Lunar farm manors operated by slaves in Dragon Pass? (pre-and-post-Dragonrise)

[seasparrow]

I've seen several mentions of large Lunar farm manors operated with slave labor being established in the Dragon Pass area. There was supposedly one in Apple Lane, and also in Nymie Vale-- certainly others that I'm not aware of.

The GM adventure book says that for the one near Apple Lane, that by 1626 the nobles have fled, the slaves escaped, and the manor is in ruins. I presume most of the other ones in the region are similar, except for the documented Lunar holdouts in the vicinity of Alda Chur.

Were there ever any maps of these places? Or descriptions, including numbers of workers, overseers, Lunar nobles, etc? What would they have looked like?

As always, looking for both canon references as well as your own speculation or local variations. Thank you!

Edited November 28, 2020 by seasparrow
clarify title

[Nick Brooke]

There’s a detailed description of a Lunar slave farm in the Arfritha Vale in @Minlister’s Lysang Clan sourcebook In A Merry Green Vale, on the Jonstown Compendium. (Currently $4 off in the Thanksgiving sale)

Edited November 28, 2020 by Nick Brooke

[David Scott]

There's a short scenario based on the Nymie Vale one in Sartar Rising Part 3, Gathering Thunder. It's now marked as Manor ruins on the Colymar Tribes map. It's near-ish to apple lane. Sartar KoH gives more details on its operator, Overovashtells. It also tells us the second one was in lower Streamvale.

The Crescent Manor is in Limelder lands, details in Wyrms Footnotes 15, Sartar companion, 

[Nick Brooke]

And while it's not in Dragon Pass, there's a nicely-detailed Lunar villa in Sun County that's run using slave labour in @Incendiary Pig's The Corn Dolls & Fortunate Sun. Also 20% off this weekend: $9.56, down from $11.95. The book includes a plan, view and personnel details.

[coffeemancer]

come to think of it, the dragonrise is so near in time that if the local lunars fled there is no reason as to why their manors should be in ruins.

unless sartarites ruined them, of course....

but a more "resident evil" style ruin mighr be more fun...

[Jeff]

1 hour ago, coffeemancer said:

come to think of it, the dragonrise is so near in time that if the local lunars fled there is no reason as to why their manors should be in ruins.

unless sartarites ruined them, of course....

but a more "resident evil" style ruin mighr be more fun...

One of the first things that the Sartarites looted and burned once it became clear that the Lunar military power was broken were the slave farms. So the one in the Nymie Vale was likely destroyed about the same time that Leika became queen, and same with the one near Runegate. I can't imagine the one in Lismelder lands lasted any longer. These things were not all that impressive of buildings and aren't significant enough to be noted on the Dragon Pass map.

[coffeemancer]

makes sense

[Joerg]

There is one place where they may have survived a bit longer - Wulfsland. Even if the leaders of Wulfsland were devoured in the Dragonrise (and I am not sure whether Tatius would have invited some provincial cronies of Fazzur), there would be enough veterans from the Provincial Army remaining with their formerly Maboder human chattel to maintain some order.

Not for that long, though, as there are bound to be quite a few Maboder refugees, out-marriages and in-laws in the neighboring tribes willing to set things right.

 

I am more interested in what happened to those slaves. Did the manors use local Sartarite slaves, or did they import fairly tame slaves from the Heartlands, or captives from conflicts on other borders? But then, Beat-Pot (born a storm Pentan) served his slavery in Oraya, so this long-distance exchange of slaves may not have been common.

How sympathetic would the Colymar have been towards slaves taken e.g. from among the Volsaxi or the Kultain? Marriage ties to those folk would have been very few, if at all.

And then there are quite a few slave-taking clans in Sartar which would have gleefully inherited the human chattel presented to them by the former Lunar owners.

[Jeff]

1 hour ago, Joerg said:

There is one place where they may have survived a bit longer - Wulfsland. Even if the leaders of Wulfsland were devoured in the Dragonrise (and I am not sure whether Tatius would have invited some provincial cronies of Fazzur), there would be enough veterans from the Provincial Army remaining with their formerly Maboder human chattel to maintain some order.

