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Slavery

2020-06-19T08:14:05Z

2406:3400:20F:FFC0:B804:D641:5287:3708: /* History stuff */

[[image:Slaves sugar cane.jpg|thumb|300px|right|Slaves harvesting sugar cane, not a lot fun for them. It is really good in tea, though.]]
{{Topquote|I came here in peace, seeking gold and slaves.|Jack Handey, ''What I'd Say to the Martians''}}

'''Slavery''' is the institution of owning other humans ([[Hard Science Fiction|as well as other sapient]] [[Soft Science Fiction|beings by extrapolation]]) as property. As slaves are bound to their owners, they were prevented from leaving or refusing to work under threat of immediate violence for disobedience. When two groups would fight, it was not uncommon for the victor to capture some of the defeated along with the goods or territory and put them to work. Later on, as long-distance trade improved, they also began selling said captives to other cultures. The children of slaves usually were slaves themselves, though this was not universal.

In other cases, people would be put into slavery as a punishment, e.g. for failure to pay their debts, or voluntarily such as an alternative to paying for something. Some systems of slavery even offered opportunities for, like the Devshirmeh system in Ottoman Empire, where boys taken from among Christian vassals who were bright enough could actually end up as Grand Vizier of the Empire.

In addition to the practice of owning human beings as chattel, there are other contemporary and historical arrangements so similar to slavery that they are referred to as slavery informally or at that point in history. A few of these include serfdom ([[Peasant|serfs]] were not owned, but they were bound to the land owned by [[noble]]s and are required to work the noble's land 2-3 days per week for free and keep what else they could grow-keep-trade), indentured servitude in colonial America (in exchange for passage to the new world being paid, criminal fines or to discharge a debt, someone would be indentured to a contract holder and have to work off their debt over a number of years such as British criminals), impressment and shanghaiing (where people were kidnapped from ports or ships and forced to serve as sailors with said debt not being hereditary), the various forced labor programs used by the [[Nazi]]s, [[Communism|Communists]], and other despotic regimes and the victims of human trafficking which is still ongoing today.

== History stuff ==
The oldest surviving codex of laws yet discovered in the world, the Code of Ur-Nammu, has multiple references to slaves, so slavery has been with humanity for a ''very'' long time. Slavery was practiced in virtually every culture at some point throughout their history; as soon as a people progressed from a hunter-gathering and nomadic culture to an agrarian one it became more convenient to look for ways to increase productivity and lower expenses. Before the advent of modern machinery, that way was some flavor of slave workforce since you generally had to spend less resources on a slave than you would on your fellow clan member.

In the ancient world, basically all civilizations made use of slavery to some degree or another. Prisoners of war were taken as slaves and made to ply their trade for their conquerors, or were sold abroad for goods. Since civilizations would wax and wane from time to time, the enslavers of one generation might end up enslaved in the next. The Greeks made heavier-than-usual use of slaves, and the Romans even more so. The Persians did not use slavery themselves and tried to limit it, but slavery did exist in their Empire among their conquered vassals. Slaves worked in every field from miners (who were quickly worked to death) to farmers, to factory workers and skilled craftsmen, to entertainers, teachers and doctors (particularly Greeks who could buy their freedom in a year, or even less if skilled) and even up to high ranking government officials in the Empire. Ancient Romans used to grumble about all these slaves coming in stealing people's jobs (this sentence is not a joke).

Slavery existed in [[Medieval Stasis|Medieval Europe]], but declined after the year 1,000 AD in a lot of places, especially the north. The basis for the modern English word slave gets its roots here, as the Slavic races were so often put upon that they pretty much named [[Grimdark|the ordeal after them]]. After the Europeans discovered the continent of Africa, there was much contact between local tribes and foreigners and many nations would take slaves from the peoples of Africa abetted at times by local slavery systems among African people themselves (see below). This brought up the matter of racial slavery. In the Classical World (and Rome in particular), slaves were basically from everywhere in the Empire and many places beyond and the children of freed slaves in Rome became more Romans. Slavery is not a nice thing even at the best of times, but racial slavery adds to it the conception that an enslaved race is inferior, doomed to servitude forever, and that people from it are unfit for anything else. Those caught up in it had little hope of ever elevating themselves from a state of being a form of livestock with the hands for manual labor. Slave ships sailed from Europe to Africa loaded with manufactured goods, textiles, guns and gunpowder which they traded for captives taken in war, who were then packed in like sardines to be shipped off to the New World. There they loaded up on tobacco and sugar and sailed back to Europe. [[Grimdark|In Brazil and most of the Caribbean between 1600 and 1800, the slave population never was able to achieve natural replacement rates due to a high death rate from overwork and abuse by their masters]]. The American system of slavery (aka "the peculiar institution") would arguably require an entire article of its own, but since we'd rather not try to poke that hornet's nest it's enough to say that it was not much better than the Caribbean experience and was only abolished after the American Civil War (which was followed by the system called the Jim Crow Laws, which is an issue for another article).

