An Aside On the Subject of Slavery and the Reversion
It should be understood that most of what follows are third and fourth-hand accounts; the work of much study, archeological and historical research, and educated supposition by the Covenant’s archival prefects and their most accomplished apostles. This alongside of more recent recordings made after the Era of Renovations. A period in time that stretched from the signing of the Manumission Memorandum in the year of our Lady, 2618 A.G.G. to the year of our Lady, 2629 A.G.G.
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Selection from an Audio Interview with Former Slave Ship Captain, Kofi Azibo of the Pastora
Recorded on the Second Day of Erele in the Second Month of Life’s Warmth at Mid-Day, 2631 A.G.G.
43 Minutes and 56 seconds Into Interview
ASHANTI:
“Captain Azibo, I’ve never understood how your lot were able to capture so many Assamians with so few men and limited arms. You only had what you could carry on the ship, after all.”
CAPTAIN KOFI:
“Dat’s not far from true. Some capin’s hulls were heavy wid coin to trade fo da tea and smooth fabrics from dem in Murrlel. And whatever room left, day cram up wid slaves. No extra room fo mo arms. I’s was no mo different, even tho I had different weight. We never would have made it far if de “Samians wasn’t up for selling demselves to us. Too many of ‘em to take alone. Der was always some of de tribe leaders who wouldn’t trade wit us. But we ain’t give a damn bout dem. De ones who made der home on de coast made out plenty good in trade.
“We always had our hull filled more with de cloths, ironstuffs and wines dan weapons. Had to have sometin’ to trade to the ‘Samians for slaves. Widout all dat to swap wid to de ‘Samian middlemen-”
ASHANTI:
“Middlemen? You mean the local traders and whatnot?”
CAPTAIN KOFI:
“Yea yea. We could never‘ve hoped to get more dan a few. Specaly with de dog-folk. Day was more dan a handful wid de way they’d claw thru you.”
ASHANTI:
“Fox.”
CAPTAIN KOFI:
“Say you wut now?”
ASHANTI:
“The ma’jong. They’re fox-kin. Not dogs.”
CAPTAIN KOFI:
“Sure. If dat what you like. Careful not to let yo heart bleed on de floor.”
ASHANTI:
“Does that bother you for some reason? To be told to correct yourself over a factual truth about a people you’ve spent your life dehumanizing? People you forced to suffer elephantiasis, dysentery, dropsy, fevers, digestive diseases and Goddess knows what else in the bowels of your…disease-ridden ship?”
CAPTAIN KOFI:
A dry laugh that sounds like the captain can be heard on the recording. “Look, Ms. Ashuntee Fargee-”
ASHANTI:
“-Ashanti Faraji.”
CAPTAIN KOFI:
“Whatev’ you say. You drink da coffe’ everyday?”
ASHANTI:
“Sure.”
CAPTAIN KOFI:
“Use oil lamps?”
ASHANTI:
“Doesn’t everyone?”
CAPTAIN KOFI:
“Den how you gon’ judge me? How you gon’ pretend like you care? Dose beans that make yo coffe’? Got by de slaves I bring. The cottons that make dat wick in yo lamp? Got by de slaves I bring. Der no part of yo life dat isn’t made better wid my slaves. So don’t cum down here wid yo high mind ideal and yo recorder to look down yo nose at me, all de while livin’ off my back.
ASHANTI:
You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.
…
CAPTAIN KOFI:
“Day tools. De folk and de dogs. Day less dan people and day here for a purpose…to serve. You tink it better had I not worked? My family go hungry? You tink it better I suffer fo dem? Would you done better? Don’t be foolish wid yo down talk. You do no better everyday. And you talk of dem even less when der no coin or fame to be had.
“You only sad fo dem when it convenient to be. You see, I’m better dan you. I don’t pretend tings are different dan day be.”
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3008 A.G.G. – 3130 A.G.G. (1,503 Years Ago)
The Fourth Epoch, The Living World of Mundus
World Wide
In the wake of the fall of Assami, its once proud survivors who wanted not to stay to eke out a living in their dying homeland, but wanted to attempt to find something better, quickly found themselves turned into a wondering peoples. Unable to find respite anywhere, even among their former allies, as economies were fragile after the war and not many could bear the strain of taking on hundreds of thousands of refugees. They were regarded as little more than an economic drain and no city in the south really wished to house any number of them.
Over time most wrongly started to look upon them as thieves, troublemakers or mischievous due to the nomadic nature of their burgeoning new culture.
A culture that found itself splitting in two. Those of a darker complexion among the malani slowly found for themselves a place on the outskirts of most societies. A place that offered to them less than the average, but enough that they nonetheless fought tirelessly for it.
