Slavery In Allornus

Slavery is a generally accepted practice amongst the men and myr of Allornus, though societies, cultures and governments vary in their opinions on how slaves can be acquired, whether or not they can be bought or sold, and who can and cannot be enslaved. There are really four types of slavery in common practice on Allornus; capturing slaves from an enemy for forced labour, usually targeting individuals of a different race; lower classes acting as indentured labour conditional on proper treatment by their lord; using prisoners (be they criminals or prisoners of war) as slaves for a set period, that may or may not exceed the lifetime of the individual and pass onto their descendants; or paying off incurred debts by the way of slavery for a set period, again sometimes for multiple generations. Most societies, with a couple of passionate exceptions, practice either one or a combination of these.

Rationale

Rationale
Slavery is an interesting subject to deal with in RPGs. Like a number of social topics that create contrasts between historical settings and modern ideals slavery is a topic that should be dealt with with an appropriate level of gravity. Attitudes to slavery is one of the touchstones of each of major Allorn cultures. In many cases these cultures might argue that slavery is a social and economic necessity, be it a judicial punishment, debt recompense, or abduction into a slave-labour society. The setting is by and large tacitly accepting of slavery by design, and characters need not look at slavery as purely a hallmark of 'evil' cultures. Indeed avoiding this reductive moral black and white treatment of culture is one of the ways the setting seeks to be complex and layered.

This choice has been made predominantly for its storytelling potential, however this means that it is the norm for the majority of the people of Allornus. Accepting that status quo does not, however, make the majority of the people of the associated Allorn societies evil any more than it made the ancient Romans or Greeks of real world history evil. Does this mean we as writers are taking a stance in favour of slavery in the real world? Absolutely not. Slavery in the real (modern) world is an indefensible practice that continues to this day, take a look at the Walkfree Foundation to learn more about that. However if we can accept the level of violence present in the bulk of RPGs, the political disenfranchisement inherent to a totalitarian monarchy, and other more distasteful elements of a fantasy setting as social norms, then we have a framework along which to understand the narrative position of slavery and the racial connotations that sometimes accompany it.

That is not to say that unlawful slave taking does not exist in societies that do not embrace it. Even the most zealously anti-slavery communities are host to criminal slave trades - black markets where the poor and weak are preyed upon and traded as goods. People are more likely to be horrified by such illegal operations, though corrupt law enforcement and even government might be compelled to look the other way, as with all organized crime.

Notable for their blanket abhorrence of slavery are the Haedrasians and the Malorns, the former because their culture prizes self-determination extremely highly, and the latter because centuries of their race being enslaved by the Draks in the homeland have made them hate such servitude in all its forms. However even amongst these peoples detractors are far from unknown.

The table below gives a general overview of attitudes to slavery by region, though of course individual regions may vary and not every technicality or nuance of the kinds of slavery in each region is fully explored.

	Slave Trade	Debt Slavery (individual)	Debt Slavery (generational)	Indentured Labour	Illegal	Notes
Ahlonia Isle	Sigard and Talthak	no	Sigard and Southaven	elsewhere	no	-
Shattered Empire	no	yes	yes	some	no	Some extreme interpretations of the Way Price allow for debt trading
Knives of Rallah	Dunsain lands	Tuarvael	no	throughout	no	-
Ancient Duchies	Vargör only	yes	no	yes	no	-
Bear Tundra	negligible	negligible	no	some	no	No specific social custom or infrastructure
Lands of Chill	no	no	no	no	yes	Free Malorns will not tolerate the keeping of slaves
Imperatry Plains	no	no	no	no	yes	While subject people have reduced rights they are free to leave
Southlands	yes	yes	yes	some	no	-
Inner Sea Basin	Goblynfells and Taal	yes	yes	yes	no	-
Unholy Wastes	Malorns only	yes	no	no	no	-
Fringe Nations	yes	no	yes	no	no	-