How common is slavery in 40k? The way it seems to me is like so:

How common is slavery in 40k? The way it seems to me is like so:

Imperium: Very common. Any mutants or aliens permitted to live are slaves. Many abhumans are slaves. All Imperial factions seem to use them to some extent, even Space Marines (serfs).

Mechanicus: Pretty much everyone below tech-priest seems to be essentially a slave. Servitors are slaves+.

Chaos: Slaves enslaving slaves.

Dark Eldar: Slavery is vital to their existence.

Eldar: No. Just kill the mon-keigh.

Orks: Gretchin are slaves. Sometimes they'll enslave other races.

Necrons: Some overlords do it.

Tyranids: Nom nom nom.

Tau: No, and anyone who disagrees with that will disappear in the night.

Am I accurate in my thinking? Also, how do slaves get treated by respective factions?

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Anybody? I can't seem to get a straight answer on it.

When it comes to the Imperium, factions like the Space Marines and Ecclesiarchy typically have volunteers, not really slaves (although they're sometimes treated as much, like with the Marines Malevolent). The rights of workers vary from planet to planet as well, of course. I feel like, officially, the Imperium is against the slavery of pureblood humans, but planetary governments will dance around that rule by calling their workers something else and paying them the bare minimum, or something. If you want to get technical, conscripts are slaves, too.

Then, of course, there's the penal colonies, where the Imperium makes use of criminals as a work force. Ecclesiarchy, too.

Anyway yeah, you're mostly on-point.

You're pretty much on point here. The only exceptions I can think of are:

Most Imperial planets prefer to practice a system of serfdom rather than out-and-out slavery. The Ecclesiarchy also practices a system of indentured servitude with people's payment being that their sins are atoned for. That being said, mutants and offworld abhumans are used as slaves if they aren't banished to the underhives or purged on the spot. I can't think of a single instance of the Imperium taking xenos slaves; they pretty much always prefer to kill them on sight.

Eldar Corsairs take slaves, and I've heard rumors of Craftworld Eldar taking them on very rare occasions, but I have no idea how true that is.

You're kind of right with the Tau. The Tau Empire does not explicitly condone or practice slavery; but, there's always the fact that an Ethereal could order another Tau to do anything (up to and including suicide) and the Tau would do it without hesitation or question. The only overt instance I can think of where the Tau practiced something resembling slavery with their other member-races was in Dawn of War: Dark Crusade, where a Tau victory sees them force the remaining human population of the world into gender-segregated work camps.

>I feel like, officially, the Imperium is against the slavery of pureblood humans
Other way around. Officially slavery is totally okay but some governors ban it. They are outright called slaves, there are official slaver licences, etc.

Also, serfs are often born into their vocations and can't leave. Well-treated slaves are slaves.

As for OP, Chaos slaves probably have it worst.

>Also, serfs are often born into their vocations and can't leave.Well-treated slaves are slaves.
Chapter serfs are usually failed aspirants and/or volunteers. They're not often born into the position, although it likely varies from chapter to chapter.

And I'm not seeing anything on the Imperium officially endorsing slavery. They probably don't really care much so long as a planet can keep up with its tithes, though.

>I can't think of a single instance of the Imperium taking xenos slaves; they pretty much always prefer to kill them on sight.
Getting it from older fluff. Used to have a picture that mentioned it. Though Deathwatch mentions Tau and Kroot slaves forced to make weapons for the Achilus Crusade.

A lot of space marine chapters have chapter serfs, who have been born in the role and don't exactly have a say in the matter. That said, they're usually treated slightly better than what we understand of slaves, with, as you said, some exceptions (cough cough marines malevolent cough cough)

I suspect if it occurs it only does so under the strict supervision of the inquisition, who as always does what the fuck it wants

Rogue Traders can probably do it too, although likely with a fair bit of scrutiny from the Inquisition.

>And I'm not seeing anything on the Imperium officially endorsing slavery. They probably don't really care much so long as a planet can keep up with its tithes, though.
Really, you've never heard of the dataslaves of the Administratum, for instance? Slaves are everywhere, do you read fluff?

Thought for the Day: The loyal servant learns to love the lash.

I believe it was under command of the warmaster of the crusade, in fact.

"Hellish factories" was the exact wording, I believe.

You know, it's funny; it wasn't until I read "dataslaves" that my memory triggered. I forgot that when they're mentioned in books and whatnot, it's almost always a quick passing mention for necessity, which fits the bill for slaves in a meta sense, too.

They're easily overlooked, but they've been a constant for a long time. It helps to know synonyms and euphemisms for slaves, as many are called something similar but not exactly "slave".

Anything mentioned as "indentured", for one. The Imperium also likes using "compelled volunteers".

Read the book "Fire Caste". It's pretty good, and centers on the Arkhan Confederates, who are like a steampunk grimdark CSA which won their civil war.

