seasong's Light Against The Dark II (May 13)

[Greybar]

Seasong, another aspect to consider might be indentured servitude. This applies to many of the 17th to 19th century migrations, though I haven't done much recent reading to really state with details or authority.

Off the top of my head, I'd say that indentured servants might fill the domestication qualities you name because they know it's going to end. Until their contract is violated, at least.

You mentioned the idea of war debt and tattoos that indicate and end to service, so that might match up as well.

There is an interesting side point as well.

... a culture has to view another group as subhuman ...

I'd say this applies outside of the Capital punishment area as well. Yet in Theralis there are free (and full citizen?) orcs already, so it may be harder for the human and ellini to see the enslaved orcs as different and thus be harsh to them. Yes, I know, this may be 20th century nature coming out. I would note that as late as the 20th century, there are substantiated stories of white landowner children being taught that blacks couldn't feel pain and thus it was okay to beat them or stick them with pins.

John
p.s. Oh, and I haven't pimped my story hour too much because I guess I don't feel it's super ready yet. I need to start actually posting session runs rather than background... [grin]

 

[seasong]

Regarding the subhuman comment: The others, you can get away with, without viewing the slaves as subhuman. It's unlikely (chauvinism being what it is), but within the realm of possibility. The greeks, in particular, often had admiration for the qualities of certain slaves they acquired... and slavery was recognized by some greek cultures as simply "the status of the loser in a war", rather than a statement of their human-ness.

Compare to the Olmec, Aztecs and similar, who viewed all outsiders as beasts!

That doesn't limit one from using a different set of techniques on a people you view as subhuman - it only limits the techniques you might use on those viewed as human.

Regarding indentured servitude: I don't really differentiate between various degrees of slavery as being anything different. If it's choiceless labor in return for less than the labor is worth, it's slavery regardless of the euphemism involved. "Slave for a day" is still a slave.

With that said, Theralis seems poised to approach it as a kind of indenturement.

 

[Talix]

Awesome updates, Seasong, thanks!

I, too, like the Uripedas sections, and I hope we see a lot more of him in the future. And summoning creatures to do more than just battle is brilliant.

I look forward to seeing how well the populous takes the slavery idea, and how well it ends up working in reality. You obviously have spent a lot of time thinking about it, so I know it will be interesting regardless of the outcome!

 

[seasong]

Not likely to be an update today. Upper boss type in office. Much gnashing of teeth and tearing of hair.

Tomorrow, I should be caught up with last session.

 

[Nail]

Thanks for the essays, Seasong. I will be sure to enslave th....I mean, use them. Very thought provoking.

 

[seasong]

Kind of a small, crappy update today. Sorry .

Road to Kithios

Visions of white-clad heroes marching through her head, Merideth was enthusiastically in support of Greppa's find. That he'd summoned a spectre of light to translate ancient maps to find it only made it that much more enticing. And while she planned and visualized just how she would return from the adventure, Bellos was...

Playing with his sling. Zwhipp! It spun one way around his finger to smack neatly against his palm. Perfect. He unravelled it in one motion, dropping it to hang beneath his hand. Zwhipp! Smack! Perfect. He unslung it again...

"Hm? Oh, yeah, sounds good. Never been that way before - always east, west should be good." Zwhipp! Smack! "When are we leaving?"

Greppa rubbed his delicate temples, glanced back and forth between the two, then rubbed them again. At least Athan had had good questions, sometimes.

He went over it again, and showed Bellos his hastily sketched map of where he was thinking they could go. According to what he could determine, there was a site that had once been a fortress against eastern invaders. That was reasonably well known, actually, because some of the ruins were still visible, but a whole lot of digging by others had turned up a whole lot of nothing. And just looking at the map, it was a small keep, likely not having much of worth.

The important thing was that the name of the place, on a map no one knew how to read, meant "Sky Marker". As near as Greppa could tell, that meant a place of importance for its high visibility - likely a meeting ground or major trade route - and that meant there might be something better nearby, possibly a town or very small city, which might have a library.

Plus whatever assorted stuff the other two might be interested in.

