Port Kar is the pirate city of Gor: a dark tangle of stone holdings and canals sunk in the Vosk delta, where the river meets the Tamber Gulf and Thassa.

It has no old towers of honor and, for most of its life, no Home Stone. Other cities call it the Scourge of Thassa, the Tarn of the Sea, a den of captains, thieves, slavers, and men who swear to nothing but their own ships. It is the only city that openly keeps a Caste of Thieves. Much of it was raised by slaves under the whip. The delta itself is the wall—swamp, tide, and maze that armies cannot easily cross.

Power sits with the Council of Captains, not a single Ubar in the northern style. Fleets raid from the ice lakes of the north to the far south. Later the city takes a Home Stone of its own and learns, awkwardly, what it means to be a city instead of a nest of raiders. Even then Port Kar stays what it is: wet, cruel, rich off plunder, and proud of the fact that civilized Gor would rather burn it than claim it.