A Human slave, huddled in misery.
A slave is an individual of any of the intelligent mortal races, who is forced to labour for and obey another under the threat of physical harm and is considered to be their legal property. Slavery is a common institution in the Known World and has been found among numerous civilisations throughout history.
Slavery and the Forces of Chaos[]
Slavery is widespread among the barbaric Northmen tribes of Men in Norsca, the Chaos Wastes and the Eastern Steppes that worship the Dark Gods of Chaos. Among the peoples of the Old World and the Far East uncorrupted by Chaos, it is a common view to regard all servants of Chaos as essentially slaves to their deities fickle whims in one way or another.
Kurgan[]
The Kurgan of the Eastern Steppes are also notorious slavers. As part of a battle's spoils, they collect the survivors and tattoo them on the face with the marks of a particular tribal ruler or "zar." The ink used almost always includes some amount of warpstone to start the mutation process and to dissolve the slave's previous loyalties.[1a]
A slave is considered an investment. The zar must feed and clothe his slaves, keeping them healthy and hale enough to serve him. In exchange for his efforts, he expects his slaves to fight. Rival tribes will pit their slaves against each other in fighting rings. Since they harvest slaves from the same places, it is all too common to have former comrades fight each other in bloody deathmatches. Those who win these contests are accorded more freedoms and greater status, and those with continued success can throw off the shackles of slavery to become a full member of the tribe, possibly even one day displacing the zar himself.[1a]
Norsca[]
Norscan slavers still prowl the seas in search of victims, often trading with other slave-keeping societies.[1b] Slaves, often called "thralls" among the Norscans, are used in multiple ways in Norscan society, and are primarily comprised of people taken from the Empire and Bretonnia as well as other Norscans from subdued tribes.[1c]
The life of a thrall varies depending on the capturing tribe. Mostly, thralls are used as labour, building longships or working in the frozen fields. Some female thralls are taken as fourth or fifth wives, selected for their appearance rather than their station. But for most thralls, their ultimate fate is to be sacrificed to curry the favour of the Dark Gods.
When a new dragonship is finished, the Norscans line the approach to the sea with screaming slaves, to crush the life out of them as the warriors push the boat into the waters.[1c]
Before a new raid, a thrall may be disembowelled, their guts flung out to the seas to appease the Daemons of the waters, whilst their corpse is strung up on the mast to feed the crows and other spirits of death. Norscan Seers kill thralls with impunity, using their innocent blood to conjure spirits from the Otherworld. Though some thralls may receive decent treatment in some tribes, most face a gruesome fate.[1c]
Slavery and the Chaos Dwarfs[]
The Chaos Dwarf empire in the Dark Lands depends on slavery more than any other institution to maintain its economy.[2a] No race is safe from the Dawi-Zharr and their depredations. Slaves work in their industries and serve as sacrifices to their god, Hashut, the Father of Darkness. Slaves are exploited fully, with their bodies exhausted in constant labour and their souls used in the infernal craft of the Daemonsmiths.
Greenskins make up the bulk of the slaves of the Chaos Dwarfs, since most of them are native to the mountains surrounding the Dark Lands and their physique is able to withstand the noxious fumes and murderous conditions better than most other intelligent mortal species.[2a]
Hobgoblins, for having sided with the Chaos Dwarfs during the revolt of the Black Orcs against the Dawi-Zharr long ago, have a favoured position in the Chaos Dwarfs' empire, and are often used as overseers for other slaves.[2a]
Giants are broken and used as tools of war, transformed into monstrous Chaos Siege Giants. Ogres are treasured for their brute strength, as are some of the beasts of the Chaos Wastes. As neither of these beasts can ever truly be broken, most Chaos Dwarfs are extra careful when dealing with enslaved specimens.[2a]
Men are valued for their adaptiveness and their quick wits.[2a] Elves, when captured, find themselves subjected to torturous extraction of alchemical unguents.[2a]
The one race that the Chaos Dwarfs cannot abide for long as slaves are the Skaven, only taking them alive to be worked almost immediately to death or used as paltry mass sacrifices, as they are simply too devious. The Chaos Dwarfs have learned from bitter experience that any group of the ratmen that are enslaved might well conceal untold spies, saboteurs and even deliberately infected plague-carriers placed in their midst.[2b]
The Dwarfs of the west, if taken alive, are often used for the darkest of rites in honour to Hashut.[2b]
Slavery and the Elves[]
High Elves[]
Among the Asur, slaves and "indentured servants" are most common in the capital of Lothern, which is the only place in the Ten Kingdoms of Ulthuan that allows their use.[9a] Officially, slaves are only allowed to be sold for the purpose of transhipment. In reality, most of the major High Elven merchant houses have switched to slave labour for menial tasks. Most of these slaves are Men.[9b]
Wood Elves[]
The Asrai have been known to kidnap Bretonnian children and turn them into servants who never grow up and think the Wood Elves are their rightful masters.