Not for that long, though, as there are bound to be quite a few Maboder refugees, out-marriages and in-laws in the neighboring tribes willing to set things right.

 

I am more interested in what happened to those slaves. Did the manors use local Sartarite slaves, or did they import fairly tame slaves from the Heartlands, or captives from conflicts on other borders? But then, Beat-Pot (born a storm Pentan) served his slavery in Oraya, so this long-distance exchange of slaves may not have been common.

How sympathetic would the Colymar have been towards slaves taken e.g. from among the Volsaxi or the Kultain? Marriage ties to those folk would have been very few, if at all.

And then there are quite a few slave-taking clans in Sartar which would have gleefully inherited the human chattel presented to them by the former Lunar owners.

Wulfsland: This territory in the former Maboder tribal lands was ruled by the Lunar noble Jomes Wulf, who waged a successful war in 1607 against the Telmori to make it his, after the lands were granted to him by Lunar administrators. After the liberation of Sartar, Jomes Wulf and his Lunar soldiers abandoned these lands, which are now claimed by the Cinsina, Telmori, and Torkani tribes, as well as by the surviving Maboder. A few retired Lunar veterans have held on, refusing to abandon the lands they won at sword-point. 

[jajagappa]

3 hours ago, David Scott said:

There's a short scenario based on the Nymie Vale one in Sartar Rising Part 3, Gathering Thunder. It's now marked as Manor ruins on the Colymar Tribes map. It's near-ish to apple lane. Sartar KoH gives more details on its operator, Overovashtells. It also tells us the second one was in lower Streamvale.

The Crescent Manor is in Limelder lands, details in Wyrms Footnotes 15, Sartar companion, 

My PC's recently visited the ruins in the Nymie Vale.  These are my maps for/interpretation of the place as of 1625-6 (based off the Sartar Rising pt 3 map).

You can see from the wide view that parts of the manor's walls and some sections remain standing.

Even where rooms were "intact" inside, the structure was unsound and likely to collapse.  Only one section at the northwest corner largely escaped the burning.  This included the rooms of the Jakaleel witch Oheha.  Her work room had floor markings for summonings of spirits.  The scrolls on the walls included the Paper and Wood Lists for the Seven Mothers (which are supposed to be burned, but were stored instead - Harmast discovered his mother's name on one such list).  The mirrors are magical, of course.  One had a view into the Black Death Snake realm associated with the dark swamps of Darjiin.  The other had a view to Oheha's current location (and through which she keeps an eye on her old home) - Oheha could cast magic through the mirrors.  The secret room held a bound large Shade - the PC's barely survived its release.

[M Helsdon]

On 11/28/2020 at 1:33 PM, jajagappa said:

 

Hey! That building (or its components) looks oddly familiar! 8-)

I am considering adding a Lunar villa to Temples and Towers.

[Beoferret]

Roughly how quickly would the slave farms have been attacked - after the Dragonrise, that is? Are we talking days? A couple of weeks? And were these slave farms set up like latifundia? Or were they simply smallish farms with a few slaves? Did Lunar officers or other officials receive other forms of land and holdings in Sartar, as reward for their service?

 

[jajagappa]

36 minutes ago, M Helsdon said:

Hey! That building (or its components) looks oddly familiar! 8-)

Yes, doesn't it!  Something you might think about for an Art Pack is your set of buildings, plus decomposed rooms/stables.  I find they work incredibly well for building out larger villas, creating small villages, and even assembling a caravanserai with an inn.

[jajagappa]

24 minutes ago, Beoferret said:

Roughly how quickly would the slave farms have been attacked - after the Dragonrise, that is? Are we talking days? A couple of weeks?

Probably within days of the news of the Lunar disaster reaching the clan.  (Not at the Dragonrise itself - no one beyond the immediate vicinity would know what happened, and might even think that the dragon was initiating a new Dragonkill within the Pass.)  But once the clan heard that the Lunar army and priests were devoured, and no one around to retaliate, then they would likely have marched upon the slave farm (and remember the leaders from the slave farms quite likely were at the Dragonrise, leaving only stewards, guards, and scribes behind).