Africa has had slavery between its various tribes and kingdoms for millennia. Between this and many foreign civilizations making extensive use of African slaves, the history of slavery in Africa is complicated and violent. In Africa, even prior to the Arab slave trade or the Atlantic/European slave trade, slavery happened in all the forms from ancient times. This was enacted between the various tribes and nations of Africa; however, in many African societies where slavery was prevalent, the enslaved people were not treated as chattel slaves and had certain rights in a system similar to indentured servitude elsewhere in the world. When the Arab slave trade and Atlantic slave trade began, many of the local slave systems began supplying captives for slave markets outside Africa. They also supplied criminals and captives from rival tribes or nations to the Arab, European or American slave trades. This means African slave traders unwittingly helped fan the flames of the issue of racial slavery, unaware of the exploitation and dehumanization these buyers would subject them to- and that's before the Scramble for Africa caused many of them to become slaves themselves.

In the Ottoman Empire, who can ''arguably'' can be seen as a continuity of the Eastern Roman Empire, the system was more or less the same, but with a small possibility of moving up if you were a Christian (or claiming to be one) because Christians (and Jews) are considered "people of the Book", meaning the worthiest of non-Muslim people according to Islam. ''Devshirmeh'' is the name for the system of taking one boy out of 40 houses from the population of Christian vassals in the Ottoman Empire; this mostly meant Balkan Christians with the inclusion of Bosniak Muslims, and Armenians, Romani and Jews were explicitly excluded. The sad and unwelcome reality of the ''devshirmeh'' system didn't stop some families from actively sending their kids, who were seen as too smart and full of potential to die toiling in some Balkan countryside; said desparation was often to the point of bribing the Janissary Aghas. The taken boys were converted to Islam (or pretended to, either way they didn't have a choice), then made into elite monastic troops called Janissaries (new soldiers); if they proved to be intelligent, they were sent to the Imperial Academy in Enderun to become bureaucrats. Being slaves, they had no ''habeas corpus'' and could be executed at any time - ''in theory''. In practice, execution was a non-issue since they commanded enough power to dictate Ottoman military policy, married Ottoman princesses, engineered palace coups to kill off sultans who didn't pay them enough, and ended up even investing back in their native countries of Bosnia (the reason Bosniaks mourned the fall of the Janissary institution while EVERYONE ELSE celebrated it).

Female slaves in the Ottoman Empire ''could'' end up in the palace as a concubine, but this involved more mindfuckery and tricks between concubines than a game of poker with [[Tzeentch]], and no concubine ever ended up dying in her bed. Ironically, concubines who lost the Sultan's favor would marry Viziers and other Ottoman Sipahi lords, and ended up ''far better'' than those gunning to the top. With the advent of nationalism, the French Revolution, and the growing need for military reforms bitterly opposed by the Janissaries, the system's flaws burst like rotting cysts, and Slavery went the way of the Dodo in 1847 thanks to [[Noblebright|Abdulmajid's reforms]]. The harem was numerous enough by then, and the freed whites went on with their lives while the black population [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afro-Turks settled in Western Turkey as free farmers].

Eurasia, particularly Ukraine, was the hotbed of slavery for the Ottoman Empire, with the port city of Caffa being the continent's major slave ports. The Russians liberated it from the Crimean Khanate, whose major income was thousands of taken women and children from villages, supplying the Ottoman Empire's need for European/white women. Evliya Çelebi even wrote about the despair and cries of women separated from their children and then sold separately.