Dark Elves[]
A Human slave of the Dark Elves
The Druchii depend on slavery as the primary economic institution that keeps their dark realm of Naggaroth both functioning and able to maintain itself in a permanent state of war. While the people of ancient Nagarythe were peerless warriors, they had little knowledge in how to build a self-sufficient civilisation. For this reason, Malekith's realm depends on raiding other peoples for food, or to capture slaves to work for them.[13a]
Slaves are often treated as easily-replaceable commodities by the Dark Elves and very little is done to care for their well-being.[12b] Slaves are marked with a rune that signifies the identity of their master above the heart.[12b] Some find themselves disembowelled and their corpse parts used as gruesome decorations, while others are sacrificed to the hunger of Khaine, the god of murder and war. Most perish from plagues, the harsh weather of Naggaroth and simple malnutrition.
The Beastmasters are tasked with enforcing order among the Dark Elves' slaves, as the Druchii see mortal races like Men, Beastmen, Dwarfs and Greenskins as no different from animals.[12a] Dwarf slaves are among the most valuable commodities, being as expensive as Dragon eggs. High Elf slaves are especially treasured and many Dark Elven noble households will part with large parts of their stock or even less fortunate family members to gain possession of one.[14a]
Escaped slaves and slave rebellions are a constant threat to the Dark Elves and serve as another tool of Malekith to keep his followers alert and weed out the weak among them.[12c]
The Naggarothi city of Karond Kar serves as the capital of the Naggarothi slave trade.
Slavery and the Greenskins[]
Among the tribes of the Greenskins, Goblins are often forced into serving as menial labourers for the larger and stronger Orcs. This system has been compared to slavery, but since Greenskins have no real laws or conceptions of a true society, slavery is not truly an organised institution.[3a]
It is possible for exceptional Goblins, like Grom the Paunch, to rise high above the station Goblins have in regular Greenskin tribal societies and even become the warbosses of mixed Greenskin tribes.[3a]
Slavery and Mankind[]
Ancient Nehekhara[]
The people of old Nehekhara were one of the first Human civilisations to make use slavery.[1b] The Tomb King Settra's ancient armies enslaved numerous tribes of Men that crossed the path of their expanding empire and brought them to Nehekhara to serve as a workforce.[10a]
The kings and dynasties that came after Settra followed his example, using slaves to erect magnificent monuments for themselves and the necropoleis they constructed. Their slave hunts reached as far north as the lands of the the Old World that would one day become the Empire.[10b] Slaves tended to the more menial duties so that the warriors of Nehekhara could concentrate fully on battle and on earning their place in the afterlife at the side of their monarch.[10c]
Even after having been forced to rise as Undead by the Great Necromancer Nagash's Great Ritual, the Tomb Kings still wage war to capture slaves. These are used to restore the populations of the now-empty ancient cities of Nehekhara to make it seem as if still-living people occupied it.[11a]
Grand Cathay[]
Grand Cathay once bought slaves from the city-states of ancient Nehekhara.[17a] However, the current legality or state of slavery in the Celestial Empire is unknown.
