<strong>The Training grounds - Maschor and Variani</strong><br/><br/>When she speaks, there is a flicker of a temptation to answer back, but that would undermine the whole approach. He doesn't even grip her arm any harder. Absolutely no response. Remove any power she might have in the situation.<br/><br/>He leads her into his alcove, which is utterly<em>his</em>alcove. There is an antique desk, fastidiously empty except for a neat pile of letters. At the very front of the desk - used as a paperweight? - is a human thigh bone. If you look carefully, you can see a complex flower has been etched into the rounded surface. Look<em>very</em>carefully, and you can see that some parts of the engraving have become a little indistinct, as if the bone healed itself after the work was done - and dead bone does not regrow. There is a shelf full of manuals and guides to the<em>sport</em>of slave breaking. There are silhouette portraits of his successful breaks, now no more than shadows on the wall. There are expensive miniature portraits of his two greatest achievements. There is also a copper plaque - very old - scrawled in a language that some believe is magical. It's not. Its just from the early days of the Empire, recovered from one of the first ever slave training establishments. If you can translate it - and Maschor can't, he just knows the words by heart - it says (roughly):<br/><br/><em>"No master should think a slave broken<br/>until he can lower his scrotal sack<br/>into her mouth<br/>and not get it chewed off."<br/></em><br/><br/>Wise words. Especially with a slave like this. But getting them there is the fun part.<br/><br/>To one side of the alcove - not the centre of it, you don't want to let them think they are important enough to be 'centre stage' - sits a small iron chair. A strange construction of metal bars and very little paddings, odd pieces of ornamentation (now reduced, and stripped of the gems which once sat in those little holes). It looks like the sort of chair you might put a toddler in, except - it's clearly an instrument of torture. The vice like clamps designed to fasten around the shins and wrists give it away.<br/><br/>Still without speaking, Maschor guides the slave across to it and begins to sit her down.<br/>