Of course, as every Gorean knows, cities too are mortal, for cities can be destroyed as well as men.
2
47
And this perhaps makes them love their cities the more, for they know that their city, like themselves, is subject to mortal termination.
2
48
This love of their city tends to become invested in a stone which is known as the Home Stone, and which is normally kept in the highest cylinder in a city.
2
49
In the Home Stone—sometimes little more than a crude piece of carved rock, dating back perhaps several hundred generations to when the city was only a cluster of huts by the bank of a river, sometimes a magnificent and impressively wrought, jewel-encrusted cube of marble or granite—the city finds its symbol.
2
50
Yet to speak of a symbol is to fall short of the mark.
2
51
It is almost as if the city itself were identified with the Home Stone, as if it were to the city what life is to a man.
2
52
The myths of these matters have it that while the Home Stone survives, so, too, must the city.
Of course, as every Gorean knows, cities too are mortal, for cities can be destroyed as well as men.
And this perhaps makes them love their cities the more, for they know that their city, like themselves, is subject to mortal termination.
This love of their city tends to become invested in a stone which is known as the Home Stone, and which is normally kept in the highest cylinder in a city.
In the Home Stone—sometimes little more than a crude piece of carved rock, dating back perhaps several hundred generations to when the city was only a cluster of huts by the bank of a river, sometimes a magnificent and impressively wrought, jewel-encrusted cube of marble or granite—the city finds its symbol.
Yet to speak of a symbol is to fall short of the mark.
It is almost as if the city itself were identified with the Home Stone, as if it were to the city what life is to a man.
The myths of these matters have it that while the Home Stone survives, so, too, must the city.
- (Outlaw of Gor, Chapter )