What is the purpose of slavery in your setting?

Not sure if thinly veiled elf slave wat do thread.

Has been outlawed over the last two centuries, which should come as no surprise as new technologies have made an educated middle class much more productive than an unpaid underclass only good for hard labor.

Cheap labor, same as any other setting.

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I'm glad I wasn't the only one

isn't that 'indentured servitude' ?

Magic and steam-tech actually made slavery for the purpose of labor obsolete centuries ago, but the system is perpetuated in certain sectors in order to ensure disenfranchisement and the loss of ability to accumulate wealth and power among certain minority groups would could affect changes to the political, social and economic landscape which could disrupt Elites. Ironically the merchant class that believes they need the slaves to maintain their businesses are also being robbed of rightful capital because the labor the slaves produce is valueless, but the Elites aren't complaining about that little bonus either.

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It kinda is, but the 'peons' - as they are called - loose a shitton of rights upon entering the deal and they pretty much become property like generic slaves.

The collection of orgone, what else?

Tinfoil hat much?

Cheap labor, commodity for profit.

What is the source on that image?

To force the scum into working out for their crimes. Or what they didn't do when the situation required them to act.

Nobody said the justice system won't utilize this as a form of punishment.

To cater to my fetish.

So kind of like real life?

Fantasy Roman Empire slavery. The decline of the Empire is just beginning.

One fifth of the population is slaves, and that stat is only increasing. Slaves are property, but abusing and mishandling them is outlawed.

Humans, Halflings and Orcs are the favoured slave races. Half-Orcs are nearly always enslaved. Gnomes are rarely enslaved, the Gnome merchant clans that prowl the !not Mediterranean sea buy them back, and don't give much opportunity for them to be enslaved.

Elf slaves are very rare, very expensive, and kept hidden. If the High Elf Kingdoms, or Weald Elf tribes discover the existence of an Elf slave, they will begin raids and warfare to liberate them. Or it's simply an excuse to kill more humans. Dwarven kingdoms have similar attitudes. More uncommon races, such as Tieflings, are enslaved upon first sight.

Slaves function mostly like Serfs, but much more restricted in rights and freedoms. Which is to say, they have none. The vast majority of slaves were captured in war.

There are many problems with slaves in this !not Roman Empire. Too many slaves are used in gladiator fights, pleasure slaves, or just house servants. Slaves don't produce anything and they can't be taxed. And of course, slave uprisings are possible...

Everyone not human is a slave, hides, or it's killed.

Slaves really depends on the place, some of the countries outlaw slavery and some countries embrace it and make armies and cheap labor.

>why

Same reason as IRL: Until Americans outlawed the practice, [mostly white] slaves built every great city on Earth.

America was one of the last western countries to outlaw slavery.

Cheap production, basically the only reason for slavery ever. Next stupid question?

It's how criminals repay their debt to society

Cheap labour and whatever the fuck slave owners want slaves to do?

It is the propensity to legalize slavery foor any expanding empire, now this is countered by magic use, so magic users are considered a little more open as a society and are more into if you are destined to use magic you can but all within the limits set by the Council or crown or whoever rules the land, while enslavers following the code of survival of the fittest and form a sort of imperium where if you dont submit to the sublime authority of the Emperor or Senate Or War Council you are enslaved.

Of course both see the uses of magic and slavery differently though slavery to an extent do appear in Magical Realms it isnt as rigidly built into society like the Enslavers, they see it as a resource like any other, which allows the national population being freed to pursue either more noble goals in war or to propogate their internal culture and influence trade and provide pleasure time while the menial and day to day tasks are the work of the slaves.

>America was one of the last western countries to outlaw slavery.

which is why he said "until"
that implies they were the last
it also implies the americans built great cities on the back of slaves which is dumb but for different reasons

Because it's a preindustrial society and needs lot's of cheap labor?

Makes it more grimdark.

Sorry wrong pic.
also forgot to add that the Enslavers have a higher chance of rebellion and dissension while the Magical Realms have a higher chance of Nether and Demonic incursions and invasions.

Well then.

Yeah, this pic is what I'm thinking of slavery.

Sorry accidental post. :)

To counteract the necromantic socialists

MOTHER GOOSE IS FUCKING LOOSE
HER MEDS ARE DOWN THE DRAIN
THE PIXIES ARE EATING HER BRAAAIIIN

I treat it like real life slavery.

Honestly not that complicated.

Things get complicated with magic adding into the mix. So undead, summons, and golems make things complicated.

...Still technically hashing out how that will all end up working out.

Food. Theres whole countries worth of fertile land but there is almost no people after three world wars and a handfull of plagues.

Wouldn't 3 world wars leave the land scorched and/or salted?

Profit mostly. Slavery is an institution that allows labor to be directly owned, reducing its expense and making it highly profitable to engage in within the context of many industries.