27 minutes ago, Beoferret said:

And were these slave farms set up like latifundia? Or were they simply smallish farms with a few slaves? Did Lunar officers or other officials receive other forms of land and holdings in Sartar, as reward for their service?

I would say that these were not huge slave farms, but well beyond smallish farms with a few slaves.  And yes Lunar officers or officials received the land - usually with the ability to collect the tribute from surrounding clans for the Lunar-friendly tribal king.

[Jeff]

They are probably 10 to 20 hides in size and had 50 or fewer slaves. These would have had a little villa made of adobe or stone, huts for the slaves, an overseer's house, and a few agricultural buildings. If I recall the Slave Farm in the Nymie Vale was an experiment to produce wine for sale back to the Heartlands, so there would be a wine press and likely a pottery workshop. The slaves were probably NOT local Sartarites, but Aggarites or Talastarings, or even Lodrilli from some peasants' rebellion.

[M Helsdon]

33 minutes ago, Jeff said:

These would have had a little villa made of adobe or stone

Probably a mixture of stone (for the foundations and the lower level of the ground level walls), and cob, rammed earth, or wattle and daub in wooden frames and then plastered with lime to improve waterproofing.

Adobe is a term that can cover all these soil/clayed based mixtures, but also more precisely sun dried bricks of sandy earth mixed with water and straw or dung, which are fine in fairly arid regions but unsuitable anywhere with significant rainfall (you'd find buildings of adobe construction in Bronze and Iron Age southern Spain and Portugal, but not much further north in Europe, but you would find cob, rammed earth and wattle and daub buildings all the way to Scotland). 

This is perhaps a decent model, at least in construction, if not floor plan, for a Lunar villa in Sartar or Tarsh:

http://www.butser.org.uk/villa.html

[MOB]

6 hours ago, Beoferret said:

Roughly how quickly would the slave farms have been attacked - after the Dragonrise, that is? Are we talking days? A couple of weeks? 

With a gigantic, miles-long stupendously-powerful dragon suddenly appearing in the air, rippling destructive shock waves with its roars and flaps of its wings, people of all persuasions - Lunars and Sartarites alike, probably fled in terror.  In the panic it's likely a lot of the slaves ran away and didn't come back. 

5 hours ago, jajagappa said:

no one beyond the immediate vicinity would know what happened, and might even think that the dragon was initiating a new Dragonkill within the Pass.) 

As the immense dragon flies in great spirals around Kero Fin (pointedly obscuring the Red Moon), strange draconic energies revive that had been quiet since the days of the Empire of the Wyrms Friends. So I'm sure people would have thought exactly that, and panicked accordingly! (In distant Sun County, Prax, they were so terrified of Draconic retribution they even revived the network of defense towers built across the county in the aftermath of the Dragonkill War - like the Arm of Pavis in the Rubble, these watchtowers once provided aerial defense and also served as heliograph stations. Too bad for the retired priests who were now using them as hermitages).

 

Edited December 1, 2020 by MOB

[EricW]

I suspect there would have been serious magical consequences to Dragonrise beyond the simple destruction of the new temple, likely as part of the dragon rise ritual some serious god learner level attacks on the local lunar magical landscape must have occurred. In the turbulent aftermath of a shattering Lunar magical and temporal loss the rebels would have pressed their advantage as quickly as possible, lest the Lunars regroup somehow.

[M Helsdon]

Small Lunar Provincial villa added to Temples & Towers.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/297497/Temples--Towers?affiliate_id=2310005

 

Edited December 1, 2020 by M Helsdon

[Scorus]

i believe that King of Sartar mentions Asborn leading his men to sack the Nymie Valley one just days after the Dragonrise. So it would be the guards from Asborn Stead probably with help from Hiording, Anmangarn, and/or Orlmarth clansmen. Whether there were still any lunars there by that time or they had all bugged out is another question. Either way, slaves are likely to ransack their enslavers' buildings.

Though in my game a charismatic Eurmali that used to work for/undermine the lunars at one of these is organizing and slowly converting ca. 20 slaves that decided to remain into a stead of sorts.