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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 2216283" data-attributes="member: 4937">I think the question is far too broad to be answered.What is the average lifespan of citizens of the culture when they aren't slaves?  What percentage of the population is slaves?  What legal rights do slaves have?  Can slaves obtain status through thier masters to arrise to relatively high social positions?  Can slaves buy thier freedom?  What sorts of labor are slaves expected to perform?  What is the social justification for slavery?  What social customs might limit the degree with which slaves may be mistreated?  Are slaves imported from foreign populations, or are a reasonably large percentages of slaves native to the local population?  If the former, how difficult/expensive is it to obtain slaves?  If the latter, what is the birthrate of the local population?There is a world of difference between an educated slave working as a sensechal for a freeborn lord who is treated as a member of the household ranking only below the master's own immediate family members whose slavery is treated as a not ignoble estate which may in fact (should the gods will) befall the master if the fortunes of his city or estate wane and who in fact is of the same ethnicity of the lord and who has some legal standing in the laws of the nation, and a foreign imported slave whose slavery is justified under the prevailing belief that he belongs to a sub-human race and who has no legal rights and who has no standing with his master beyond that of disposable property and who is expected to preform dangerous, demanding, and degrading labor precisely because his life has little value.  Likewise, there is a world of difference in being a slave in a society that can barely feed itself, and being a slave in a relatively prosperous society with adequate caloric intake.  It's worth noting that how harshly you treat your slaves is somewhat related to how easy they are to replace.  The less valuable the slave is, the easier it becomes to rationalize whatever you choose to do.  If on the other hand the birth rate in the society is low, there is a labor shortage, and slaves can't be obtained easily from an outside source, then slaves tend to start gaining status.The best answer I could give you off hand, would be the suggestion to work out from the estimated life expectancies and infant mortality rates of medieval serfs the death rate among adult European serfs.  This would give you a good estimate on the death rate of any moderately oppressed slave with a poor diet.  From thier you could extrapolate death rates for other degrees of oppression and technology levels (most campaigns I've seen have standards of living that are well above medieval Europe).  If I find such information, I'll update you with my conclusions.   For there, you could work out as a guess how many slaves obtain thier freedom each year.  In most cases, this is a pathetically small sum or the institution would just cease to exist.  As the feudal system started breaking down (say by the 17th century), many european slaves were indentured servants that legally had to be freed after laboring for a certain ammount of time.  Many died before thier terms of service were up, but time limits on slavery will be the biggest factor in slaves being released if any are.  Another example would by the 'Year of Jubilee' time limit proscribed for Jewish slavery in the bible.  On the other extreme, you have serfs.  The percentage of serfs that became free in a given year is so small as to be negligible.  The percentage of plantation slaves that could buy thier freedom from 'generous' masters in the antebellum South is only slightly higher - though probably a good deal more were freed in a given year as 'acts of conscious' by slave holders plagued by feelings of guilt.  Likely more than that escaped or where helped to escape.  In soceities where slavery is the general by product of conquest, probably the single largest cause of slaves losing and earning thier freedom.  Conquered peoples go off into bondage.  Someone losses a battle, and slaves go free.</blockquote>

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