Slaves

There are several ways for a person to become a slave in Imperium of Karadia.   The most common one is just being born to a pair of slaves or a slave and a citizen (but without being recognized by their free parent). This happens pretty much every day throughout Imperium, due to its already sizable slave population, and especially often in the areas where they make for significant part of society (mostly Virija, Vhessana and Triumvirate).   In most countries that are 'average' in terms of their approach it's actually considered something rather distasteful to not accept such a child as yours (but often nobody knows), making most people who doesn't want children to go the third route (making sure that children is a free person, just unconnected with them). Or consider them a part of extended family/clan, just not blood related (officially) to anyone.   Second most common (that is normally here but often spikes above the hereditary slavery) is simply selling yourself. Which is seen as a good way of escaping extreme poverty and overpopulation which often happen in most of the countries in the world.   Third most common is war. Imperium of Karadia is far from being a collective paragon of virtue, and selling prisoners of war (or just parts of enemy population) especially during extremely fierce wars against traditionally hated enemies or a variety of revolutionaries and rebels.   Fourth is crime. Many harsher crimes are punished with enslavement. Others - especially those punishable by death - are often 'pardoned' by a chance to become a slave instead. Most people decide to accept it.   The last two ways are either selling a family members by its patriarch, which is allowed in some cultures (but generally looked down upon in the rest) and being kidnapped and sold by slavers. Which is considered a crime and grows into a problem only when Imperium is undergoing a period of crisis. Slaves that were taken that way are normally freed when it is discovered, but the problem is that proving it tends to be quite hard.

While slavery generally is abusive, it's also very good way of stabilizing demograhy. With most cities, towns and villages existing in the middle of very hostile world, the population is more or less caped. With both abortion and contraception being generally frowned upon (they are opposed from both religious point of view and simple pragmatism - you need a lot of people to repopulate devastated settlements), the population over skyrockets above the possibility to sustain it.   This causes a spike in poverty, with additional overpopulation. Those with skills can avoid it - if only by becoming adventurers - but for the rest, the only hope to escape poverty is by selling themselves. It's quite common for really poor families essentially preparing their children for that right from the start.   This allows not only to avoid the overpopulation getting even worse, but also allows to easily repopulate devastated areas: most sensible lords have their own stash money that can be used to simply buy new settlers, that in 99% of cases are barely different that simple commoners (and whose children tend to become average commoners - or more, if their parents were talented).

Slaves can play a variety of roles. While they still have to listen to all of their owners orders - regardless of their contents - they tend to be more or less profiled. If only to allow easy discernment of their skills, importance and value. The exact type the slave belongs to is shown on their collar, in forms of their colours. Officially only slaves that can carry weapons should be marked like that, but the rest grew into a sort of cultural tradition.

White-Collared are slaves that belong to a religious organization, mostly of Imperial Temple but this isn't a rule. Most of them are recruited from the slaves that were tormented to the point of actually escaping and being granted an asylum in said religious organization. They tend to clean the temples, deal with the more physical part of a various rituals and so on. Adding such a rule as an asylum for maltreated slaves was done mostly to somehow weaken the possible mistreatments.   Violet-Collared are slaves that can use magic. The rule is that when the collar is violet then its wearer is only a sorcerer, while violet with red horizontal line in the middle, the slave is a magician (which is rare). When the line is gold (ultrarare case) then the slave is an archmagician.   Black-Collared are slaves that can carry weapons. Black with golden line means that a slave belongs to some imperial organization, simple black is a slave from a regular forces of a vassal state, while black with grey line means that he belongs to a private person that allows him to carry weapons.   Green-Collared are slaves that are servants. It is a rather wide category that can include cleaners, cooks, qualified teachers and so on. Blue-Collared are slaves that are a physical workers, while Red-Collared are a qualified craftsmen.   Yellow-Collared are prostitutes of either gender, often with a written price for using them. It is considered the worst possibly ending for a slave, although it depends on a quality and obedience of a slave. It also includes high value concubines, and not only simple whores in the city' worst districts.   Pink-Collared are pretty much official slave concubines of either gender. They are expected to do the same thing as Yellow-Collared, but only with their owners. While owners can do it with their slaves at will, such marking equals to saying that they invested some feelings in this slave and won't really be satisfied with fine if something happens to them, giving them certain protection according to both laws and customs. Not accepting children of Pink-Collared as yours is EXTREMELY frowned upon (as long as you were a father/mother).   Imperial-Collared are a unique existence. Their collar is a mix of gold, violet and red. This means that they belong personally to the Grand Emperors, meaning that they have an access to his ear - giving them a very precarious position, with even monarchs treating them with respect. They are quite often siblings of the Imperator from his father's slaves, or their childhood friends, which makes them even more important. Their slave status is merely a way of ensuring loyalty to the Grand Emperor, as they surpass 99% of free people in status.

