But there are already many free workers making a decent living in Morrowind. This isn't a completely slave-labor-dependent province.

But bear in mind that any attempt to put a pleasant face on Morrowind will be vicoiously condemned by the Dumer themselves.

You're trying to honeycoat it again. Morrowind's slave labour is intensive and brutal, and more people are slaves than we know.

Still, even before the Oblivion Crisis, Helseth freed the slaves because the institution was an embarrassment for someone trying to align with the Empire. Apparently he fought a civil war soon after against the Indoril and Redoran houses, and either won or has brought a truce to Morrowind under his rule. Why do you assume that the slaveholders were automatically able to get around abolition?

Probably because that's the most interesting direction. Or rather, it obviates the existence of the abolition in the first place, which strikes one as an intrusion of progressive modern values in a place where it doesn't belong. But I didn't detect any irony in Helseth's actions, so I think we're supposed to believe the abolition was in earnest and be glad that the Dunmer are moving on from their benighted ways.

Yes, most of the mining was done by free workers. You didn't see any free workers on the plantations, though, did you?

Also, what were the two Great Hoses most dependant on slavery? Hlaalu and Dres. What two Houses were cited as supporting the abolition of slavery. Hlaalu and Dres. That's a dead give-away right there that there's another cheap labor system that can easily be implemented. And the most logical cheap labor system is sharecropping.

I see what you mean, but Morrowind is better off without the institution. Or would you rather have a society that has to resort to shackles, overseers, and whips to maintain its farms? What would Dunmer morality mean in a society resting on that? Although the Empire is dead or dying, I think Helseth made the right choice here.

Slavery is a part of Dunmer morality. Betraying the ways of their deified ancestors and relying on the depraved apparatus of the occupying empire- that's what makes a mockery of Dunmer morality.

That's not actually true, unless you happen to be an American, where Abolition was forced upon the South. The most logical is for Morrowind to have agricultural reforms similar to the ones that occured in Great Britain and the rest of Western Europe, which made slavery and indeed even serfdom unprofitable.

Hey, I'm as opposed to slavery as a modern guy can be. But in a game setting, I'd like Dunmer morality to be Dunmer morality, not Enlightenment morality or Cyrodilic morality. It makes things just that leetle bit more interesting.

Part of their morality? If it wasn't economically viable and profitable, they'd drop it in a heartbeat.

There's a lot of truth in that.

Maybe we can see Morrowind slavery and the House system as similar to the late Tribunal: a system rotten and ripe for a fall. When you explore Vivec's palace you find empty corridors and rats; that was a symbol to me of how far the Tribunal had declined from their glory years. You have to wonder if Almalexia felt relief in the end when the Nerevarine ended her madness and desperate schemes.

Saying that, I'd have to add that I still respect the Temple adherents and I assume they'll find a way to continue their faith, as I think Vivec predicts in "Morrowind".

If we found a way to stop defecating we would, but we'd still love potty humor.

As an American, I have an excuse to think like an American. Besides, Morrowind seems more akin to the American South than Europe to me.

Don't throw around "we" like someone agrees with you here. :lmao:

But, uhh, I'll think about it. I REALLY doubt it, but I'll consider it.

The Tribunal system wasn't rotten, but was coming to an end. You, the PC simply enter the scene at the end.

It's the wave of the future, I tells ya. It's just as likely as... I dunno, the Dunmer abolishing slavery.

I never said that slave labor was good, but not all slaves are plantation workers; some do domestic service, especially in the Telvanni areas. And more people are free laborers than we know.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cUhtv2XOolU

Do you have a reason for thinking so or is it severe overestimation of the Dunmer culture?

The first PGE was propaganda, directed at showing all unconquered lands as dangerous places full of evil barbarians.

The third PGE is propaganda, directed at showing how the Empire is all united in its values.

Is Helseth genuinely concerned that slavery is an evil and inefficient system that needed to be brought to an end? Maybe. He was raised in High Rock, after all.

Did the change happen exactly as the PGE says? Hardly likely. House Dres' economy was entirely based on slavery. Not just using them in mines and plantations, but also capturing them and selling them to the other houses. And yet they were with the Hlaalu the earliest adopters of the reform... You can bet there was something unsaid behind all this. Even if all members of House Dres were suddenly convinced that slavery was bad, restructuring all the economy takes time.

So we're being told everything is golden, and we know -- because we are rational beings able to use our brains -- that it's not possible. Therefore, what we're being told is inaccurate, in whole or at least by omission.

Q.E.Duh.

Last time I was in a rush in what I was saying because I was leaving. It's unlikely that their is going to be some residual form of slavery taking place in Hlaalu and Dres territories. It is not believable that these two houses would fight over the transition to a less economically feasible system. That means that they have found a new, more profitable system of labour. I would say that they would have agricultural reforms akin to those of Western Europe. These reforms switched some of the top slavers, like the UK, into the fiercest opponants of the system in what can be called overnight in this type of time frame. It represented the rise of the merchant and the middle-class, a trend that was visible even in the game Morrowind. And since both Dres and Hlaalu are merchant Houses, it is feasible that they have gotten to the point where free labour is more profitable than slavery.

Indoril and Redoran on the other hand fiercely opposed abolition, making them more like the American South. It was thrust upon them by a more urban, advanced society. They resented it, so they found another way of slavery, sharecropping. This system also kept them backwards for many years, because the system is inherently flawed, morality withstanding. But they were not ready to accept the free labour system that Europe, the American North and by this time, Japan had accepted.

But no fiscally intellegent person, which Hlaalu and Dres are almost entirely comprised, would abondon, much less fight a war, to switch from slavery to a half-assed alternative that does the same thing.

Slavery wasn't practiced in Western Europe. It was used by European colonists in colonies, but not at home.

Serfdom, which existed in the feudal system, could be likened to slavery but it was a different system, which was replaced by farming. Nowadays farming just means agriculture, but originally it was a specific type of agricultural system, one in which the land, beasts, tools and buildings belonged to a farmer and were "leased" to a family of workers in exchange for their work. (Essentially, sharecropping.)

Hmmm. You are still trying to do it, maybe because Imperials are vaguely involved.

Not exactly true. The Western Europeans had domestic slaves, but you are right. But the colonies gave up slavery the same time as the mainland did.

I also feel that slavery and serfdom are essentially interchangable, since serfs were basically slaves, just tied to the land. Doesn't change the main point.

That's not slavery, and something like slavery happening is an absolute worst-case scenario. Pessimism is one thing, but paranoia is another.