Becoming a Slave

There are several ways into slavery. Two account for most slaves, and the defenders of the system point to one of those.

Voluntary submission

The most common route and the one the whole philosophy rests on. Every person is encouraged to follow their own nature, and a person whose nature is to serve will often present themselves and ask to be collared. Within one's own city it is a legal act with a process and a record: Clearhold examines the applicant and records the terms in the Registrars' archive; Eldershore involves the lineage, since a person leaving their house is the house's business; Shining Reach puts it before a magistrate; Forgegate records it in the civic registry as a matter of standing; Stormharbor takes a declaration before witnesses with no paperwork. Outside the submitter's home city nobody checks anything, because there is no way to. The Natural Order holds that some people are suited to serving and flourish in it; that is both the foundation of the world and the claim the abolitionists dispute. What is not argued is that people do present themselves, in every city, every year, and that nobody compels them.

Debt

Insolvency: A court taking you. A creditor petitions, a magistrate hears it, and when the debt exceeds what the debtor could reasonably earn in a set number of years, the debtor becomes the payment. The ratio matters, not the sum, so a merchant's ruin and a laborer's are handled alike. Who is taken depends on what was pledged — a man who borrowed against himself pledged himself; a house that borrowed against itself pledged everyone in it. In practice the creditor takes whoever covers the most debt: a healthy adult, and disproportionately a young woman; children and the elderly cover little and cost years. Each city handles it in character — Clearhold to the letter, Eldershore through the elders, Forgegate through the guild, Shining Reach with lawyers, Stormharbor at the Thing, and the Coves between two people and whoever they can bring.
Contracted debt-slavery: A person sells themselves for a term against a stated sum, with manumission at the end. It is registered and public — and unenforceable by the person it protects, since the moment it executes she has no standing to hold anyone to anything. Whether the terms are honored rests on the creditor's reputation. She can be sold during the term, as any slave can, and sold on to a Coves buyer she is serving a term no one will honor. It is rare; the usual case is substitution — the ratio has been crossed, someone in the house is going, and a person volunteers before the choice becomes the creditor's.

Judicial sentence

A crime creates a debt, and where the debt exceeds what the offender could earn, the offender becomes the payment: theft above a threshold, fraud, and injury serious enough that the injured cannot work. A fine and an enslavement are not different sentences; whether it ends in a collar depends on whether the offender can pay. Sentences are permanent, and the injured party owns the offender as compensation rather than as a punishment the city administers. Murder is not a ratio: the family of the dead chooses death or the murderer's enslavement to them. Most poorer families choose death, since keeping him costs money every day; families who take him usually sell within a year or two, once the anger becomes unaffordable. A murderer carries a Bill of Chattel stating his crime, and ends up in the mines or the roughest labor there is.

Frontier claiming

A person found alone and in trouble beyond a city's walls belongs to whoever found and saved them — the Fyndrecht, recognized in all six cities. Nothing has to be proven; a collared person traveling with someone is presumed to be theirs. Waendra groups carry spare Sigrings; a caravan uses rope or a strap until the next town, and a makeshift collar is the one thing that invites questions. A freed person out there is no more protected than any free person, and if anything has less to say for herself.

War capture

A soldier taken alive rather than dead has shown he wishes to be a slave. It follows a choice, as everything does: he fought, was overwhelmed, and chose his life over his Oathbond, and everyone reads it that way, including him. The shame is specific and permanent, which is why capture is uncommon. Women taken in war are simply taken; there is no equivalent shame. See Male Slaves#The war captive.

Piracy and raiding

Coastal raids and taken ships produce slaves in volume, and The Iron Coves is where most of them enter the market. The captain holds them until sale, like any cargo. What comes out of a raid is predominantly women, for reasons of arithmetic rather than preference. See Piracy#Coastal raids.

The arriving stranger

An Aesloes who reaches a city under their own power is free — unplaceable and awkward, but unclaimed. An Aesloes found and saved on the Frontier is a Fyndra like anyone, and most cannot look after themselves.

The first hour

Every route ends in the Koeler and the Sigring: the broken circle tattooed at the nape by a practitioner, the collar fitted and closed. No further ceremony is required anywhere. Before either comes the Wyndreis, the first command given to a new slave — the command to undress — given without explanation. It is not principally about the body; it establishes that the person owns nothing, including what they are wearing, and that instructions are to be followed rather than discussed. It is where the thing stops being an idea and becomes real, and it is given in every case: sentenced, taken, indebted, or volunteered.

When it was a mistake

Claims are occasionally wrong — a debt paid before the hearing, a sentence resting on a forged manifest, the wrong person taken. Correction requires a provable error rather than a bad outcome. The slave cannot bring the case; she has no standing to testify. Her family, or whoever held the receipt, is the injured party, and she is the property in dispute. The remedy is compensation, in the form the injured party chooses: money, in which case she stays where she is, lawfully owned, and may never learn their decision; or her return, which restores her to her house and everything that follows from belonging to one. Her preference has no standing but may matter, and whether she is asked at all says what kind of family they are. When taken back she receives the completion, not a dissolution — the enslavement happened and was lawful on the evidence at the time — and carries the closed circle for life. The buyer who loses her recovers what he paid from whoever caused the error. Once she has been sold on to another city, none of this reaches her.