It's the same reason why big companies would rather pay someone a wage rather than share ownership of the product and means of production with workers.

I think I love you.

Cheap manual labor, crime punishment, arrow fodder. Sex slavery is also a thing.

Dwarves and gnomes: the Good aligned factions do not allow slavery because they find it an abomination. Their laws approve of mandatory labor as a way to pay off debts and other reasons to be sold into slavery in other cultures. They can't abuse their "slaves", but do not have to be nice to them either.

Humans: Most of the human societies still support slavery,but in different degrees of abuse and degradation. The most advanced ones practically mimic the dwarven/gnomish system,but with the twist that they actually own slaves,rather than have forced labor force with rights.

Elves: they're polarized; the "high elves" do not keep slaves at all,they see that practice obsolete and aberrant ('cause elves were a slaving empire once). Wood elves do not usually keep slaves, only prisoners of war,and they either work until they drop dead or are released.
Now "Dark elves" consider slavery the natural order of the world, with the strong (them) at the top of the power pyramid and the weak (everybody else) below them. They do not use slaves only as workforce, but also as cannon fodder,materials for their magic experiments and even lewd playthings.

Beastmen: They abhorr slavery,because they were slaves once. Instead,they take prisoners of war or during their raids,whom they will give back to their homes after getting a ransom. The exception is elves. They hate elves,and will do to them pretty much what a dark elf would do to anyone. Some savage beastmen tribes are cannibalistic and eat their prisoners rather than slaving them,but they're quite rare.

Orcs: don't have slaves. Just food and crafting materials.

Currency and work.

If you need to pay off a debt but have no cash or way of getting cash, like damn near everyone, you can agree to a limited time as an indentured servant.

Your new master has to provide adequate housing and food for you and you have to work 6 days out of 7 and work hard (maybe you get holy days off. Maybe). And no you don't get to choose which day is your rest day.

90% of slaves are owned by the crown. In such transactions it's easier to just sell yourself to the state for the cash, pay the cash and work for the state. The state then leases you out to someone looking for some work done. There is some negotiation on time served if you have some sort of useful skill like blacksmithing, languages, literacy and the like.

Many people spend their whole lives in service to the crown, one contract after another, because it gives them a free bed, free food and their next of kin (or other designated family member) gets their price.

Yes the system does get abused and there have been tragedies but not as many as foreign nations like to claim.

Half the royal court is or has been a slave at some point. Its how you traditionally pay for a classical education.

>Orcs: don't have slaves. Just food and crafting materials.

I've never understood why people think barbarians who live in hunter-gatherer societies would take slaves. They're just more mouths to feed.

That's the point. In my setting orcs lived in their world's equal to our Arctic Circle,in underground compounds where they grow roots and fungi and hunt subterranean monsters for meat.Slaves would mean having to give them from their already scarce resources.
In spring and summer most of them migrate south to raid and plunder, and in autumn they go back north to pass winter underground. Most of their raid prisoners die on the way back, mostly because they are travel rations, but sometimes orcs will keep the most interesting ones alive (captured officers to interrogate, clerics to sacrifice to honour the orcish gods,etc.).

Blood and research materials

>you will never fuck a qt fanged elf monstrosity

Why even live?

That art style looks familiar. Source?

>it also implies the americans built great cities on the back of slaves which is dumb but for different reasons

You wanna give it another go minus everything cotton paid for?

>ME THINK ME HAVE CHANGELING

Every time.

Slavery is the best of several bad alternatives with prisoners of war in my current setting:
-keep them imprisoned, do you think I'm made out of food?
-keep them imprisoned and not feed them, do I look like I want a ton of ghosts and curses here?
-let them go, what, so they can all fight us again in two years?
-make them slaves, occasionally do exchanges if they have some of ours as slaves.

Not seeing any signs of that after the first two.

I'll take both for 30,000 and thank that kindly Ork for his business. He must be a really good salesman

Well, considering we did it less than 100 years after our nation started, I think you could say we did it faster than everyone else.

He is forever the prisoner of his own amazing prices

Circumventing max emcumberance.

Look how sad he is to let those elves go at that price.

Not the OP, but it's from godhateselves.com/

No idea who the original artist is.

>godhateselves.com/
Jesus Christ, some people have problems.

See, taking captives for ransom or other profit is one thing. Keeping a slave around permanently is just a waste of resources. Slavery only makes sense in societies where people specialize in different professions, because then having slaves for dedicated jobs makes sense.

Punishment for crimes. If you do 100 gold of damage, you have to do 150 gold of labor as penance.

I'm sure as fuck i've read this before somewhere

If we hit the world with all our collective nukes we would wipe out humanity but the world itself would be back to green productivity after a decade, non-radiactive productivity after a couple centuries.

