Slavery

[KiKi Tampusa]

Do any of your cultures have slavery? If so how do they deal with slavery.

[Ossicone]

Slavery is strictly taboo to the Inyauk. They do not place possession over any human. When they were conquering lands they did not take prisoners or slaves. Inyauk also think the foreign slaves are pretty stupid and wouldn't trust them to do their labor.

The Amjati have slaves as part of their class system. But that's all you get for now. :P

[KiKi Tampusa]

If a society that I haven't made yet were to have slavery it would follow certain. Rules.

The rules being:

1) No person is born into slavery.
2) All people are capable of becoming slaves.
3) Slaves must first consent to becoming slaves.
4) The slave buyer pays money to the slave for his rights.
5) The slave may specify which rights he sells.

This would work for say when a person is in agonizing debt. He would go to the local slave auction and set a starting bid for how much he needs to be sold for in order to pay off their debt. In a court room a Lawyer would write out what rights he isn't selling. Though more often then not the person sells all of their rights to make it seem like a good deal. The new slave owner takes that person home and does what they like with it. The slave if it wants its freedom back will be paid a salary (often very small) that will be put towards his freedom.

[cybrxkhan]

Although I haven't worked out details on slavery for most of my concultures, or even barely outlined, since my conworld, Arteran, attempts to vaguely mimic patterns of real world development, slavery does play roles in a number of societies, and the level of 'oppressiveness' in slavery varies from society to society; in some places, slavery is exactly as 'bad' as one would typically imagine it to be - slaves are treated worse than animals and little more than tools for their masters; in other societies, slaves are pretty much considered to be normal citizens or semi-citizens, with the exception that they are 'owned' by a person, similarly to how in a modern society children might be considered dependent of their parents.

The only conculture that where I have attempted to vaguely outline a system of slavery is that of the Keintapans. For much of its history, the Keintapan civilization, being extremely autocratic and hierarchical, kept an extensive system of slavery. In other words, there were a few levels of slavery a person could get themselves into. At the lowest level, masters could kill their slaves without any legal ramifications. Since the early Keintapan culture was also deeply religious and partly theocratic, the Keintapan temples also owned a large amount of slaves. Even as the Keintapan religion began to lose its power and even be supplanted by a new atheistic, "modern" regime (which bears resemblances to the prototypical modern-day communist dictatorship), this new regime would encourage the slavery of anti-government persons and other groups the regime did not like. The Keintapans were one of the last peoples in Arteran to abandon slavery, and still kept a slave system well into Arteran's equivalent of a post-Industrial era; in fact, until the very collapse of the Keintapan nation through a series of several wars, the Keintapans still relied heavily on a slave trade that sustained itself through the kidnapping of foreigners and other illegal means.

[Micamo]

If a society that I haven't made yet were to have slavery it would follow certain. Rules.

The rules being:

1) No person is born into slavery.
2) All people are capable of becoming slaves.
3) Slaves must first consent to becoming slaves.
4) The slave buyer pays money to the slave for his rights.
5) The slave may specify which rights he sells.

This would work for say when a person is in agonizing debt. He would go to the local slave auction and set a starting bid for how much he needs to be sold for in order to pay off their debt. In a court room a Lawyer would write out what rights he isn't selling. Though more often then not the person sells all of their rights to make it seem like a good deal. The new slave owner takes that person home and does what they like with it. The slave if it wants its freedom back will be paid a salary (often very small) that will be put towards his freedom.

If they can change their mind they aren't a slave.

