EVE Fiction

The Intergalactic Summit is a place for heated debates from various viewpoints. It can be fun, or it can be tiring. A few recent discussions there have revealed some glaring inconsistencies in the prime fiction regarding the current state of slavery in the Amarrian Empire. Basically, depending on which parts of the PF you read, you end up with either the idea that there's only a minor part of slaves left, most of which have to be criminals, or that the emancipation act of Jamyl has been a rather small gesture.

Emancipation Act

Jamyl "emancipated" all slaves of the 9th generation and older (and even all higher-educated ones, regardless of generation - a somewhat lesser-known detail). It is completely unclear what proportion of all slaves this would be.

A "generation" in the modern world is between 20 and 30 years, with less developed countries hitting shorter time spans there. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation#Familial_generation Assuming 30 years, which is the upper end in the present-day world, 8th generation slaves would have been captured around 180 years ago, or about 67 years before YC. That's some 15 years before the Amarr first make contact with the Gallente and Caldari, and 47 years (1-2 generations) before the rebellion.

The first Minmatar slaves were taken 881 years before YC, which would amount to over 33 generations, with major parts of the Minmatar Empire being conquered 29 generations ago. Older generations have an exponential growth, meaning the first 24-20 generations should vastly outnumber the last 8 generations. But the 9th generation apparently only made up some 600 - 700 million slaves. http://www.eveonline.com/news.asp?a=single&nid=2643&tid=4 PF states that, prior to this emancipation, more than one third of the present-day population remains enslaved as well The Minmatars are the most numerous of all the races in the world of EVEhttp://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/Minmatar

Assuming a 50/50 split between the 9th to 33rd generation and the 1st to 8th generation, which is highly unlikely, we'd end up with a 1.4 billion Minmatar in the Empire, and thus 4.2 billion Minmatar in total. They're also the most numerous of the four races, so we're talking about justunder 17 billion people in the whole EVE universe (excluding Jovians). Present-day earth has 7 billion people on it, so EVE is kinda small!

This does not make sense at all. Not to mention that the rest of PF hasn't noted that the Amarr suddenly do not really depend on slave labor anymore, so this can't have been a very significant drop in slave population.

So there is something to "the 9th generation" that is not quite apparent to the eye. There's PF to indicate that tampering with the records happens, but is severely punished, http://www.eveonline.com/news.asp?a=single&nid=2649&tid=2 so that's not the explanation for the large discrepancy. Matariki Rain suggested that the "9th Generation and upwards" refers to pure-breed slaves - any kind of tarnishing there (e.g. offspring from a Holder or other non-Minmatar, maybe even offspring from a non-dedicated partner) would break such lineage. But this is not supported by any PF on the matter.

So, we now have the Quantum Empire in a superposition between having few slaves left at all, most of which are criminals, and having just as many slaves as before with a gesture of good-will at best.

No Enslavement Outside of the Empire

There is a repeated claim that the Empire is currently not allowing capturing slaves outside of the Empire. The only source for this that I could find was in the evelopedia, http://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/Slavery where it was entered by Garion Avarr, not a CCP employee. Does anyone have any other source for this?

Because it sure as hell does not seem like it. If you fly Minmatar missions, you regularly get to fight Imperial Navy ships enslaving people in the Republic in various ways. The 24th IC recruitment text even states rather explicitly that [w]e need you to reclaim the Minmatar. Etc. etc.

So my explanation so far was that the law is more or less a farce, as the Empire is rather obviously breaking it. But that's kinda silly for Amarr loyalists having to try defend their Empire acting obviously against its own laws.


(Rough) answers to these questions should be easily available to most people in new eden, especially capsuleers. The EVE-equivalent of Wikipedia should list details such as "the emancipation act released roughly 99%/75%/50%/10%/1%/0.000001% of all slaves" and also why it was only that percentage. There also should be an easy reference to this law and why the Empire feels it not in conflict with its own law to launch a crusade to "reclaim" the Minmatar.

