I've encountered much confusion with larl role-players in how to go about their role. To lessen much confusion as possible, I've decided to comb all the books for excerpts relevant to larls. Excerpts with a Gorean's approach toward larls are also included in order to help human role-players and their interaction with larls too.
Each bolded header indicates which book the excerpts originate from. Before each quote is my own interpretation of the quote if I'm not being lazy.
I have also excluded the page numbers since my source may differ from yours. You could do a search for "larl" or "larls" in your own books to confirm it.
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Tarnsman of Gor
Larl as a target of Hunting
"As I was drawing on the two-strap, to guide the tarn to Ko-ro-ba, I saw something I did not expect to see, something directly below, which startled me. Shielded among the crags of the Voltai, invisible except from directly above, I saw four or five small cooking fires, such as might mark the camp of a mountain patrol or a small company of hunters, perhaps after the agile and bellicose Gorean mountain goat, the long-haired, spiral-horned very, or, more dangerously, the larl, a tawny leopardlike beast indigenous to the Voltai and several of Gor's ranges, standing an incredible seven feet high at the shoulder and feared for its occasional hunger-driven visitations to the civilized plains below."Larls Hunting:
"As the tarn wheeled upward, I heard the wild, uncanny hunting cry of the larl, piercing the dusk from somewherein the peaks below. Even the tarn seemed to shiver in its flight. The hunting cry was answered from elsewhere in the peaks and then again from a farther distance. When the larl hunts alone, it hunts silently, never uttering a sound until the sudden roar that momentarily precedes its charge, the roar calculated to terrify the quarry into a fatal instant of immobility. But tonight a pride of larls was hunting, and the cries of the three beasts were driving cries, herding the prey, usually several animals, toward the region of silence, herding them in the direction from which no cries would come, the direction in which the remainder of the pride waited.
Larls Grieve the loss of their ownThe light of the three moons was bright that night, and in the resultant exotic patchwork of shadows below, I caught sight of one of the larls, padding softly along, its body almost white in the moonlight. It paused, lifted its wide, fierce head, some two or three feet in diameter, and uttered the hunting scream once more. Momentarily it was answered, once from about two pasangs to the west and once from about the same distance to the southwest. It appeared ready to resume its pace when suddenly it stopped, its head absolutely motionless, its sharp, pointed ears tense and lifted. I thought perhaps he had heard the taro, but he seemed to show no awareness of us.I brought -the bird somewhat lower, in long, slow circles, keeping the larl in view. The tail of the animal began to lash angrily. It crouched, holding its long, terrible body close to the ground. It then began to move forward, swiftly but stealthily, its shoulders hunched forward, its hind quarters almost touching the ground. Its ears were lying back, flat against the sides of its wide head. As it moved, for all its speed, it placed each paw carefully on the ground, first the toes and then the ball of the foot, as silently as the wind might bend grass, in a motion that was as beautiful as it was terrifying.Something unusual was apparently happening. Some animal must be trying to break the hunting circle. Onewould suppose that the larl might be unconcerned with a single animal escaping its net of noise and fear and would neglect an isolated kill in order to keep the hunting circle closed, but that is not true. For whatever reason, the larl will always prefer ruining a hunt, even one involving a quarry of several animals, to allowing a given animal to move past it to freedom. Though I suppose this is purely instinctive on the larl's part, it does have the effect, over a series of generations, of weeding out animals which, if they survived, might transmit their intelligence, or perhaps their erratic running patterns, to their offspring. As it is, when the larl loses its hunt, the animals which escape are those which haven't tried to break the circle, those which allow themselves to be herded easily."
Outlaw of Gor"From perhaps a pasang away I heard the frustrated roar of a larl, probably one of the companions of the beast I had killed, puzzled about the failure of the hunt."
Spear is the choice weapon for hunting larls
"The spear was a typical Gorean spear, about seven feet in height, heavy, stout, with a tapering bronze head some eighteen inches in length. It is a terrible weapon and, abetted by the somewhat lighter gravity of Gor, when cast with considerable force, can pierce a shield at close quarters or bury its head a foot deep in solid wood. With this weapon groups of men hunteven the larl in its native haunts in the Voltai Range, that incredible pantherlike carnivore which may stand six to eight feet high at the shoulder."
