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[Arkady Sadik]

So, after some lengthy IGS discussions, I'm at the point where I simply do not get EVE PF anymore. As in, it is not just spotty or somewhat contradictory in the details, it's contradictory in major ways. Which makes it currently rather impossible for me to play a character with a logical position on the general political situation.

9th Generation

Jamyl "emancipated" all slaves of the 9th generation and older (and even all higher-educated ones, regardless of generation - a somewhat lesser-known detail). It is completely unclear what kind of proportion this would be.

A "generation" in the modern world is between 20 and 30 years, with less developed countries hitting shorter time spans there.[1] Assuming 30 years, which is the upper end in the present-day world, 8th generation slaves would have been captured around 180 years ago, or about 67 years before YC. That's some 15 years before the Amarr first make contact with the Gallente and Caldari, and 47 years (1-2 generations) before the rebellion.

The first Minmatar slaves were taken 881 years before YC, which would amount to over 33 generations, with major parts of the Minmatar Empire being conquered 29 generations ago. Older generations have an exponential growth, meaning the first 24-20 generations should vastly outnumber the last 8 generations.

But the 9th generation apparently only made up some 600 - 700 million slaves.[2] PF states that, prior to this emancipation, more than one third of the present-day population remains enslaved as well The Minmatars are the most numerous of all the races in the world of EVE [3]

Assuming a 50/50 split between the 9th to 33rd generation and the 1st to 8th generation, which is highly unlikely, we'd end up with a 1.4 billion Minmatar in the Empire, and thus 4.2 billion Minmatar in total. They're also the most numerous of the four races, so we're talking about justunder 17 billion people in the whole EVE universe (excluding Jovians). Present-day earth has 7 billion people on it, so EVE is kinda small!

This does not make sense at all.

No Enslavement Outside of the Empire

The only source for this that I could find was in the evelopedia,[4] where it was entered by Garion Avarr, not a CCP member. Does anyone have any other source for this?

Because it sure as hell does not seem like it. If you fly Minmatar missions, you regularly get to fight Imperial Navy ships enslaving people in the Republic in various ways. The 24th IC recruitment text even states rather explicitly that [w]e need you to reclaim the Minmatar. Etc. etc.


Well, *I* am quite fine with the Amarr officially claiming that they are not taking slaves from others, but inofficially still doing slave raids. It just puts imperial loyalists into a pretty stupid situation where they get to find excuses as to why their navy is rather obviously breaking their own laws. Well, at least they're in the same boat as the Minmatar loyalists who get to wonder why their Republic is still at war if the Empire just released a vast majority of the Minmatar slaves.

(Rough) answers to this should be easily available to most people in new eden, especially capsuleers. But they aren't. Which means that the discussions on IGS are pretty much at the point where everyone is talking as if they were living in completely different universes.

So, wtf?

[Matariki Rain]

Not much help here, I'm sorry.

One possible fishhook I did consider at the time was that the ninth generation slaves would have to be able to prove their pedigrees. I'd assumed that many wouldn't be able to, but then there was a story of an audit which suggested that such bookkeeping was expected. *shrugs* Did you have to be ninth-generation on all lines of descent? If your grandfather was an Amarrian slave overseer would that help or hinder your case? Because if only one line matters, then everyone descended from a Minmatar taken in the "Day of Darkness" raids should now be free.

As for the general state of PF, and interacting on the IGS in ways consistent with us having a shared world where some things can reasonably be discussed and disputed because there's some level of objective reality about numbers of people and places and products underneath all the spin and propaganda...

... this is currently an exercise in futility.

I'm very, very fond of EVE. I wish things were otherwise. I still hope they might become otherwise. But just now I can't offer much hope: it seems to me that IGS is a silly place and the shared world is fundamentally flawed. We can retreat to our groups of players defining our own sub-worlds within the general framework, but we're not inducting people into those sub-worlds fast enough to balance attrition. So playing in the public arena is mostly spin and frustration, and playing in the private arenas is lovely but needs ways to bring in more people who won't make the old people not want to be there.

(I'd love to hear suggestions for paths out of this, by the way. Hope springs eternal. )

[Arkady Sadik]

As for the general state of PF, and interacting on the IGS in ways consistent with us having a shared world where some things can reasonably be discussed and disputed because there's some level of objective reality about numbers of people and places and products underneath all the spin and propaganda...

... this is currently an exercise in futility.

