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In fantasy, a relatively common trope in fantasy settings, particularly D&D, is underground societies that are more willing to endorse slavery than surface-dwelling societies.

We see it in the Drow, the Illithids, and the Aboleths (they're more underwater than underground, but they are prevalent in the underdark), but we don't get a reason for why these societies endorse slavery other than an explanation that basically boils down to "they're evil, that's why they've been driven underground".

I want to explore a similar trope but want a reason for why these underground societies endorse slavery that is tied more to the environment they occupy than the societies themselves. Slavery is wrong, and the societies that endorse it are obviously making a VERY BAD moral choice, but I want a reason why the underground caverns in my world have a higher concentration of such societies than the surface.

Basically, I'm asking; What kind of geographical conditions might make underground environments more 'palatable' for slave-owning societies? Note that the setting is a low-fantasy one where magic is rare, and the tech level is late medieval.

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    $\begingroup$ aboleth and illithid endorse slavery because that is there whole thing, they have innate mind control abilities. in the case of illithid they need it to reproduce even. which means they probably have different moral than us, morals are not universal. $\endgroup$
    – John
    Jun 13, 2022 at 21:17
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    $\begingroup$ VTC because the help center states, (a) "When asking Qs keep in mind that the goal of the site is to help you build your world, not to tell your story." (b) "If on the other hand you aren’t sure what a character (be it an individual or organization) should do, that is out of scope for the site." And (c) "If you are looking for discussion, brainstorming, or an overall process rather than specific Qs and As, the Worldbuilding Stack Exchange might not be a good place for your question." $\endgroup$
    – JBH
    Jun 13, 2022 at 21:25
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    $\begingroup$ "Slavery is wrong, and the societies that endorse it are obviously making a VERY BAD moral choice": Which is absolutely obvious to ultra-modern people in the western civilization. I seem to remeber that 150 years ago there was a deadly war in the USA exactly about this? Have you thought that maybe, just maybe, the Throw, the Eely Thidds, and the Shibboleths (whatever they may be) are not bound by the conventions of ultra-modern western civilization? (VTC because the question is asking about the ethics of extremely obscure nations without even giving any clue where those people live.) $\endgroup$
    – AlexP
    Jun 13, 2022 at 21:42
  • $\begingroup$ Might you mean "palatable"? - Palpable means able to be felt or manipulated by touch. $\endgroup$
    – Escaped dental patient.
    Jun 13, 2022 at 23:31
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    $\begingroup$ Actually, the real question is why the surface societies do not own slaves. Slavery in settled human cultures is the norm, not the exception. $\endgroup$
    – Mary
    Jun 14, 2022 at 0:13

5 Answers 5

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Slavery, serfdom, and indenturement are industrial processes as much as they are social structures. They are socially expensive to maintain, with severe risks to their ruling class when they fall. As such societies turn to slavery when they lack alternative power sources, or when they believe they can tolerate the inherent risk of an oppressed class through superior force. The Romans felt they could control their slaves, and so didn’t bother to invest in wind or water mills even when they had the engineering to do so, because slave power was cheaper. Imperial Japan engaged in slavery in occupied Asia because oil was hard to get, fuel was reserved for the war effort, and again they figured they could get away with it. Slavery and indentured servitude was used in both the northern and southern United States, but with the rise of coal, steam, and industrialization, the North could afford to ditch it. In the southern US, where population did not support industry and malaria restricted growth, slavery persisted, as it was still considered viable in the risk/benefit analysis of the times. for an underground society to utilize slavery, they need 2 conditions just as above ground societies:

  1. A lack of alternative work/power sources. You can't burn oil/coal to power society because of fouling the limited air. There is no solar power or wind. Water wheels might work but would require flooding precious tunnel space to build up enough hydraulic head. You want to mill grain, cut wood, power looms, spin textiles, cut, thrash, wash, transport, pump, elevate anything? Without magic, someBODY has to do it. this means paying for physical labor or…

  2. Confidence that the oppressed class can be maintained and controlled cheaper than any other practical alternative. If your victims can leave, they will. If they can fight you, they will. If they can do anything to foul your efforts, they will. They must. Any system that doesn’t acknowledge this will fail fast and hard. Maybe your troglodyte slavers control their surface victims through violence, but history has shown any number of brutal possibilities. and if a warrior class is more expensive to maintain than just paying laborers, the society won't be stable long term. Maybe slaves are enthralled by a forced addiction to cheap cave opium, or some sort of biological dependency (2nd generation slaves all developed extreme sensitivity to light or agoraphobia). Maybe it's as simple as in the land of the blind, the bat people with echolocation are kings.

Figure out why slaves are economical, and how they would be affordably controlled, and you have your (disgusting) answer.

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No Escape:

In an underground environment, there are few escape routes. Especially when dealing with solid rock, getting away is really hard. Once you've created a prison environment, you can maintain it way easier than, say, a plantation setting where there is open terrain in every direction.

No Alternative:

Life in the underworld is harsh. A creature that lacks the support of a system will assuredly die. Yes, being a slave sucks, but it beats starvation. Or being turned into some undead creature wandering the halls for eternity. Or being eaten by a monster. Or dying of thirst. Or being rolled by the first thing you meet, where there is only fleeing one way or cutting through whatever is in front of you.

No Difference:

To the species that live here, the top dog is god and master. If you aren't top dog, you are dirt to be used by the bigger (Trog/Orc/Goblin/Drow). As a slave, you usually aren't being asked to march into the enemy fireballs and deathtraps - they don't trust you that much. As a slave, you may be more reliable to a boss than his own underlings; after all, you can't steal his job.

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There is no food underground.