Superstition with consuming the heart of the larl granting the eater good luck
Priest Kings of Gor"It is said that only the heart of the mountain larl brings more luck than that of the vicious and cunning sleen. The raw meat, hot with the blood of the animal, nourished me, and I crouched beside my kill on the road to Ko-ro-ba, another predator among predators."
The larl described as a big cat
The larl has a fat head"The larl is a predator, clawed and fanged, quite large, often standing seven feet at the shoulder. I think it would be fair to say that it is substantially feline; at any rate its grace and sinuous power remind me of the smaller but similarly fearsome jungle cats of my old world."
Some larl pelts are a tawny red and a sable black. Cubs are usually born in late fall or winter."The larl's head is broad, sometimes more than two feet across, and shaped roughly like a triangle, giving its skull something of the cast of a viper's save that of course it is furred and the pupils of the eyes like the cat's and unlike the viper's, can range from knifelike slits in the broad daylight to dark, inquisitive moons in the night."
The Priest Kings kept larls as guards in the Sardar"The pelt of the larl is normally a tawny red or a sable black. The black larl, which is predominantly nocturnal, is maned, both male and female. The red larl, which hunts whenever hungry, regardless of the hour, and is the more common variety, possesses no mane. Females of both varieties tend generally to be slightly smaller than the males, but are quite as aggressive and sometimes even more dangerous, particularly in the late fall and winter of the year when they are likely to be hunting for their cubs. I had once killed a male red larl in the Voltai Range within pasangs of the city of Ar."
The nature of the larl. They are never fully tamed. This excerpt shows that it is not only the Pani who attempted to domesticate the larls as the man who recognizes the larl is certainly not Pani. We will learn later on though that thus far only the Pani have a more successful system of attempted taming of larls."I then understood that the larl I had heard must be a larl of Priest-Kings, for no animal and no man enters or exists in the Sardar without the consent of Priest-Kings and if it was fed it must be at the hand of Priest-Kings or their servants."
Description of the larl's skull. It has four nostrils and ridges going from nose down to the spine."In spite of my hatred of Priest-Kings I could not help but admire them. None of the men below the mountains, the mortals, had ever succeeded in taming a larl. Even larl cubs when found and raised by men would, on reaching their majority, on some night, in a sudden burst of atavistic fury slay their masters and under the three hurtling moons of Gor lope from the dwellings of men, driven by what instincts I know not, to seek the mountains where they were born. A case is known of a larl who traveled more then twenty-five hundred pasangs to seek a certain shallow crevice in the Voltai in which he had been whelped. He was slain at its mouth. Hunters had followed him. One among them, an old man who had originally been one of the party that had captured the animal, identified the place."
Another quote emphasizing the larl's mate taking revenge."The larl's skull is an even more difficult cast, for its head is almost continually in motion. Moreover, it possesses an unobtrusive bony ridge which runs from its four nasal slits to the beginnings of the backbone. This ridge can be penetrated by the spear but anything less than a perfect cast will result in the weapon's being deflected through the cheek of the animal, inflicting a cruel but unimportant wound. On the other hand if I were under the larl I would have a brief but clean strike at the great, pounding, eight-valved heart that lies in the centre of its breast."
Loud sounds can startle the larlI might kill one larl, but then I should almost certainly die under the jaws of its mate.
At last I came to the bend in the path and braced myself for the sudden bolt about that corner in which I must cry aloud to startle them and in the same instant cast my spear at the nearest larl and set upon the other with my drawn sword.
The white larl is the largest and the only one described with saber toothed fangs.
The white larl used its hind legs to punt people like horses do.I was struck with wonder, though I was careful to keep beyond the range of their chains, for I had never seen white larls before.They were gigantic beasts, superb specimens, perhaps eight feet at the shoulder.Their upper canine fangs, like daggers mounted in their jaws, must have been at least a foot in length and extended well below their jaws in the manner of ancient sabre-toothed tigers. The four nostril slits of each animal were flared and their great chests lifted and fell with the intensity of their excitement. Their tails, long and tufted at the end, lashed back and forth.
Only an instant later did I understand what was happening for suddenly turning he threw himself on his side and his head facing in the other direction hurled his hind legs at me. I lifted the shield for to my horror in reversing his position on the chain he had suddenly added some twenty feet to the fearful perimeter of the space alotted to him by that hated impediment. Two great clawed paws smote my shield and hurled me twenty feet against the cliff. I rolled and scrambled back further for the stroke of the larl had dashed me into the radius of its mate. My cloak and garments were torn from my back by the stroke of the second larl's claws.The Priest King's White larls were leashed by chains which could be drawn in.
