A legal contract
Then she took Soba's Contract of Destiny and scanned it rapidly. It was, in effect, an agreement in which Glan Gleneth Soba Lubamacasta consented to be the bound concubine of Yulius Epoktatima, her concubinage to be governed by certain terms and conditions, and to be accompanied by certain rewards.
The language of the document was plain enough, and Atlanta, though initially astonished, soon realized why Soba had signed it. If it was assumed that Soba had no intrinsic objection to bedding with young Yulius, then it could be said that she had done rather well for herself, and had exposed herself to very little risk. The contract specified, for example, that Soba would automatically be entitled to her freedom if Yulius Epoktatima should beat her, or sodomise her, or match her with a pig, or violate her with vegetables, or commit any of the five thousand acts so lovingly enumerated in that magisterial tome by Maki Desadi, the Book of Brutality, that catalogue generally known to the civilized world as the 'General Almanac of the Acts of Atrocity'. [WoH Ch12]