Because no plants grow in the dark. Slaves captured from the surface make good food. Vegetarian food animals (e.g. sheep, goats) that are not eaten immediately require large quantities of veegtable food which must be brought down from the surface. Humanoid slaves can themselves eat more or less what the slavers themselves eat and so food does not need to be procured specially for them.

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  • $\begingroup$ Huh! I was just about to convert my comment on the question into an answer, but I see you've already been there 👍 I suspect, from the way the question is worded, that the OP was already thinking this and was just looking for some confirmation and support for his thinking. $\endgroup$
    – Pelinore
    Jun 14, 2022 at 2:30
  • $\begingroup$ Not sure I like this answer. There's agrarian food sources such as mushrooms and fungi that don't require light. However, they COULD be labor-intensive (you need a LOT of mushrooms to feed a community), necessitating a agricultural slave society, much like the Antebellum-era South. $\endgroup$
    – Brinstar77
    Jun 14, 2022 at 15:00
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    $\begingroup$ @Brinstar77 - you probably know fungi feed on the remains of plants. Underground fungus farm poses the same issue as underground goat farm,: you need to bring down food from topside. The autotrophs we have on earth are either photosynthetic or chemosynthetic. D&D works around the lack of plausible autotrophs by invoking magical sources of deep energy which fill the energy role that the sun does. That world is not a "low-fantasy one where magic is rare". There is a bunch of stuff on WBstack about subterranean ecosystems if you are digging it. $\endgroup$
    – Willk
    Jun 14, 2022 at 16:44
  • $\begingroup$ @Willk Yeah, but there are other sources of energy than the sun; namely, geothermal. The Underground areas could easily have an entire ecosystem based around things that derive energy from geothermal sources rather than sunlight. $\endgroup$
    – Brinstar77
    Jun 14, 2022 at 22:24
  • $\begingroup$ @Brinstar77 there are but ALL the cave ecosystems I ever heard of rely on resources that work their way down from the surface or are brought in by animals like bats that roost in the cave but forage above so it's very reasonable to suppose that the same will hold true for any subsurface society and their economy, it's a lot more of a stretch to say otherwise, this is by far the most supportable answer (that actually attempts to provides an answer to your request for geographic contributing factors) to your question so far. $\endgroup$
    – Pelinore
    Jun 15, 2022 at 4:17
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Because underground societies require much more difficult and dangerous work

Mining is hard work. Unfortunately, you live underground. If you ever want to expand your city, you have to excavate that area. Want to carve out a living space or underground home? What if you live in an underground city of several hundred people (at least), all having families and growing? Theyll all need homes soon. You'll likely have a lot of digging to do. not only that, but caves can also collapse, and that would kill you. While sure, the people digging this area out don't need to be slaves, but it's probably better (in their eyes) that this important, common, yet unskilled work such as digging goes to someone expendable.

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    $\begingroup$ yet unskilled work such as digging goes to someone expendable => Unskilled clashes with "collapse"; you don't want to dig nilly willy if you want to avoid collapse, or blow-outs due to gases, or, ... Not all miners need be skilled, but you don't want to leave an unskilled miner digging on their own. Do remember that traditionally mine owners were safe on the surface, so didn't care as much about cave-ins. Here, the mine owners are in the mine, so they care very much. $\endgroup$
    – Matthieu M.
    Jun 14, 2022 at 9:55
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    $\begingroup$ @MatthieuM. Not necessarily, if the cave-ins are just limited to the areas being worked on. $\endgroup$
    – Brinstar77
    Jun 14, 2022 at 22:25
  • $\begingroup$ @Brinstar77: That's a big if. You know where a cave-in starts, but it's hard to know where it'll end. And that's not talking about gas leaks, or water floods. $\endgroup$
    – Matthieu M.
    Jun 15, 2022 at 9:38
  • $\begingroup$ There would likely be engineers behind the recently excavated areas (safely far enough back though) to do things like install pipes and build reinforcements. Not to mention there would probably be an overseer who A) keeps the slaves suppressed and B) is planning and making sure the excavation is going well. There would be skilled workers there who know their stuff and aren't slaves, but they aren't gonna be swinging the pickaxes, so much as making sure that the people doing that dont get themselves killed. its still a mining/excavation mission, but someones gotta do the manual labor. $\endgroup$
    – Chuck
    Jun 15, 2022 at 14:31
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Slavery is a method to concentrate wealth. In slavery, the owner takes the results of the slave's labor. Often slavery came out of both increased stratification of society and capturing people in warfare. So, ask "what is the history of those societies?"

However, there are degrees of slavery. In some cultures, a slave could become a full member of society. The ancient Hebrew law called for a slave to be freed after 7 years and provided with goods. There are stories of slaves in some Native American tribes becoming full tribal members. While in the cotton growing South, many slaves were worked to death in order to get as much value out of them as fast as possible and there was (almost) no possibility of freedom. Sparta used random killing of slaves in order to try to terrorize them into submission and still had to use the army to keep slaves from uprising. The more stratified the society, the more oppressive the slavery.

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    $\begingroup$ The ancient Hebrew law called for a slave to be freed after 7 years and provided with goods. A bit more complex than that. A Jewish slave had to be freed after 7 years, and then returned to a full role in society. A non-Jewish slave did not. But a non-Jewish slave who was freed (for whatever reason) would become a Jew and did receive "parting gifts". The treatment of non-Jewish slaves was (or at least was supposed to be) far better than the norm. of other societies at the time. $\endgroup$
    – manassehkatz-Moving 2 Codidact
    Jun 14, 2022 at 16:46
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    $\begingroup$ Even within a culture, there are different degrees of slavery. For example, in republican Rome, a slave might be a respected member of a household -- or might be worked to death in the silver mines. $\endgroup$
    – Mark
    Jun 14, 2022 at 22:57

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