Slavery is a common occurrence in the Warhammer World and has been found among numerous civilizations throughout history.
A Day in the Life
A slave's day starts when he is whipped awake from inadequate sleep, and thrown disgusting, half-rotten food, which he must fight over with his fellow slaves. The skaven go through the ranks, pulling out the bodies of those who died in the night and cutting them out of the chain. Sometimes the living slaves are allowed to feast on the bodies of the dead; for many slaves this becomes their greatest hope.[2a]
The day is filled with hard labour, of whatever sort the overseers need. Slaves who are not quickly put to back-breaking work become terrified, because that means that they have been chosen for some experiment, or as food. Those who die during the day are pulled from the chains when the overseers notice, which may not be until the work is over. It is hard to work chained to a corpse, but any slave who lets that slow him down can expect a flogging.[2a]
When the day’s work ends the survivors are thrown food to fight over once more, and then are allowed to drop into exhausted sleep where they stand.[2a]
It is a bleak, hopeless existence. For the most desperate of slaves, death becomes a more attractive option as time passes.[2a]
Little Known Facts
Many slaves of the skaven go mad, and a few even come to believe they are skaven. Whispered rumours among the slaves say that those who go truly mad are mutated into skaven as they sleep, and that the chains are lost during the mutation. Some slaves see this as their only hope of escape, and pretend to believe they are skaven in the hope that it will break their minds.[2a]
The skaven do not separate male and female slaves, and very occasionally a female slave becomes pregnant, although the poor nutrition and hard work make this unlikely. Carrying a child to term is even more unlikely, and human babies look like tasty treats to most skaven. Nevertheless, there are a handful of children in the tunnels, protected by a group of slaves as allies unbound by chains.[2a]
Races that use slaves
- The people of ancient Nehekhara used slaves to build many of their monuments
- The Skaven make extensive use Slave Rats, also called skavenslaves, enslaved members of their own kind as well as any other race they can overwhelm. These Slave Rats are the backbone of the Under-Empire.
- The Druchii are also heavily dependent on slaves and send their corsairs across the seas to acquire them.
- The Chaos Dwarfs used to enslave much of the greenskin races for manual labor. Even today, their industry and religion depends on a steady flow of slaves.
- The Ogres use enslaved Gnoblars and Giants in their armies.
- The men of Araby still practice slavery, while most of the other kingdoms of men have outlawed this practice.
- The Asrai have been known to kidnap Bretonnian children and turn them into servants who never grow up and think the elves are their masters.