Indentured Servitude

A cultural practice from the Southsong Cycle

Indentured servitude was one of the practices that distinguished Southrons from other Waveborne. A free Southron or non-Southron warrior, whether man or woman, might become an indentured servant upon capture in battle, conviction of a legal offence of middling consequence, or similar disgrace. Indentured servants owed service to the Southron empress, or on rare occasion a yarl or thane, without reward or recognition. The period of indenture varied widely and was usually indefinite, dependent on the discretion of the empress or other master.

Indentured servants enjoyed a status higher than Nordling “oarsmen” (a euphemism for serfs) or Southron serfs (a class of non-warriors bound permanently to a specific ship, isle, or village). As elsewhere in Southron society, female indentured servants held a higher status than their male counterparts. Women of the indentured class were full-time warriors, as opposed to indentured men, who were laborers permitted to bear arms for light or emergency warrior duty. The harpoon was the characteristic weapon of male indentured servants, while indentured women carried long-knives, javelins, and shields akin to free warriors. Unlike free Southrons, however, all indentured servants wore tunics of undyed linen over their armor (if any), hence the common epithet “plain-clothes.”

Traditional Southron belief held that slain indentured servants could earn an oar on the ship of the undying. Yet, prior to the rise of Elder World influence in the heart of the empire during the fifth and sixth epochs, most Southrons assumed indentured servants were unworthy of such honor in the afterlife. They attributed the presumed rare exception to an especially courageous death or to the empress’s fickle nature.