[xBlackWolfx]

i do have one conculture that practices sexual slavery. I mentioned them earlier, and btw i decided to name them the gækə (not sure about the IPA vowels, hard to find information on those, the word is normally spelt Gaka, with the first a pronounced as in man or bat, and the second pronounced more like 'uh', like in 'about'). all women are born into sexual slavery, they're indoctrinated into it at a very early age, infact part of the reason the system has been maintained for so long with virtually no resistance from the women themselves is bc they virtually never know anything about outside cultures, they go through their entire lives oblivious to the fact that there's any other way to live. but it's not exactly a very angsty situation, they're all sex addicts and despite their screwed up existence actually quite enjoy it, and adore their 'husband'.

of course, the men themselves aren't exactly the masters. they live in an extremely totalitarian society, and the vast marjority of men are forced to spend most of their day working (though the only occupations a Gaka civilian has are construction, armor and/or weapon making, and being a soldier, the Gaka have conquered several foreign nations over the millenia and they just use their populations to do more 'pathetic' tasks like farming and keeping livestock, besides the Gaka are a race of giants and simply aren't able to handle little tiny seeds). infact, young boys are actually sent to a barracks and raised by the military. anyone who is defiant is simply killed on the spot. however, females actually have more freedom in this regard. though it's rare for a female to resist the life given to her, the few who do are often prized bc some particularly sadistic men like unwilling females. in alot of their country a rebellious girl is actually considered to be worth more than an obedient one. and most men are murdered before they reach full adulthood for one reason or another. most commonly for being physically weak or sometimes disobedient, laziness and cowardice are also punishable by death, and making a decision on your own if you're a normal citizen or soldier can also get you killed, the exection isn't exactly very sophisticated either, there is no trial, a higher authority figure, typically a very strong one, simply smashes their skull in with his bare hands on the spot of the offense. females are never killed for crimes, infact it's rare for a femal to be killed for any reason.

however, a male Gaka does have the right to do anything he wants with his slave/wife (including killing her) however he has no right to the slaves of others, and if chooses to kill his slave he wont be given another one unless he earns it. their slavery system is actually meant to keep the citizens from revolted despite the extremely cruel and brutal lives forced upon them. the goverment makes certain that every males knows that no foreign nation would tolerate their life style (the gaka are infact the only nation that practices sexual slavery). the gaka have no currency, sex slaves fulfilled the same function as money long before any culture on the planet developed currency, and due to the gaka being extremely racist and impulsive, their society hasnt changed much over thousands of years, even though they have advanced technologically and are infact the most technologically advanced nation on their continent.

though males can gain authority, there's always someone above you who can do w/e the hell they want to you, infact anyone can do anything they please to anyone that's below them in rank. the only individual who has any true freedom is the one man who runs the entire country, and has no one above him.

their society is based mostly off of nazi germany (i regularly refer to them as being fascist), though i've also added in some elements from the spartans since the two cultures are so similar. they both practiced eugenics (this is infact the reason why the Gaka are so large, they selectively bred themselves to be that way) and are extremely militant. the nazis also gave the Gaka the central rule of their society: all men exist only to be soldiers and laborers, and all women exist purely for procreation. this is the concept that the Gaka conjured up when they were just another primitive tribe in their arid homeland. their extreme aggressiveness, totalitarian structure (which at the time only consisted of three ranks, the warlord, the men, and the women), and culture of self-breeding eventually allowed them to wipe out all six other tribes in their area, and eventually expand to the empire that they are now.

they're of course depicted as being absolutely evil. years ago i wanted a highly sexist society to act as villains and that's how the gaka came to be. actually they were once two seperate cultures. one of which as pretty much a copy of nazi germany, and the other was a race of dark-skinned giants based off of the spartans. when i combined the two cultures, i essentially had the males look like the spartan-tribe, and the females look like normal humans. i think it really accentuates the extreme sexism in their culture.

[zelos]

If a society that I haven't made yet were to have slavery it would follow certain. Rules.

The rules being:

1) No person is born into slavery.
2) All people are capable of becoming slaves.
3) Slaves must first consent to becoming slaves.
4) The slave buyer pays money to the slave for his rights.
5) The slave may specify which rights he sells.

