The Chronicles of Counter-Earth (Gor) series, authored by John Norman, details a highly ritualized and hierarchical society. Excluding sexual duties, a slave woman (known as a Kajira) would be expected to know and perform a vast array of domestic, social, and service tasks to fulfill her primary role as the property of her owner (Master).
Here are the key things a slave would need to know and be able to do, organized by domain:
🏡 Domestic & Personal Service
The primary function of a Gorean slave is the running and maintenance of her Master’s household, quarters, or tent.
⦁ Housekeeping: Maintain immaculate cleanliness of all living spaces, including sweeping, polishing, and dusting. She must be knowledgeable about various cleaners and materials used in Gorean homes (e.g., various oils, sands, or perfumes).
⦁ Cooking and Provisioning: Be able to prepare basic Gorean meals using local ingredients (like Surt eggs, Tarn meat, or Kanda fruit), understand proper food preservation, and fetch supplies from markets.
⦁ Personal Grooming & Attire: A slave must be skilled in dressing her Master, keeping his garments and equipment (like leather, weapons, or boots) clean and well-maintained. She would also be responsible for her own simple attire, which is usually mandated by her Master or city law (often basic silks or strips of cloth).
⦁ Waiting and Serving: Anticipate the Master's needs, serving food, drink, and personal items without being asked. She must know the proper forms for presenting items, such as kneeling, and the correct distance to stand.
👂 Communication & Deportment
A slave's behavior, posture, and speech are strictly regulated to constantly affirm her status as property.
⦁ Silent Obedience: Understand that her Master's will is paramount. Her ultimate function is to obey immediately and without question. She should often communicate non-verbally through deference, posture, and facial expression.
⦁ Gorean Protocol: Know the proper forms of address and respect when speaking to Free Men (Sir, Master) and Free Women (Mistress, Lady). She must always use a submissive tone and language, often prefacing statements with "Master, if I may speak..."
⦁ Body Language: Maintain the "slave posture," which often involves lowered eyes, a slightly bowed head, kneeling or sinking to the ground, and standing with hands clasped over her stomach or in another position of submission.
⦁ Recognizing Authority: Immediately identify and show deference to individuals based on their caste color, rank (e.g., Ubar, Pantharr, Kajirus), and social position.
🧭 Utility & Travel
For slaves serving Masters involved in trade or martial activities, mobility and practical skills are essential.
⦁ Caravan Skills: If owned by a Merchant or a man on a mission, she must be able to manage and care for Pack-Ka (beasts of burden), set up and take down a camp/tent quickly, and efficiently pack supplies for travel.
⦁ Navigation & Guiding: Have a basic geographical knowledge of the surrounding territories, trade routes, and the relative locations of major cities or Holds.
⦁ Assisting in Craft Duties: Depending on the Master's caste, she may be expected to assist with basic, non-professional tasks related to his work, such as carrying a Builder's tools, mixing pigments for a Painter, or acting as a messenger.
Essentially, a Gorean slave must be a model of perfect submission, domestic efficiency, and silent utility, her entire existence focused on the physical comfort and social standing of her Master.
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A Gorean slave's tasks would be categorized by the physical location and the nature of her owner's needs. Here are five or more non-sexual tasks she'd be expected to perform for the $\text{Master’s Hold Quarters/Tent}$ and $\text{Master's General Person}$:
🏡 Master’s Hold Quarters/Tent
These tasks focus on maintaining the cleanliness, organization, and readiness of the Master's living space, whether a permanent room in a Hold or a temporary tent during travel.
1. Immaculate Housekeeping: Clean, sweep, and dust all surfaces daily. This includes beating rugs, polishing wooden or metal furniture, and maintaining the fire pit or lamps.
2. Linen Management: Change and freshen the Master’s sleeping pallet or bedding, ensuring linens are clean, mended, and properly stored.
3. Provisions Ready: Keep the Master's personal water, wine (T'rala), or Kashwa (coffee substitute) continually refreshed and within easy reach, along with simple snacks like Kanda fruit or dried Surt eggs.
4. Heating/Lighting Control: Regulate the temperature and lighting of the quarters, ensuring the Master's comfort without being asked (e.g., lighting braziers, opening shutters, or trimming lamps).
5. Weapon/Gear Maintenance: Clean, polish, and sharpen the Master’s knives, swords, or helmet. Ensure his personal harness or armor is kept oiled and ready for immediate use.
6. Pest Control: Ensure the quarters are free of insects, rodents, or other pests common to the environment, such as Sleeks or Vard.
👤 Master's General Person
These tasks focus on the Master's appearance, health, comfort, and immediate support outside of the sleeping quarters.
