Marked

A person sold, arrested, or captured by a licensed trading company based in Dolorn is brought to the city in captivity and screened for information. With the information known about the individual, their records are drafted and they are forced to receive the tattoos applicable to them before being taken to auction and sold to their first owners.

Duties of a Marked are myriad and highly dependent upon their owner. Some Marked have valuable proficiency in trades or skills that guide them to do certain forms of work, but most do not. Marked are general slaves that are used for simple house work, child rearing, sex work, general unskilled labor, agriculture, or anything in between. Certain Marked are purchased to become combatants in gladiatorial games and given some amount of training before letting the chaos of combat separate the warriors from the fodder.

Some in Dolorn firmly hold the belief that it's safer to live as a Marked than as a free person. They're not completely incorrect, but that perspective is usually held by oppressors and not sympathizers. The laws and proceedings protecting Marked as property are more defined and straightforward than those pertaining to the happenings of free people. Marked are one of the most closely protected forms of property in Einborg, and breaking laws involving Marked which don't belong to you carries extreme punishment. However, there are very few laws protecting a Marked from their owner. Owners can and do murder their Marked with no repercussions, sometimes in broad daylight. But the investments made into purchasing, training, and supporting a slave make killing them a difficult habit to sustain so it doesn't happen as frequently as outsiders might assume. Beatings and non-lethal punishments are far more common responses to the shortcomings or crimes of a Marked.

Marked can be set legally free if their owner approaches an Einborn notary to pay a fee and complete paperwork. That being done, the Marked is transported to one of the city's markers to receive a final tattoo called a "freedom band" made with a secret, distinctive ink that visually shows this person has been legally set free and is to be considered as an equal in society. An ex-slave with a freedom band is henceforth referred to as Unchained.

In older days, the Sandsage Nomads were the first enslaved people in the territory of what is now Einborg. The indigenous people used tattoos to mark significant accomplishments or stations among the people, and those who were enslaved were mockingly tattooed in a twisted display of station. The markings began to spread to denote other slaves, originally having no set system. These early slaves were simply called "marked people", and as time went on the tattoos began to adapt into uniformity for displaying information. Constantly referring to somebody as a "marked person" gradually became shortened into the modern slave noun "Marked".

The Marked are the backbone of Einborn society and a huge staple in global economics. They are lower than the lowest class of free people with no authority over them, and their treatment is highly symbolic of how the early settlers of Einborg treated the indigenous Sandsage Nomads. It comes as no surprise to outsiders who oppose slavery that the Nomads have worked diligently to exact their revenge upon their historic oppressors.