People killing each other with siege weapons and fireballs are not hurting the world more than we can.

We gave up on that system because it turns out making anti-socials build bridges and railroads was a bad idea, specially when mexicans and chinese actually wanted to do those jobs for a pittance.

Free labour through oppression.
NEXT PLEASE

Now Its a song too:

Wheeeeeeeen....

When I need some work done, and good labour's hard won, then who do I ask for a deal?

I Go down to oldtown, and ask for a job done, the slaves who can do it for free!

But what if the law says, that slavers are ruthless, and nobody should work for free?

I murder the guardsmen, and kidnap their women, and suddenly I got a Deal! (Hey!)

So slave me up slaver, I need a new shaver, and someone to take out the trash,

My garden needs tending, my shoes need a mending, I need you to work for no cash!

And if you can't fathom, then hear me out madame, cause life ain't no walk in the park

When goblins be skulking, and dragons be lurkin', it won't be a good-aligned arc (no!)

For i need....

Manual labour, and sexual favours and high profit businesses too.

The GM is crying, his NPCs dying, a henderson plot made for (you)

Slaves are used as biological batteries to generate mana, for powering magitech. The process may or may not involve having ones brain removed and placed in a jar in order to more efficiently siphon mana from the soul..

Are simulacrum slaves? If so, mostly as soldiers.

First post best post. Every time.

There is no slavery but there is indentured servitude. People well sell themselves/ children to a reputable master usually a tradesman or noble lord. The master will room, board and maintain his servant for the duration of the contract and in exchange the servant will get some digs, 3 squares, a up front fee and if lucky a bonus upon completion of the contract. Works pretty well as people tend to tell other people if the master sucks but sometimes people need a job and get desperate. It is not uncommon for peasants to sell themselves with renewable contracts for their entire lives to effectively be serfs. In rural areas men and women may either work the fields or if they got the looks serve in the Manor. In cities men typically pursue the trades and if starting at a young age may be apprenticed. Women work in the textile mills or for the many banking houses and merchant guilds. The government and state religious institution doesn't utilize indentured servitude.

Ran a campaign where one of the party members was an indentured servant for a lord and was basically tasked with seeing to the needs of the party while they visited the manor. Servant took this literally to mean join them on their epic adventures. Party liked him enough to buy out his conteact. The Lord just wanted to get rid of him.

To keep the Gangrel on a short leash and keep the dirty Nossies in their place.

>Story wise?
Slavery and/or forced labor is a thing present in many cultures throughout history from the dawn of civilization to the modern day.
As the nature of sentient beings generally doesn't change that much with the times it makes the setting more authentic.
Also its a cultural marker that shows how evolved a society has become or how it views human life.

>In lore?
Cheap labor, thriving industry, and in one city state you can purchase brainwashed super slaves that were bred and raised from birth to fulfill any given task.

to get a real qt GF and ask her to cosplay as a fanged elf monstrosity?

>Slavery is an institution that allows labor to be directly owned, reducing its expense and making it highly profitable to engage in within the context of many industries.

Except that's not economically correct or a historically accurate depiction of the role slavery played in the societies which practiced it.

Economically wage labor is actually more efficient and profitable. With wage labor an employer typically doesn't have to worry and the feeding or housing of his workers, as they see to that themselves. This substantially reduces the overhead slaveholders had to invest in.

Historically slavery was about social control and social status. Fractious populations were enslaved to keep them under control and ensure they worked for their upkeep (i.e. prison labor style). This is why being enslaved was a common consequence of military defeat. If you didn't want to slaughter an enemy, and you could just let him go because he would simply fight you again, you enslaved him. That way you kept him under control, but his labor provided for his upkeep.

Societies which allowed slavery also often featured ownership of slaves as a status symbol. The fact that you could afford the upkeep of a slave was proof of your affluence, and controlling the slave was a demonstration of social dominance. The slave's official function in this sense often varied (tutors, concubines, singers, etc.) but the real function was a status display.

>Societies which allowed slavery also often featured ownership of slaves as a status symbol.
I have something similar in my homebrew.
There is a certain city state that has a population of specifically bred slaves for individual purposes. They are trained from birth, brainwashed into complete obedience and competence.

They are very expensive, but once purchased will only follow the commands of their owner. The city state only sells gelded male slaves of these breeds. Owning one is considered a status symbol.

A way to manage and control the poor by incentivizing giving up their rights as citizens (voting, property ownership, privilege of carrying a weapon, etc.) in order to procure guaranteed food, shelter, health care, and a pittance of a wage that they are strongly encouraged to spend on wine and garum and the circus and other frivolities.

Also, to get shit done, because like it or not throughout human history getting impressive shit done has almost always required a shitload of slaves. That's still mostly true today.

