=============================================================================== THE SLAVERS' ISLAND =============================================================================== A few words of warning: The Slaver's Island is not for the faint hearted players. It is a rude and cruel setting where the moral is the one of slavers and where very strict rules are enforced. It is a great environment to play either IC consensual or IC non- consensual BDSM-biased scenes (OOC consent is -always- required), but if you decide to RP an unowned slave character, do not expect too much IC consensua- lity... Also, the hierarchy is very strong and strict in this area, and should you prefer more leeway, I'd recommend you to move your D/s and s/M RPs in another area of the MUCK. --------------- You will find below the theme of the area, the associated IC Laws (that may of course be violated for RP purposes), the OOC rules (which must be followed to the letter), and some free advices. 1.- THEME The Island is ruled by a cruel dictator, Morloch, whose only name makes his people shudder in fear. It is said that Morloch, who is a powerful sorcerer, is not even human, but rather a Demon Lord. Thankfully, he is rarely seen on the Island itself, preferring to roam parallel dimensions in search for more power. The dictator did setup a strong frame for the society of his island, though, and he relies on the nobility to rule it following his precise directives while he is absent. The Nobles are therefore the highest class after the Emperor himself, and they occupy the highest positions of responsibility within the society. Some of them are cruel, but not all of them. Yet, all of them do have a common interest: to keep their status and maintain the social stability and balance of powers. To achieve this, they do pay a great deal of attention to the way the things are ran by each other. Should one of the Nobles show any weakness, the others would be quick to lower the weak one to the status of Citizen, or even to enslave them. Nobles are born on the Island (but some are strangers who married a Noble). They are raised, educated and trained to become ruthless rulers. The Citizens constitute the middle class on the Island. They are free persons, usually born on the Island (some came from other worlds but to keep from being enslaved they must show strong enough). The Citizens occupy many different responsibilities and are employed in various jobs, ranging from judges to servants (intendants of some Nobles, for example). They are free to choose their job and even when they are servants, they freely agreed to serve and may change from job at any time. The last, lowest class, is the one of the slaves. The slaves have no right whatsoever. Their freedom was taken away when they were enslaved, and so were all their other rights. They are mere property and they either belong to a Master or Mistress (be them a Noble or a Citizen), or to the community of the free persons via the slavers' Guild. The life of a slave is only worth their price. Slaves rarely occupy any position involving even remotely medium respon- sibilities, yet some are known to be trusted enough by their owner and to have been endowed with minor responsibilities within their house. There are many different categories of slaves, from underground workers to pleasure slaves, most of them having been imported from far countries and bought from slavers ships. In this cruel society, quite some untrained slaves are also slaughtered for consumption, or sacrificed in the temples (untrained slaves have the lowest value of all the slaves and are therefore more likely to be killed). Social promotion is possible, and while it is indeed easier to get your status lowered when showing weakness, it is also possible for a Citizen to become a Noble, or for a slave to be set free and become a Citizen. However this change of status is hard to achieve and more an exception than a rule, as it is merely tolerated by the very strict hierarchy of the dictatorship. 2.- LAWS OF THE ISLAND (IC LAWS) Laws applying to all the free persons: Any free person is allowed to own private properties, be them a house, any kind of goods, or slaves. Free persons must enforce and help enforcing the Law, particularly in regard to the slaves they own and the public slaves under their orders, maintaining proper control over them. Free persons are responsible towards the Emperor and his representatives for the troubles and damages their slave(s) could be the origin of. Should a privately owned slave violate the Law, their owner is the one to complain to in the first place. The owner should indemnify the victim(s) and correct the slave's behaviour. Should the owner refuse or fail, they will be brought to the Court of Justice together with their slave for judgement. Free persons shall never act publicly in a manner not matching their social status and the responsibilities of their class. Free persons will not wear any collar, brand, or otherwise act as slaves. Should a free person be known to act in a way that demeans their class, they will be reduced to the status of slave and all their belongings will be confiscated. Although they are just properties, the slaves shall not be damaged without a good reason (nourishment is of course a good reason to slaughter a cattle- slave, and a sacrifice to the Gods in a temple is also a good reason for killing a slave...). Slaves are hard to find, hard to "break" and train, and the total cost for a well trained and well groomed slave is very high, making them a valuable property. Disproportionate punishments that would result in damaging or killing a trained slave may result, beside financial compensation, in the prosecution of the one(s) having inflicted that punishment. Laws applying to the Nobles: The Nobles are the representatives of the Emperor. They shall behave in all circumstances in an exemplary way as far as the Law is concerned. A Noble shall never serve anyone but the Emperor himself. As such, they can't be placed under the orders of any other free person. Should a Noble show any hint of weakness, they may have their status reduced to the one of Citizen, or may even be enslaved. Laws applying to the Citizen: The Citizens are free to choose their job. They may choose to serve a Noble, or even another Citizen. However, such "servants" are not to be treated like slaves as they retain their freedom and full rights. Laws applying to the slaves: The slaves have no right whatsoever. Slaves are either the property of a free person (they are sometimes called "owned slaves") or public property (they are sometimes called, "public slaves", or "unowned slave", though they are actually owned by the Guild and therefore also often referred to as "Guild slaves"). All the slaves must wear a collar around their neck. The collar must provide a leashing point and a tag on which the name of the