In Dróttargard and the rest of the world, women are treated as special commodities to be traded and owned. This part of life in the Grossenland resulted from early population imbalances wrought by war and famine. Several nations and countries started trade in women independently or by outside influence as a reaction to these events.
Background
The land saw peace among three races. Joyous sanguines, who brought happiness and energy to those around them. Respectful phlegmatics, who brought harmony and mediation. Analytical Melancholics, who brought reason and structure.
Yet this peace broke when a fourth race came and ravaged it. The cholerics, a savage people who willed to dominate others. They enacted strict regimes, brutal tortures, horrific punishments to those who refused their rule.
Then a lone melancholic, supported by sanguine and phlegmatic allies, took to arms and began a long war of extermination. They bore many ills and pains, yet in the end, the three races lived in harmony once more.
But at a cost.
Now, women voluntarily became slaves to men, herds wishing to pool their resources with a man to see increased reward.
The Lay of Itchen
The Angantyrian War
See also: The Angantyrian War
In 751 of the First Sun, a grand fellowship of northern nations wrought against what they saw as a heresy springing from the south and east. These northerners had three races among them: joyous sanguines, respectul phlegmatics, and analytical melancholics. The south and east, however, found a fourth race spring forth: cholerics, savage, eager to dominate others. These lands found ceaseless chaos and destruction, outside invaders turned back by the wickedness within. Not even the divine could escape the cholerics’ ways, for worship of the Ten Divines had fallen in favor of the one Allghost, the Ten now only the Allghost's aspects. Angantyr of Itchen, known in his land as Aemilius Alreto, would inherit the heresy and refuse to destroy it. Forces from all over Eisenheim, Brigant Arduin, and Amberstern formed a united front to invade. Elfin hosts from the East and North would intervene against either side based on what fortune beset. The war coincided with divine famine and disaster, killing many men who had not fought. The war ended with Angantyr's death and the conquest of Itchen, but its borne plight forced several survivors to sell their women for food and security. The First Sun ended in its 801st year, after half a century of war. The next Sun saw slave and woman be treated as same.
A Slave's Life
Societal and Legal Codes
Masters have corresponding rights and duties with their slaves. Social ethics discourage wanton abuse, seeing their welfare as necessary to peace and order. Slave women and slave girls live under a Master's legal jurisdiction. A Master is expected to teach and provide for his slaves, his sons helping out where able. No one style of headship exists, although common practices include a hierarchy of slaves or regency of older slaves to sons. Some realms have enshrined legal codes mandating strict standards for slave welfare.
Slave trade
Unlike most markets, slaves have special customs for buying and selling because of their humanity. Input from a slave is weighed highly with regard to buyers, and a slave with input wantonly ignored may be immediately bought out by someone else. Trade usually happens between buyer and seller, or any representatives. Mass markets are a sight mostly for festivals and other special events, the slaves there displayed in public spectacle. A buyer may request a seller to physically inspect the slave for him, with the buyer forbidden to touch a slave during a trade.
Servantry and Retainership
A slave may be tasked to manage a Master's holdings or to act as his regent. Kings and other figures have also used slaves to govern regions in their names. While abroad, a slave is expected to keep faithful to her Master and do things for his good. No one dares to touch her lest the offender risk her Master's wrath.
Training and Education
Traditionally, a Master and older slaves are expected to teach the traditional liberal arts: the triduum of grammar, logic, and arithmetic, then the quadrivium of algebra, geometry, physics, and analysis. A Master also teaches each slave menial tasks suiting her station. All slaves learn homemaking and the triduum, then special tasks and the quadrivium.
Eventually, schools have started accepting slaves as students. Coeducation with sons now predominates, with many buying their first slaves from encounters in school from saved allowance or apprenticeship pay.
Household environment
A Master, his sons, and his slaves live in a single unit called a household. A Master has free use of his slaves, whether for profit, recreation, companionship, or reproduction. Slave daughters are either allocated for a son's use or sold to young men. More rarely do Masters keep slave daughters for personal use, although not unheard of. Masters usually perform background checks on a slave's buyer, her future welfare ultimately being his responsibility. Many slaves request to be sold to Masters willing to let them pursue interests or other pursuits outside of duties, with any profits going to the Master.
A man's power in his household is absolute, with only bans on killing, maiming, or other permanent damage in any way. The only ones immune from his power, authority, and command are his sons - men are expected in all upright cultures to endow their sons with skill, wisdom, experience, knowledge, resources, and sister slaves to live on their own
Nation and Race
Women and elfwifs alike share the same doom, although elfin lands see greater privileges for slaves. Nonetheless, women often land in elfin markets, and elfwifs in men's. Slaves have given their genes to sons and slaves alike, their nation seen as the Master's. Longlived Masters use Elfin galders to extend their lifespans, while Elfin Masters do the same to their women.