Indentured Servitude is a form of slavery.
As is hard labour sentencing and other corrective coercive work program.
Slavery runs the gamut from full persons (legally) who have a mandated manumission term and property rights all the way to the chattel slavery infamous in the U.S.

Wage labor was only more efficient and profitable in a market where the wage earner could use his earnings alone to support himself and his family. If food wasn't cheap enough, or if wages weren't high enough, it wouldn't work.

Slavery is an institution that allowed for the relocation of labor, not simply reducing expenses by direct ownership of labor nor for social status or control alone. Being able to relocate labor before modern transportation was a huge problem, especially for areas of the world with huge distances between labor rich and labor poor regions. This is why we see slaves being traded far beyond border regions where control would be a major goal for local slaver cultures, and not merely for status either.

Some slaves were kept as a symbol of wealth, but a great many were bought solely for their work on farms, mines, and construction projects.

Honestly the purpose is to more clearly show the differences between the various cultures through what amounts to ticking a box for the amount of work it took me. I mean I did actually flesh out the effects later on, but for the most part I did it to kind of just show, this group here, they're kind of assholes.

>not killing them as sacrifices to your pagan gods

Do you even the study of Sacrifice in religion, senpai?

In my worlds, slavers are sold to strange, divine beings that visit the world from their own hidden realm, in exchange for so called "golden seeds", an extremely nutritious and very durable kind of grain.
The agriculture of my world is otherwise pretty fucking miserable, there is barely enough food to grow to feed the farmers themselves, so virtually any kind of surplus necessary to build complex states, urbanized centers, well stratified society etc... comes from the slave trade with the so-called "Celestials".
Which basically means all larger, urbanized societies of my world are driven by constant slave drive.

Meat-shields for an all sorcerer party

I know this fucking melody but I haven't the slightest idea what the name of it is
fuck
I blame my not being an Anglo

Let this thread die already.

Soul trade, really profitable and the demand is stable.

History class?

Depends on what you imagine as a "slave", but hunter gatherer societies would surely engage in the kidnapping of women to use as wives, and they would invariably end up doing labor for no pay with no expectation of release from their bondage and an expectation of sever punishment if they proved a drain

It's effectively a form of bankruptcy. If you can't pay your debts the slaver guild calculates the value of your labor, compares it to what you owe, and sets a number of years of service for you to pay yourself off. Then, they present it to an imperial magistrate or judge who either approves the term as is, or modifies it up or down based on intangible value you add to society as a citizen. Them the guild can rent you out for the duration of your term.

>Wage labor was only more efficient and profitable in a market where the wage earner could use his earnings alone to support himself and his family. If food wasn't cheap enough, or if wages weren't high enough, it wouldn't work.

In such cases an employer could secure labor simply by offering room and board. The employer could count on the prevailing scarcity to keep his employees loyal and obedient. Slavery is both unnecessary and ill advised in these conditions. Slaveholding societies typically held masters legally liable for the conduct of their slaves in a way that employers weren't liable for free laborers.

Slavery makes less sense in scarce environments where wage laborers can't earn a living wage, than it does in environments of strong labor competition. There slavery at least has the appeal of preventing your workforce from leaving should it chose to do so. However, the point is again control rather than efficiency or simple profit.

>Slavery is an institution that allowed for the relocation of labor

I find this specious given that mass migration is being accomplished via foot traffic and crude boats today, and that the historic record describes many similar (though often more militant) migrations. Labor is mobile by nature, the institution of slavery doesn't add to or detract from that effect.

>Some slaves were kept as a symbol of wealth, but a great many were bought solely for their work on farms, mines, and construction projects.

When labor markets are tight, such slaves are expensive and work alongside free labor. They are typically purchased as a supplement to free labor because there wasn't enough of it to go around.

When labor markets are slack such slavery is less efficient than wage labor, but served the dual purpose of accomplishing work and controlling a population. Control was more the point than labor, as labor was cheap.

Slavery in and it'self is illegal due to a religious proclamation about the ownership of souls. Indentured servitude is still considered a valid institution, however. There's a number of practices call "The Concessions" which traditionally regulate the industry.

First, nobody is born a slave. You're born owning yourself. Only you can sell yourself into slavery or have it taken from you as punishment for your crimes. Even the child of a slave is considered a freeman.

Second, slaves have a set time limit on their servitude. This proved instrumental in reducing slave rebellions as it gave them something to hope for in an otherwise hopeless situation.

Third, slaves can not be executed out of hand. They can be worked to death or die from punishments or illness but an owner has to prove that they did not intend for the slave to die. Generally speaking, it's considered wasteful to actually kill slaves.

Usually nations have a ministry dedicated toward the management of slaves. Most slaves have a rather blaise attitude for their circumstances. Yes, their life sucks but they're fed and housed and just have to wait a little longer and they're free.

Kids you can mold, into performing all kinds of atrocities

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