Nomads of GorThen I heard the movement of chains and I saw that the two chains which fastened the larls were not hooked to rings in the stone but vanished within circular apertures. Now the chains were being slowly drawn in, much to the obvious frustration of the beasts.
There's not much information here on larls themselves. Though throughout the book, the Tuchuks do use the pelt of the red larl for cloaks and blankets.
"Perhaps then," said Kamchak, "I should have sheets of crimson silk brought, and the furs of the mountain larl."
Assassins of Gor
Larls probably fear tarns. In this mention, the black war tarn.
Marauders of GorThen the tarn threw back its head and once more screamed, wild, eerie, fierce, savage, a cry that might have struck terror into the heart of a larl, but I did not fear it. I saw the talons of the tarn were shod with steel. It was, of course, a war tarn.
The larls having trailing and hearing abilities equal to the Kurii.
The trailing capacities of the Kurii are not as superb as those of the sleen, but they were reputed to be the equal of those of larls. The hearing, similarly, is acute. Again it is equated with that of the larl, and not the sharply-sensed sleen.To humans, Kurii communicating with one another is similiar to the sound of a growling larl.
Tribesmen of GorThe Kur stepped back with the other Kurii. They spoke together in one of the languages of the Kurii, for there are, I understood, in the steel worlds, nations and races of such beasts. I could hear little of what they said. I could detect, however, that it more resembled the snarls and growling of larls than the converse of rational creatures.
Likely the best way to "bind" a larl in combat is to chain it. The same as one would a Kurii.
Slave Girl of Gor"It is a Kur, surely," he said."Yes," I said, "it is an adult Kur.""It is a large one, is it not?" asked Samos."Yes," I said, "but I have seen many larger.""As nearly as we can determine," said Samos, "it is only a beast, and not rational."I smiled.It was chained in six places, at the wrists and ankles, and about the
waist, and again about the throat. Any of the chains might have held a bosk or a larl. It snarled, opening its fanged mouth.
Young larls are spotted in the narrators comparison of Bran Loort trying to take on Thurnus.
As well might a young larl with spotted coat be matched against a giant, tawny claw Ubar of the Voltai.The fur of larls and sleens were used in the crest of Treve's war helmets. In this context, Rask, The Captain of Treve's Scarlets invaded Turia.
Beasts of GorThen the room was in the control of the strangers. They were fierce, swift men, efficient, terrible. They wore gray helmets, with crests of the hair of larls and sleen. Their leather told me they were tarnsmen.
The larl's tracking abilities are inferior to the sleen's.
Explorers of Gor"That," I said, "would be the end." The sleen can follow a track better than a larl or a Kur. It is tireless and tenacious, and merciless.
There are Jungle Larls who are less apt to attack man. The theory is that the jungle has plenty of prey to keep the jungle larl well-fed.The rainforest here is that of Ua.
On the jungle floor, as well, are found jungle larls and jungle panthers, of diverse kinds, and many smaller catlike predators. These, on the whole, however, avoid men. They are less dangerous in the rain forest, generally, than in the northern latitudes. I do not know why this should be the case. Perhaps it Is because in the rain forest food is usually plentiful for them, and, thus, there is little temptation for them to transgress the boundaries of their customary prey categories. They will, however, upon occasion, particularly if provoked or challenged, attack with dispatch.The sleen that hunts might be far dangerous to man than a Voltai or Northern larl.
Conspicuously absent in the rain forests of the Ua were sleen. This is just as well for the sleen, commonly, hunts on the first scent it takes upon emerging from its burrow after dark. Moreover it hunts single-mindedly and tenaciously. It can be extremely dangerous to men, even more so, I think, than the Voltai, or northern, larl.Fighting Slave of Gor
The male larl kicks the shit out of a female larl before he mates with her. The female larl resists at first but yields when defeated enough.
The female larl, her flanks bleeding, yields to the male, after which she bears his young and hunts for him.Guardsman of Gor
Larls can fall to numbers.