PF has *mostly* worked for me so far. There are some holes and inconsistencies, but they were not grave enough to break things for me. "We disagree", "we do not know" or even ignoring minor gaps seems to work well for me. E.g. while there is very little known about the "daily life" of Minmatar people, I have been able to RP quite well around that and even create some general ideas about how clans and tribes work that seem to work for most people.

So far, these discrepancies have not been clearly contradictory on very basic information. The problem in the OP is worse than anything I have encountered so far in PF.


And about the record keeping, there are some more PF texts indicating that the Empire was quite serious about the emancipation act and the record keeping of the generations.[1] The idea that to be considered a 9th generation slave, you need an unbroken lineage on both sides for 9 generations, sounds like a sensible explanation. Thank you.

[Louella Dougans]

there's a couple references to things in old stuff like:
http://www.eveonline.com/news.asp?a=single&nid=1344&tid=2
http://www.eveonline.com/ingameboard.asp?a=topic&threadID=419686
http://www.eveonline.com/ingameboard.asp?a=topic&threadID=436217&page=1#12

mentioning things like the Youil Conventions.

there's also the "rogue slave trader" mission (lvl3 vs Blood raiders) which mentions that "These Blood Raider fanatics kidnap people indiscriminately, instead of only targeting criminals and POWs like the Amarr Empire"

there might be something, in the eve-guardian interview with Emperor Doriam, but I can't seem to find a copy of that.

[Arkady Sadik]

I started a copy of this thread on the official forums in hopes of getting some dev response. Louella was kind enough to respond in both places, thanks.

Official forums thread: https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=16322

[Louella Dougans]

I think Heideran might have mentioned something, I'm not sure.

trying to find sources is 

a few chronicles have been retconned, and so on.

Must be something somewhere though

[Esna Pitoojee]

tl;dr of my post on the EVE fiction thread - there's a unique Amarr L3 mission description that makes it very clear the Amarr are not actively raiding the Republic (or any other nation) for slaves - at least not legally.

Regarding Heideran - I seem to remember Heideran's order ceasing cross-border raids being related to his recieving the Aidonis (sp?) award. I've double-checked nearly ever single chronicle relating to the Aidonis and Heideran, though and can't find it; right now I'm trying to dig up old news stories in the hope they mention it somewhere.

[Arkady Sadik]

Regarding Heideran - I seem to remember Heideran's order ceasing cross-border raids being related to his recieving the Aidonis (sp?) award. I've double-checked nearly ever single chronicle relating to the Aidonis and Heideran, though and can't find it; right now I'm trying to dig up old news stories in the hope they mention it somewhere.

http://www.eveonline.com/mb2/news.asp?nid=67
http://www.eveonline.com/mb2/news.asp?nid=80

The only news stories I could find regarding that. :/

[Arnulf Ogunkoya]

tl;dr of my post on the EVE fiction thread - there's a unique Amarr L3 mission description that makes it very clear the Amarr are not actively raiding the Republic (or any other nation) for slaves - at least not legally.

Regarding Heideran - I seem to remember Heideran's order ceasing cross-border raids being related to his recieving the Aidonis (sp?) award. I've double-checked nearly ever single chronicle relating to the Aidonis and Heideran, though and can't find it; right now I'm trying to dig up old news stories in the hope they mention it somewhere.

The thing is. It's not the Imperial ships that are doing the actual raiding in these missions.

Invariably you have to fight past a screen of Caldari ships, and then get to deadspace transit camps guarded by Imperial Navy ships. So, technically, no Imperial laws are being broken. The Amarr here are just taking charge of these poor, distressed travellers that their Caldari allies/mercs have brought to them.

This obviously means something to the nations concerned based on the fact that I am now irrevocably KOS in the empire, and will have to be very careful about the State.

As opposed to the Republic Fleet mission where I had to kill some overly nosy Gallente, and took no standings loss at all ("spies, what spies?").

[Lyn Farel]

I like this PF part concerning the Amarr being tied by the rules and laws and not able to raid for slaves anymore, but doing it nevertheless by short circuiting the laws and hiding behind a lot of shadowy layers to avoid being caught in the eyes of the law.

For the rest about the slave population and its size, yeah, its quite small. Even if for the 1st generation alone, its 600M x2^8, which equals to 153B of slaves, so it would do a total of around 250B of total slaves. I took the double at each generation of slaves (exponential by square², which means around 4 children per slave couple), even if it must be a lot more in the slave milieu, especially in breeding colonies and the likes. But it is also to compensate the fact that a lot of slaves are very probably getting integrated in the amarr society, some of them being freed, married to amarr citizens, etc. And this without counting the death/attrition rate that must be quite high in some remote places. So please keep in mind this approximation can vary a lot depending on the exponential factor you choose.