Normally, slaves status is beneath the average citizen. If disobedient, they can be punished by their owner (which includes things like beatings and whipping, as long as without permanent physical harm). In short - there aren't objects (like in some pre-imperial states - but are much below a free people.   A problematic part starts when sex comes to play. Theoretically slaves are protected from it, but quite often are forced to participate if only to avoid angering their owner - while he can't punish them for that, he can punish them through other ways, ones that won't break the law. This is a little hole in the laws, that simply cannot be fixed because Imperium cannot keep watch in every slave owner's bedroom.   There is a law that regulates going openly with that, with 'official' sex slaves (or slave concubines/slave wifes or husbands, depending on their exact status) requiring written consent and being paid. In the form of money deducted from the slave's worth, at leastuntil the moment he or she will 'earn' their value, which in most cases will take at least several years. After that they can continue earning money, or officially get freed.

Varied between 0% (in Visenia, Inrithia and Diret) and 80% (Virija). There is little corelation between this and demographic map of species or races. While before the Imperium was created enslavement of particular species was quite particular (with humans enslaving elves, elves enslaving humans, drakons enslaving humans and elves, and beastmen enslaving everyone else), it stopped being a thing after the Imperium was formed. Few thousands of years of slave being liberated, free people being enslaved and constant slave trade erased the territorial division and any notions of 'slave species'.

Slavery is as old as civilization itself, the forms of it however changed and evolved as time passed. Even First Empire had it - though, arguably, all inhabitants of it were slaves of the Ancient Dragons, but with varying degree of personal freedom, with slaves being considered living tools.   It got worse after the First Empire fell. The civilizations of Ancient Era brought the institution of slavery into a completely insane heights. K'Shisan Tyranny mindsculpted its entire human population into slaves biologically devoid of free will, completely lacking any attachments or even personalities (to the point of having numbers instead of names). Xylian Dominion geneengineered its own, vast slave population from captive humans. Treating the dwarves, ogres and elves as even less than tools.   Slaves of Xylian Dominion were objects. They could be killed or sacrificed in a bloody ritual at their owner's whim. If xylian genmaturgists wanted, they could simply take two of them and order them to breed together in order to 'improve' their genepool as Xylians wanted, even if said slaves were siblings or a parent and child. Merely few subspecies of some intrinsic value (for example as warriors) were treated any better.   Later on it was geting even worse, with Xylian Dominion marking 'breeding zones' where their slaves had some personal freedom... in exchange for producing sufficiently many new slaves to send into Xylian Dominion, where they were process and implanted with techmaturgic devices that extinguished most of their free will. Dominion seemed to slowly follow the footsteps of the now dead K'Shisan Tyranny, though it was stopped from going too far by Black Iron War.   The period of chaos following its fall was actually a massive improvement. Sure, its entire territory descended into barbarism, with dozens of bloodthirsty warriors that considered slavery as an important pillar of their power (be it slave workers on their fields and towns, or sex slaves in their beds). But said warlords lacked technological or societal power required to push slavery into truly abhorrent and extreme ways.   The only sides that did have some power in that regard, couldn't do that for other reasons. Kraad Technocracy, that could theoretically go all out just as Xylians did, was terrified of doing anything that might have make it look like new version of Xylian Dominion in fear of Command AI retaliation.   Elven states, while had significant part of their society made of slaves (in most cases considered living tools as well) and being able to have a well organized system of slavery, lacked ability to 'modify' their slaves and, in fact, were at least partially scarred by the treatment they got from the Xylians. The fact that they kept slavery (and most of their sorcerer kings had at least few 'personal attendants', not to mention few thousand slaves to toil on his fields) was mostly caused by the fact that they couldn't imagine world without it.   Humans came mostly as another wave of warlords, that also enslaved a lot of people. It wasn't until the raise of eastern monotheisms when there started to be groups that actually started debating whether slavery is really needed or is it good. First was Inrithism (though not at the very beggining), somewhere around the same time Visenism came. The religion of Diret came as third.