The fourth planet out from its sun, Werel has seven small moons. Its current climate is cool temperate, severely cold at the poles. Its flora is largely indigenous, its fauna entirely of Hainish origin, modified deliberately to obtain cobiosis with the native plants, and further modified through genetic drift and adaptation. Human adaptations include a cyanotic skin coloration (from black to pale, with a bluish cast) and eyes without visible whites, both evidently adjustments to elements in the solar radiation spectrum.
Voe Deo: Recent History: 40003500 years BP, aggressive, progressive black-skinned people from south of the equator on the single great continent (the region that is now the nation of Voe Deo) invaded and dominated the lighter-skinned peoples of the north. These conquerors instituted a master-slave society based on skin color.
Voe Deo is the largest, most numerous, wealthiest nation on the planet; all other nations in both hemispheres are dependencies, client states, or economically dependent on Voe Deo. Voe Dean economics have been based on capitalism and slavery for at least 3000 years. Voe Dean hegemony permits the general description of Werel as if it were all one society As the society is in rapid change, however, this account will be put in the past tense.
Social Classes under Slavery
Class: master (owner or gareot) and slave (asset). Your class was your mother’s class, without exception.
Skin color ranges from blue-black through bluish or greyish beige to an almost depigmented white. (Only albinism affects hair and eyes, which are dark). Ideally and in the abstract, class was skin color: owners black, assets white Actually, many owners were black, most were dark; some assets were black, most beige, some white.
OWNERS were called men, women, children.
The unqualified word owner meant either the class as a whole or an individual/family owning two or more slaves.
The owner of one slave or no slaves was a staffless owner or gareot.
The veot was a member of an hereditary warrior caste of owners; the ranks were rega, zadyo, oga. Veot men almost invariably joined the Army; most veot families were landed proprietors; most were owners, some gareots.
Owner women formed a subclass or inferior caste. An owner woman was legally the property of a man (father, uncle, brother, husband, son, or guardian). Most observers hold that the gender division of Werelian society was as profound and essential as the master/slave division, but less visible, as it cut across it, owner women being considered socially superior to assets of both sexes. Since women were property, they could not own property, including human property. They could, however, manage property.
ASSETS were called bondsmen, bondswomen, pups or young. Pejorative terms: slaves, dusties, chalks, whites.
Luls were workslaves, owned by a person or a family. All slaves on Werel were luls, except makils and assetsoldiers.
Makils were sold to and owned by the
Entertainment Corporation.
Assetsoldiers were sold to and owned by the Army.
“Cutfrees” or eunuchs were male slaves castrated (more or less voluntarily, depending on age, etc.) to gain status and privilege. Werelian histories describe a number of cutfrees who rose to great power in various governments; many held posts of influence throughout the bureaucracy. The Bosses of the bondswomen’s side of the compound were invariably cutfrees.
Manumission was extremely rare up until the last century, restricted to a few famous historical/ legendary cases of slaves whose supernal loyalty and virtue induced their masters to give them freedom. About the time the War of Liberation began on Yeowe, the practice of manumission became more frequent on Werel, led by the owner group The Community, which advocated the abolition of slavery. A manumitted asset ranked legally, though seldom socially, as a gareot.
In Voe Deo at the time of the Liberation the proportion of assets to owners was 7:1. (About half these owners were gareots, owners of one or no assets.) In poorer countries the proportion dropped lower or reversed; in the Equatorial States the proportion of assets to owners was 1:5. In Werel as a whole, the proportion was estimated to be about three assets to one owner.