Savages of GorYet I knew that in the end even the mighty larl, if chained, must eventually succumb to the attack of endless streams of hissing urts. The tiny gnawings, the miniscule lacerations, the drops of blood extracted, must in their cumulative effect take their inevitable toll.
A larl eating a kaliliauk.
A larl is compared here as the narrator ponders why Canka refused to fight him.This is just the narrator using a metaphor and not details on the actual larl's behavior.In the declivity below the rise there lay a slain kailiauk, dark in the snow. There could be no mistaking what, alert, huge, catlike, like a larl, crouched behind the kailiauk.
Blood Brothers of GorHe was not refusing to fight with me as the larl might refuse to fight with the urt.
The male larl works with his mate by roaring to scare their prey so the female can go after it.
Most interestingly, such cries, particularly if unexpected, may freeze, or startle, the enemy, thus, for a brief, valuable moment, providing the aggressor with a relatively inactive, stationary target for a particular stab or thrust. This sort of thing occurs in the animal world, incidentally, as when the cry of the male larl freezes game for the coordinated attack of his mate, the she-larl.Larls crouch to avoid detection by prey.
Mercenaries of GorThere is, within normal limits, and assuming the dimension is under surveillance, a direct correlation between height and detectability. It is for such reasons that an upright carriage increases the capacity to detect the approach of a predator or the position of game. It is for such a reason that the larl commonly crouches when stalking prey.
Larls move slowly around prey to trick prey into thinking them harmless.
It is plausible for people in the books to be retarded when it comes to larls.I moved a little in the shadows, slowly, and back and toward the center of the hut. In moving slowly, one tends to convey, on a very basic level, that one is not intending harm; to be sure, even predators like the larl occasionally abuse this form of signaling, for example, in hunting tabuk, using it for purposes of deception; more rapid movement, of course, tends to precipitate defensive reactions.
Dancer of GorThis Gnieus Lelius, if truly interested in the welfare of Ar, must act. If he had flaws as a regent presumably they might be due to his lack of information, or perhaps to a certain unwarranted optimism, or untutored innocence or naivety. Such things are not uncommon among idealists, so tender and thoughtful, so loving and trusting, prisoners of verbalisms, dazzled by inventions and dreams, projecting their own benevolence unto the larl and the forests, skeptical of reality, construing the world in the metaphor of the flower. What consolation is it for others if they should eventually discover they live in a world of facts, if disillusioned they should eventually recognize their errors, living to see the harvests of their foolishness, living to see their civilization split asunder, to see their world fall bleeding under the knives of power and reality.
There are no larls around Venna.
The larl is likely more feared than the sleen."There are panthers," I said, "and beasts called larls. Such animals are very dangerous.""As far as I know, there has not been a panther or larl in the vicinity of Venna in more than a hundred years," she said.
Vagabonds of Gor"What is more to be feared than sleen," he asked, "saving perhaps a larl?""There are things," said the small fellow.
Not a good idea to follow a larl.
Don't kick a larl."I would have hoped so," he said. It is dangerous to follow a warrior, as it is a larl or sleen. Such, too often, double back. Such, too often, turn the game.
Sleens may hunt a larl in packs and wait for it to tire."His perceptions would certainly seem warranted, from his point of view," I said. "Too, he knew there was no retreating Cosian force in the delta, and he might well suppose you knew this, as well. Too, one of their villages was burned, unfortunately, which would naturally be taken as an act of war. If you kick a larl you can not very well blame it for taking notice of the fact."
It can be a bitch to track down a larl.Ina, creeping at my side, I, moving through the aisle, looking about me, moved between the hunters, who fell back, on both sides, to let me pass. But then, as soon as I had passed them, they fell in behind me, and about me, as closely as they dared. I would move toward one or another, and that fellow would give way, but the cloud, like a pack of sleen scouting a larl, waiting for it to tire, or make a mistake, stayed with us.
Animals like larls are circled for capture to fight in the arena.When men search they normally do so, naturally enough, I suppose, as if their quarry were going to remain stationary, obstinately ensconced in a given situation. It is then necessary only to examine the available situations thoroughly, and your job is finished. On the other hand, whereas it is clearly understood by most searchers that the quarry may be in B while they are in A, it seldom seems to occur to them that the quarry may now be in A while they are in B. In this fashion it is possible to both "search everywhere" and find nothing. In this sense, locating men, or larls, or sleen, which tend to double back, often to attack their pursuers, is not like locating buttons.
