Category:Slavery

Across Creation, there are innumerable variations of bondage and forced labour, where beings must work for others against their will. Debt bondage, indentured servitude, serfdom, and others all share many things in common, and all can be called ‘slavery’.

However, amongst savants and Counters, true slavery refers not just to the removal of freedom and forced labour, but to property ownership, where people are treated as chattel, bought and sold as commodities. When it is said that The Guild spreads slavery to all corners of Creation, people are speaking of chattel slavery. The peasants of the blessed Isle, serfs tied to their fields, still speak with pride that the Scarlet Empress gave them the great gift of freedom, for by the laws of the Realm no peasant can ever be a slave: these peasants and these laws refer to chattel slavery.

Even here, to be chattel does not make one a slave. Some cultures hold that slaves are human chattel, while others expand to include all sapient beings regardless of form. There are variations for every step between (an example can be seen amongst the forest people of Halta, where even humans must prove their sapience).