Good vs. Evil

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Someone Else 37

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77 He has written a bit of history... although not much. The werecats used to have a powerful empire, until their jungle disintegrated and became a barren desert. Now there are a few werecats living in and around desert oases, but (as I understand it) most living werecats are enslaved, effectively or explicitly, by the elves or faeries. Most of the rest are crew members on elven pirate ships.
 
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lenscas

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78 the werecats are also not the only lost empire that this world has. On the other land mass there used to be a much more advanced civilization but it pretty much imploded when they became too advanced, now only the robots, ruins and cyborgs are left.

The robots went on and did their own thing and the cyborgs lost all knowledge and are now not much more then homes for their own technology to live in and feed from. Hooray for parasitic nanobots.

as you can imagine, there are a lot of lost treasures as 2 very powerful and very advanced civilizations fell and then I am not even talking about ships on the bottom of oceans, pirate treasure and of course good old legends and myths. And who knows what else has lived before these 2 empires and what wonders there are still left on "undiscovered" islands.
 

lenscas

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82 btw, you can comment on the docs themselves and there are still some things I need :)

For example, something to make sure the werecats that are enslaved don't try and reclaim their freedom. Due to the height difference between the fairies and them I suspect something like that will go poorly for the fairies without special percussions.

The current thing I am thinking about is a special collar containing an air container which can be used to launch a pin in the throat of wearer. Obvious to mechanical switch to release the air and thus fire the pin needs to made small and hard to reach with normal fingers.
Obviously, this is rather cruel as it means the slaves are always walking with a literal kill switch around their neck. It also means that the amount of guards per werecats still needs to be rather high which is a problem during for example the night though I have another solution for that but that one is also not exactly the nicest one:

The werecats sleep in small chambers, separate from each other (or as much as the fairies are willing to kill if one miss behaves ). These chambers are hooked up to the steam ducts but have a mechanical gate between them. This gate can be opened and closed using levers from a central location. Alternatively to steam cooking the werecats to death (which is probably even more horrifying then it sounds), a crusher system could also work or any other thing to remotely kill someone.

As I already mentioned, this method is also not exactly ideal due to it just being a bit too much....
 

duckfan77

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81, Well, if it were my ruling civilization with dangerous slaves, most methods of safety wouldn't be considered too much, unless they have different morality than humans, as humans are pretty good at not caring about the "others".
 

Someone Else 37

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80 Make the island that those particular werecats inhabit lack a crucial resource the werecats need to live (such as fresh water), and so they must buy it off the faeries in exchange for food, spices, etc. The fae could build a steam-powered desalination plant of some sort, which would periodically break down and need to be repaired by someone with more technical expertise and more nimble fingers than the werecats have. As long as the werecats give away the fruits of their labor, the steam still keeps running.
 

lenscas

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81 that would work for the island but the werecats are needed at more places then that. Also, the island was kind of a failed project that thanks to the werecat's fear still kind of works
 

Someone Else 37

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82 For the werecats enslaved in the faerie homeland, the manual suicide collar might be the best bet, assuming that you can design it in such a way that the faeries could trigger it without getting swatted first. Having the switch be located on the back of the collar might do it, if the werecats, like humans, can't easily see what's going on at the back of their necks and thus would have trouble swatting a faerie there.

The steam-cooking thing is certainly safer for the faeries, but provides much less of a spectacle and thus wouldn't do nearly as good a job of keeping the werecats in line.
 

lenscas

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83 well, I have come up with a better solution (I think and hope). It still uses the collar and special bedrooms but it has something a lot nicer in addition to it.

First off, the steam cooking thing will be unknown to the werecats, secondly the real purpose of the collar should be as much of a secret as possible. Instead, have the werecats believe it is to allow the fairies to more easily spot who is missing in case of an accident or something like that.

Now, why would you remove fear you might ask. Let me answer it for you.
First, you need to remember that the current werecats are poor, even for the ones that aren't enslaved and still live near the oasis's. It really doesn't take much to make their life's better.
Second thing you need to remember, a fairy is small a werecat is pretty big. They already proven to be able to sustain each other through farming, now, how much extra food would an fairy city need?

You may already see where I am going with this, if not well here it is.
The fairies don't treat the werecat slaves the same as humans did to their slaves. Instead, they make sure the werecats have a better life as "slaves" then when they are free. This doesn't take much because of how poor they are in their home land. Even the hard work they need to do is that much of a setback to archive that better life as in their home world they also had to work hard in order to keep alive.