Magicians of Gor"Surely you know the hunting of larls, the beating of game," I said."Surely," said a man."The ring can be pasangs in width," said a man."So, too, it is here!" I said.In such drives, the ring growing smaller and smaller, hundreds of animals can be brought together at a given point. Peasants from different villages sometimes combine forces to engage in this form of hunting. Sometimes, too, animals desired for the arena are hunted in this fashion, usually to be driven, at last, by fire and spears into nets or cages.
Larls are used as symbols on dice.
A description of larls when compared to humans in certain places on Gor."Larls" would be maximum highs, say, double highs, if two dice were being used, triple highs if three dice were in play, and so on. The chances of obtaining a "larl" with one throw of one die is one in six, of obtaining "larls" with two dice, one in thirty-six, of obtaining "larls" with three dice, one in two hundred and sixteen, and so on. Triple "larls" is a rare throw, obviously. The fellow had double "larls." Other types of throws are "urts," "sleen," "verr," and such. The lowest value on a singe die is the "urt." The chances of obtaining, say, three "urts" is very slim, like that of obtaining three "larls" one in two hundred and sixteen. "Verr" is not a bad throw but it was not good enough to beat "larls." If two dice are in play a "verr" and a "larl" would be equivalent on a numerical scale of ten points, or, similarly, if the dice are numbered, as these were, one would simply count points, though, of course, if, say, two sixes were thrown, that would count as "larls."
Larls are pure carnivores."Or larls," I said, "patient, unreconciled, dangerous, capable of action."
Witness of Gor"From the fact that most larls eat meat it does not follow that some larls do not," I said. "Rather, if one were to hazard an inference in such a matter, it would seem rational to suppose that they all eat meat."
Larls can live in caves.
Prize of Gor"We can expose her in the mountains," said the second man. "We can leave her bound, at the mouth of a larl's cave.”
Larls and sleens hunt with the wind in their direction. This is to detect scent better.
Sleen, of course, like larls, commonly hunt with the wind blowing toward them. Thus they have your scent and you do not have theirs."
Kur of Gor
Kur can injure a larl but is unlikely to win.
Larls sure need oxygen.I suppose this would count as a difference between the Kur and the average human being. To be sure, if one lacks fangs and claws it is seldom to one's advantage to grapple with those who possess them. The average Kur on the other hand could best, unaided with weaponry, a typical forest sleen, and might seriously tear and bloody even a larl, though the larl would doubtless be the last to feed.
Kurii, incidentally, require oxygen for life, as well, as does the cobra and ost, the leopard and larl.Larls can see in the dark.
They were large-eyed, these creatures, now with verticalized pupils, in the light, pupils which could, as those of the sleen and larl, swiftly adapt themselves to anything short of total darkness.Larls sometimes take hold of their prey and shred them using their limbs.
Multiple sleens hang onto a larl's flank when hunting one.Cabot awaited the tearing of his body.There are a variety of ways in which this might be done, and much depends on the individual beast. Sometimes the head is bitten free and the spurting neck is covered with the predator's mouth, which is then drenched with the imbibed, flighted blood; another way is shared by certain other forms of predator, such as the larl or forest panther, in which the prey is seized, say, at the shoulder, and then, as in a frenzy, disemboweled with the hind legs; sometimes the victim is merely held and, after a few moments, as it struggles, the throat is torn open; a clean fashion is simply to bite through the base of the neck; perhaps the least attractive Kur feeding is to torment the quarry, biting and licking here and there, perhaps a finger, a hand, a foot, and so on.
When one tried to defend itself from a sharpened stick three or four other humans, like sleen hanging on the flanks of a larl, drove their points deep into hairy bodies.Larls can hunt what is trying to hunt them.
It is not unusual that the hunted may become the hunter. The larl, for example, will commonly circle, or double back, and stalk its hunters.Larls are too heavy to go after prey that retreats up a tree.
The height, he hoped, and her silence, would protect her from predators, of various sorts. The branches would be likely to break beneath a larl and the sleen, a ground animal, is reluctant to climb.A Kur's net might hold a larl down.