In contrast to the above, slavery is virtually never mentioned in [[Oriental Adventures|east Asian-inspired]] settings. This has some basis in history in certain areas: The [[Mongols]]' nomadic lifestyle was not conductive to widespread slavery, though they did take some captives as slaves ([[Genghis motherfucking Khan|Genghis Khan]] himself was briefly a slave in his youth), and during the Mongol Empire's runs on conquering China people were often little better than slaves anyway. The Chinese themselves went through several periods of loosening and then making stricter laws surrounding slavery, usually rallying around who was in charge following their frequent wars to unify, only to break apart once more. The inhabitants of the Ryukyu islands "would die over" slavery rather than participate. Slavery in Asia was probably most prolific on the Korean peninsula, who had a caste system, but population growth, a few slave revolts and modernization eventually rendered it less than palatable.

The earliest European reports of [[Japan]] mention that, though it existed there, slavery was rare and primarily inflicted on debtors and prisoners of war. The main recorded examples are the maids/concubines of the rich, and those brought by Europeans themselves. One European held slave's physical stature impressed Oda Nobunaga so much that he purchased him, freed him and elevated him to samurai status. This man would be known as Yasuke, [[Anime|the only black samurai]]. During the Sengoku a not-insignificant of Japanese prisoners of war were sold to the Europeans for foreign trade until 1587/1595, when Toyotomi Hideyoshi banned it.

==Slavery in Fantasy==
Because slavery is viewed as such a moral repugnance throughout the modern world, it is an easy way for lazy [[GM]]s to get a reaction from players. Slavery being one of the common features of a setting's bad guys makes for an easy way to establish that civilization or organization is [[Alignment|evil]]. A bunch of armed guys attack a peaceful village with chains and whips to catch its residents, bind them, and take them to their dwelling, where they're treated worse than how we treat livestock and forced to: toil, be beaten, probably raped, and made to fight to the death in arenas for the amusement and benefit of some sick bastards? That is more than enough reason to establish "these guys are bad, go [[murderhobo|kill their asses]]" regardless of alignment; even Evil characters can simply indulge their drive to kill by offing slavers, and exploit the freed villagers and their families for more favors - particularly Lawful Evil ones.

However, this is not always the case; both the perceived "good" and "bad" factions can also engage in slavery, although how they do it usually defines who's good and who's bad (regardless of how minute the difference is). Take [[Araby]] and the [[Dark Elves]] in the ''[[Warhammer Fantasy Battles|Warhammer Fantasy]]'' setting, for example. Both factions engage in wanton slavery and have no qualms about it being a common thing everywhere. However, what sort of defines each of them is how they see their slaves. In Araby, slaves have several rights, the children of slaves are guaranteed by law to not be slaves, and particularly cruel mistreatment of slaves will result in punishment to the masters and the mistreated becoming free. The Dark Elves consider all non-Dark Elves to be beneath them and will torture and maim their slaves, just because they think it is fun.

Though it is found in both, slavery is more common in fantasy settings than in science fiction. In your typical Tolkien knockoff, the way you go about digging rocks, harvesting lumber, tilling fields and raising buildings is normally with strong backs. In most sci-fi worlds, why have a bunch of slaves working in an irradiated asteroid space mine when you could have a bunch of robots who don't need slave drivers, don't require food or air, won't plot escape/rebellion ([[Men of Iron|'''hopefully''']]), and are stronger and easier to repair if damaged? ''[[Warhammer 40,000]]'' actually justifies having slaves fairly well in that, in the [[Imperium]], such automation is considered techno-[[heresy]] (or simply decayed like spaceship artillery loaders) due to a robot rebellion happening in the past and the risk of Chaos corruption for the machines, while the [[Dark Eldar]] are sick bastards who need to consume souls of psychically susceptible species (human youngsters are prime specimens, while Tau souls taste bland and weak) and get their rocks off at making others miserable.

Slavery of a [[/d/|certain kind]] is a common feature of many [[Magical Realm]]s.

==A Digression About the Economics of Slavery==
For serious worldbuilders who have it, you need to consider what economics already considers a long-standing question: Is slavery profitable in the long term, and if so where?

The consensus answer among economic historians to the first one is that yes, slavery can be profitable, but only in those situations where technology does not offer a faster/cheaper/safer solution. Indeed, most ancient Empires (Egyptian, Greek, Roman) had some form of institutionalized slavery that allowed them to endure. This being said, the very concept of slavery has some serious downsides (that have nothing to do with morality) dooming it in the long run. The short answer to the "where" question is "cash crops and other agriculture, unskilled labor, and a bit of mining", in roughly that order of profitability.

