The Home Stone

It is with great honor that I present the new Imperial Ar on this 23rd day of December, 2010, right in the midst of this special holiday season and on the very cusp of a new year. In 1999, when I slid my much younger hand over the worn cover of “Tarnsman of Gor,” a dream was birthed in my very soul to make the City of Ar, the Home Stone of Gor, somehow come alive for men and women. I had extensively studied the Latin language and Roman and Greek histories in my education, and given my intense draw to fictional romance, power exchange, the lyrical near-prose style of Norman, and Tarl's daring adventures, I soon found myself in love with Marlenus and wandering through the pillars and stadiums of Ar in my dreams. Too, I became Tarl and followed him through his countless perilous deeds for many years.

Chat rooms sprung up everywhere in the modern miracle of the internet, and it wasn't long before likeminded Gorean fantasists and lifestylers infiltrated IRC, yahoo, MSN, and html chat. They lived the dream in their written, roleplayed fiction, some even meeting offline with the philosophy in their hearts, as men and women who dared to somehow rise above society's common denominators that would govern their behavior, and they declared themselves to be Free. It wasn't long before Second Life became popular, and in 2006, I, wide-eyed, stepped off the ship that bore Dark Starr's Flag of Piracy, and onto the infamous docks of malignant Port Kar with one hand on a scroll of the Scribes and one eye on the throne of the Ubarate of Ar.

Ar in Second Life has come and gone. Risen and fallen. It's been built, torn down, its people brought together, fragmented, and then lost again. The most glorious of Gorean cities has never maintained stability here in our adventure world, and it was always my aim that, should I ever have the means or ability to build Ar the way it should be done, I would do so – but only with the right group of folks who were committed, who shared this Gorean vision, and who wanted it just as badly. Other people whose hearts could not be swayed by a single man or idea, who were tired of roaming from place to place and looking for their home, who were ready to embrace the ideal of that great City of Ar, not only as a “sim” with a “family” of roleplayers.

The ideal of Ar I speak of is this: That we, as Gorean roleplayers, lifestyle Goreans, or just... humans... have a quest for the Home Stone of our hearts. There is a truth that binds us, and it is why we return. It is the Home Stone. It is our community. It is us, unified. It is the “we.”

It is, now, our time.

This is Ar.

S.P.Q.A.