1. Dressing and Undressing: Assist the Master in dressing, tying belts and laces, and putting on his boots or harness when he rises, and assist him in undressing when he retires.
2. Grooming and Hygiene: Prepare the Master's bath water, lay out his toiletries (oils, combs, towels), and often assist with washing or shaving him.
3. Carrying/Fetching: Act as a personal baggage carrier, hauling messages, purchases, or light equipment while following the Master through the marketplace or Hold halls.
4. Message Delivery: Serve as a reliable, discreet messenger, delivering verbal or written missives to other Free Men or women, accurately conveying the message and properly reporting back.
5. Waiting (In Public): When accompanying the Master, she would stand, kneel, or sit a short distance away in a position of complete submission, ready to perform any small service (like fetching a cup or adjusting a garment) at a moment’s notice.
6. Shoe/Boot Cleaning: Immediately clean the Master's footwear upon his return from dusty streets or travel, ensuring his boots are always impeccable.
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A slave owned by a Scribe (a member of the Scribe Caste, responsible for record-keeping, law, history, and education) would perform tasks focused on maintaining the Scribe's tools, workspace, and the records themselves. These tasks demand neatness, silence, patience, and meticulous attention to detail.
Here are key tasks a slave would perform for a Gorean scribe:
✍️ Preparation & Maintenance of Tools
Preparation of Surfaces: Stretch, prepare, and treat writing materials like parchment (often made from animal hides) or various Gorean-made papers, ensuring a smooth, clean surface free of imperfections.
Ink Management: Grind pigments and mix them with binders to prepare inks. She would be responsible for storing the inks properly to prevent drying or contamination.
Quill & Stylus Care: Sharpen the writing tips of quills or reeds with a careful hand. She would also clean and polish any metallic or bone styli.
Cleaning the Work Area: Maintain the Master’s scroll and writing tables (often built-in furniture or portable field desks) free of dust and debris, as any contamination could ruin ink or parchment.
📚 Handling of Records & Documents
Filing and Indexing: Roll, tie, and label finished scrolls or carefully stack and bind pages (Leaves). She would then file them according to the Scribe Master's system in designated containers or racks, maintaining strict order.
Copying (Basic): While only a trained Scribe could write legally binding documents, a slave with good penmanship might be trusted to copy non-critical, simple texts (like inventories or practice exercises) to save the Master time.
Damp-proofing and Storage: Oversee the proper storage of fragile documents, often using specific oils or protective cloths to shield them from moisture, insects, or fluctuations in temperature.
Proofing (Verbal): Be positioned nearby during the copying process to read aloud from the original text (or to whisper the letters being copied) so the Master can focus on writing without having to visually switch back and forth.
Essentially, the slave serves as the silent, tireless assistant who handles the physical, often messy, labor required to produce and preserve the intellectual property of the Scribe.
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A slave serving the Assistant Head of Caste (likely an important or senior Scribe Master) would perform all the tasks required for a regular Scribe, but with an added layer of complexity, responsibility, and social protocol, reflecting her Master's higher rank.
Here are the kinds of non-sexual tasks she would perform for the Assistant Head of the Scribe Caste:
🏛️ Administrative & Protocol Duties
As the Master holds a high administrative position, the slave's duties extend beyond the desk to managing his social and official life.
Managing Appointments: Keep the Master informed of his appointments, meetings, and official duties, remembering which Free Men or dignitaries are expected and at what time.
Maintaining Official Attire: Ensure the Master’s formal Caste garments (often indicating rank through specific color or quality of silk) are immaculate, pressed, and ready for official functions or meetings with the Ubar or High Council.
Handling Official Correspondence: Be trusted with transporting sensitive or high-ranking documents (like sealed scrolls or legal drafts) to and from the Head of Caste or other high-ranking officials. This requires understanding the importance of the documents and exhibiting discretion.
Managing the Master's Aides: If the Master employs junior Scribes or multiple slaves, she may be designated as the senior slave responsible for overseeing their work, ensuring the Master's orders are followed promptly and correctly throughout his office or chambers.
🧠 Advanced Archival & Record Keeping
The Master deals with more complex and valuable records, requiring greater precision and knowledge from his slave.
Organizing Historical Records: Work directly with the Master to catalog, index, and organize large volumes of critical, historical, or legal documents. This requires learning the Scribe Caste's official dating and filing conventions.
Managing Valuables: Be responsible for the secure storage of precious materials, such as rare or imported parchment, expensive foreign inks, or the Master's personal seal or ring, which would be critical for authenticating documents.
Preparing Legal Drafts: Assist in preparing the physical layout of legal documents or important decrees, which may involve meticulously ruling straight lines, ensuring proper margins, or preparing official seals on the parchment before the final inscription by the Master.
