Slaves and Slavery

Although Emperor Alexius has begun taking steps to restrict the
practice of slavery in the Known Worlds, there are a number of crimes
for which the specified punishment remains slavery under the Imperial
legal code. The Church frowns severely upon slavery in principle,and
strictly forbids generational slavery, but otherwise the trade in
human flesh /is/ perfectly legal (although there are variations in
local law from world to world). This is why the Muster slavers are
allowed to exist at all: when people are sentenced to slavery for a
crime, they are sold to the Muster for ultimate dispersal (have to
keep the mines on Bannockburn and the armies on Stigmata supplied
with warm bodies, after all).

What is /not/ legal is to enslave people who have committed no crime,
or, more to the point, have not been sentenced to slavery by the
courts. It is patently illegal for Chainers to wander around the
countryside snatching people at random to fill the quota for their
latest contract. The basis of this fact is not humanitarian: serfs
are bound to the land (and are thus the property of the owner of that
land), and freemen are subjects of the local lord and ultimately the
Emperor. By enslaving such people, the Muster would effectively
either be committing theft or violating the feudal protections
guaranteed to all free persons.

Of course, the fact that enslaving people in this manner is illegal
does /not/ keep the Muster from doing it all the time. The Muster
/do/ have labor contracts to fulfill, and have to live up to their
reputation for providing prospective buyers with just the laborers
that will suit their needs. They also have a reputation for being
able to dispose of peoples' rivals, for the right price (Earl Peter's
Hawkwood stoicism getting on your nerves? Have the Muster cart him
off to Stigmata). Thus, Muster slavers are feared and reveiled by the
general populace, and with good reason.

So, keep these legal niceties in mind as you play in this often brutal
and dangerous universe that is the Fading Suns. The inhabitants of that
universe will not necessarily look upon slavery in the same light as we
who are children of the liberal democracies of the late 20th/early 21st
centuries. In fact, odds are the majority of Known Worlders would find
the notion of innate human rights totally alien and subversive. There
are exceptions, of course... as I mentioned above, the Church does not
approve of slavery, and certain combustible... err... I mean /free-
thinking/ guilders also revile the practice, if for different reasons.
Just don't expect the people you encounter on the street to think
slavery is in any way wrong (unless they happen to face the prospect
themselves)