The practical downsides that doom slavery include, but are not limited to:

*First of all, in any area where sabotage is a serious concern slavery is usually a non-starter. For a recent example, look at the [[Nazi]]s using forced labor to build their weapons later in the war, and the quality of said weapons. That rules out most semi-modern mining, as well as just about any industry with any degree of mechanization and a surprising amount of agriculture.
** Despite mining being the stereotypical use of slaves in fiction, mining past a certain depth is sufficiently deadly and expensive that semi-skilled labor is '''absolutely required''', and a slave has a nice way to commit suicide AND hurt his master's profits at the same time. While ''other'' exploitative practices may be used, the training required means actual slavery-based mining is very much a no-go save for tasks such as the very basic work of breaking surface mineral seams, as well as open-pit mining, where "getting stuck" is not an issue and carrying loads to processing stations a la South American silver mining done by Spanish or simple stone quarries where all one needs doing is to hit a stone with a pick and carry the result to storage.
*Second, unless reproduction is heavily encouraged, slave populations have a tendency to drop over time, especially compared to relatively free populations (even ignoring manumission and escapes), and five seconds of thought on slaves' living conditions should lead to a few obvious conclusions as to why. So if you want to keep up, you need to constantly raid (or trade with raiders) for more slaves. Last time this was done beyond the 16th century, the United States wrecked the entire Barbary coast with artillery and freed slaves. So any "sustainable" raiding *will* attract military threats that will make sure any slave taken will eventually be more expensive than a free worker who is A) already available and willing, B) lives within the empire and C) has many motivations, such as family, welfare and [[Tzeentch|hopes for a good future]]).
*Third, slave-holding societies are usually economically out-competed by non-slave-holding societies once military considerations are either removed or temporarily equalized. There are plenty of reasons for this, but the big ones are the twin spectres of Incentives (which align more closely in non-slave societies) and Efficiency (effort you expend on keeping slaves from escaping or rebelling could usually be more productively used elsewhere, and that's just to ''start'', saying nothing of potentially intelligent slaves wasted in labor they are not optimal for rather than being educated and made into scientists).
*Fourth, if slaves are owned in large numbers they start to displace the local non-slaves. This is not a simple case of [[Meme|"DEY TOOK AHR JERBS"]], as the Romans can attest: when large numbers of slaves started to displace local farmers who were forced to sell their land for some reason or the other, said ex-farmers were driven to the cities, where there were not a lot of jobs either. This bred poverty, and from poverty rose a class dissatisfied with their lot in life as they starve while the rich grow fat. And from this rose political and civilian unrest, which is never good for any state. In the case of the Romans, this gave birth to a populist dictator, Julius Caesar and his adoptive son Octavian, which created a major precedent for all modern dictatorships and bread-and-circuses states.

[[Category:History]]

The Last Church

2020-06-19T07:41:31Z

2406:3400:20F:FFC0:B804:D641:5287:3708:

{{Awesome}}
[[File:The Last Church on Terra.jpg|200px|right|thumb|THE LAST CURIOUSLY DENOMINATIONAL CHURCH!]]

{{Topquote|May have been the losing side. Still not convinced it was the wrong one.|Malcolm Reynolds}}

'''The Last Church''' by [[Graham McNeill]] is a short story describing the conversation between an old and lonely priest named Uriah Olathaire of the very last church on Terra (The Church of the Lightning Stone) during the [[Unification Wars]] (where the Emperor banned religion and the worship of gods) and a mysterious character named [[God-Emperor of Mankind|Revelation]], the story is pretty deep and thought provoking and shows you that you don't need '''XTREME GRIMDARK''' and violence to make a great 40k story (even though the story doesn't take place in the 41st millennium). As well as being the earliest complete story in the 40k canon, it deals with morals, religion, atheism and humility and the benefits and costs of each. And also, Uriah is probably running for 'most badass non-augmented human' in the setting at first place. What's more badass than [[Ollanius Pius| getting killed by Horus]]? Telling the Emperor, ''to his face'', why he sucks (note that the Emperor was never Jesus: at most, and in fairly old lore he was implied to be Jesus's 13th disciple, which in turn means not only that he knew Jesus, but purposely tried to do better than God at guiding humanity with [[Horus Heresy|predictable results]]. What is more, other than its being called a "church," there is not really anything specifically Christian about Uriah's religion explicitly described–rather it seems like a vague syncretic religion that venerates miracles, saints and nature.)

==Plot Summary==
In the titular last church, the very last worshipper and priest on Earth, Uriah Olathaire, is visited by a mysterious figure. They talk about why the church is the last of its kind, and what happened to all of the faithful who once cherished it so much. This figure, "Revelation", argues about all of the harm that religious worship and organizations have inflicted on humanity throughout history (despite his examples being blatant lies and the opposite of what really happened in history), whilst the priest attempts to refute it. Finally, Revelation reveals himself as the Emperor of Mankind, and more specifically as the being who originally (unintentionally, more or less incidentally due to Uriah's experiences during a brief and dramatic encounter between the two during the Unification Wars) inspired the priest to believe in his religion. He then gives the priest a chance to recant his false beliefs and leave; the church will be destroyed, but he does not have to perish as well.

The priest refuses. Instead pointing out the Emperor's hypocrisy in the various things he has done and in doing that, makes him to be no different to the crusaders and fanatics of the past. Despite this, the Emperor disregards Uriah's words and escorts him outside before his troops start destroying the church. As his church is destroyed, Uriah gives the Emperor one last warning about the folly of his plan before calmly walking back in to the church, preferring to die with it, and prays while he waits for death before he is crushed beneath the rubble.

The Emperor dismisses him as a lost cause and moves on. As the rain lifts, and the morning sun rises over the smoldering remains of the last church on Terra; inside, a broken clock, prophesied to chime only when the world is at an end, begins to softly ring...

==Moral==

The moral of the story is a lot more complicated and relevant than most would think. The Emperor is a well-intentioned extremist fighting against four monstrously powerful daemonic gods and trying to starve them out by spreading the Imperial Truth. He made mistakes, yes, but his intentions were pure (sort of, his methods weren’t at all necessary, merely easier than worrying about people calling him out on immoral acts as proven when his ultimate rebuttal to Uriah calling him out was to eliminate him)). ([[Tolkien|Ah, but good intentions matter not. Only good deeds]].) In this he had the stereotypical view towards religion that some atheists have: that it is the cause of most of humanity's problems including much of the killing and/or all the wars in human history, ignoring any and everything else that was a factor in said problems/wars, the fact that those same negative behaviors and actions are also found in non-religious people and ignoring the fact that '''other''' modes of thought (such as his own) also cause untold suffering. It also ignores the fact that any time extremists act on their religion, their beliefs are almost always directly contradictory to their religion (any successful religion teaches tolerance (To an extent, otherwise your stuck with constant fighting all the time.), extremists are anything but). So, if anything, the Emperor should have made religions enforce their own teachings. The story also is about the Emperor's adamant refusal to accept that extremists are extremists, whether religious or secular. On top of that, the extremists who might have become religious extremists instead become secular extremists thanks to his own secularization of his Imperium and this comes back to bite humanity horribly for the next ten thousand years. The story is about why people really do what they do for their beliefs. The Emperor was prepared to do whatever it took for his beliefs because it appeared to him that he was undeniably correct, just like extremists. The moral is that any reason based on rejection is immoral reason. Case in point, the Emperor-lead Imperium purged so much and so often that it’s sheer scale of atrocity was part of the traitor Primarchs’ motivation to rebel.

