He stared, revolted, as the hatch opened and a chain of tall, willowy women with hair that moved in an invisible breeze stumbled down. Chain was the key word. They were chained to each other, hand and foot, and the bruises and cuts on their bodie3s showed that it had not been easy to do. "How can they do that?" he demanded, caution barely enough to keep his voice low. "Isn’t enslaving people illegal in every civilized quadrant? And isn't this supposed to be one of the civilized quadrants?" "Sure, but they were in season. Not the same thing." His revulsion grew. "You mean--" he gestured near his crotch in a hand-signal recognizable across all the quadrants. "No, no...nothing like that. The guilds would be up in arms, are you kidding me? No. Hunting season. Every five years, the season opens. Only good on people of a certain age, who wear bracelets indicating that they are valid prey. Some sick fucks go down to actually *hunt* them. Believe it or not, the people who capture them and bring them in as servants or bond-slaves or what have you--and yes, enslaving people may be illegal but there are still old laws on the books about how slaves must be treated once they exist--aren't the worst of the lot. The government says they do it because the natural selection pressures on their people became insufficient once their civilization advanced and it was that or massive civil war every five years. Me, I think they're all nuts."


Inspiration: Cookbook title: "Simply in Season." Tasty recipes, too.
Story potential: Medium? High?
Notes: Need to swap genders to avoid certain stereotype/fetish problems, have captive be male.

She was all smiles, eager to please, eager to try out the new fashion line, until she saw the projected image. Then she understood why they had picked her. What better image, what better way to stir up controversy through fashion, then by hiring a manumitted cyborg and having her model the latest in stylish shackle-wear? She flinched away from the picture, the reflection of herself in the heels impossible for a normal human to balance in and attached to chains around the ankles. The image had heavy chains wrapped around her arms, too, a weight beyond what a human could bear, and she knew without asking that she would be expected to pose with her arms up and out. She had so hoped that this would be the beginning of a new start, the beginning of what her life had been before the car accident and the news that the only way she could survive ambulatory would be to sign the cyborg contract and accept the indenture.


Inspiration: http://ontd-political.livejournal.com/9758645.html
Story Potential: High.
Notes: Because becoming a cyborg is expensive. Choice to make here: to comment on race or to avoid race? Avoiding seems the wuss way out.

The ghosts was what bothered 'em most. The work was hard, true, and it weren't fair, no, not nohow. But they weren't separated and sold, they weren't forced into anything less good by the master of the house, and they weren't beaten much. The overseer had even been known to send a person particularly exhausted by the heat to go rest in the icehouse, and to drink water. It was much better than where most of them had come from, and for that reason, they distrusted it. Well, that and the ghosts. The master and mistress weren't proper Christians, either, and didn't try to make them stop the conjure--

Inspiration: Conjure Tales by Charles W. Chesnutt
Story Potential: Low
Notes: Dangerous ground, and this isn't interesting enough to make it worth treading on.

The raised ships sailed on sacrifices of blood and rum. Every mast was a crossroads. Every anchor was a tombstone. Live crews shipped on them, but the ghosts and gods were thick around them, enough that to a person with the sight, it looked like the ghosts were covering the entire ships in a heavy cloak. They did serve, sort of, against the invaders. Soon enough the slavetakers learned to fear the sight of tattered sails and ships with holes in their hulls. If the slaveships sank, the ghosts of those chained in the hull flew up and filled the sails of the raised ships, and they sailed on.

Inspiration: "Death Before the Mast" by Alestorm, and an Escape Pod short story about possession by the spirits of pirates resurrected by bone rum, Pirate Solutions (http://escapepod.org/2009/11/26/ep226-pirate-solutions/) by Katherine Sparrow (a really, really excellent short story that my description does not do justice to).
Story Potential: High-ish? I am confused by this story.
Notes: Say voodoo powers raise up dead ships and escaped slaves crew them and they destroy the slave trade. This story could be really lovely historical wish-fulfillment. Lots of historical research required.

The counting off of her daily goals was what got him through that dark time. He watched her, watched her succeed and build and grow, and he realized that what she was able to do, what she was able to accomplish because of his help, willing or not, knowing or not, was more important than anything he had done before. It was certainly more important and better than the murdering of that prostitute, which was the reason he'd been locked away inside the charm. He did help. He even helped more than the charm insisted that he had to, once he saw the way that she used the slightest boost to accomplish great things. It made his heart swell with pride to see how much she was able to accomplish. And so his ethereal heart grew chilled to the bone when he saw the young man that--

Inspiration: Checking off things on my daily goals spreadsheet.
Story Potential: High? Sort of?
Notes: Kinda like the setup. Could be played as a romance if I give a "good" motive to the murder, but that would take away a lot of the kick. His nastiness being subdued by a desperate sublimation is a stronger notion.

The woman was everything he'd ever wanted, finer even than the horse that he'd had his eye on in the marketplace. He knew that her price would be much higher, too, and so he immediately spun on his heel to go to his father. His father gave him part of the funding, and he sold his second and third horses, fine beasts that he'd saved many moons to be able to purchase, without a second thought. He must have her. He had seen the glint of defiance in her eye beneath the submissive bowing of her neck, and he'd seen the ropy scars along her knuckles and the roughening of strange callouses along her hands and feet, her elbows and her knees. He knew that probably her first action on being brought to her owner's house would be to kill him--or try to. He bet that she could easily defeat him. He was no warrior--

Inspiration: "Oully" by Natacha Atlas
Story Potential: High.
Notes: Would make a good, sorta-subversive romance. A variant on the slave woman and big strong warrior that wins her gently. Make her the barbarian warrior captured in battle and him the unwarlike (unfit?) nomad who purchases her when she's put on the slave block, and then--?