The Kurii made a robot larlAnd now Cabot himself was netted, though not in the light toils of a weighted slave net, which he might have torn open and shredded, a net unsuitable for a man but inescapable for a female, but in a mighty net, stoutly woven, thickly stranded, cast by a Kur, a net that might have held a larl.
Through the trees into the clearing emerged a machine, slowly, menacingly, in the form of a gigantic larl.The larl is known on Gor. It is not known if it was native to Gor or, as many other forms of life, including humans, it was brought to that world by the mysterious Priest-Kings, whoever or whatever they might be. The ecological niche on the planet Earth, which is usually filled with large predators of a feline nature, such as the lion, the tiger, and such, is filled, or mostly, on Gor by the larl, and a diversity of smaller predators, primarily pantherine in form. The adult Gorean larl is usually in the range of seven feet at the shoulder and over a thousand pounds in weight. It is lithe, sinuous, agile, aggressive, ferocious, carnivorous, and, unlike the sleen, quadrupedalian. It has a broad skull, rather triangular in shape, and is fanged, and clawed. But the machine which now emerged, stalking, from the forest, must have been ten to twelve feet at the shoulder. Its weight would be difficult to ascertain without a better sense of its construction, but it was doubtless considerably heavier than a natural larl.
The living Kurii in the clearing, their weapons lowered, stepped aside, to allow the advance of the device.Hungry larls may be attracted to the smell of blood.
A larl will ignore machines as a life form. But will attack if provoked.A larl, thought Cabot, might have been brought to the clearing by the smell of blood.
A man can be sent flying if smacked by a larl.The larl did not understand of course the menace of the power weapons, and their scope, so unlike single arrows, weapons which might have transformed him in a moment into a little more than a mound of burned meat, like a small mountain, smoking and bubbling, beneath a descending, gentle scattering of drifting, burning hair.But the machine stood between the winnings of the sleen and he who would lay claim upon them.The sleen was now burrowing his muzzle into the body of the wild sleen, chewing out the organ meat, delicacies most prized amongst carnivores.The larl, no more than the sleen, reacted to the machine as a living thing, no more than it might have to a rock or tree.
The larl tried to strike the object from its path with its paw, and there was a raking, scraping sound, but it might as well have struck against a wall of iron, and there was, as a consequence of the blow, which might have struck a man yards from its path, almost no movement in the machine.Larls typically disable their prey by biting the back of the neck.
It is not unknown amongst larls and sleen, but the sleen usually strikes for the throat and the larl, where practical, particularly after it has bled and exhausted its prey, bites through the back of the neck.
Larls will sleep next to their catch if they don't finish it.
The larl will often sleep in the vicinity of prey half eaten, thusly guarding it. Who would challenge a larl? Smaller beasts wait patiently, until it abandons its prey, and stalks away in its disinterested, lordly fashion.Larl fangs are sharp as a scimitar.
A trail of misery and death in one case, and of health and vitality in another, lies at the roots, here and elsewhere, of what might seem to be a thousand matters of coincidence, but are no more coincidences, or inexplicable accidents, than the scimitarlike sharpness of the larl's fangs, or the erratic, bounding fleetness of the tabuk.Larls can eat people too.
"I would have thought your claws and teeth would be sufficient,” said Cabot."There are beasts in the forests other than humans,” said Pyrrhus."And they prey on humans?""Some,” said Pyrrhus, “larls, sleen."
Kurii also hunted larls to be used in their games.
Cabot knew that larls could be found in the sport world, as well as sleen. These beasts were hunted by Kurii with primitive weapons, as well as men.Swordsmen of Gor
Larls do not naturally live in the Northern Forests. They must be captured and brought there.
Humans are not the typical prey of larls. But it is possible.Then, to my surprise, I heard, from deep within the forest, what was, unmistakably, the roar of a larl.I found this anomalous.The larl is not indigenous to the northern forests.
“That is possible,” I said, “but I do not think there is much to fear in the reserve. The oddity of the ditch discourages the entrance of animals, and, as there is little grazing here, there would be few herbivores, and there being few herbivores, there will be few carnivores. Too, the human is unfamiliar prey to most carnivores, the panther, the sleen, the larl, and such. They will certainly attack humans, and humans are surely within their prey range, but, given a choice, they will usually choose prey to which they are accustomed, wild tarsk, wild verr, tabuk, and such.”Larls were used as Guard beasts by the Pani.
