Yoking the Kavok
The Yoking of the Kavok is a daily ritual within Akavel. A collection of alleged miscreants whose crimes may include insubordination, petty theft or staying out after curfew are chained together into two columns of three to four people, with the leader of each group having to place their head within a Kavok's yoke. They are then made to pull a heavy goods cart from outside the barracks in Redboot down along the border of Rubbleden and Ironglow all the way to the gate into Southwedge.
Often, the yoked are jeered at as they pull their heavy burden through the city streets. Whilst it is a minority of the citizens of Akavel who take sadistic joy in tormenting the unfortunates, the rest simply accept it as a part of the Akavel justice system. After all, those in chains have clearly misbehaved otherwise they wouldn't be there. Of course members of the Subrim (the lowest caste in Imperium) society know better and those who have need to set out from Rubbleden in the early morning know to be wary of the Enforcers, who are often seeking any pretense to add someone to a yoked chain gang. It's not uncommon for very minor crimes such as littering, or even imagined or fabricated crimes to be used as the reason for someones arrest and yoking.
Yoking the Kavok was instituted as a punishment by Exarch Kurin Tresh shortly after he was posted as the new governor of the Akavel Administrative Partition. Watching it each day gives him some satisfaction, and lets him feel powerful again despite his failings that led to his being assigned to the "boring rump end" of the Imperium.
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