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Message: <blockquote data-quote="fusangite" data-source="post: 2018692" data-attributes="member: 7240">ManumissionIn any society that has multi-generation slavery based around individuals captured in war, there is always a manumission process. How, in your society, do people become ex-slaves? In the Roman state and colonial Spanish and Portuguese states, there were two basic processes for people ceasing to be slaves:(a) Purchasing Freedom: All slaves had the right to purcase their freedom; if your master didn't want you to do so, you went to a court, got the court to assess your value and, once you accumulated and paid that money, the court would order your master to sell you to yourself. You would thus become a freed person.(b) Voluntary Manumission: For various reasons, your owner might decide to grant you your freedom. This was typically legally documented so that there was no danger you could actually become a slave again. A common reason to grant manumission was that your master was pleased with your service and believed that he had gained more in value from you than he paid and you deserved to retire. Another reason might be that your master had taken a shine to you and wanted you free so that you could be legally married.Almost any society with legal slavery has legal processes for getting out of it. The antebellum slavery of the US, with people crossing state lines to capture escaped slaves, was really an exception to this. So, what you need to think about is how slaves are usually freed. Also, in any normal society, slavery is not going to equal abuse of slaves. There must be good, humane models of slavery which even if not generally practiced, are held up as the social ideal for good slavery by the government. Listen to some Stephen Foster songs to get the hang of this one -- ask yourself: what kind of master has happy slaves? Your society will almost certainly believe that some must. WIth these tools at your disposal, you have a number of options: (a) These particular slavers, by virtue of abusing and mistreating the slaves, have violated some local statute that prevents slave abuse. Thus, they can be brought to justice even though slavery is legal. (b) These slavers can be forced to grant voluntary manumission to their slaves -- at swordpoint if necessary.(c) These slavers can be forced to sell the slaves to the PCs -- at swordpoint if necessary.Only point (a) directly addresses the question that you are concerned about: the fear that these slavers will get slaves in future and abuse them. This is something modern society is becoming increasingly obsessed with -- predicting future crime. This has not been a big concern of most societies, however. It's only in modern society that people are punished on spec, based on the fear of what they will do rather than revenge for what they have done.Still, if your characters have these highly modern values, there are a number of non-lethal approaches to this problem:(a) The PCs could make a case to the local slave regulators that based on their abuses, these slavers should not be allowed to purchase slaves in future. There might even already be a list of people in the kingdom of people not allowed to own slaves for any number of reasons (e.g. staged insurrections in the past, were only buying slaves to free them, etc.)(b) The PCs could exact a vow or promise from the slavers that they get out of the business for life on pain of the PCs returning and killing them then.(c) The PCs could financially and materially destroy the slavers to the point where they lost the capacity to purchase or capture slaves in future.(d) The PCs could use a legal technicality or situation of their own creation (for instance somehow placing the slavers deeply in debt to them) to make the slavers their slaves.Hope this helps.</blockquote>

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