He was also under the belief that it was faith in general that makes the Chaos Gods stronger and the [[Imperial Truth]] was an attempt to stop them. What the Emperor failed to understand was that the Chaos Gods were powered not only by faith, but by emotions as well as aspects of reality itself such as change (which also means wiping out all life probably would fail to destroy Chaos). People going about their daily lives experiencing their normal emotions would still empower the Chaos Gods. It has been argued that if the Emperor had not destroyed the other religions and actually WARNED people about Chaos ([[Interex|like some other people]]), Chaos would have been less powerful because people would have directed their belief to religions (such as the Abrahamic faiths) or outright have nothing to do with it at all (which is still better than falling to it). If anything, belief and faith grant power in this setting and even [[Ork|make gods real if they weren't before]], so while [[Interex|an atheistic approach guarding against Chaos]] could help, at most it would just result in a stalemate; theistic religiosity in the 40k verse not only defends but allows adherents to [[Ynnead|take the fight to Chaos and provides the only possibility of defeating them]]. Therefore, by abolishing religion (especially purging the theistic ones) [[FAIL|the Emperor HELPED the Chaos Gods]], albeit [[Tzeentch|unintentionally]]. As such the Emperor's own ignorance in this regard led to the [[Horus Heresy]], bringing about his own downfall. The Emperor may have been tens of thousands of years old, vastly intelligent and unbelievably powerful, but even he could not predict everything (he didn't have to predict anything, just accept that Chaos feeding on emotion is exactly what it says on the tin instead of projecting his own nonsensical beliefs that aren't even truthful in the first place). Perhaps that was his greatest failing: he attempted to ''predict'' how to defeat Chaos instead of applying the scientific method. From his words throughout 40k it is clear he saw Warpcraft and science as completely separate and distinct fields. Had he applied the scientific method to studying Chaos, he would have learned the above information about Chaos's strengths and combating it with faith. As with most genii, he outsmarted himself. Naturally trying to understand the Warp scientifically is impossible, but that's its ''behavior'' not its ''nature''. Nothing stopped him from studying its nature in order to get a good enough concept of what it feeds on. The Inquisition did exactly that which is how they got so good at fighting Chaos in the first place. Even so, his reaction to anything but blind-obedience was “kill them with fire.” When you’re claiming there must be no religion and kill anyone who wants a reason to believe your claim that religion is bad, you set yourself up for self-destruction at best.

Murdering countless worlds while claiming it's because religious people are violent really just gets people to think "Then what the fuck are you!?" In short, the Emperor turns out to be a high-functioning psychopath. There's a reason religion exploded shortly after the Emperor's internment into the Golden Throne.

===Alternative view===

Makes you think though - The Emperor knew about the Chaos Gods (even if he didn't refer to them as such), since he talked to Horus about them, who then passed it on the Garviel Loken to soothe his mind (not strictly true - Horus and Loken only learned about Daemons - Loken is totally mystified when an Interex soldier explains the nature of Chaos/Kaos to him). The Emperor also might have had an inkling that it wasn't just belief that powered them (in actuality, they solely feed on emotion, worship and belief are vectors to reality but not even slightly needed or empowering for them...but for the Emperor...), what with him being in such close contact with the Warp 24/7. This begs the question - was he, in fact, out-Just As Planning Tzeentch and, as [[Erebus]]' false(?) memories showed Horus, did he ALLOW the Primarchs to be taken, just so Lorgar would land on Colchis, be raised by Kor Phaeron, learn about Chaos, fall to Chaos, turn Horus, allow the Horus Heresy to happen, teleport to Horus' Battle-Barge, kill his son while being mortally wounded himself, and be installed on the Golden Throne just so the billions upon billions of humans would have someone to worship other than the Chaos Gods, as a God that can be seen, touched and interacted which is nowhere near as powerful as a God that must be believed in purely through faith. Probably the only hiccup that The Emperor didn't foresee was Magnus ripping through his psychic shields and wrecking the Golden Throne/Webway Gate, which could've been avoided if The Emperor had fucking told his sons what he was doing. And especially if he'd given them a way to communicate with him, since that problem was why Magnus used sorcery to try and warn him of Horus in the first place.

In other words... did the Emperor plan to be worshiped all along? Probably not, but it makes you think. Still, though, this idea might actually have some merit judging by how the Emperor didn't seem so disbelieving of his divinity when chatting with Guilliman after his son's return from stasis. Given he planned for Magnus to take his place on the Golden Throne and how Sanguinius was basically an even better Emperor than the Emperor, it seems likely that he have every intention of arranging them as such and perhaps sacrificing himself in someway to become humanity's "god" in the Warp. He's basically sci-fi Sigmar and that is basically what Sigmar did, so it would make sense if you add Grimdark.

===Author's Opinion===
[http://graham-mcneill.com/ McNeill's website] has an explanation for his thought processes when writing the story as well as his opinion of it on [http://graham-mcneill.com/last-church/ its own page], but it's been copypasted here for convenience. Strangely, Graham states that "he didn't want to preach", but then states he wanted Uriah to be "wrong" and the Emperor to be "right" (see below).