Within a few weeks, as their down time came up, they went recruiting... unfortunately, their "in" to the Keraunesti was dead and buried. Arkos was up for an adventure, but no one else seemed particularly interested in following Greppa and Merideth into the face of danger in quite the same way they would have followed Athan. And Bellos was right out.

So the four (Arkos, Bellos, Greppa, Merideth) packed their things and prepared to head out into the wilderness. And when they finally began marching downslope, out of the protective ring of mountains of their home and into the untamed wilderness to the west, they all felt something of a tug to home.

Then it was primal, viridian-streaked mountains and seaward winds. They were off to the past.

 

[seasong]

Really, really off-topic, but if you substitute "spelling bee" with "arcane word studies", I can soooo see Greppa as Millie (the little fox girl).

Ozy & Millie

In his dreams, at least...

 

[seasong]

Road to Kithios

The first part of the journey was the hardest. Bellos knew his way around wilderness, and they managed to avoid most of the worst of what might be found there, but it still took three days to get through the first pair of valleys outside of Theralis. Then they found the highway.

Once upon a time, long stretches of bedrock were cleared of dirt or raised from the earth by magic. The result looked like a naturally resulting street, two to three wagons wide and stretching for miles. The ancients had made highways out of it, the blood arteries of a nation larger than ten Theralis city-states combined. Now, patches peeked out from beneath grass and worn earth, with stretches of flat rock providing easy egress through the wilderness.

As Merideth stepped onto the first stones, she could feel the history embedded in its quiescent hardness, perhaps more so than Greppa or Bellos or Arkos. To her sensitized perceptions, the cataclysmic final days were still echoing in the stone. Phantom sensations of the earth rippling. Where a stretch of stacked stone blocks had remained standing along the edge of the highway, she could see the missing patches, rent from their place by elemental forces.

She resolved to never, ever, ever take on a dragon without extensive prior planning, and remained uncharacteristically quiet. The others did not really notice - all were in awe at the scale of achievement necessary to create roads from the native earth itself. No one spoke much, in fact, and as they passed an area of highway more intact than the rest, the silence was almost palpable.

A lone sunglobe, set to brighten as the sky darkened (instead of the reverse, as was true of Allas' lost temple), continued to stand on a stone pillar, maintaining its watch over the highway. The others in that stretch, shattered by time and accident, lay dark and quiet.

Greppa stopped by the lone survivor and stared at it. He imagined, briefly, that when this civilization had collapsed, that the orc tribes (whose history was chaotic and likely longer than any living civilization) had taken those people as slaves. And that, one day, a slave named Thera had been born, to rise and build anew.

It inspired a dim and primal instinct for glory, one that he hoped to retain as time passed between seeing the sunglobe and whatever the future held for him.

Bellos was focused on something else. Never particularly fond of intuition, and trusting to strategy more than instinct, he was nonetheless getting very uneasy. Merideth seemed to feel it as well, and both stepped closer together as they walked on.

The earth trembled.

Pebbles on the stone chattered. One skipped high as an odd edge found its place, and beneath, the earth began to shake. As the four adventurers attempted to find their footing, rocky earth flowed up from and out of the highway. Vaguely humanoid in shape, only its towering torso and arms rose above the surface.

One of those arms was beneath Merideth, and it lifted her high, her legs folding beneath her into its palm, then turned its hand over and smashed her against the earth. The other arm swept Bellos and Arkos flat, barely missing Greppa, though he felt the air suck behind the massive limb.

In Greppa's stunned mind, only one thing flashed through: it was an earth elemental, easily the largest he'd ever seen. And it was saying something in a language he didn't recognize.

 

[Nail]

In Greppa's stunned mind, only one thing flashed through: it was an earth elemental, easily the largest he'd ever seen. And it was saying something in a language he didn't recognize.

Terran translation: "Hey, you stepped on my toe! Watch were yer goin', buddy!"

 

[Greppa of Tartwater]

Reminder

This is a reminder for me to post a statement about eyetyrants, deception and a huge underdark, beneath the mountains.