>i need an answer

Why, specifically, do you care?

In FB, Skaven actually had slave MODELS, but 40k Cultists are just CALLED Slaves to Darkness, which only means collars and whips to Slaaneshis - because they get off on it. But slaves aren't part of any playable 40k faction, afaik. So, again -

Why do you ask?

Maybe because I'm trying to GM a Dark Heresy game?

Is this off-topic? Should I have made a thread about elf slaves?

Well, as far as I know, how Space Marines tread their serfs varies from chapter to chapter.
For example...
Ultramarines see them as a necesary part of the chapter, who keeps the whole chapter alive.
Iron Fists, see them just only as servants.
Also, most serfs (actually, all of them) joined the chapters by free will...

Carcharadons use straight up slaves and it's apparently one of the reasons why they were exiled in the first place.

>it's apparently one of the reasons why they were exiled in the first place
Outright lie. They were exiled because Corax is racist against innocent Terrans.

Yeah, Space Wolves were the Emperor's most trusted legion and Fenrisian tribal society is based on slave raiding, they even explicitly take women as "breeding slaves" according to Prospero Burns. No way would any Marines be chastised for keeping slaves or condoning slavery.

>Chaos slaves probably have it worst.

depends on the master.

But a slaneeshi-torture-slave is probably on the same level as a dark eldar playtoy.

I would say Gretchins are more of a servitor race. Once a Gretchin becomes a killa kan they often move up in the social hierarchy and no one bosses them around (save things bigger than them)

Most Dark Eldar slaves, at least, will have some escape when they die. The ones personally singled out by the Haemonculus might not, but the average Commorite doesn't have the know-how or equipment to ensure their slaves suffer on after death. Slaves who end up falling into the hands of a Slaaneshi (or, indeed, any Chaos) warband are likely to have their soul used to power some unholy ritual, and thus are in for quite a bit of misery even after they die.

>and no one bosses them around

Maybe not, but they aren't respected enough to boss anyone else around either. They don't move up in the hierarchy so much as step outside it.

The nature of slavery varies considerably. Roman era slavery was very different from that of the southern united states, and neither bore much resemblance to that of precommunist China.

A medieval peasant would indignantly deny that he was a slave, and christiandom made a big deal of the distinction between serf and slave... but to modern eyes they're the same. Similarly, communist countries often build elaborate empires of forced labor camps, but have entire branches of Marxism to explain why it doesn't count as slavery. In a sense, anyone not in the ruling class of a totalitarian state (fascist or communist) is a slave: forced to work determined by someone else, without compensation.

So slavery takes many, many forms. I'd say that the imperium practices it- what else is a servitor?- but in milder forms as well. And many people who are slaves in all but name.

>what else is a servitor?

One could argue that a servitor isn't any more of a slave than a computer is. The majority of them don't have any kind of personality or free will left - they're biologically alive, but mentally and spiritually dead. The process of turning someone into a Servitor is akin to executing them.

Grots don't always willingly seal themselves forever in a steel cylinder.

You forgot the most dominant form at the moment: wage slavery.
In most western countires around a third of the work force are pretty much slaves. They do not earn enough to have reserves of any kind, which would enable them to either look for a better job or organizing themselves to get higher wages.
Thus they will stay with their shitty jobs which barely feed them (often not even that).

>if you lobotomize them it's not slavery
As a cyborg, you will serve SHODAN well.

Seriously, is this like "it's not rape if she's dead"?

warhammer40k.wikia.com/wiki/Zoat

Tyranid keep Slaves

Or at least older edition Tyranids did, don't know if this was retconned, but probably.

yeah the closest thing are genestealer cults.

Hive Fleet Colossus.

Summoned and bound demons are enslaved.
Necron troops are as well, and one could make the argument Chaos Androids were enslaved by the Chaos Squats.

By that logic a daemonhost is enslaved by the daemon. Making a bound one a double slave.

Regarding this part:
>It may be that the Hive Mind found these creatures' usefulness to be less than it had imagined, for the Zoat have been rarely seen by the Imperium or the other intelligent races of the Milky Way Galaxy since the early years of the Tyranid invasion almost 300 Terran years ago. In recent times, the Hive Fleets have sought only to absorb more bio-mass, not conduct diplomacy.

The Zoats' absence from 'modern' Tyranid forces isn't actually a change in the Tyranids' approach in-universe, it's just a retcon - which the wiki has, typically, tried to put its own spin on. Even the Collossus fluff that brought Zoats back both referenced their old role but at the same time confirmed (if confirmation were needed) that it had been retconned: the fact that the Collossus race communicated with other beings was noted as "unlike any other Tyranid organism before or since".