[Mithfindel]

One of the excuses/reasons I've heard most often is that having a slave convicted of crimes would essentially drop the generation counter back to one (or zero, depending on how generation is measured). Or having the slave families freed earlier, loaned them money to "get started with free life". (Oh, you can't pay your loans? Welcome to slavery again.)

Also I think Jamyl's emancipation was originally worded all 9th generation slaves, but at some point the material was changed to all 9th generation Minmatar slaves. So there would potentially be all kinds of workarounds, such as breeding Minmatar with other slave races, at which point the offspring could be likely declared to be non-Minmatar. (For example emancipating Ealurians back to Ealur wouldn't likely make much sense.)

Of course, the amount of tricks done to keep the slave's generation low depends on whether there are similar, generation-tied mechanics in the Empire in general. Or then when the news leaked out of the court the slave crime rate might have suspiciously peaked on some compounds.

[Vieve]

I wouldn't doubt that some holders may have also read the edict, scratched their heads and said something like, "Did She mean Minmatar generations or Amarr ones?"

[Esna Pitoojee]

The thing is. It's not the Imperial ships that are doing the actual raiding in these missions.

Invariably you have to fight past a screen of Caldari ships, and then get to deadspace transit camps guarded by Imperial Navy ships. So, technically, no Imperial laws are being broken. The Amarr here are just taking charge of these poor, distressed travellers that their Caldari allies/mercs have brought to them.

This obviously means something to the nations concerned based on the fact that I am now irrevocably KOS in the empire, and will have to be very careful about the State.

As opposed to the Republic Fleet mission where I had to kill some overly nosy Gallente, and took no standings loss at all ("spies, what spies?").

This has always seemed to be a bit of a :derp: situation to me, given that the Empire actually sends me to shoot people for skirting the laws in similar fashions. This may represent a failure to crop old, conflicting missions while new ones are introduced.

[lallara zhuul]

Why would a free person of the Empire marry a slave?

Would you marry your pet dog?

[Gottii]

The thing is. It's not the Imperial ships that are doing the actual raiding in these missions.

Invariably you have to fight past a screen of Caldari ships, and then get to deadspace transit camps guarded by Imperial Navy ships. So, technically, no Imperial laws are being broken. The Amarr here are just taking charge of these poor, distressed travellers that their Caldari allies/mercs have brought to them.

This obviously means something to the nations concerned based on the fact that I am now irrevocably KOS in the empire, and will have to be very careful about the State.

As opposed to the Republic Fleet mission where I had to kill some overly nosy Gallente, and took no standings loss at all ("spies, what spies?").

This has always seemed to be a bit of a :derp: situation to me, given that the Empire actually sends me to shoot people for skirting the laws in similar fashions. This may represent a failure to crop old, conflicting missions while new ones are introduced.

To be honest, I dont think its that ridiculous a situation.  Given the size of these various factions, it would actually be more unrealistic to me if there was 100% compliance with any given law.

The Empire is hardly a uniform and homogeneous entity.  Above and beyond the various nobility, there are economic and religious groups all jockeying for position, wealth and influence.

I could think of all kinds of reasons why Amarrian ships are out slaving.  One, there is the simple greed factor.  More slaves equals more money.  In fact, I would argue that one reason the Empress doesnt allow more slaving runs is that it sets a cap on the number of slaves, and thus economic strength, within the Empire.  It behooves the established powers within the Empire to not allow upstart families from acquiring more wealth through rampant slaving runs.   They're on the top, and they want to stay that way.

Moreover, there could be hard line religious elements within the Empire, those who see the Imperial stance of not bringing God's light to the heathen as an abdication of their God-giving duty, and quite literally against their religion. ( "Our first duty is  bringing God's Word to the rest of humanity!  The Empress would have us turn from our most sacred duty!", etc)

Combine the two, you have quite a lot of reasons for Amarrians to conduct slaving raids outside of the Empire. 

If you REALLY want to be machiavellian about it, I could easily see the Caldari eager to work with such dissident Amarrians.  I'm sure they wouldnt mind the established Amarrian leadership be replaced with those Amarrians who owe their new positions to their Caldari allies, thus leading to say better trade opportunities, less access for a rival mega-corp, lower tariffs, etc.  Besides, basic supply and demand would mean that the Empress's restriction on new slaving runs would drive up the price of new slaves, and the Caldari are loath to pass on such economic opportunities.   

Basically, I dont see it as that far fetched that there are still slaving runs going on despite the edict banning it.