I had, in wandering about, intended, for my interest, to cross the border of the wands, to scout the area, but I had been warned back by a prowling larl, which was, as nearly as I could determine, although it was not collared, a guard beast. I understood then why the camp, despite the richness of timber about, was not palisaded, at least not in the sense of being encircled by a close-set wall of sharpened palings. It did, of course, in a sense, have its palisade. Such beasts were its palisade.
Nishida had larls at his Pavilion.
The Pani are unusually indifferent to the presence of their larls.At that moment I heard the roar of a larl.“Do not be dismayed,” said Tajima, “it is from the pavilion of Lord Nishida.”“It sounds close,” I said.“It is,” said Tajima. “There is the pavilion.”
The Pani took larl cubs and trained them with different commands. The Pani achieved "domesticated" larls.She uttered a tiny noise of fear, and her legs gave out beneath her, but she was steadied by the two guards who held her in place, by the upper arms, beneath the sheet. Her fear, understandably enough, was a reaction to the sight of the two larls, one on each side of the platform. She had perhaps never seen a larl before, and even if she were familiar with these large carnivores, finding oneself in their vicinity, without viewing them through thick bars or ascertaining that they were, say, tethered on stout chains, would be enough to unnerve a heart more experienced and stouter than hers. In any event, I had certainly shared a similar apprehension upon my entrance into the pavilion. The fact that the beasts seemed somnolent and that they seemed to provoke little concern amongst the others in the pavilion had, of course, considerably, if not entirely, assuaged my apprehensions. The larl, of course, is never fully tamed. Like the tarn, it has a wild blood. Too, if one makes a sudden movement in its vicinity, for example, a paw may, as by a reflex, lash out and a hand may be half torn from a wrist, or an arm may be shredded.
She now understood the two larls to be harmless. She was mistaken in this conjecture, but it was a rational conjecture considering that the two beasts were quiet, crouched in place, and that their presence seemed to be accepted without question by the others present. She might have been less confident had she known more about larls. Pretty obviously the two beasts were domestic larls, probably raised from cubhood, and trained to respond to certain commands. On the other hand, as noted earlier, no larl is ever fully tamed. A thousand generations of stalking and killing lay concealed, lay in wait, in every corpuscle of those pelted, passive giants.Pani larls usually stayed beyond the border of the wands.
We were walking within a path, leading from the logging camp deeper into the forest. The path was lined with wands, on each side, and the guard larls, which were occasionally seen, would not intrude within the wands.
Pani Guardian larls will kill and fed on those attempting to escape the camp.
A Pani who owned larls as "pets" would have them carried about in wheeled cages.At that moment, from afar off, perhaps two hundred to two hundred and fifty yards to our right and ahead, there was a terrible roar, surely of a larl, followed, a moment later, by a harrowing scream.Tajima seized my arm. “No!” he said. “Do not depart from the wands!”“Help is needed!” I said, pulling away.“No,” said Tajima. “It is no longer needed. The kill has taken place. Do not disturb a larl when it is feeding.”“Someone was beyond the wands,” I said.“Now, and again,” said Tajima, “some will flee the camp.”The roar of the larl commonly startles and freezes the prey. Then the larl is upon it.“The camp, I gather, is not to be fled?”“No,” said Tajima, “it is not permitted.”“Why do men flee the camp?” I asked.“They are afraid,” said Tajima. “They do not wish to die, and then they flee, and then they die.”
The Pani might favor and respect larls more than the sleen.At that moment we heard the roar of caged larls, as, down from the forest, came the cage wagons housing Lord Nishida’s pets, of which there were some ten, as I had counted, two from the pavilion, and some eight, who had prowled the wands. The larl, as noted, is not native to the northern forests.
The Pani's larls sometimes hung around on platforms.“You brought a dangerous animal on board,” he said.“No more dangerous, surely,” I said, “than ten larls.”“They are caged,” he said.“Not at Tarncamp,” I said.“The larl is large and noble,” said Lord Nishida. “The sleen is sly and treacherous.”
At the edges of the lacquered platform, one on each side, crouched two larls. Behind Lord Nishida, at the back of the platform, stood six of the “strange men,” each armed with a glaive, the blade of which, socketed in its stout pole, was some two-and-a-half feet in length, and curved.The Pani sometimes fed bad slaves to larls too. Truly unworthy slaves get eaten by urts instead.
