiting for warm-blooded animals. They fasten themselves to their victim to suck blood until, satiated, they detach. They can be removed with fire or salt. They are edible.
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Vagabonds of Gor pages 96-97, 99-100, 102
marble sized parasites that infest tarns.
I withdrew some of the lice, the size of marbles,
which tend to infest wild tarns, and slapped them roughly into the mouth of the tarn,
wiping them off on his tongue.
Tarnsman of Gor, page 142
Originate in the delta and similar places. Its sting is extremely painful but it is usually not dangerous unless inflicted in great numbers.
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Raiders of Gor, page ??
a crablike poisonous desert insect.
I was told by Kamchak that once an army of a thousand
wagons turned aside because a swarm of rennels, poisonous, crablike desert insects, did
not defend its broken nest, crushed by the wheel of the lead wagon.
Nomads of Gor, page 27
an inhabitant of the rainforests lower level this brown or black spider camouflages itself by tucking legs under its body to look like a rock hence its name; it will catch small rodents or birds in its web.
They are called rock spiders because of their habit
of holding their legs folded beneath them. This habit, and their size and coloration,
usually brown and black, suggests a rock, and hence the name. It is a very nice piece of
natural camouflage. A thing line runs from the web to the spider. When something strikes
the web the tremor is transmitted by means of this line to the spider.
Explorers of Gor, page 294
found in the canopy level of the rainforest.
Here, too, may be found snakes and monkeys, gliding
urts, leaf urts, squirrels, climbing, long-tailed porcupines, lizards, sloths, and the
usual varieties of insects, ants, centipedes, scorpions, beetles and flies, and so on.
Explorers of Gor, page 311
a long slow blind worm that inhabits the caverns below the Nest in the Sardar; scavenges the remains of the Golden Beetles kills
Its tiny mouth on the underside of its body touched
the stone flooring here and there like the poking finger of a blind man and the long,
whitish, rubbery body gathered itself and pushed forward and gathered itself and pushed
forward again until it lay but a yard from my sandal, almost under the shell of the slain
Beetle.
The Slime Worm lifted the forward portion of its long, tubular body and the tiny red mouth
on its underside seemed to peer up at me.
Priest-Kings of Gor page 186
a crab-like organism with overlapping plating; inhabits the Nest and scavenges on discarded fungus spores.
I swung the transportation disk in a graceful arc to
one side of the tunnel to avoid running into a crablike organism covered with overlapping
plating adn then swung the disk back in another sweeping arc to avoid slicing into a
stalking Priest-King who lifted his antennae quizzically as we shot past.
"The one who was not a Priest-King," quickly said Mul-Al-Ka, "was a Matok
and is called a Toos and lives on discarded fungus spores."
Priest-Kings of Gor, page 142
tiny, sand-colored insects found in the Tahari Desert.
I detected the odor of kort rinds, matted, drying, on
the stones, where they had been scattered from my supper the evening before. Vints,
insects, tiny, sand-colored, covered them.
Tribesmen of Gor, page 115
large, harmless, purple insect about two feet long with 4 long, translucent wings, with a span of about a yard. It is able to walk on top of water because of its padlike feet and feeds on small insects.
I did see a large, harmless zarlit fly, purple, about
two feet long with four translucent wings, spanning about a yard, humming over the surface
of the water, then alighting and, on its padlike feet, daintily picking its way across the
surface.
Raiders of Gor, page 5
