i wanna buy some slaves

so the servitude slave setting is native to my world, how do i represent my slaves during character burning?

are they just color that come with being a noble?
can i purchase a ‘gaggle of slaves’ with just 1 resource point?
or do i have to spend precious circles points on a relationship with the slave master or affiliation with my slaves?

I’d do it as color, and circle them as needed in play. IMO Relationships are for connections to characters with story importance.

I’d treat it as color until it was something extremely important. A slave to wash your back? No problem. A slave who overheard the secret plans to murder the prince? Circles. 1,000 slaves to give as a gift to the pleasure palace? Resources.

Like Paul said, depends on how they are needed.

i dunno, can a Noble even circle up a slave. different lifepath setting. you’d at least need an affiliation. and then, the obstacle for ‘lowest station’ is huge. i guess a ‘loyal slave’ is probably hard to come buy.

I’d by a relationship with a Taskmaster.

But what do you them for? What do you need them for in the game?

slave bombs. i have a darikahn rebel count holding out in a world the Dunedin took over, and i want him to bomb the Forged lord’s territory using slaves. circling up a slave just doesn’t work for that… so i figured maybe i could just ‘buy them’ as in use resource points.

How’s the bomb going to work? Is he inserting the bomb into a slave? I’d do it via the tech burner.

How is he controlling the slave? Are these willing suicide bombers? I’d do it via Circles, with the +3Ob “loyal” thing as well as +whateverOb for “lowest rank”.

Hmmm how does the society view slaves? It would be so awesome and ugly to roll them us as tech and the Gift of Kindness for failure is rebellion or betrayal!

i figured he’d just do an explosives check, give the slave a ‘package’ to deliver, and boom, bomb goes off. a slave inserted with a bomb is cool, but way out of his insurrectionist budget, i believe. i’m shooting for terrorism, here. nobles become afraid of their slaves, etc.

Ah. I’d do two things, then. Maybe three depending on the fiction:

  1. Circle up a slave or slaves with “blindly loyal.” Carry this package and DO NOT LOOK IN IT. If you get enmity, they look in the package at some point and hilarity ensues.

  2. Resources for the bomb(s).

  3. Explosives to see how bad it was, if actual damage is what you’re looking for. Probably I’d just set an intent that’s suitable to the bomb that was sent in, like “kill a bunch of civilians and scare the living shit out of the survivors.”

If they’re unwitting, then I’d dial back the “loyalty” bit to +1 or even 0, and then require a … Falsehood, maybe … test out of the dude giving him orders.

Sounds like a combination of a slavemaster relationship – surely the FL isn’t going to directly dirty his hands with this? – and tech for the bomb.

Sounds fun!

-L

Maybe it is literally bombing with slaves, a bit like that Cordwainer Smith story where the Chinese conquer Venus by dropping people on and having them hug the native lifeforms to death?

I think two out of three of our games have ended up with some form of “martyrdom operation” so far. Maybe we should be playing Burning Sands: Jihad? :confused: