Legal Slavery - TrinianGames/Sapphory GitHub Wiki

In Sapphorian law, a slave is defined legally as a woman who is the property of another woman. She has no rights beyond the right to life, health and to live free from danger, she is not a Sapphorian Citizen and is considered to be wholly the responsibility of her legal owner. Slaves usually remain slaves until they reach retirement age, at which point, they are customarily released from service, though this is at the discretion of the owner.

The youngest age at which a Sapphorian is eligible for slavery is 18. If a Sapphorian under the age of 23 is enslaved, it will be up to her owner whether or not she attends High School.

At any given time, approximately 3-5% of Sapphory's population are legal slaves and an estimated 0.2% are illegal slaves. This is low by both historical standards and compared with the outside world, and is due to the fact that Sapphory creates its own slaves rather than pillaging them from elsewhere, as has more normally been the case throughout human history.

Becoming a slave

No Sapphorian woman can be born into slavery. The only way for a woman to be enslaved is by the order of a civil or criminal court. The overwhelmingly most common way for this to happen is for a woman to become bankrupt and unable to pay her debts. It can also be given as a criminal sentence, usually for fraudsters and confidence tricksters. The third, and by far least common way is for a foreign-born woman who has been denied asylum or citizenship to voluntarily enter slavery as a last-ditch way of remaining in Sapphory.

When a woman is enslaved, she is stripped of all of her worldly possessions, as she can not legally own anything. Her assets are liquidated and her bank accounts closed. If she is a debtor (as in the majority of cases,) her remaining possessions, including her clothes and even underwear will be auctioned off towards repaying her creditors. If she has not been assigned a specific mistress by the court, she will then be held until the next local slave auction, where she will be sold and the proceeds also put towards her debts.

The new slave will be taken to the Sapphorian Underling Bureau (SUB) where her Sapphorian Citizenship will be formally revoked (if applicable) and she will be re-designated as chattel. At this time, she will be fitted with an official collar, which cannot be removed, can track her movements and will alert the authorities if she or anyone else attempts to tamper with it. This ensures that slaves can never attempt to pass themselves off as free women.

Slave Auctions

If she is to be auctioned off, the slave will be kept in a purpose-built holding pen with others like her until the date of the next auction. Most Sapphorian cities hold at least one auction every two weeks and most towns approximately once a month. The slaves in the holding pens will usually be put to work doing municipal cleaning to pay for their upkeep in the meantime.

On the date of the auction, the slaves will first be placed in pens where prospective clients can inspect them prior to the auction proper. This usually lasts for most of the morning as bidders inspect each slave carefully. There are no limits on how much prospective buyers can touch slaves' bodies and many women have been known to attend slave auctions to 'inspect' slaves for their own amusement with no intention of buying.

Once the auction itself begins, slaves are led one by one onto the main auction plinth naked and leashed. They are paraded as bidding commences. The average buy price for a slave in most Sapphorian cities is approximately 30,000 credits, with the youngest and most attractive fetching prices in excess of 100,000 credits. Some slaves who fetch high prices consider it a point of pride.

Once she has been won, the slave will be taken to the transfer office, where the appropriate paperwork will be completed and filed with the Sapphorian Underling Bureau and ownership of her is formally transferred to her new Mistress. She can now be taken home. A simple dress is usually provided with the slave, though many owners prefer to keep a new slave completely nude for the first few weeks while she gets used to the idea of being owned and having no rights. Being forced to remain completely naked has been shown to speed up acceptance of her new lot in life. Most owners will also sleep with a new slave within 24 hours of buying her.

Rights and responsibilities of a slave owner

Owning a slave carries certain responsibilities. The owner must feed and house her property and is legally responsible for her welfare. It is against the law to starve or beat a slave or to make her sleep outside. The slave must not be put to work in an unsafe environment and the owner is responsible for ensuring she is not put at unreasonable risk of injury or death. The slave must attend a hospital appointment once per month where she will receive a full medical check-up to ensure her health and wellbeing.

While owners may not beat their slaves, certain forms of physical correction are permitted, and these are carefully codified within Sapphorian law. Owners may spank their slaves bottom as much as they like, either with an open hand or with a flat implement. They may also slap their slave in the face with an open hand, ensuring the do not cause head injury or draw blood, and may pull their slave's hair as long as they do not rip it out. These actions are intended to humiliate rather than to hurt, and only limited force is permitted. Owners may also punish the nipples and feet of their slaves, again in such a way that does not cause injury. Finally, owners may not punish the genitals of the slave, but are at liberty to insert their fingers or objects into them, again only insofar as the slave is not injured in the process.

When a slave is physically corrected, it is the owner's responsibility to ensure she has not been injured and she must be allowed sufficient time to recover before the correction can be repeated. In reality, the vast majority of Sapphorian women balk at even this level of violence, however, and most slaves will only ever be spanked, or at most occasionally slapped, as Sapphorians greatly prefer to humiliate those beneath them than to hurt them.

That said, laws do exist to deal with slave owners who go too far. If a slave's medical exam throws up anything untoward, or if the slave goes to the authorities of her own volition and shows them evidence of wrongdoing, the slave will be removed from her owner while the Town Guards investigate. This can take some time, and the slave will be retained and put to work by the authorities during this time, after any required hospitalisation is complete.

If the owner is found to have negligently or wilfully caused the slave harm or failed in her duty of care, ownership of the slave can be withdrawn. The owner can also be prosecuted, with the maximum penalty being exile, though exile would only be considered in very serious cases. More often, the owner will be fined, put in the stocks or even enslaved herself.

