Khorinis

Author: Flosha  
Created: 12.06.2024   
Last update: 09.09.2024

Here we are primarily focusing on the definition and role of Khorinis as a location in the grand scheme of the history of Myrtana, while the more elaborated history of the City in particular will be dealt with in the city design documentation.

Etymology

We can either assume that the word is comprised of two words such as “Khor+Inis”, as suggested by Avallach, or we can assume it to be “Khorin” with a suffix “-is” as it appears in words such as basis or polaris, which I suggested.

Based on this research and the idea of Khorin-is, it is an obvious and easy explanation for Khorinis to mean as much as the territory/valley and city “of Khorin”, a saint from past days, as I originally suggested.

Based on the idea of Khor-Inis it could mean as much as the “island of the sun”, “the island in the east”, “the territory in the east”, or the “eastern creek”. It is noteworthy that Avalon (Ynis Affalon) was sometimes also described as a valley instead of an island in medieval sources and so Khorinis could as well mean as much as “the valley of the east”.

Both explanations are valid, they aren’t necessarily causing any conflict and can be combined.

Khorinis as “of Khorin” has two meanings depending on what people refer to. They may refer to it as the city (Khorinis then: city of Khorin), sometimes to the territory such as the valley surrounding the city and the colony beneath (Khorinis then = valley/region of Khorin).

Quotes

Im Namen König Rhobars II, (…) verurteile ich diese vier Verbrecher zur Haft in den Erzminen von Khorinis. [C]

Ich zog es vor, eine Weile unterzutauchen, und dafür gab es im ganzen Königreich keinen besseren Ort als Khorinis. / Die Stadt lag weit entfernt von den großen Königsstädten im Zentrum des Reiches. Hier kümmerte es niemanden, welches Schicksal den anderen in diesen äußersten Winkel der Welt verschlagen haben mochte. [C]

Als sein Spähtrupp von der herannahenden Orkarmee überrollt zu werden droht, sucht Milten rechtzeitig sein Heil in der Flucht. Völlig entkräftet schleppt er sich in die nächste Stadt, wo er unglücklicherweise von den Stadtwachen als Deserteur festgenommen wird. [W]

Ka-Garon: (…) Sei uns willkommen, Bruder im Geiste. Du hast gefunden, wonach du gesucht hast. Den einzigen Ort der Freiheit und des Glücks, den es auf dieser trostlosen Insel gibt. (…) [D]

(…) Aber seine Armee war klein geworden und nur noch wenige Waffen standen ihm zu Verfügung. Zur Herstellung neuer Waffen brauchte er Erz. Die Lage war überall im Land schlecht, besonders in den Minenstädten. Diebe und Deserteure trieben ihr Unwesen und viele Gefangene flohen aus den Minen. Vor allem die Stadt Khorinis, eine der Haupt Erzlieferanten war zu wichtig als das der König nicht eingreifen müsste. Denn in den Minen von Khorinis schürften die Gefangenen ein besonderes, seltenes Erz. Magisches Erz. [M]

In order to save his most precious mine in Khorinis, where his people gathered magical Ore and forged them into the strongest weapons in the land (…) [M]

Strategic importance

The manual makes it clear, that magical ore is only to be found in Khorinis. The king would not erect a magical barrier around the colony, if the colony wouldn’t be of the utmost strategic importance for the war.

The small size of the colony and the relatively little amounts of magical ore that the prisoners deliver, does not make this any less plausible or less realistic, since we do not know how many of these “strongest weapons in the land” can be produced by even little amounts of this specific ore. The swords are thus unlikely to be made entirely from magical ore, but rather be coated by it. One sack of ore can therefore suffice for the production of a plethora of swords.

Secrecy

It is common knowledge in the kingdom, that Khorinis is rich of ore, that a special, magical ore is to be found at its mines and that a lot of profit is made through the ore business.

But Milten, while being an educated man, stationed not too far away from the city, on the northern plains, is neither aware of the penal colony nor of the barrier surrounding it. The existence and role of this high security prison at this “utmost corner of the world” is kept secret by the empire.

This will be elaborated on in the design documentation of the City.

Khorinis for the Orcs

The orcs came from the North driven by hunger and are thus drawn towards the fruitfuil soil around the royal cities in the centre of the realm. Khorinis, for them, is a mountaineous region, rich in ore, but poor in food. Most importantly Khorinis is the home of the Bloodearth Clan - a cursed clan on cursed soil, full of orcish blood - thus known as the blood earth -, hated by their kin, as they brought great misery upon the orcs by the summoning of Krushak.