Araby[]
The Arabyans are one of the few nations of Men that still practice slavery.[1b] The city of Copher houses one of the largest slave markets in the vicinity of the Old World, and most of the various emirs and sheikhs that rule the Arabyans have hundreds of slaves who service their every whim.[8a] Much of the Arabyan military is also made up of expendable slave-soldiers, known as Mamelukes.[15]
Old World[]
Although today's Tileans are unlikely to be direct descendants of the citizen of Tylos, who presumably perished in the cataclysm that engulfed their city millennia ago, they might well be descended from the tribal folk who tended the crops and grazed the flocks that fed and clothed the inhabitants of the nearby metropolis. One legends records a tithe of slaves levied on the tribes which had to be sent every year to Tyleus to labour on its great building projects.[16a]
Most other Human realms of the Old World have outlawed slavery. Despite this, slaves are sometimes traded in major port cities, like Sartosa, Magritta and Marienburg.[1b][18]
Within the Empire, slavery is forbidden.[1b] Bretonnia's feudal serfdom is sometimes compared to a form of chattel slavery, but differs in several important legal ways, including that Bretonnian serfs cannot be bought and sold separately from the land which they work.[1b]
Slavery and the Skaven[]
The Skaven's entire economy revolves around the use of slave labour. The Skaven clans make extensive use of Slave Rats, also called Skavenslaves, who are enslaved members of their own kind as well as slaves taken from the communities of any other mortal race they can overwhelm. These Skavenslaves represent the economic and military backbone of the Under-Empire. Without slaves, Skaven society would collapse.[5a]
These miserable wretches are bought and sold for Warpstone Tokens on the slave blocks in the major subterranean Skaven strongholds of the Under-Empire. When they arrive at their new homes they find endless toil and pain: clearing new tunnels, feeding the Rat Ogres, becoming food for their masters, and serving as test subjects for some new Clan Skryre or Clan Moulder enterprise are only a few of the many possible fates that await Skavenslaves.[5a]
A slave's day among the Skaven, regardless of clan, starts when they are whipped awake from inadequate sleep, and thrown disgusting, half-rotten food, which they must fight over with their fellow slaves. The Skaven overseers then go through the ranks, pulling out the bodies of those who died in the night and cutting them out of group's chains. Sometimes the living slaves are allowed to feast on the bodies of the dead; for many slaves this becomes their greatest hope.[5a]
The Skaven slave's 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 to serve 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 them down can expect a flogging.[5a]
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 until the next morning, when the entire cycle begins anew.[5a]
It is a bleak, hopeless existence. For the most desperate of Skaven slaves, death becomes a more attractive option as time passes.[5a]
Many Human slaves of the Skaven go mad, and a few actually 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 of the Skaven see this as their only hope of escape, and pretend to believe they are Skaven in the hope that it will break their minds.[5a]
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 Under-Empire's tunnels, protected by a group of slaves as allies unbound by chains.[5a]
Slavery and the Ogres[]
The Ogre Kingdoms depend on the enslavement of a small, diminutive Greenskin species related to Goblins known as Gnoblars. Gnoblars act as servants, cannon fodder, ammunition and sometimes even food for their far larger owners.[6a] As marks of ownership, Ogres mark the ears of favoured Gnoblar slaves with their bitemarks.[6a]
Ogres are also known to take slaves from the other intelligent mortal races. Butchers use them as sacrifices to the Great Maw, while other Ogres simply keep them around for a snack. These slaves often have miserable lives, as Ogres often resort to violence and torture to maintain order and few races are as hardy as they are.[7a]
The most treasured slaves of an Ogre tribe are the Slavegiants. Possession of a descendant of the ancient Skytitans is a sign of great status in the Ogre Kingdoms for any Ogre Tyrant and several try to coerce a wandering Giant into their tribe by more means than simple violence.[6b]
Sources[]
- 1: Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 2nd Edition: Tome of Corruption (RPG)
- 2: Tamurkhan: Throne of Chaos (8th Edition)
- 3: Warhammer Armies: Orcs and Goblins (8th Edition)
- 3a: pg. 8
- 4: Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 2nd Edition: Children of the Horned Rat (RPG)
- 5: Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 2nd Edition: Career Compendium (RPG)
- 5a: pg. 193
- 6: Warhammer Armies: Ogre Kingdoms (6th Edition)
- 7: White Dwarf 310 (UK)
- 7a: pg. 102
- 8: Warhammer Fantasy: Rulebook (6th Edition)
- 8a: pg. 167
- 9: Sword of Caledor (Novel), by William King
- 10: Warhammer Armies: Tomb Kings (8th Edition)
- 11: Warhammer Armies: Tomb Kings (6th Edition)
- 11a: pg. 9
- 12: Warhammer Armies: Dark Elves (6th Edition)
- 13: Warhammer Armies: Dark Elves (7th Edition)
- 13a: pg. 14
- 14: Warhammer Armies: Dark Elves (8th Edition)
- 14a: pg. 10
- 15: The Red Duke (Novel) by C.L. Werner
- 15a: pp. 161-163
- 16: Warhammer Armies: Dogs of War (5th Edition)
- 16a: pg. 75
- 17: Gotrek and Felix: The Serpent Queen (Novel) by Josh Reynolds
- 17a: Ch. 13
- 18: The Voyage South (Short Story) by Nicola Griffith