Friday, February 10, 2006

Slavery And Population Dynamics

02/10/2006

From a post at the Player Forums, regarding the plausibility of creating Sharath as a playable city:

“This game isn’t really set up to support a town like Sharath. Any non-collared pakra’a would be rounded up and enslaved by press gangs, Dhe’nar could kill with impunity, ect.”

It’s constant comments like this that make most Dhe’nar in GemStone a self-congratulating private roleplay society, where they love themselves, and most others groan and try to ignore them when they “roleplay” in public.

Now, ignoring the fact that the prime argument against making Sharath a playable area is that it would utterly destroy the mystique of the Holy Mountain at the heart of the Ash Jungle…

No society with a very low population that gives birth at barely replacement rate could absorb a constant influx of slaves. Period. End of argument. It cannot be done.

Very soon, there would be an order of magnitude more slaves than slave owners, and more resources would be spent supporting slaves than supporting the society ostensibly “controlling” them. The Dhe’nar would “slave-own” themselves into extinction.

Also, how does the constant harnessing of slaves help them reach their goal of obtaining the power of the Arkati? It doesn’t, even though that is ostensibly the society’s prime goal.

The Obsidian Tower version of Dhe’nar isn’t a culture - it’s a B&D power fantasy. It does not even attempt to create a remotely plausible society.

There’s a reason Dhe’nar were excluded from the game’s Dark Elf Cultural Festival.

Dhe’nar are slave owners, yes. But at least this site attempts to present that aspect of their society in a sensible fashion, and it isn’t the defining characteristic of their society. It’s something the Dhe’nar do to survive and accomplish their goals - nothing more, nothing less.
To the Dhe’nar, slavery should be a tool, not an obsessive fetish.

The Dhe’nar as presented on Dhenar.com are cold, cruel (by the standards of other cultures) and heartless, yes, but they’re simultaneously mystical, devout, and noble.

The Dhe’nar -can- be more than a group of leatherbound halfling-disturbers who speak in unpronounceable strings of apostrophes.

Sunday, October 09, 2005

Slavery Overview

10/09/2005

Sharath, the home of the Dhe’nar, is a blasted rock in the middle of dense, resource-poor jungle. They chose this place to live in – it was not thrust upon them. They obviously have a deeply ascetic set of values. They choose to live in a harsh environment in order to test themselves. They live modestly, and do not shirk a hard lifestyle. Because of their decimated population, they utilize slave labor to feed their people. Otherwise, most Dhe’nar would have to become farmers in order to merely survive, and the downward spiral of their civilization would begin.

The use of house slaves is seen as conceited - the Dhe’nar do not tolerate such laziness. Slaves are needed primarily for food and construction purposes. If you are too lazy to even keep your home clean, then you are not Dhe’nar, you’re a spoiled weakling.

Slave raids on the the villages of the local savages are mostly a thing of the past. This was initially the only method of procuring slaves, after the Great Fire left the Dhe’nar in a weakened state. The locals quickly learned, however, that resistance never won success, and instead only increased their casualties. Many non-elven generations later, the Dhe’nar themselves have a bountiful supply of slave laborers, many of whom were born into slavery, and the local tribes often provide new slaves as tribute. This tribute is mainly comprised of young children that the primitive tribes do not have the resources to support at the moment. They find that offering their children to the Dhe’nar is preferable to abandoning the children, or risking them dying of starvation. Slave raiding is therefore no longer a required function of the Warrior Caste, although they may still engage in punitive raids against troublesome tribes wherein slaves might be taken if it is felt that such is necessary to deliver the proper message.

Regardless of their reasons for slavery, and despite the fact that their slaves are often treated better than the free peasants of other nations, the simple fact that the Dhe’nar condone slavery immediately paints them as evil and corrupt to many of those they encounter outside their homeland. The Dhe’nar, unwilling to debate the practice of slavery with soft, spoiled outsiders who do not and cannot understand the harsh realities of life in Sharath, deal with the stereotype in their fashion. They remain silent and aloof, ignoring those who would call them evil for doing what they must out of necessity. This, of course, further promotes their stereotype as cold and arrogant, but the Dhe’nar have long since stopped worrying about how outsiders see them, as it is irrelevant to their goals.

Slavery In The Canon

10/09/2005

“Because of their small numbers, they developed the stealth and merciless raiding parties that later became a hallmark of their society. They learned to take slaves to augment the worker caste. Slowly the government was restored to power, this time with a group, the Obsidian Council, to guide the way.”

People enjoy pointing to the tradition of slavery amongst the Dhe’nar as making the culture entirely evil, without ever asking the one important question this begs –

“Would the Dhe’nar own slaves if they didn’t have to?”

We are given no direct answer to this in the official histories, but based on the cause for slavery – dangerously low Dhe’nar population – we can assume that no, they would not, since according to the official documents, they did not practice slavery until after their population was devastated.

They acquire slaves for labor, because they do not have enough people to perform basic jobs such as farming and construction themselves. If the Dhe’nar released all their slaves and devoted a significant proportion of their society to manual labor, their society would collapse.

There is no mention of how slaves are treated, whether manumission (the act of freeing a slave) exists, and if it does, under what conditions, and so on.

It seems likely, however, that slaves are treated well, seeing as they are a vital workforce, and arbitrary mistreatment of them would accomplish nothing but a degradation of the work they do.

And it would seem likely, due to the status of the Khanshael, that manumission does exist, since apparently they were once slaves, but are no longer.

Thus it stands to reason that any slave who shows skill and intelligence is able to free himself from servitude and achieve a higher status in Dhe’nar society.

Also, considering the fact that slaves are acquired from scattered jungle villages, rather than civilized nations, it is not implausible that life as a slave amongst the Dhe’nar is of higher quality than life amongst the primitive jungle tribes.