>Orks: Gretchin are slaves. Sometimes they'll enslave other races.
>Sometimes they'll enslave other races.
Orks take an absolute shit ton of slaves. They do it at pretty much every opportunity, to any captive who can't offer a good fight instead.
If memory serves the slaves mostly help Meks supply their WAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH!

Waaagh Gazbag even enslaved several Exodite worlds and defeated the Biel-tan force that tried to take them back.

Pretty on point, its not crazy common in the imperium (at least not as much as DE or Chaos) but it still isn't an oddity

Tyranids in older fluff enslaved the Zoats but they've more or less been retconned and now nids are just consumers.

Tau don't have slaves as such, youre just forced into their system, if you don't wanna join then you better fucking leave or die

"The citizens involved have subsequently been placed into penal servitude for their betrayal of the Emperor in allowing themselves to be captured."
Praise the Emperor.

That was the point of the Zoats, they were the Mouth of Sauron.

It was a Squatting, as pretty much the same thing happened when their vanishing was explained in 3e which is in line with what the creatures of Colossus claimed. Both fucked by Tyranids, retconned, then returned with later editions.

Because of the humans they were almost eradicated. Same as 3e. They're canon but a virtual non-entity as of current 40k, like Squats.

Nuh uh, for instance, the orks of Waaagh! Grukk just horribly killed fucking everyone on a virtually defenseless agriworld for giggles. And ate them IIRC.

>leave
In a space casket, sure, any time!

>raised from birth in the dank holding pens beneath the machine rooms

I guess it could be worse. Could have been raised in the straight edge holding pens.

The more obvious joke was that the holding pens were FOR dank.

I feel like the orks wouldn't really understand the concept of slavery. It's like

>You do wot I sez, or I crump ya. Dat's 'ow it works fer every git.

Slavery is not distinct from how their entire society works. Similarly, personal property is what people don't want to try to take from you, for whatever reason.

who says mine couldn't be construed as such?

Runtherds are accomplished in slavery and its nuances. It's their oddboy talent.

"Straight edge" is a quality of a person or persons, not a holding cell.

see
this is like, basic ork lore man. gretchin are outright considered slaves in many cases, that's runtherds' whole spiel. and orks using human slaves is also canon.

>it's a some dweeb on Veeky Forums revs up the semantics autism episode

yeah I didn't use punctuation in that last post either you wanna fight about it or something

It's just a bad joke, user. Move on with your life.

Runtherdz are also called Slavers.

nay, you have besmirched my honor and now it is time to answer for your careless slander

*unsheathes katana*

>slander

fuck you wrote it so I guess it was technically libel

[seppuku]

*unzips dual chainkatanas*
...heh...you mad a big mistake...fool!
*teleports behind you*
*slices you in half*
...psssh...nothin personnel...kid...

> *unzips dual chainkatanas*
wat?

*unsheathes dick*
Got a problem kiddo?

>"it's not rape if she's dead"
which is completely true, once dead a person isnt legally a person anymore, they are a corpse, the crime in that case is profaning the dead

>Outright lie.

Outright truth. The new carcharodon novels are trying to retcon forge world.

>novels

>A medieval peasant would indignantly deny that he was a slave, and christiandom made a big deal of the distinction between serf and slave... but to modern eyes they're the same.
It's a pretty easy distinction, actually.

A slave can be sold, uprooted, transferred from place to place without any notice, and separated from their friends and loved ones. A peasant has the right to continue to live in their birthplace in the way of their ancestors.

This is actually wrong. They are still legally a person, and even have laws saying dead people have their rights. This has the side effect that if the dead rise from the grave, and still remain as smart as a human, they'd be covered by the laws that we are.

Same as aliens as long as they come in peace, actually.

So... you are either retarded, spewing stupid stuff on the internet and full of shit, or a necrophiliac who didn't check to make sure it was legal or not yet.

>They are still legally a person,

TECHNICALLY, no, they are not (at least in the US). However, the rights of a living person include the right to a proper funeral/burial of your choosing and the reasonable expectation that your corpse be treated with respect as if it were a person.

Your corpse does not have rights, but the rights your living body has includes the right to proper funeral rites according to your beliefs/traditions.

But a serf does not have the right to leave his patch of land.

They're doing nothing of the sort. Adding in additional perspectives to a story is not retcon.

Imperial Navy is said to use Galley slaves, right?

Though, I'm not sure about the efficacy of human slaves pushing massive shells into lance batteries. when machinery is obviously superior.

A serf cannot be removed from his patch of land, by *anyone*. Not his lord, not himself, nobody. Slaves can be traded wherever. It's actually a fairly important distinction that slave families can be broken up and sold piecemeal but a serf family is irrevocably bound to their land for life.

They even use giant tread mills to move the turrets

Because that machinery isn't commonly available anymore. It's why autoloader tech is rare and valuable.

Well, what WOULD you do?

Purge the alien.