It Takes a Group, Even on Hyperborea
The Limits of A Single Swordsman
Not all who live on Hyperborea can afford to become great warriors, well-equipped to face the myriad of natural, human, and eldritch threats of the world. Neither can all such threats be survived by the sword skill of a single man. As much as Hyperborea lends itself to the free wheeling libertarian, going where he will; slaying who he must; and enslaving who he likes; it is a world given to the formation of strong and protective communities.
Abandonment and Re-Colonization
Hyperborea is a land of ongoing change, renewal, and growth. Settlers constantly push out into regenerated lands, long abandoned by ancient peoples fleeing the ravaging power of Eldritch beings. Easy sea and river access mean relatively easy travel. Just one farm over, may be folk of a different language group, religion, and ancestry. As such, old, carried-forward power structures from home territories are not useful. They are as likely to create cultural strife on the frontier as they are unity.
Ad Hoc Power
Instead, a more ad hoc system emerged that could quickly form and as quickly be abandoned. This is the institution of the Hyperborean clan chiefs: meritocratic patrons who emerge to support and organize their neighbors.
Clan Chieftains
Sooner or later, a man will tend to stand out, marked by his deeds or great wealth. He may be a farmer outside the gates of a great city that leaves its peasantry to their own problems, a frontiersman in the wilds, or a trapper roving the mountains. What makes them progress from local heroes (or villains) is they they start helping out their neighbors.
This is an ingrained Hyperborean behavior that is millennia old. Formed out of self-interest and transmitted to all parts of the world, it grows communities and reduces the risk to individuals - especially the emerging chieftain. .
He typically helps by:
Buying and storing excess grain against disasters
Visits to see how his fellows are doing
Small loans
Adjudicating disputes
Dealing directly with outside dangers, or organizing posses
Building community structures such as wharfs, granaries, and especially temples.
There is no official recognition or statement of intent to become a clan chieftain: it evolves naturally. Fogrim for example is on such a path: a fearsome and prosperous warrior with many slave girls, he is locally respected and sees his neighbors problems as his own. In time (if left alone by Gerard) he would emerge as a local chieftain.
Slave Breeding: Dynastic Pacts the Hyperborean Way
Masters typically breed their strongest and most attractive slaves.
There is no greater tie than friendship, but lacking that blood ties will do nicely. Just as noble families consolidate power through dynastic marriages, chieftains also make dynastic bonds. However, they do not marry off their children. Hyperborea’s widespread female slavery creates a different option: dynastic adoption.
This has three advantages:
Absorbing Excess Fertility
Successful Hyperboren men tend to have lots of slave girls. The more pretty girls a man has chained in his slave pen, the more chances he has to screw up with the breeding drugs. Abortifacient treatments can be dangerous and a master may opt to allow a favorite slave to bring a child to term, rather than risk her death.
Not all Hyperborean men want children, and few wish to see more than one or two running around. Giving newborns to subject families is a good solution to what follows keeping caged girls by the bed.
Protecting Free Women
Free women hate slave girls. They compete for the attention of their husbands, and enjoy/suffer sexual experiences their husbands can never subject them to. However, free women see slaves girls as necessary for reducing their childbearing burden. Both maternal and infant mortality on Hyperborea are high.
Dynastic adoption solves this. Not only only does it put a family under a chief's formal protection, but it also means a household needs fewer slaves.
Slave Girl Domination
Some masters enjoy the idea of breeding their slaves. It is an exercise in power, and all the more attractive to them as breeding is the one indignity most Hyperborean slave girls will actively resist. Such masters make breeding another tool of domination and slave training. A slave is made to beg to be bred, to kneel and present herself for chaining in the breeding hut, and to thank her master after he is done with her. The more bitterly she does these, the more satisfying it is for the master to command them.
(Some such men breed several slaves at a time. The slaves will know that most of them will have their pregnancies terminated, but one or two will be made to carry their infants to term. Their torment in going days or even weeks without knowing, is part of their master’s game.)
Dynastic adoption is an good fit for the breeding habits of such masters. They may breed their girls more freely, knowing the infants will have loyal homes. Greater political power means more slaves taken in raids or commerce, and in turn more breeding.
From Community to Clan
Bred slaves enjoy better feeding and kenneling.
Dynastic adoption ties a subject to a chieftain - but it also ties subjects to subjects. Here is its power. Even the most disparate group of strangers can be welded into a united, family clan within a generation.
The nuts and bolts of the mechanism can vary. More aggressive chieftains will not wait to be asked: they will offer adoptions. This forces recipients of their support to "shit or get off the pot" as it were - especially important where one chieftain’s influence may come up against another's.
Some subjects (or ‘landsmen’) may send a slave girl to their chieftain to serve in his slave pen until she becomes pregnant. Then, the chief returns her.
How Clan-building Affects Slave-holding
Bharaji girls are preferred breeding slaves. Their recovery is superhuman and their breeding cycles are only 3 months: perfect for rapidly repopulating a lost region.
A Chieftain may breed his Bharaji girls as often as three times a year, if needed.
When a local hero decides to build a clan chieftaincy, his needs change. He will begin purchasing slave girls specifically for breeding. He will also need more slave girls, to help support those he has impregnated.
Any kind will do as breeding slaves, though Shang, Bharaji, and Ansaru are preferred as they are genetically engineered transhumans:
they have low maternal mortality
recover completely
have shorter gestation periods
give birth to heavier infants
Bharaji girls are exceptional in that they recover completely within a month of giving birth. The only way a bred Bharaji can then be told from an unbred one, is that the bred one produces milk.
Newborns are kept in a nursery for as little time as possible, usually not more than a month. Then they are given to their adoptive families, and the slave girl can be put to dairy.
Some chieftains offer cheese and fresh milk to prospective landsman as a hint that it is time to ally up. Others ask if a chief is ‘selling milk,’ to signal their willingness to enter into formal alliance.
Is This Going to be In a Story?
If (if!) Gerard survives Aymund, he will return to Dura - as a man of considerable achievement, wealth, and with many slaves. He is keen to embrace Hyperborean identity and has become quite comfortable with subjecting his females to his whims!
Slave breeding will very much be a thing.