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I'm looking to make an escaped slave character akin to Morgiana from Magi: The Labyrinth of Magic.
What regions of Golarion still practice overt slavery? I understand it's been greatly dialed back and toned down in the setting as of late, so I'm no longer as sure of the answer as I used to be.
Any help you can provide would be greatly appreciated! Bonus points if it's also a hot, arid environment.
Also, what other region most parallels the "dark continent" of Ankoku Tairiku, at least in reputation as a "mysterious and dangerous land known for producing powerful warriors?"
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Nowhere in the Inner Sea, to my understanding. Cheliax and Katapesh are both done, as is Qadira.
Pathfinder these days generally tries to avoid tropes as fraught as having any "dark continent" around these days.
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I figure you can conjure something like "the local bandit lord has oppressed the underclass in their vicinity to varying degrees" almost anywhere remote enough to have bandit lords.
But like "the international slave trade" or "chattel slavery in general" are gone in the Inner Sea.
What you're likelier to see are more modern forms of slavery- things like prison labor, debtor's prison, and economic slavery; or ancient forms of slavery - various flavors of serfdom, or with cultural institutions that do provide modes of manumission even if they're inconsistently applied (Ancient Roman households would sometimes just "let go" their household slaves as a reward for service, but if you were a manual laborer you were SOL.)
Probably the cleanest way to do it in canon would be to be a PC from Geb who escaped from being one of the thralls who are bred as a food source for vampires et al.
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Slavery only ended recently on Golarion, so unless I'm missing something about Morgiana, couldn't they still be an escaped slave?
And as noted by others, even without institutionalized slavery your PC could have escaped from most anywhere. Even modern, free countries on Earth have slaves hidden in the gloomy cracks and crevices.
So it falls on you on what kind of beef you want your PC to have with what kind of slaveholder. Golarion will provide most anything you'd like (albeit PG-13).
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I looked up Morgiana at Magi-The Labyrinth Of Magic Wiki.
Traditionally, the Mwangi Expanse on Garund continent has served as the Dark Continent in Paizo modules. That changed with the publication of Lost Omens The Mwangi Expanse, which sees the region through the eyes of its own inhabitants. In Golarion time, the big change was the revolt in Vidrian, formerly known as Sargava, in 4717 AR. That was only 9 years ago by the standard that Paizo material published in 20XY AD happens in Golarion in 47XY AR. So the character could be a former slave who was liberated 9 years ago.
However, Morgiana is described as a white-skinned redhead. Such people would be badly sunburned in the Mwangi Expanse and not native to the region. If you wish to keep the character's original colors, she has to be from the north. You would have to look at the Ulfen people in the Lands of the Linnorm Kings and Irrisen. However, blonde hair is more common than red hair among the Ulfen. The Slavery entry in Pathfinderwiki acknowledged both the Lands of the Linnorm Kings and Irrisen as nations with slavery.
The Magi wiki entry on the Fanali people says:
The Fanalis people might be based on the real-life Berber people. This is supported by the fact that the Dark Continent which they hail from is based on Africa (specifically North Africa) and that the Fanalis (like the real-life Berbers) were often kidnapped and forced into slavery or forced to become soldiers. Their "wild" nature (or at least their perceived nature by other countries) parallels the Greek and Roman view of Berbers as barbarians. In addition, the Dark Continent is referred to as Cathargo, a reference to Carthage (see Dark Continent for further details).
That would correspond to the Golden Road region of northern Garund. Katapesh outlawed slavery as late as 4722 AR, only 4 years ago. Slavery is still legal and common in Rahadoum, according to Pathfinderwiki, but the editors update their entries only when Paizo releases new material about the region.
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Chattel slavery no longer exists in the Inner Sea. However, Cheliax still practices inheritable debt-indenture, and the difference between being owned and being leased at a debt that's impossible to pay in six lifetimes (and keeps getting bigger, because they charge you for your food and lodging!) is... somewhat academic to the guy being forced into it.