Within the limitations set out above, a slave owner has complete control of every aspect of her slave's life, and the slave has no rights whatsoever. She can be forced to perform any task, and most owners will also set out rules for what (if anything) she must wear and how she must present herself. It is common, for example, for an owner to dictate the appearance of the slave's hair and makeup, with the slave being expected to tend to these things herself each morning, rising early if necessary to do so before the owner wakes.

Most owners will also buy an outfit to be their slave's "uniform" - even if they require their slave to be naked in the house, the slave may still be sent out on errands that will take them to areas of the city that are open to children, and it is considered inappropriate (though is not illegal) for a slave to have her vagina on show in these areas. Culturally, it reflects poorly on the owner, and so, like many things in Sapphory, is regulated socially rather than legally. Most slaves are allowed to wear clothing outdoors.

Common uses for slaves

The vast majority of slave girls in Sapphory work as domestic servants. Most are owned by well-to-do families and serve in their household. They spend most of their day cooking, cleaning, washing, gardening and tidying. Later in the evenings, they will often be required to serve as entertainment, either by performing sexual acts or in other ways, such as singing and dancing. High-school aged daughters of the slave's owner will sometimes humiliate a slave to impress their friends or simply to amuse themselves.

Domestic slaves are usually used for sex by every adult member of the family. As having sex with a slave is not considered adultery, couples will often use slaves as marital aids, making them participate in threesomes when they wish to spice up their marriage, and many upper and upper-middle class high school girls lose their virginity to the family slave, or the slave of a friend's family if they do not own one themselves.

Other, less fortunate slaves find themselves forced into stripping, prostitution and the great arena.

While the majority of strippers in Sapphory are free women, slaves can also be put to work in this field. An owner can earn a significant return on a slave who works as a lap dancer, and unlike prostitution, no licence is required. This is one of the reasons younger and more beautiful girls fetch a much higher price on the slave markets, as the income they can generate for their owners by dancing can be significant. In most Sapphorian cities, dance schools that cater to slave owners wishing to train their property to lap dance are common.

Owners can also go through the process of having their slaves officially licenced as prostitutes. This takes time, and there are fees to be paid and forms to be filled, which is why many owners opt for lap dancing instead, but once licenced, the slave can become very profitable to the owner, some of whom have their girls sleep with upwards of a dozen women each night. Other specialist services, such as naked cleaning services that also provide sex have also proved popular, as have services catering to women who wish to dominate a slave sexually.

Finally, slaves can be made to fight in the Great Arena, or whatever the local approximation is. Slaves forced to compete in this way may be pitted against other slaves, or against glory-seeking free women. An owner receives an appearance fee for the slave regardless of whether she wins or loses, but will receive significantly more if she wins. For this reason, ordinary slave owners will rarely bother with this, when their property can earn them far more as a stripper or prostitute. However, it is common for professional slave-wranglers to own a group of 6-20 slaves at once, forcing them to spend their days sparring, working out and learning to fight better. A slave girl who finds herself in this miserable position will be put in the arena several times a night and harshly punished if she loses. She will also spend her days training and sparring with her fellow slaves, though if she proves unequal to the demands being made of her, she will be sold on by the owner, who will look to replace her with a more profitable girl.

Slaves in Criminal Law

Criminal acts committed by slaves are considered to be the responsibility of the slave's owner unless she can prove that the slave acted alone. This is due to the fact that because a slave owner has complete control of the slave's life, she can order her to commit crimes, and the slave can be punished if she refuses to obey, unless the order would likely result in injury or death.

Slave owners convicted of crimes committed by their slaves are treated as if they had committed the act themselves. On the other hand, if a slave owner can demonstrate that she did not instruct the slave to commit the crime, the slave will be very severely punished, and sent on a mandatory course of retraining.

Slave Training and Retraining

Slaves are expected to obey all orders and instructions from the moment they are enslaved, and most do. However, a small percentage of women are unable to accept enslavement straight away. These are usually identified before they are sold, but in either case, they are taken to a purpose-build slave breaking facility (not to be confused with the slave breaking process used by illegal Slavers, though there are many similarities,) and subjected to several days of intense "training." Here, they are chained, hobbled and are fitted with a remote vibrator, then forced to repeatedly perform tedious, humiliating tasks, such standing up and kneeling down, doing star jumps, putting their hands on their head, then by their side, bending over in lewd ways, and suchlike for hours at a time, all of course completely naked.

They will also be leashed and forced to crawl around on the floor, made to "walk to heel" like a dog, assume and hold humiliating poses, such as face-down-ass-up for long periods of time, they will be made to beg for breaks and food, and denied these things if they refuse. At night, they will sleep in a cage, often hogtied if they have misbehaved or failed in their training that day.

Each time they refuse an order, they are spanked. Each time they complete a series of instructions successfully, they are vibed as a reward. (Though obviously, being forced to orgasm nude in front of a group of strangers is its own form of humiliation.)

After several days of this, they undertake a test, in which they are ordered to perform some of the most humiliating tasks that slaves in Sapphory can be subjected to, such as lap-dancing, masturbation shows and having sex with whoever they are ordered to. They must also perform cunnilingus on each of the very women who have spent the last several days humiliating them, in order to demonstrate their capitulation. If they refuse or hesitate in any of these tasks, the entire process begins again, but with the punishment spankings becoming more extreme, including the introduction of paddles, switches, and the like. Slaves sent for re-training begin at this higher level of punishment, and must perform other, even more humiliating tasks as part of their final test, including being chained in public and forced to offer passers-by sexual favours.