The Rats of Skallgard was the term used in regards to children used as slaves for the cleaning and certain specific maintenance of the city of Skallgard. The 'Demonized' captured capital city of the petty kingdom of Roccasone from 2440 a.a.H. and possibly all the way to The Cataclysm which destroyed Skallgard.
Organization[]
Teams[]
The Rats of Skallgard were divided into various teams of about twenty to thirty children each, and divided by which level of the city that they were assigned to:
- There were two teams for the upper level
- Four teams for the middle level
- Seven teams for the lower level
A non-human overseer with a few guards would mind the child-slaves and assign their duties. Various 'managers' with their own small group of guards--often essentially deserted soldiers--took on this 'management' job for their own profit. Each team and the manager in charge was responsible for keeping a certain area of trash bins emptied and the streets and alleys and nooks and crannies of several city blocks of area clear of trash and debris.
Functions[]
Primary, Daily Work[]
The Rats of Skallgard were a cadre of a few hundred children old enough to work, but generally prepubescent, who picked up the trash, dead animals, dung and debris generated by a city. Often this meant collecting great amounts of trash into carts, which was sometimes more than they could handle if moving them along streets with a steep slope, and the difficulties of steps.
Periodic Work[]
They were also responsible for keeping the cunning and advanced sewers of the city clear and in operation on a periodic basis. This meant going down into the sewers with poles and partners and ensuring that dung and debris was swept clear so as not to build up or impede the water flow.
Extra City Work[]
They were also called upon to give some help to rebuilding and harvest in the autumn of 2440 a.a.H.
Errata[]
The nominal owners and managers of the children used them to make money in other ways. In addition to their regular duties, they begged or pickpocketed or did odd jobs to make money for their masters. Some of which created disorder in its own right. Particularly in that in some cases these money making ventures seemed more important to greedy managers than the principal jobs the child-slaves were meant to do.
For some managers, early on, street cleaning was typically 'done' by noon, with over half the day with the rats devoted towards making their managers money through extraneous ways. This, even when the city was still in ruins, often, much work needed to be done, and alleys and odd corners were left filled with debris.
Laisha would formally put the managers 'On Notice' for their behavior. Also, her enforcers were not shy about letting their displeasure be known, which might involve violence and intimidation.
History[]
Beginning[]
In the Fall of Roccasone in late 2439 a.a.H., the Succubus demon who became a self-styled Bazrrod ruler, Queen Laisha, renamed the fallen city, Skallgard, the garden of skulls. There was an enormous hate in the Dark Legion of Demons towards Humans, since the demons appeared on the surface of Aiers. But a hate that was greatly amplified in the defeat of the demons in the First War of the Power, and one that was shared not just by peoples who were strictly speaking 'demons'. Many of the various Orcs and Beast People and even Kanovs, Blood elfs and others of Polforia and elsewhere inherited hate for humans as well. Less for the failure of the Dark Legion in the War of the Power, than for the colonial efforts of humans (and some elves) in the postwar period taking the form of the Polforian states.
The effort at colonialism had angered the indigenous peoples of Polforia, and over time, these colonies failed due to distance from each other or their parent nations and the resistance of the peoples around these colonies who often attacked and raided. Further, the abuses of the remaining State of Roccasone towards non-humans, who had become a slave society, with the slave trade being an economic leg of its economy, had made it an especial sore point for demons, orcs, and other native Polforians alike. One that they were happy to crush and subject to their own 'medicine' of enslavement.
The Sorting[]
After the fall of Roccasone, the surviving populace was divided into categories. Most of the male nobility was either put to death through demonic sacrifices, or knights were essentially made into gladiators to sacrifice themselves, or subject to experiments turning them into deranged slave shock troops for the Dark Legion. Or else, some 'lucky' knights and soldiers were put to work gagged and pulling carts as if beasts of burden.
Remaining members of nobility, particularly the women or children or the upper and middle class, were sent as slave coffles to the demon cities to the east, the cities of Morod and Dol-Nur being likely and probable examples. The remaining populace of the city and nearby villages were sorted and assigned slave duties of various categories. Families were almost completely broken up by this process, and deliberately so, as the effort was to make the new human slaves as disconnected as possible. Men, for example, were made into quarrymen, miners, were sent out to farms, or became wagon pulling 'livestock', gagged so as to not speak to each other.
Indeed, but for some men commonly seen pulling wagons or put to work on city rebuilding projects, human men virtually vanished from the city, as most were working off site or out of sight, and those that remained were unable to speak.
Mothers typically lost their children, with the youngest being sent to 'State Nannies', or often being culled in the Sorting and early days after the fall of Roccasone, and were put to various menial or servile tasks or as sex workers. Otherwise, they did not seem subject to the same 'gagging rule' as the males.
Prepubescent children that were old enough to work in light labor were often assigned to become the 'Rats of Skallgard'. Sometimes, older children were acquired later, often illegally, and put with the 'rats' as they were useful in that hard work was indeed sometimes needed.
Many humans escaped the 'Sorting' by being captured by Dark Legion soldiers and held or sold illegally by those soldiers. It is not known how Queen Laisha and her developing tight organization dealt with this illegal slavery later on, but it was generally ignored or poorly combatted for a time. But a commitment to order and accounting gradually rose to a very high level within a year after the fall and takeover of the city.
'Nationalization'[]
The Rat Pack system worked akin to a franchise or licensing agreement. Individuals who were willing and able to take on the job would be paid for their trouble and for the upkeep of their slaves. They would often hold slaves of their own (which were also very often humans that were captured within the city but failed to attend the Sorting and were therefore 'pinched' illegally). As probably no one had nearly sufficient slaves to make a team, they were 'licensed' children to work in this role. The amount they were paid increased for the slaves they already held following some accounting system whereas the manager received monies for their slave upkeep and the pay of the overseers/guards, but they themselves had a small 'licensing fee' deducted for each slave they were assigned to use by Laisha.
Functions of the Rat Packs originated in a loose 'ad-hoc' way, early on. The children being put to many uses and abuses, and sometimes dying or perhaps even being traded. Later on, the managers were called to account for their slaves' lives, actions and welfare by Queen Laisha and the bureaucracy that she was setting up. There was quite a bit of early 'free for all' activity involving the new human slaves that gradually became increasingly very structured as the year of 2440 progressed.
In any case, poor managers of the Rats could be removed, and the children were subject to true accounting (as opposed to just numbers coming up right). Sometimes when the Rats died, managers would struggle to find a replacement lest they pay a penalty, but the officialdom became loathe to ignore such tricks. Also, such mandated care as common baths and inspections, improved the Rats' lives markedly, as early on, they were often in poor shape due to abuse and neglect. Poor managers who were more interested getting all they could out of their child slaves quickly were weeded out of the system as the primary work needed to be done, and rather than cleaning streets, many Rats spent much or most of their time bringing home coin to their masters while not receiving enough nutrition.
In the end, inspections greatly reduced harsh punishments and privations for the Rats whether they were owned by the manager or by the government.
Creator[]
The Rats of Skallgard and the events surrounding them in Roccasone and Skallgard are creations of, and detailed in "Survival" by dA writer Walt-Marsters http://aiers.wikia.com/wiki/Category:Walt-Marsters .