Alternatively, war captives being used for forced labour is very much still gonna be a thing. Like, yeah, it's widely considered illegal, but 1) the Inner Sea doesn't have international laws, and 2) that just means someone has to catch a general at it. I'd expect the River Kingdoms, Oprak, and Cheliax to practice that fairly frequently, with it not being unheard of in places like Andoran, Molthune, Ravounel, and Numeria.
And of course, prison labour, aka the 21st Century's Chattel Slavery, isn't mentioned at all. Being arrested on trumped-up charges and forced to work for coppers to the week for the Lumber Consortium or something would capture a lot of the vibes.
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I'm looking to make an escaped slave character akin to Morgiana from Magi: The Labyrinth of Magic.
What regions of Golarion still practice overt slavery? I understand it's been greatly dialed back and toned down in the setting as of late, so I'm no longer as sure of the answer as I used to be.
Any help you can provide would be greatly appreciated! Bonus points if it's also a hot, arid environment.
Also, what other region most parallels the "dark continent" of Ankoku Tairiku, at least in reputation as a "mysterious and dangerous land known for producing powerful warriors?"
For the last point, Belkzen seems to fit pretty well. And they did have slaves, though I do not know what the current state is.
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NoxiousMiasma, I would argue that Andoran would do conquest slavery, due to their societal fetish for "Freedom and democracy" it would be considered taboo to individually own slaves. HOWEVER I could easily seem them doing prison slavery, most people do see them as the "Fantasy Merica" and we allow prison slavery.
Now the idea of slaves taken from conquest and war in Oprak has ben thinking, because Oprak is a mostly "monsterous" nation, and those they take prisoner would be Molthunian and other local humans/human-adjacent peoples. IN Rome, at least, I know it was possible for these sorts of slaves to not only be freed, but even made citizens. Makes me wonder about a human/human like minority in Oprak.
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Do the slavers have to be human? Duergar, hobgoblins and drow are obvious candidates.
NoxiousMiasma, I would argue that Andoran would do conquest slavery, due to their societal fetish for "Freedom and democracy" it would be considered taboo to individually own slaves. HOWEVER I could easily seem them doing prison slavery, most people do see them as the "Fantasy Merica" and we allow prison slavery.
Now the idea of slaves taken from conquest and war in Oprak has ben thinking, because Oprak is a mostly "monsterous" nation, and those they take prisoner would be Molthunian and other local humans/human-adjacent peoples. IN Rome, at least, I know it was possible for these sorts of slaves to not only be freed, but even made citizens. Makes me wonder about a human/human like minority in Oprak.
Yeah, that's why I mentioned them doing the more... institutionalised forms of forced labour, and called out Cheliax instead as being the place doing debt-indenture.
As for the idea of an Opraki freeman minority of non-goblinoids, that makes some sense... However, IRL, war captives historically were often treated very badly indeed, and generally the more of a fight they put up before losing, the worse they got treated. Like, maybe Oprak's managed to reject that (very easy) cruelty, but generally, say, Ancient Greek captives did not stay if they found freedom, which they only rarely did without escaping.
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Do the slavers have to be human? Duergar, hobgoblins and drow are obvious candidates.I don't think the drow even exist anymore. Pretty sure they had to retcon them away with the remaster due to IP conflicts with the other company.
The Drow don't exist anymore and neither do the Duergar, the Duergar have been replaced by the Hryngar who are subterranean mean Dwarves who are into usury and multi-level-marketing rather than slavery. We haven't met the subterranean Elves yet, but the report is that they're going to be a lot nicer than the Drow were.
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1 NoxiousMiasma, thank you for parsing my poorly typed response.
2 yeah, anyone willing to own another human being is going to abuse that power. I can't imagine any form of slavery that doesn't encourage cruel abuses even in what most would claim are "reasonable" people.