“And this one,” said Tajima, who had had, from the beginning, as I understood it, reservations pertaining to the former Miss Wentworth, “as she would be unworthy meat for larls or sleen, may be bound and cast into the garbage pit for the delectation of swarming urts.”A group of larls is called a pride.
The expression ‘pride’, in this context, was a metaphor, of sorts, taken from the usual grouping of larls, such a group being commonly called a pride. The term is Gorean, but, like a great many terms in Gorean, not surprisingly, given the voyages of acquisition, it is taken from another language, in this case, English.Enemies are not pleased with larls as defense.
The larls, of course, prowled, still, beyond the wands. Some of our foes would learn that, to their dismay.Larls chasing people fleeing from the camp.
Larls would back away from an area secured by the wands even if the wands were removed. They would check out the area eventually.Some of the enemy then turned about, to flee back to the shelter of the trees and, momentarily, the housing area. Few reached the track, even backing away. Others fled into the forest, beyond the wands. I heard the roar of larls, and screams, from north of the track.
I had no doubt hundreds of the wands would now be uprooted. I trusted this would not result in an eventual, casual intrusion of larls into formerly secure areas.The larls patrolled even into the forests surrounding their posts.
“You are unarmed,” I informed him. “You are far from villages, even huts. And you know not their locations, or your directions. There are larls in the woods but, hopefully, they are now well fed, and sleeping. You are without weapons and supplies. Many are the dangers in the forest. I do not expect you to survive.”Again, larls would patrol their posts even without the wand to designate their post.
Larls hunt to avoid their scent detected.“Remain at your post,” I said.“Enemies, Commander,” said one, “may linger.”I thought this possible, but unlikely.Few, I thought, would care to linger in our precincts, risking discovery byAshigaru .Would they not now, scattered, defeated, haggard, desperate, frightened, half-starved, have sought flight?Too, they might well fear larls.Certainly some of these large, dreaded, clawed, fanged, fearsome beasts occasionally roared within the forests. These were, doubtless, given the latitude, the larls of Lord Nishida, which might well still be in the vicinity, frequenting their former haunts, making their rounds as though the encirclements of wands was still in place.
The sleen, as most predators, whether panthers, larls, or such, will stalk in such a manner as to approach the prey from downwind, from the direction toward which the wind is blowing. In this manner the scent of the prey is borne to them, and their own scent is carried backward, away from the prey. To such animals scent not only detects prey, but can be informative as to its distance, movements, numbers, and sex.Larls were taught secret commands.
Larl eyes glow when light shines on them.A cage wagon rolled past, in which, turning and twisting about one another, agitated, were several larls. These were the beasts, primarily, who had patrolled outside the wands. They were trained from cubhood, to respond to secret commands. Accordingly, one who knew these commands might command them, venture beyond the wands, and so on. Ashigaru prowled the edges of the road, lest any of Lord Nishida’s minions, primarily mercenaries, be tempted to avail themselves of an unobstructed highway to another prince, one with perhaps a deeper purse.
Taking light, even that of a lantern, the membrane behind the eyes can suddenly flash like molten copper, an anomaly in the darkness. It is the same with panthers and larls.Mariners of Gor
Larls sometimes pretend to be asleep to throw their prey's guard off.
He reminded me of a seemingly somnolent larl, pretending to be asleep, lying in the grasses, near a watering hole. Woe to the tabuk which might ignore such a form. The larl does not always move whilst hunting.Larls live in dens too.
The girls of Gorean origin were being kept chained below decks, some hooded, and sedated. One could not blame a girl for being uneasy if she were being drawn, say, wrists bound behind her, naked, on a tether, into a larl's den.Larls dislike odd movement and loud noises. They are known to retreat from loud noises.
Alright. So that wasn't all the books. Only the books that make mention of them."In, in, in!” cried a tarnkeeper, swinging open one of the large, wood-barred gates of a cage. Another, before one of the monsters, was shouting and raising his arms. Tarns, like larls and sleen, tend to find noise and violent motions disconcerting. Larls have been known to withdraw before a shouting child beating on a pan with a metal spoon. One of the monsters backed into the cage, beak snapping with menace, and the tarnkeeper at the gate swung it shut, hooking the latch in place. I saw another tarn down the aisle being similarly housed.