Maintaining Reference Library: Keep the Master's private collection of reference scrolls (Laws, Treaties, Caste histories) in impeccable order and immediately accessible, knowing precisely where any requested volume is located.
In short, she would be an Executive Assistant whose competency directly reflects the professionalism and status of the Master within the Scribe Caste.
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A slave woman serving a Gorean teacher (likely a Scribe, Baker, or another Craftsman who takes on apprentices, or a Master from the Scribe Caste specializing in instruction) would focus on tasks that maintain the integrity of the educational process, the classroom environment, and the students' comfort.
Her duties would blend the meticulousness of a Scribe's slave with the organization of a service slave.
🍎 Classroom & Workspace Management
Student Management: Supervise younger apprentices or Hold children during lessons. This may involve ensuring they sit quietly, remain attentive, or follow the Master's basic commands, acting as a non-verbal enforcer of discipline.
Organization of Supplies: Keep all educational materials organized and stocked. This includes distributing and collecting practice scrolls, tablets, inks, quills, chalk, or whatever specific tools are used by the Master's discipline.
Cleaning the Learning Space: Maintain the classroom, lecture hall, or private tutoring room in perfect order, ensuring cleanliness, comfort, and proper arrangement of seating (benches, stools, or mats).
Heating and Airflow: Manage braziers, shutters, and fans to regulate the temperature of the classroom, ensuring the students and the Master are comfortable without distracting from the lesson.
Setting up Demonstrations: Prepare or lay out any visual aids, diagrams, maps, or physical objects (such as tools of a specific craft, or models of celestial bodies for astronomy) needed for the Master's lesson.
📝 Assisting the Instruction
Preparing Practice Materials: Spend time preparing writing tablets, cutting fresh parchment, or rolling out clay for students' practice sessions. This is a repetitive task that frees the Master for teaching.
Fetching References: Retrieve specific scrolls or volumes from the Master's personal or classroom library on demand during a lesson, often with only a brief description of the required text.
Dictation and Notation: Sit silently and transcribe the Master's lectures or notes onto a fresh scroll, particularly when he is speaking rapidly or demonstrating something practical, providing him with a clean, final copy later.
Serving Refreshments: During long lessons or breaks, serve water, tea (Larma), or simple bread and fruit to the Master and his higher-ranking students, ensuring no interruption to the lesson's flow.
The Gorean series frequently mentions a wide array of tasks for slave women, or Kajira, which constantly reinforces their status as property and ensures the absolute comfort and convenience of their Master.
Excluding the sexual duties, the most often mentioned and emphasized non-sexual tasks fall into these categories:
🧺 Domestic Service & Maintenance
These are the fundamental, tireless duties required to manage a Master’s living space, be it a Hold, apartment, or tent.
Cleaning: The slave must keep her Master's quarters immaculately clean. This is frequently stressed as a core duty, involving sweeping, dusting, polishing furniture, and cleaning bathing areas.
Waiting and Serving: Anticipating the Master's needs for food, drink, and comfort. She must be constantly ready to serve Kanda (tea/coffee substitute), Ka-la-na (wine), or meals, always kneeling and maintaining a submissive posture while serving.
Attire Management: Maintaining the Master's clothing and gear, including laundering, mending, and folding garments, and meticulously polishing the Master's boots or leather harness.
Grooming Assistance: Assisting the Master with his bath, shaving, and oiling his skin, often requiring the preparation of specific scented oils and clean water.
🧍 Deportment & Personal Support
These tasks relate to how the slave presents herself and supports her Master outside of the private quarters, reinforcing his public status.
Maintaining Submission: The paramount and constantly repeated task is maintaining the proper posture of submission at all times. This includes keeping eyes averted or lowered, standing with a slight bow or with hands clasped, and kneeling or sinking to the floor when speaking to a Free Person.
Carrying and Hauling: Serving as a beast of burden for the Master. She carries his purchases from the market, his scrolls or tools, personal bags, or the heavy materials required for a Craft Master's work.
Verbal Deference: Using formal, self-deprecating language when addressing free people ("Master, if I may speak...") and never speaking unless directly spoken to or given permission.
Following Orders (Immediate Obedience): The necessity of absolute, unquestioning, and immediate obedience is constantly mentioned, as hesitation or a single lapse in obedience is considered grounds for punishment.
🧳 Travel & Public Utility
For slaves belonging to Merchants, members of the Warrior Caste, or those involved in caravans.
Caring for Beasts: Tending to the Master's riding beast (Tarn, Kajirus, or Sleek) or the Pack-Ka (beasts of burden) on a journey, including feeding, watering, and grooming them.
Setting Up Camp: Being responsible for the swift and efficient erection and dismantling of the Master's tent and camp furniture while traveling with a caravan.
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