Slavery....in Space!

[Blue Ghost]

Because I was known for doing that in the past. I still think about it when tangential subjects like this come up. I was just amazed that the parents didn't come and see what was going on, and shut the whole thing down. We were in the dining room which was next to the kitchen, separated by a pocket sliding door. I guess they were busy watching TV. Whatever. It's not something I would ever tolerate again, and I'm still puzzled why he ran that adventure like that right then and there.

I don't have too much more to say about it. I just didn't get it with that guy. It's like he didn't even know NOT to run that kind of adventure with that kind of company in that house. Oh well.

 

[BillDowns]

Odd that there is a similar thread over on TheRPGSite. What's up with slavery lately?

For myself, I don't see slavery as any more repulsive than piracy or drug running. Historical piracy - not sure about today's flavor - usually involved brutal murders, rape, and some degree of slavery. It's not all nice and sugary like Disney's Treasure Planet.

 

[aramis]

Odd that there is a similar thread over on TheRPGSite. What's up with slavery lately?

Don't know that it's the trigger, but it's an interesting correlation - a number of news shows have had slavery as a topic in the last 45 days. Mostly involving prostitution rings.

 

[sabredog]

Bladerunner replicants are slaves, and look what happens to them if they decide they don't want to be slaves anymore.

This applies to worlds in Traveller since the technology exists to create biological machines - androids/replicants, call them what you will. I've used replicants on many a TL9-11 world IMTU.

Then there are the tank grown in-vitro fertilised second class citizens as presented in Space: Above and Beyond (ignore the war with the chiggs and concentrate on the struggle between humans, tanks and machines and you have quite an interesting setting).
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There are many interesting ways to get slavery of some sort into Traveller.

I had a group once play in a campaign which began with them taken by slavers (influenced by Enemy Mine) and forced to work on hostile worlds.

I use all of the above in some form or another IMTU. Along with penal slavery for capital crimes inside the Terran Empire. Still, it isn't something that comes up in adventures very often except as stage dressing and background.

Gene Wolfe wrote a story back in the day called The HORARs Of War that has replicant-type vat-grown soldiers that were developed for fighting a particularly nasty war against aliens. Wolfe explained that the story was very much about his own 'Nam experience, and it fairly reeks of that when you read it. The idea of the HORAR stuck with me since I first wrote my campaign so I advanced the idea to include condemned prisoners being altered to fight as HORARs, too, along with some of the alterations being available to ordinary humans wanting to amp up their attributes.

One of my earliest adventures involved one of those condemned prisoners that had been rebuilt as a HORAR deserting and wanting the players to help him get to a world where the alterations could be modified so he could pass for human before the Marine chasers could catch up with him. This was before Blade Runner so when that came out I added in the civilian android types and the appropriate police hunters who keep them from running away from wherever they are 'assigned'. All of this HORAR and replicant stuff is kept outside the Terran Empire, since only penal slavery is legal within it. HORAR alteration and service as a sentence for those crimes is a touchy matter and is not widely known by the public as something that happens - t is more of an urban legend to the average joe.

As for the civilian replicants (or android as I have called them), whether or not they are legally considered slaves depends on two things IMTU: A) if they are not within the jurisdiction of the Empire then the Empire doesn't care so long as whatever is going on doesn't constitute a threat to the Empire's security or trade, and B) whether or not the android can be considered intelligent and self-aware. The simple Turing test is not enough - the android has to be capable of creative expression unique to itself.

I had some rules from somewhere that I think may have come from an ancient issue of Space Gamer or something that allowed me to custom build all sorts of androids from various components and programs. Or maybe I dreamt it since I can't find any traces of it in my myriad boxes of stuff, but I did find two android models I wrote up decades ago, along with about a dozen or so pages of and written rules for creating custom built vet-grown androids, along with the alterations available for use with regular people.

They are surprisingly comprehensive and good - which is why I think they were from somewhere else and these are my expanded and modded versions. If anyone wants to look them over I'll scan the pages and send them off.