(Side note: It's highly annoying that the url tag on these forums is so dysfunctional. Sorry for the URLs in the post.)

Thank you. Does not quite answer the confusion, but gives some hints:

1) The main reason why the Amarr are not capturing new slaves outside of the Empire is given as "fear of trade embargoes", not the law. I'm more and more wondering if that law never existed, but it's a bit too widely-known to be just made up.

2) The Amarr do use "independent" sources of slaves to increase the current stock of slaves, i.e. it's not primarily a criminal punishment.

Hm.

Thanks. (I guess this is about the imperial law I mentioned, not so much the rest of the post.)

Those sources mention all laws and regulations enforced by CONCORD and abides by the Yoiul Conventions to the letter, and does not traffic in slaves illegal acquired (incidentally, also All IHR slaves are home bred and trained, from birth to adulthood, no mention of criminals).

Regarding CONCORD, I've found http://www.eveonline.com/mb2/news.asp?nid=64 CONCORD wants to remind people that slave trade is strictly forbidden everywhere except within Amarr borders.

Nothing about an imperial law.







Maybe some other mission?



Wayback Machine to the rescue!

http://web.archive.org/web/20031231094933/http://www.eveguardian.com/comments.php?catid=14&id=334

The only relevant part I could find:

Due to the multi-faceted nature of the Amarr Empire there are no formal rules about slavery. I intend to set standard laws for slavery, regulating their treatment, work hours and so on. These laws will call for more humane treatment of slaves, but slavery is an integral part of the Empire and my aim is certainly not to abolish it.

How annoying. Anyone with access to Amarr L3s want to ruin their agent standings on SiSi and find the mission description? :o)

I can try poking level 3s again when my comp / ISP / some-other-piece-of-technology isn't exploding on me, but for whatever it's worth I can confirm seeing the mission briefing Louella posted, and that it appears to be exclusive to Amarr, level 3 , vs. Blood Raiders (I've since run missions for other factions and level agents, and never seen it elsewhere).

Note there is an L4 version of the 'Rogue Slave Traders' mission pair, which is v. Sansha (just ran it this morning as an Ammatar mission). For *that* faction, the wording made sense on part 2 (replace your last post's quote appropriately).

Also of note, depending on just how many slaves got freed, there would likely be massive societal changes, and on some worlds likely violence, revolution, or anti (former?) slave genocide. We're talking about a massive loss of capital to the slave owners, as their "property" ceases to be as such, a sudden influx in the cities of angry, desperate poor people of low social status and probably no means of supporting themselves, and the very basis of the Amarr empire tradition being challenged. I think if this was really done, there would be at least a few worlds and factions in open rebellion against the Amarr now, angry about the social changes and facing uncertain economic futures without their slaves. While it could be a small number of total slaves freed, and thus not causing these social changes, I don't see how 9th generation in context of previous PF of indefinite slavery for whole ethnicities over centuries would not equal just a huge amount of people, easily enough to lead to economic and population shifts sufficient to cause unrest and even revolution.

I don't think anyone asked for that.

What I asked for was a rough idea of proportions, and the official law. Both should be trivial to find out for any capsuleer in the EVE universe. I fully agree that exact numbers are irrelevant, and that policies are an awesome thing to keep unclear because it allows for good RP.

There is a vast difference between "some PF implies that there are only very few Minmatar in captivity still, and actually the total amount of Minmatar is about the number of humans on RL earth" and "the absolutely exact numbers of minmatar freed are ...", though. Just because the latter is undesirable does not mean that the former is the only option.

I am not determining my numbers.

I am saying that PF gives rather contradictory evidence on something that a capsuleer should be able to easily get a rough estimate on. You can say "I will for various reasons ignore that part of PF and only accept that other part of PF", but that does not facilitate RP discussions, it facilitates "your RP is wrong" discussions, and those are boring.

Full text of that:



I'm not sure which of the whole topic the "that" there refers to.