Kinktober 2023 #15 - Fire/Ritual
Content Warnings: BDSM Fantasy, F/fm, femdom, lesdom, bondage, non-consensual, consensual, bondage slavery, fantasy, mythology Korvilah
Every god and goddess has their rituals. Ceremonies and rites their priesthood and followers must perform so as to please them and win their favor.
The goddess Korvilah’s most sacred and secret rituals will involve at least one of three elements that are key to Her domain, Her power, and Her legends.
Korvilah is mistress of the sun, so there will be fire. At the center of every temple dedicated to Her is a flame. It is lit in a room that is cut off from the light of the sun She tamed and bound. And so long as it burns, Her will and favor are with the temple.
She is the bringer of order, so there will be discipline. Control. If there is any chaos to be found under Her authority, it will be brought in line and enforced with bondage.
And She is a goddess of love. In each of Her rituals, there is care, concern, and the betterment of both her willing and unwilling subjects is paramount.
The Initiation Rite of new priestess and the rare Korvilan priest exemplifies all of these vital elements.
When a temple servant has finished their training to the satisfaction of their teachers, they must pass a final test. If they fail, they must wait a full year at least before they can attempt again, and only after spending a quarter of that year in slavery as penance for their failure.
The test begins at noon, when Korvilah’s tamed and bound sun is at his highest in the sky, and ends when the sun is gone and Her sister’s captive moon might grace the sky. The most daring of initiates will attempt the ritual when the day is shortest.
Dressed in the shining gold, vivid crimson, and pure white raiments of a full priestess, the initiate kneels before the Temple Flame. Her heat is at the initiate’s back as they await the beginning of the test. Ropes are laid out to one side, tools of discipline on the other, and they must remain silent as a captive is brought forth.
The captive begins the test naked and bound at the wrists, in front of their body, but nowhere else. He or she is dragged into the Temple Room, a place they would never normally be allowed to enter, and forced to their knees before the prospective new priestess or priest.
It is the initiate’s duty to complete the captive’s bondage. They must tie the captive’s legs together, then their ankles to their thighs. Their arms must be bound to their sides, and their wrists moved from the front of their bodies to behind their back, and then to the ankles. And the captive must be gagged.
Korvilah’s ranking servants are all trained to subdue the unwilling. To discipline and dominate them until they become willing. It is one of their most sacred duties. To this end, the captive subjected to the initiation test is frequently a foreign slave, a heretic, or a criminal who denies Her glory.
All this is done when the captive is struggling and resisting their bondage. The prospective priestess must subdue the prisoner on their own, with no assistance. This may be done with words rather than force, persuasion and threats are acceptable tactics. But the classic image of Korvilah’s priestesses is that of warriors who physically conquer their prisoners.
When the captive is fully bound, they are to be placed before the Temple Flame, and the bondage must hold until the sun is finished setting. They are not required to hold still, in fact it is preferable when they fight till the last minute. It is a test of Korvilah’s new priestess’s skills, nor of the prisoner’s desire for freedom.
In more recent days, this role is sometimes filled by a willing participant, often a young man or woman from the nearby community. He or she is chosen for their willingness to resist Korvilah’s newest servant. They will resist the initiate’s ropes, fighting them as best as they can. Sometimes they will even succeed, freeing themselves and denying the initiate their sought position for another year, though many of these willingly chosen participants will stop before they reach that point. Their respect for the temple servant prevents them from truly fighting, but they will at least struggle.
Willing submission is holy. Those who kneel before Her and Her priesthood with enthusiasm are honored. But Korvilah is the bringer of order. It was She who bound and tamed the wild spirits of the world so mortals could thrive, and the purpose of this final test is to prove that her greatest servants may do the same. There is no challenge in bringing order to what is already orderly.
Some heretical perversely ill-disciplined temples will forgo even this lip service to that vital component, and choose fully willing participants who might barely offer token resistance. Temple Heads who are discovered to allow such heretical shortcuts are visited by their superiors and disciplined. If they are lucky, they will only be bound in public, their punishment on display for their community to see. Floggings are common in such cases. More often they will be demoted and taken by force to a new temple where they might be forbidden from ever again holding high office. In rare cases, the truly unrepentant will be removed from the priesthood entirely and made a lowly servant slave. Forever the property of their displeased Goddess.
Once the test is complete, the new priestess or priest may choose what is done with the bound and gagged slave. In the beginning it was a simple choice. They may keep the slave for themselves as a symbol of their rank, donate it to the temple, sell it, or decide to grant it freedom. This final option has grown in popularity since the advent of willing captives, but even now it is not unheard of for the false prisoner to voluntarily choose slavery to the new Priestess.
This initiation rite is perhaps the most famous of Korvilan rituals. It is performed in the light of her temple flame, it demonstrates the prospective priestess’s ability to bring order and discipline to a captive, and it helps to better the captives themselves by bringing them more fully into Korvilah’s light.
Whether they like it or not.