This would work for say when a person is in agonizing debt. He would go to the local slave auction and set a starting bid for how much he needs to be sold for in order to pay off their debt. In a court room a Lawyer would write out what rights he isn't selling. Though more often then not the person sells all of their rights to make it seem like a good deal. The new slave owner takes that person home and does what they like with it. The slave if it wants its freedom back will be paid a salary (often very small) that will be put towards his freedom.

doesnt sound like slavery to me since slavery is involountary by nature

[xBlackWolfx]

there is something similar to that in the real world, though i'm not sure what it's called. it also sorta exists in my conworld. despite how much the gaka are hated, some of their neighbors have taken some cultural influence on them (either their militantism, or their hedonism). in some nations, women actually have the option of becoming someone's sex slave in exchange for feeding and sheltering her. however, by law they have the option to quit whenever they want, and they prefer to be taken in by rich ppl, only the most desperate woman would become a slave to a normal civilian. though legal, not everyone approves of it, though mostly the only objections come from the few nations in the area that dont allow it.

[Thakowsaizmu]

My Orcs have a slave caste.

[zelos]

Umbras: Has no slavery and consider it unaccaptable
Wosret: has a caste system, lowest one is near slaves but not quite
Formicas: anything that isnt their own species is kept as slaves for the sole purpose of working them to death

[xBlackWolfx]

why are half of you not detailing your slave cultures? he specifically asked for that, really it's pretty pointless to just post 'yeah, my conculture has slaves'.

cybrxkhan actually gave a history of slavery in his conworld, and i explained almost every detail of the Gaka (though it wasnt until after i made that post that i realized that i had made them so complex)

[cybrxkhan]

why are half of you not detailing your slave cultures? he specifically asked for that, really it's pretty pointless to just post 'yeah, my conculture has slaves'.

cybrxkhan actually gave a history of slavery in his conworld, and i explained almost every detail of the Gaka (though it wasnt until after i made that post that i realized that i had made them so complex)

Thanks for mentioning me. But some people haven't thought too much about it, I'm sure. Still, as I said, there are many different forms of slavery and how it worked in real history, and not all of it was simply "Muhahaha, I'm the master, kiss my foot". In some cultures, slaves were well-respected in some cases; in Greece and Rome, for instance, an educated slave could become a tutor to his master's children, which isn't too bad an occupation compared to what other slaves could have been doing. Another interesting case occurs in Medieval and Early Modern Middle Eastern history, where an entire caste of slaves could even, somehow, rise up and become the rulers of the nation themselves (for instance, the Mamluk dynasty in Egypt). So the popular conception of slavery (at least in America) of African people doing backbreaking work in southern plantations, while true, is not the only type of slavery there is.

I actually forgot to mention that the Keintapans were also ultra-chauvinists, and they did practice some variant of sexual slavery, although this term is somewhat wrong. Basically, women in Keintapan society almost always had to be "owned", or, perhaps to put it less harshly, "protected" by a man, whether this man was her father, brother, uncle, husband, son, and so forth. As long as they had a male guardian, that woman was relatively fine (sure, they didn't have many rights, but at least they weren't slaves either). If, however, the woman's male guardian died or withdrew his right to guardianship, and that woman had no other male relative (or friend, occasionally) who was willing to become her new guardian, she was taken by the government and basically sold into slavery. It is impossible for a woman to be free per se, because she is always required to have a guardian (although in more liberal areas of Keintapa they allow widows to be "free" to some extent). I'm sketchy on how this system evolved in the first place, but I think it'll have to do something with an extremely unbalanced male-female ratio that forced society to "use" women for reproduction as much as they could and protect their numbers. I used this system as a catalyst for one of my story ideas; basically, the protagonist, a lower-upper-class male, buys his female friend (also of the lower-upper class) when her father dies and none of her relatives are willing to take her in; although he would like to free her, he can't, because doing so will basically make the government pick her up again and sell her into slavery since no other male is willing to take her, and those that would want to marry her would prefer to keep her as a slave rather than as a free woman.