About slavery

[scott-martin]

 

14 minutes ago, Joerg said:

The harvest of the Tadeniti falls into the right frame of Godswar events. Mostal had been silenced at the Birth of Umath, as the clockwork was lifted off the axis, and the waters reached to the top side of the Earth, with the rivers invading. Attrition of the demigod Mostali was high, and reproduction or replacement rate was low as Mostal's absence had thrown a spanner into the workings of the crucibles.

I know it's my hobby horse lately but doesn't Lodrilela also die at roughly this moment? They might provide reproductive technology whereas the theoretically immortal in-caste Tadeniti could well have become something else.

27 minutes ago, Joerg said:

I don't get the impression anywhere that the sons of Malkion had any children outside of their own caste. The Dromal caste explicitely is of darker hue due to their earth goddess ancestry. The other four castes descended from Phlia come as tinted pale - yellow, blue (twice, different hues for Zzabur and Menena?) and red.

Ironically the most detailed look at skin color goes with the "small SIZ / little Westerners" material. I'll track it down first chance I get. This is the era when there were "Naga" or "Nogi" in the gene pool as well as blues and "greens" who may or may not be Waertagi and/or Menenites, not part of the formal four-part society but still participating in various iterations of the community of Malkion. 

I really do think colonization of the northern coast went very differently from what we see in the Seshnelan histories, which explains the persistence of local Dronar versus Dromal. Depends on where you put Lodril's mountain, I guess. 

My turn for a digression, the Western mockery of "Lammy" as coequal to "Laddy" must really burn the beards, I love it.

[Sir_Godspeed]

All I can say is that there has to be something the Malkioni histories are not telling us about how the reproductivity of the caste system worked in Danmalastan. Either because they don't know, or they don't want to tell.

[Ian Cooper]

BTW, in a Fonrit game I ran at a con, then I made Darleester's Noose a sorcery grimoire (Harmony rune) which included a spell Compulsion, that allowed the sorcerer to make a slave collar. Someone wearing the collar had to obey the sorcerer, or whoever the sorcerer had cast the spell on behalf of, or the collar would tighten and strangle the slave. Not all slaves were worth the expense of a sorcerer binding them, far simpler methods could keep a common field slave in control, just those whose betrayal would be dangerous.

The Grimoire also contained a classic Harmonize spell.

Overall, I treated the Fonritians as similar to the Soninke people in social structure: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soninke_people#Social_stratification

 

[Ian Cooper]

42 minutes ago, Ian Cooper said:

BTW, in a Fonrit game I ran at a con, then I made Darleester's Noose a sorcery grimoire (Harmony rune) which included a spell Compulsion,

Here is what I wrote for that game:

 

The Noose
The Noose is a spell of compulsion known to the Darleester cult. It is a sorcerous spell, not rune magic. The spell is used to enchant a slave collar which can be forced to tighten on the instruction of the caster, strangling the wearer. The caster may choke the victim simply as a lesson that leaves them gasping for breath, or to kill them.
Slave collars vary in material, but the cost of enchanting a collar, as opposed to simply ordering an overseer to beat a slave to death, means they tend to be made for slaves that the caster has trusted with autonomy and some authority. As such they are often ornate bronze collars, some, for  particularly valued slaves even of gold. The collar is a reminder to the slave that their owner does not accept disobedience or failure.