owner is to be engraved (the collars of the Guild slaves bear a blank tag). Slaves are not allowed to own anything, but for their collar and what their owner gave to them. A slave can't keep money for themselves; any money they earn must be brought to their owner. Slaves are in no circumstance whatsoever allowed to carry weapons (and it is forbidden for a free person to give a weapon to a slave). Privately owned slaves are for the exclusive use of their owner and of any free person to whom the said owner granted the use of their slaves. Guild slaves ("unowned" slaves) are for use by any free person. A slave shall never refuse to obey an order given by a free person, with the only exception of orders that would go against the directives or orders they received from their owner (or from the Guild for "unowned" slaves). In the latter case, they shall politely explain what are the conflicting orders or directives so that the free person may change their order in a suitable way, or dismiss the slave. Slaves shall, in all circumstances, show the deepest respect to the free persons. Failure to abide to the above laws will get the slave punished. The punishment of an owned slave is normally the responsibility of their owner (who may also opt for a public punishment to be inflicted to their slave). Guild slaves may be punished by the offended free person and/or any free person having witnessed the offence. The slaves are under the protection of their owner. The "unowned" slaves are under the protection of the Guild. 3.- OOC RULES First and foremost, whatever the class of their characters, each and every player got the same OOC rights as the other players. This is particularly true of the OOC consent (read carefully 'news consent' please): if a free person asks a slave to perform some action, the player of the slave may choose to refuse to make their character to perform it: in this case, the player of the slave must say OOCly to the player of the free person that they don't want their character to perform the action in question, and they must find an IC excuse for their slave character to refuse to perform it; the most obvious way to do this is to pretend that the order goes against the directives of the slave's owner (or Guild for public slaves). The player of the free person -must- then make their character to accept the slave's objection. However, the above rule shall not be used by the slaves' players to escape ICly the punishments deserved by their character. The second rule is therefore: each IC action entails IC consequences. Should you play a slave and the said slave disobey a Citizen (IC action), your slave shall be punished (IC consequence): invoking the OOC consent rule to avoid the IC punishment would be an abuse and will not be tolerated. This said, the type of punishment is to be negotiated OOCly beforehand so that both parties do enjoy RPing it. It is forbidden for a player having opted for a class to use their character in a way pertaining to another class (the only exception to this rule being a -temporary- behaviour for the sake of a RP plot resulting in your character getting punished or its class lowered as an IC consequence of its inadequate IC behaviour). The reason for the very existence of the three classes is that each one corresponds to one of the three types of D/s levels: Dominant, switch and submissive. You (the player) are interested in playing a character pertaining to -one- of the three types, and you chose the corresponding class for your character. Should you want to play some time as a strict Dominant, and another time as a strict submissive, please use two -different- characters, but DO NOT play a collared Citizen, or a slave owning another slave. You will notice that in the Slavers' Island, some commands behave in a different way than elsewhere on the MUCK. For example, the 'wixxx' command doesn't decode flags that don't match your character's class (such as the dominant flag for a slave, or the submissive flag for a Noble), and the 'sm' command will not allow a slave to collar anyone, neither a Citizen or Noble to be collared by anyone. It is possible for a player to ask a wizard to change the social class of their character. However, and to avoid abuse, this change of social class may only be performed once a year for each character, which also means that, should your character class had been lowered as an IC consequence to your IC actions (such as having your Citizen character enslaved because they were seen walked around on leash), you will have to wait one full year before you may regain your former social class. On the other hand, you may perfectly use -different- characters pertaining to different social classes on the Slavers' Island. Failure to follow the OOC rules may get your characters to be banned from the Slavers' Island. 4.- A COUPLE OF ADVICES Here are advices that you might consider following as they will help you and your partners to better enjoy the RPs on the Slavers' Island. - Try to act realistically and according to your social class. Let's take an example: you play a rebellious slave in the hope that your character will get punished a lot. Fine... but -please-, don't provoke openly a Noble or Citizen by insulting them. This is very unrealistic in such a society, as a slave doing that would most probably be punished by getting their tongue cut off or even whipped to death... Let's give another example: you play a free person (either Noble or Citizen) and witness a slave misbehaving in some public place: please do not ignore the incident and pretend your character didn't see it happening: playing a free person does have its constraints, just like playing a slave does; the constraints are simply different and, in the free person case, it will be to help and enforce the Law (or, if you play a gentle Citizen, to try and help the slave by convincing them to change their behaviour, to apologize and to accept a punishment)... - Reforming: just like in the other MUCK areas, it is possible for your character to 'reform' whenever it dies ICly, and therefore to have it resuscitate in one way or another. However having this happening without any IC consequence on your character is not much fun for anyone in a BDSM-biased environment (imagine a slave who is sacrificed by being fed to a giant snake into a temple: having the slave "reforming" like if nothing did happen to them would remove all the dramatic aspect of the RP and would completely ruin it). Instead, try to be creative and have some "price" to be "paid" for the reforming: you could, for example, pretend that each time it reforms, your character looses the memory of its past life... or it could keep the memory but be reincarnated in another body/form... or it could simply take a few IC days for it to come back to life... or it could keep some sequels (scars, remanent pain, or anything you deem appropriate). |