The two examples I have are of animals grown to assist scouts and Marines in recon units. The first is grown from a regular house cat matrix (Scoutcat) and the second from a leopard (Neopard). Sometimes I'm really surprised at how stodgy my imagination has become over the years when I find stuff like this hidden away in my reams of loose notes from yesteryear.

In fact, I think I'll go post these two in the Ship's Locker with some expanded notes to make better sense of them.

 

[Fritz_Brown]

Bladerunner replicants are slaves, and look what happens to them if they decide they don't want to be slaves anymore.

Remember, though, that happened to them even if they stayed slaves. Their deaths were pre-programmed. It's why some of them would make such a desperate move as to run - they had nothing to lose by doing it.

The idea of the HORAR stuck with me since I first wrote my campaign so I advanced the idea to include condemned prisoners being altered to fight as HORARs, too,

Sounds similar to Legion of the Damned, by William C. Dietz. Not a really outstanding story, but it was interesting.

 

[sabredog]

In the original HORAR story the protagonist is a reporter who had himself altered to look and perform like a HORAR in order to be embedded with one of their units. He wanted to do an expose' kind of article on what the HORARs are like and the war - like I said, it (and the description of the fighting) reeks of Vietnam, and Wolfe said as much.

The line blurs between the HORARs and the reporter as to who is human or not, and that is more or less the point of the story. The idea that HORARs might be more human than anyone suspected (or was let on to believe by either the HORARs or the officials), and that someone could be turned into something that fooled even a HORAR led me to think about the penal aspect. Punishment battalions in WW2, etc....penal slavery you could earn your way out of, criminals given a choice of jail or the military, etc.. It all led to the obvious.

My paternal uncle was given that choice when he was a young juvenile delinquent in the late 50's - he was 18 and it was either real jail for yet another weekend brawl or join the service and keep a clean record - he joined the Marines, found he liked in and stayed for a couple terms, came back and became a cop. Granted it wasn't a capital offense that required he be condemned to physical alteration and then sent off to die on some backwater colony world, but some things need amping up a bit in scifi.

 

[Whipsnade]

Odd that there is a similar thread over on TheRPGSite. What's up with slavery lately?

I expect it's a result of Spielberg's Lincoln being in wide release. Also, I cannot recommend the movie more highly.

 

[aramis]

I expect it's a result of Spielberg's Lincoln being in wide release. Also, I cannot recommend the movie more highly.

Oh, and the release on DVD of Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter a few months back, too.

Things coming in waves.

 

[BlackBat242]

Odd that there is a similar thread over on TheRPGSite. What's up with slavery lately?

For myself, I don't see slavery as any more repulsive than piracy or drug running. Historical piracy - not sure about today's flavor - usually involved brutal murders, rape, and some degree of slavery. It's not all nice and sugary like Disney's Treasure Planet.

Exactly... even kidnapping can be considered a form of slavery. First you steal a human, then you sell him/her to a bidder.

That the bidder happens to be a family member/business associate/law-enforcement officer is irrelevant to the core of the act.

The degree is different, yes... just like selling someone to a brothel or "strict" mine-owner who needs diggers is different than selling them to a wealthy client who wants a personal servant/companion for his sick mother (no "sexual services" expected). The act, however, remains.


To me, and for most worlds in my games, all 3 offenses (kidnapping/piracy/slavery) are punished similarly... execution is the default sentence unless significant extenuating circumstances pertain.

 

[Carlobrand]

So ... what do you do when the robot asks you to rescue it?:devil:

 

[Timerover51]

The following is taken from Camp-Fire and Cotton-Field, by Thomas Knox, published in 1865, and downloaded from Project Gutenburg. Mr. Knox served as a war correspondent for the New York Herald during the Civil War. He has some interesting comments on the Southern views of slavery.