It also wouldn't cost the fairies much as the fairies need a lot less then what a single werecat could produce. Think about it, a werecat can farm much more land then a single fairy ever could and this difference could thus pretty easily overcome the extra cost of making sure both the fairy that guards the werecat and the werecat have a good place to live.

The belt and steam chambers can then just be used as last resort to make sure that if one goes on a rampage it won't totally wreck everything.

As for why the slavery is still seen as cruel, the elves don't have this benefit of height and as such probably will need to result to how humans handled their slaves. Additionally, the fairies have all reason to make sure the werecats that are being transported think it will be just as bad if not worse. Having slaves be disappointed because the stories they heard about how awesome it is to be a slave for the fairies could very easily interfere with the point of improving their life's.

As for how it did not get leaked? Its hard for stories to spread far without Internet or other forms of long range communications. Additionally, there isn't exactly a lot of tourism to the fairy city from the elves for obvious reasons and the fairies also have all reasons and means to sink unknown ships from far away when they get near the docks thus even an elf pirate would know its suicide. Heck, even the cross breed probably knows better then to try and attack the docks of the fairies for a "rescue" mission.
 

Someone Else 37

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83 well, I have come up with a better solution (I think and hope). It still uses the collar and special bedrooms but it has something a lot nicer in addition to it.

First off, the steam cooking thing will be unknown to the werecats, secondly the real purpose of the collar should be as much of a secret as possible. Instead, have the werecats believe it is to allow the fairies to more easily spot who is missing in case of an accident or something like that.

Now, why would you remove fear you might ask. Let me answer it for you.
First, you need to remember that the current werecats are poor, even for the ones that aren't enslaved and still live near the oasis's. It really doesn't take much to make their life's better.
Second thing you need to remember, a fairy is small a werecat is pretty big. They already proven to be able to sustain each other through farming, now, how much extra food would an fairy city need?

You may already see where I am going with this, if not well here it is.
The fairies don't treat the werecat slaves the same as humans did to their slaves. Instead, they make sure the werecats have a better life as "slaves" then when they are free. This doesn't take much because of how poor they are in their home land. Even the hard work they need to do is that much of a setback to archive that better life as in their home world they also had to work hard in order to keep alive.

It also wouldn't cost the fairies much as the fairies need a lot less then what a single werecat could produce. Think about it, a werecat can farm much more land then a single fairy ever could and this difference could thus pretty easily overcome the extra cost of making sure both the fairy that guards the werecat and the werecat have a good place to live.

The belt and steam chambers can then just be used as last resort to make sure that if one goes on a rampage it won't totally wreck everything.

As for why the slavery is still seen as cruel, the elves don't have this benefit of height and as such probably will need to result to how humans handled their slaves. Additionally, the fairies have all reason to make sure the werecats that are being transported think it will be just as bad if not worse. Having slaves be disappointed because the stories they heard about how awesome it is to be a slave for the fairies could very easily interfere with the point of improving their life's.

As for how it did not get leaked? Its hard for stories to spread far without Internet or other forms of long range communications. Additionally, there isn't exactly a lot of tourism to the fairy city from the elves for obvious reasons and the fairies also have all reasons and means to sink unknown ships from far away when they get near the docks thus even an elf pirate would know its suicide. Heck, even the cross breed probably knows better then to try and attack the docks of the fairies for a "rescue" mission.
So the werecat slaves don't rebel mostly because it's better than the only alternative they know, and the only ones who might know better- the pirates- can't do anything about it because the fae don't want them at their ports and their defenses are ridiculous and overpowered.
 

lenscas

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So the werecat slaves don't rebel mostly because it's better than the only alternative they know, and the only ones who might know better- the pirates- can't do anything about it because the fae don't want them at their ports and their defenses are ridiculous and overpowered.
Yes, something like that.
Think of it this way, if you where a fly and you would have to feed on 1 human but are able to change how good his surroundings are and the human knows you influence it.
Would you make it a hell, thus making said human hate you or would you make it a paradise?
 

Someone Else 37

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85

Yes, something like that.
Think of it this way, if you where a fly and you would have to feed on 1 human but are able to change how good his surroundings are and the human knows you influence it.
Would you make it a hell, thus making said human hate you or would you make it a paradise?
Yeah, makes sense.

Different topic on the same world: You mentioned a bit ago that you'd decided to make the ancient werecats' technology more magical in nature. Would that allow the ninja mummies to inhabit ancient werecat temples, as you'd originally planned?