I heard something about slaving coming into the game (again?). So I'm curious.
Do you have to have a license to sell someone into slavery? Can citizens be sold, as long as they're caught outside the city? Are most slaves born into it? What's the average price of an adult commoner?
Does Borsail typically use its House Guards to enslave people, or do they use mercenaries? Do they have large colonies of slaves that they breed, or do they mostly enslave previously free people?
This (http://www.armageddon.org/general/slavery.html) is the documentation concerning slavery. The rest you can find out IC without too much trouble.
Noble Houses are the biggest sources of slaves in the city-states, and they use their own forces for this at least during most of the times. Most slaves are bred, and captured slaves generally cost less.
About slaving coming to the game - I believe this will mostly take place with RPTs of the slaving houses against NPCs, with PC slaves remaining quite rare.
Ah, thanks. Somehow I missed that one(or glanced over it like a year ago). :)
I'll leave the Borsail-related questions to Naiona to answer, but I'll give the Winrothol standpoint on a few of your questions.
Both Borsail and Winrothol breed slaves that are trained from birth in various specialties--guards, pleasure slaves, etc. These are the most valuable slaves as they have no memory of anything other than slavery.
However, Borsail also has a secondary market in captured adults, who they use for Arena fodder, sell to the templarate to mine obsidian, etc. Winrothol doesn't have this need/demand for captured adult slaves, so they don't capture adults.
If Winrothol were to capture or "buy" someone into slavery it would probably be a very young child, i.e. a family with seven children might sell one so that the other six can eat. The only adults they might conceivably have a use for are human females, for the purpose of breeding muls (usually a fatal procedure).
My friend says he became a slave.. <_< I think he pissed off a Noble or something. So, there are apparently some PC slaves. Don't know if he's just a rarity. Heh.
Yes, templars are the law. if they want you a slave, you are. But I imagine commoners pressed into slavery aren't that easy to handle, so it probably doesn't happen to often.
From an OOC standpoint, usually it requires consent from the player if he wants to continue playing the character as a slave. THe alternative would be to just retire the character, leaving him forever a slave, virtually.
And then some slaves live the high life as Senior Aides, guards, slavers themselves, etc.
Though that may take time to trust a slave.
Borsail's highest ranked commoner is indeed a slave and he does live a life that nearly any non-noble would envy.
With that said, we haven't yet implemented an organized PC slaving process and I personally won't likely be able to do so for the next few months while the hurricane recovery is in high gear. Without restarting a topic that has been talked to death already, our biggest concern is how to make slavery fun (for the player - not neccesarily the character) and playable.
But to answer the question - Borsail does both breed and purchase slaves. Those who are bred or trained from early childhood are much more likely to be trusted and treated well then those who are not.
in ancient rome, poor people would sell themselves to slavery with a pre-set buy back price, and slowly work back to that, making pennies at a time from the hand outs given by their master for good work.
an indentured servitude, of sorts.