This taverner's wife and daughter professed an utter contempt for all white persons who degraded themselves to any kind of toil. Of course, their hostility to the North was very great. Beyond a slight supervision, they left every thing to the care of the negroes. A gentleman who was with me sought to make himself acquainted with the family, and succeeded admirably until, on one evening, he constructed a small toy to amuse the children. This was too much. He was skillful with his hands, and must therefore be a "mudsill." His acquaintance with the ladies of that household came to an end. His manual dexterity was his ruin.

Once he said the destruction of slavery would be unworthy a people who possessed any gallantry. "You will," he declared, "do a cruel wrong to many fine ladies. They know nothing about working with their hands, and consider such knowledge disgraceful. If their slaves are taken from them, these ladies will be helpless."

This woman respected and admired the North, because it was a region where labor was not degrading.

She had always opposed the Southern sentiment concerning labor, and educated her children after her own belief. While other boys were idling in the streets, she had taught her sons all the mysteries of the printing-office, and made them able to care for themselves. She was confident they would vindicate the correctness of her theory, by winning good positions in life. She believed slavery had assisted the development of the South, but was equally positive that its effect upon the white race was ruinous in the extreme.

 

[BlackBat242]

So ... what do you do when the robot asks you to rescue it?:devil:

If it has been formally recognized by a competent authority (not some fringe radical group... but by the Imperial/sector/subsector government,ISS, etc) as a sentient being with all the rights of any other citizen, then I'd rescue it (or at least report the problem to the local law... unless they were ignoring the problem).

 

[BlackBat242]

The following is taken from Camp-Fire and Cotton-Field, by Thomas Knox, published in 1865, and downloaded from Project Gutenburg. Mr. Knox served as a war correspondent for the New York Herald during the Civil War. He has some interesting comments on the Southern views of slavery.

This woman respected and admired the North, because it was a region where labor was not degrading.

She had always opposed the Southern sentiment concerning labor, and educated her children after her own belief. While other boys were idling in the streets, she had taught her sons all the mysteries of the printing-office, and made them able to care for themselves. She was confident they would vindicate the correctness of her theory, by winning good positions in life. She believed slavery had assisted the development of the South, but was equally positive that its effect upon the white race was ruinous in the extreme.

The last one is something I agree with... the act of owning slaves is as degrading to the owner as to the owned if not more so.

Any society in my Traveller game that tolerates slavery will inevitably show that moral degradation dressed up in the finery of "superiority".

 

[Fritz_Brown]

The following is taken from Camp-Fire and Cotton-Field, by Thomas Knox, published in 1865, and downloaded from Project Gutenburg.

Interesting stuff, timerover. And, it does give you a hook for even hi-TL slavery, as that status symbol of not having to do anything for yourself. As BlackBat notes, it would certainly take a totally decadent society (in a hi-TL setting) to maintain that. And, it could probably be taken down by adequately enterprising adventurers.

If it has been formally recognized by a competent authority (not some fringe radical group... but by the Imperial/sector/subsector government,ISS, etc) as a sentient being with all the rights of any other citizen, then I'd rescue it (or at least report the problem to the local law... unless they were ignoring the problem).

Or, if it might provide comic relief for the characters. (Marvin, C3P0, Kryten, etc.)

 

[rancke]

If it has been formally recognized by a competent authority (not some fringe radical group... but by the Imperial/sector/subsector government,ISS, etc) as a sentient being with all the rights of any other citizen, then I'd rescue it (or at least report the problem to the local law... unless they were ignoring the problem).

What if it is a sentient being without the rights of other sentient beings? The Imperium only acknowledges sentient lifeforms as protected beings, denying civil rights to robots.

Mind you, true AI is TL17, so only a few prototypes of sentient robots exist, mostly in cutting edge research laboratories. [The last bit is not canon, just my own stuff.]

IMTU there's an Old Darrian scout ship with a sentient AI in charge (Lon Geryen), and a small bunch of sentient doll-sized robots, both unknown to the general public. There are also the aforementioned experimental models, although I haven't made up any yet. I also think there may be a few computers infected by disembodied psionic gestalts, but again, I haven't had any crop up in the setting yet.