Now the idea of slaves taken from conquest and war in Oprak has ben thinking, because Oprak is a mostly "monsterous" nation, and those they take prisoner would be Molthunian and other local humans/human-adjacent peoples. IN Rome, at least, I know it was possible for these sorts of slaves to not only be freed, but even made citizens. Makes me wonder about a human/human like minority in Oprak....
As for the idea of an Opraki freeman minority of non-goblinoids, that makes some sense... However, IRL, war captives historically were often treated very badly indeed, and generally the more of a fight they put up before losing, the worse they got treated. Like, maybe Oprak's managed to reject that (very easy) cruelty, but generally, say, Ancient Greek captives did not stay if they found freedom, which they only rarely did without escaping.
In my PF2-converted Ironfang Invasion campaign, my players objected so strongly to the slave-taking in the hobgoblin culture that would become Oprak that they declared they would not make peace until all war captives were free. I created a thread, How can I remove slavery from Ironfang Invasion?, to gather ideas. Most ideas I tried were not enough. The campaign ending changed the adventure path so much that Oprak is not a nation in my campaign world. Instead, it is a province of Nirmathas subject to the no-slavery rules of Nirmathas.
PossibleCabbage brought up in comment #8 of my removing-slavery thread the different degrees of enslaving:
There's probably a big enough difference between "the systematic enslavement of a bunch of people" or "a slave based economy" and "forced labor by prisoners of war".
The Born of Battle article in the back of Fangs of War says,
Slavery is as ingrained in hobgoblin society as much as war, yet hobgoblins are not known for participating in the slave trade in the same way as duergar, gnolls, or even evil humans. Hobgoblins take slaves to impose their order on others, assert their dominance, and spread suffering. Most hobgoblin armies leave dangerous or menial tasks to these prisoners, allowing the hobgoblins to more efficiently focus on martial endeavors. When slaves fall ill or no longer serve their purpose, they are simply killed or are crippled and left for dead.
The primary exception to this rule is the hobgoblin slaving organization known as the Iron Ring. These slavers participate in and promote the slave trade as a business instead of simply a means of exploiting prisoners of war. ...
Ravingdork's query about slave-holding nations was to find a setting for an escaped slave character akin to Morgiana from Magi: The Labyrinth of Magic. Morgiana had an abusive master in a place with legal chattel slavery, so war captive in forced labor would be a poor fit unless a particular overseer over a work gang had singled out the Morgiana character for extra suffering.
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Falcon's Hollow (Andoran) was supposedly in a country where slavery was very explicitly and proudly illegal, but that didn't stop it happening. Anywhere that the boss is in charge and nobody is in a position to stop him, you can get something that might as well be slavery. Doesn't have to be an isolated village; could be a ship, a trading caravan, a castle in the centre of a city.
With Cheliax no longer being the go-to nation for enslaving halflings (Thrune would just wink wink about conscription and debt inheritance) It seems that a traditional group of people who insist that 'Freedom is the right of all sentiment beings' would no doubt get labeled terrorists when they try to 'free the slaves'
Unless the group wants to become a bunch of super lawyers who do a LA Law style game where they loophole their way to victory.
@Zoken. I think you swerved just a bit too hard into what is going on IRL these days. Roleplaying heroes is that yes, we can do something good in the fantasy realm and not turn into murder hobos.
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Ravingdork's query about slave-holding nations was to find a setting for an escaped slave character akin to Morgiana from Magi: The Labyrinth of Magic. Morgiana had an abusive master in a place with legal chattel slavery, so war captive in forced labor would be a poor fit unless a particular overseer over a work gang had singled out the Morgiana character for extra suffering.
For big chunks of pre-modern history IRL, "war captives" definitely included "anyone who was in this city when we captured it and didn't die or escape" - I could see a Morgiana equivalent being enslaved young when her hometown was captured, and getting taken as part of the "pay" of a specific soldier - pre-modern economies didn't often have huge amounts of money flowing, so it was pretty common for armies - not having the logistics to actually pay everyone in coin - to instead pay at least part of a campaign's wages in stuff they stole from their enemies, so a war captive could definitely still be one specific guy's property.