But it didn’t take long for the leaders of these displaced people to came to the realization that things would get far worse for them as a people before they got better if they stayed on this road. So they decided that they had little choice than to separate themselves from society at large. They ceased looking for support from people that didn’t want them around. They stopped accepting the scraps that were handed to them by those who despised them.
They were far too proud of a people for that. Their culture too rich to be underwritten so carelessly. Nothing would be given them by the world. And they would ask for nothing. Eventually their many clans congregated in the unclaimed deserts of Alphava and slowly conquered its environment.
Today, the Desert People’s cities are spread from Assami’s arid western tip to the central desert plains; having phenix’d themselves into a singular thriving culture with a way of life that grows deeper with each passing year.
Sadly, their former kinsmen were not nearly as fortunate. The fairer skinned balani along with the fox-like ma’jong found themselves in the most uncomfortable position of being favored by many as servants…indentured or otherwise.
Eventually, and unfortunately, this led the lost peoples’ places in society de-evolving. Many non-Assamians began to take advantage of their kind natures and use them as tools to do with as they pleased. And far too rarely did either the balani or the ma’jong speak against those who offered them work with the one hand while slapping them down with the other; accepting housing or pay regardless of the circumstances. Even as their patrons’ requests became more and more unreasonable over time. As the offered lodgings became more and more sparce. And as the pay became more and more scarce.
The fear of losing whatever meal ticket they were fortunate enough to come by was too great. And sadly, it’s easy to see why this manner of servitude became the foundation of the chattel slave trade and the slave casts as we know them today.
And when “voluntary servitude” ceased to be a viable way to procure Assamians, other methods came to the fore.
At its height, numerous methods were used to procure chattel. Each more deplorable than the last. The Assamians who fell into slavery solely because of extreme poverty, such as with children who were given away or sold by their starving parents or through flesh trades conducted via kinship arrangements, were the lucky ones.
Violence tended to be the most common form of obtaining fresh bodies. Prisoners of war, slave raids, and kidnapping were the rule, not the exception. Vast caravans of child slaves were recorded after several of the larger documented raids – upwards of two chiliad in number – by the slave traders who marched them in chains moving eastwards along the long unnamed roads south of the Pass of Myths whose waters flowed underneath the Land-Bridges of the Eight Kings towards Bunceton.
The point is, that there was no single form of enslaving the ma’jong and the balani.
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The cruel fates of the Assamians were not the only changes that time visited upon the mortals of the world with the conclusion of the Ten and Five Year Wars. The Magi, dwarves and swalii were not spared the degeneration of this new world’s phobic views of all things that were different from the accepted norms.
Views of technological progress grew similar to those of hekan progress in the eyes of the oratory. Leading a not insignificant number of people being soured on them as well. Especially in the shadow of the Technological Revolution. The in-depth study of the nature of the Great Expanse; the study of advanced flight far beyond hydrogen filled airships; the combining flesh and living machine…such ideas had ventured too far afield, far too quickly, for too long to the common mind.
The destruction of Assami, the partial collapse of dwarven society and loss of many dwarven cities during the Fifteen Year War were cited by many authoritative minds as the direct effect of flirting with scientific studies that ventured too close to the realm of Dįvįnë knowledge. Too similar to the Magickal gifts that were believed to be too alien to the human condition to be allowed to exist beyond what the oratory or the abbey deemed necessary.
To this day, it’s the only known subject that the two religious superpowers have ever agreed upon; their only common ground.
The Technological Revolution was brought to a swift end by the holy powerhouses in the form of an aggressive Reversion. Weaving heka was harshly criminalized if done outside of governmental mandates or royal decrees, sufficiently advanced technologies were either descaled, sealed away or destroyed outright, and unconventional scientific study was outlawed. Sanctions that were already in place on Magi who were born and lived outside of the Link were doubled over and any known Magi who dared to rebel against these decrees were detained.
A dark age of fear, religious paranoia and hatred washed over the world. A period we never fully escaped.
Provoked heavily by the Oratory, a great purge was executed in which many advanced technologies, research developments and writings outside of the swalli homeland were heavily sought after and destroyed. Many swalli were even put to the sword simply for being what they were.
And all that’s without giving mention to the Great Culling…which was an unprecedented massacre all to itself.
Not willing to part with the apparatuses which defined their individual cultures, or the Magick which gave their lives meaning, the vast majority of the dwarves retreated either to their underground cities, or to the safety of the hyper-advanced, Hesijua. Not often to venture out of either again. With many Hesijuan natives following suit. While the Magi returned to the welcoming arms of the Link.