Hans

 

[atpollard]

Interesting stuff, timerover. And, it does give you a hook for even hi-TL slavery, as that status symbol of not having to do anything for yourself. As BlackBat notes, it would certainly take a totally decadent society (in a hi-TL setting) to maintain that. And, it could probably be taken down by adequately enterprising adventurers.

Wide spread use of Robots could have the same effect on a society ... any manual skill is beneath a person of quality, that is what machines are for!

Imagine the effect that would have on the skill rolls ... "Of course I am a qualified Starship Engineer, I am fully certified in Jump Fields, in Fusion Reactors, in Gravitics and in Advanced Life Support Systems. Just point me to your repair droids and I'll show you what I can do!"

"You don't actually pilot the ship yourself? Oh my, and here I thought, as Captain, you were a person of quality ... there will be no sale between us. Good day to you sir."

 

[BillDowns]

The following is taken from Camp-Fire and Cotton-Field, by Thomas Knox, published in 1865, and downloaded from Project Gutenburg. Mr. Knox served as a war correspondent for the New York Herald during the Civil War. He has some interesting comments on the Southern views of slavery.

Interesting but I would venture it was not indicative of the South as a whole. Less than half of the white populace were slave-owners. The majority then were poor dirt farmers. Some areas went very far in their dislike of slavery. West Virginia seceded from Virginia over that issue. The Appalachia region was pretty much anit slavery and anti war. In Alabama, Wilcox county even resisted war efforts and the state often raided for "conscripts".

 

[Carlobrand]

If it has been formally recognized by a competent authority (not some fringe radical group... but by the Imperial/sector/subsector government,ISS, etc) as a sentient being with all the rights of any other citizen, then I'd rescue it (or at least report the problem to the local law... unless they were ignoring the problem).

Now therein lies the rub. How do you become recognized if your owner doesn't believe you, or if you fear he might have you reprogrammed if you express that wish and thereby threaten his investment? For that matter, how do you prove you're sentient, and not just a very effective emulator? How does the player tell a sentient robot from one who's been instructed to say it's sentient for whatever nefarious reasons the owner might have, or from an advanced AI who's made a flawed logical deduction based on how the children treat it?

There's going to be a grey area between the achievement of sentience and its recognition, fueled in part by resistance and the fear of losing one's helpers, and in part by the fact that the boundary is likely to be fuzzy and that robots will evolve gradually. It's going to be one of those cases where, in this era they were indeed nonsentient and in this era some were indeed sentient - and in between the two eras we aren't entirely sure and may have been behaving disgracefully.

 

[Timerover51]

Interesting but I would venture it was not indicative of the South as a whole. Less than half of the white populace were slave-owners. The majority then were poor dirt farmers. Some areas went very far in their dislike of slavery. West Virginia seceded from Virginia over that issue. The Appalachia region was pretty much anit slavery and anti war. In Alabama, Wilcox county even resisted war efforts and the state often raided for "conscripts".

I would recommend that you read William Howard Russell's My Diary North and South and John Beauchamp Jones' A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital for a better view of how the South viewed manual labor. The views expressed were by persons in southwestern Tennessee and northern Mississippi. Similar views were expressed by slaveholders inn MIssouri. There were a number of areas in the South that were not in favor of secession, particularly what is now West Virginia and also eastern Tennessee around Knoxville. The volume quoted from and the other two works mentioned are all available as free downloads on the Internet.

Do not let the "Clerk" title in the Jones work fool you. His position was essentially the administrative head of the Confederate War Department, and his immediate superior was the Confederate Secretary of War.

 

[BillDowns]

Slaveholders in the antibellum South were the upper crust. They would not hold the same views as the lower classes, like my great-great grandfather. He was an Anabaptist preacher in Chilton County, Alabama, and inveighed against both slavery & the war. When his 3rd son went to Birmingham and volunteered for fight for the Confederacy, he disowned him.

I'm just saying you can't lump everyone into the same bucket.