What most do not know is the reason she is so acutely, even intimately aware of what makes a slave tick...
That is because Moreta rarely, if ever, talks about her past, most especially the time before she came to Thebes, after her father was killed.
Her travels were fraught with many forms of hardship along the way.. Among them, capture by a band of slavers from a far off world. She fought bravely, but, in the end, she was still young and not yet the warrior she would eventually be, and was overpowered.
She was chained, collared, and transported to the slavers' ship, which took them back to the land from which they had come. A place called Gor. Upon landing, she was taken to a slave house, where she was branded, given stabilization serums (injections which immensely slow ageing), trained as a slave, and eventually auctioned off to the highest bidder.
She learned early on that attempting to escape or to take her own life would not be tolerated, and the penalties for such were dire. She was a branded, collared slave in a world whose laws supported forced slavery. Even if a slave did manage to escape their owner, there was nowhere to run, nowhere to hide, and only a harsher slavery, with perhaps a crueller master in store for them when they were caught.
Though she saw that there were many slaves who seemed to actually enjoy their lot.. even to thrive, she never understood how.
She served in abject misery for years, passing from owner to owner, obeying only to escape the terrible punishments meted out for failing to do so. Her will and spirit were broken, seemingly beyond repair, when she eventually came into the possession of a warrior of Ko-ro-ba named Haratar, who claimed her during a raid of an enemy city.
In the beginning, she served and obeyed him, like she had served and obeyed the others, because she knew she had no other recourse. In time though, she began to realize that there was something different about this man.
He held her to the same exacting standards as any other master, certainly, and she was just as surely punished for any disobedience, laziness or impertinence, but he was not cruel, nor was he uncaring, like so many. Even her past masters who had not been outright cruel deliberately, were cruel in their indifference. She could have just as easily been any slave in their eyes. They cared not for who she truly was.. But this man.. This warrior, Haratar... He looked, it seemed, straight into her very being when he locked his gaze upon her. He asked her many questions, demanding to know of her past, her likes, dislikes, wishes, dreams, hopes, fears... Everything! He was determined to own the whole of her and to know, intimately, not only every inch of her flesh, but each and every recess and cranny of her mind, heart and soul. And he truly listened to her. This terrified her, but also called to her in a way unfathomable to her. She began to find herself flushing with pleasure when he praised her, thrilled to her core when he was pleased, and dejected when she failed him in any way. She strove to please him, to serve him in perfect grace and obedience, no longer for fear of punishment, but simply that he be pleased. And pleased he was. In truth, he had come to care very much for his newly acquired slave girl.. so much so that he rarely made use of his other slaves, or frequented the paga taverns, but spent much of his free time with her, talking late into the night, debating on all manner of things, wandering the woods and beaches for days and nights on end together, slowly reviving her spirit and discovering that, as her will was restored and her fiery spirit healed, he loved her all the more! He had found his perfect Love.
And she.. rather than rebel with the return of her will, found that she was completely in thrall to him as well and that he owned her in all senses. Far beyond the legal sense, she was his.. completely his. He had awakened the true slave within her and nurtured it, such that her greatest joy was in service to him, her Love, her Master.
They could have lived that way forever.... But it was not to be so.
Early one morning, while they were travelling to a Sardar Fair, bandits set upon their camp. She took up weapons and fought alongside her master and his men, and the intruders were vanquished, but Haratar had taken a mortal wound in the battle.
Moreta, with the help of her master's men and other slaves, nursed his injuries and did all that they could over the next several days to heal him, but it wasn't enough.
With his last breaths, he freed her and extracted a promise from his Sword Brother, Kelast, to see to it that she was returned to her native world.
True to his word, Kelast booked passage for himself and the bereft Moreta with an expedition that was bound to settle near the very lands from which she had originally been taken. For a while, she lived in the settlement, which eventually grew to become its own large nation, the capitol of which was named New Ko-ro-ba. The people and their culture, brought from their homeland of Gor, provided only a painful reminder of all that she had lost, so she set out, once again, to make her own way.
She still keeps in contact with Kelast and many others in New Ko-ro-ba, and has travelled back to the great city on occasion to visit or conduct business.
After the destruction of Thebes and her subsequent relocation to Lyrean, she decided to open her inn, fashioned after the paga taverns on Gor and in New Ko-ro-ba, and soon found that there were many who had slave hearts who simply burned to serve and be owned. These would be slaves gravitated to her, as though some part of them could sense that she really, fully understood them and the desires that drive them.
Of course, she does, since she has felt the same.
She sometimes secretly envies her slaves for the joy they find in service, but has never again found anyone to kindle the spark to light her own slave fires.
Most likely, she never will.
But if one were to see her unclothed, and looked closely, high upon her left thigh, they would see that she still wears the kef.. a slave brand, though much faded, forever emblazoned upon her flesh.
"So how does a woman know a man is worthy of her submission, of all those things she is, of everything she can give? The greater you value yourself, the greater your need to test those who pursue you.
The hunt is a way to sort out the men from the boys. It proves the male's ability; physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually. You treat him as an equal because you will accept nothing less but in reality you are not looking for an equal, you are daring him to be something more; testing him, seeing what he will allow you to get away with and what he will not; testing his mettle, gauging his reactions, measuring his resolve, assessing his intelligence. You learn much from hunting and being hunted. And in the end, when he has you cornered, when there is nothing further you can do, when he has out-witted, out run, out manoeuvred you - the feeling is incredible."
~ BlackRavenWemyss