Position of Khorinis

Climate

The rather mediterranean climate of the colony with burned grass and people being able to run around without much or any kind of cover, which would otherwise serve as a reasoning for a position further south, is explained in the novel by the barrier and is thereby not a sufficient reasoning against a position in the north of Myrtana.

The barrier is both blocking light to some degree (leading to that desired depressive gothic atmosphere within the colony that was initially aimed for) and still makes it much warmer inside, almost like a conservatory. At the same time not much (if any) rain can pass, resulting in the dryness of most of the soil, except for the areas around the rivers.

Outside of the barrier, on the other hand, we can see conifer trees on the hills surrounding the colony, as displayed both in the Comic and on all of the concept arts by Ralf Marczinczik; which can be seen as an additional confirmation of the ideas above, that it is quite a bit colder outside of the barrier.

Khorinis as an Island

In 1998, Mike said the following:

[…] We needed to limit the size of the world, therefore we planned to place the prison on an island, but then we decided in favor of the magic barrier, because it emphasizes the feeling of being imprisoned.

At the same time, he clarified to us in 2020, that…

There was no worldmap when we did Gothic 1, so it was neither on the mainland, nor on an island at that point.

They had the idea of an island at first, because of Escape from New York, the essential inspiration to Gothic, which is taking place in Manhatten, but the idea was discarded in favour of the magical barrier (which was an idea by Stefan Nyul) and at that point there was no concept of the world around it, only fragments.

When then the Sequel was being developed by Nyul and Brüggemann (the other two of the four founders of the team apart from Mike Hoge and Tom Putzki) and when they decided to let their project take place in the colony only, - which they were forced to do since they didn’t have enough level designers to do more than an overhaul of the colony, as all the former level designers decided to help Mike with his shooter project Unplugged instead, that sadly never came to fruition - there was still no reason to clarify the position of the colony within the world of Gothic. But as the idea had been discarded during the conception phase of Gothic, they did not imagine it being situated on an island.
And the Comic, that was considered canonical and showed the city of Khorinis (that Milten travelled to by foot from the northern plains (in the north of Myrtana), with Khorinis being the “next city” from there, as the official website informed us) - and thus showing us a part of the outside world - surrounded by huge mountain massives, has thus obviously given no reason to imagine an island either. While the barrier was gone, the game world of the Sequel was meant to be limited by the inability to swim out of the world (due to monsters in the sea) and orcs (for reasons related to the story) being placed around all the exits of the valley.

There is one mentioning of an island though, as quoted above. In the design documentation of story version 3, there is written a dialogue of Ka-Garon, one of the “higher” novices:

Be welcome, brother in spirit. You have found, what you searched for. The only place of freedom and happiness that exists on this dreary island. [D]

Independent from the question whether Khorinis and the colony are situated on an actual island or not, we can for sure think of it as an island in a metaphorical way, due to its secluded position (“ore island” may be a common term). But even more so since the creation of the barrier. Just as the Orgas as “ore pirates” are pirates in a metaphorical sense, the colony as this valley surrounded by the barrier is like a metaphorical island - far more secluded than any island, as it is not surrounded by water, which men could at least overcome by ships, but by unbreachable and insurmountable magic.

But if Khorinis is an actual island, based on all the findings before and the inspiration from Escape from New York, it is most reasonable to assume it to be either an island like Manhatten - which means being extremely close to the mainland, almost connected with it - or perhaps to be indeed connected with it partially, as a peninsula (german “Halbinsel”, meaning “half-island”); a solution by which we can merge the idea of an island inspired by the dark anarchist Manhatten in Escape from New York (at first imagined as a level limitation, then discarded when Nyul had the idea of the magical barrier, but still kept in the back of their mind as a potential geographic solution for later), with the idea of it being located on the mainland, as the Sequel and Comic seemed to assume - in that it is directly connected to the Northeast of Myrtana through a mountain pass and also lies to some degree within the Myrtanian Sea as seen in the creek of the colony (and potentially within a myrtanian gulf (see Myrtana)). It is thus far away from the center of the realm due to its secluded position in the northeast, not due to it being far away on the sea. This is what we end up with when following all the early sources and ideas consequently.

Phoenix Solutions

/lore/khorinis.md