<blockquote>I came late to this anthology, as I was finishing a novel while the bulk of writers were thrashing away at their keyboards. So when it came time to start developing a story, I asked the editors to send me a one-line pitch for each of the other stories so I didn’t waste time replicating a story that had already been written. When I got them, they were mostly bolters blazing, chainswords hacking stories, which is great, but I felt needed balancing by one that had a more thoughtful pace, with less fighting. One of the aspects of the Heresy I’ve liked the most has been the dichotomy between a growing secular empire butting heads with humanity’s urge to worship things in the sky. I saw this story as a challenge to myself, the readers and to BL. Would I be able to write a story like this that was exciting and engaging? Would the readers buy into it or would they be bored without the action? Would BL publish a story like this? Turns out that it seems all three were answered with a resounding yes. There’s a lot of me in this story, though I’m certainly not preaching to anyone with it. It’s more like I wanted people to talk about the story, to ask themselves questions and look at things in a different light. Some folk have said that Uriah is a straw man, and that the arguments made on both sides of his and Revelation’s debate are simplistic. Part of me agrees with that, as I’m not a theologian (and, crucially, neither was Uriah. He was a drunken rake, called to be a priest by a personal experience. No years of training in a seminary for him…) and I wasn’t trying to write a treatise on religion or belief, but rather a story that got people talking and entertained them. It’s also the first time the Big E turns up in a Heresy story in any real form. He’s appeared a few times to deliver the odd line of dialogue, but this was the first time we’d seen him talk, interact and appear for any length of time (even though most of it is in another guise) so I needed to be careful. In the end, to really stir the pot, I wanted to end the story in a way that, while Uriah might have been wrong, he was the one you liked better and who came out with the apparent moral high ground. The Emperor was right, yet he came across as the arrogant, short-sighted tyrant – the very kind he rails against in the story. Now go back and read it again and see if you agree!</blockquote>

==Trivia==
*Isandula Verona's paintings depict 3 events of old earth (both factual and presumably fictional), one painting depicts "nude figures disporting in a magical garden", likely the Garden of Eden. The second is a painting of "a battle between a golden knight and a silver dragon", undoubtedly based of the battle between the Emperor and the Void Dragon in ancient Libya. But the third painting is by far the strangest, it depicts a "wondrous being of light surrounded by a halo of golden machinery" (couldn't possibly be foreshadowing the Emperor on the Golden Throne) ... Also, there is the description of an "explosion of stars", possibly referring to the creation of the Eye of Terror.

*The church in question appears to be [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindisfarne Lindisfarne]: perched on "a rocky promontory jutting from [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Britain an island] that was said to have [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_empire once ruled the world]". Uriah even references it being raided by [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindisfarne#Vikings Scandi].
*Many of our currently existing countries and continents are mentioned in the story, however they are spelled and pronounced differently.
*The Mariana Canyon where the giant stone figures are carved in is most likely the remnants of the Mariana Trench, the deepest point of the Earth's present-day oceans -- given that this place is now exposed, you can grasp just how much the Earth has changed... For example, the oceans boiled away due to various factors. Some of the new land that became exposed became known as the "Panpacific".
*Given Uriah's knowledge of (and ability to travel to) other countries, and his reaction to the Emperor's plans to conquer the galaxy, it seems likely that the Age of Strife on Terra was less of a complete societal breakdown and more of a regression to the dark ages in which knowledge of the past remained largely intact but functionally useless. Ironic, considering the state of the Imperium ushered in to save humanity from that. So, the inverse of the 40k Imperium.
*Lastly, The Emperor's claim that "humanity will not be free until the last stone of the last church falls on the head of the last priest" is lifted from a quote of [https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/122284-civilization-will-not-attain-to-its-perfection-until-the-last Émile Zola]. Interestingly, he doesn’t seem to have a reason for believing this.
{{40k-Timeline}}

[[Category:Warhammer 40,000]]

C. S. Lewis

2020-06-19T07:34:18Z

2406:3400:20F:FFC0:B804:D641:5287:3708: /* Legacy */

[[Image:CSLewis.JPG|thumb|Right|250px|The second patriarch of modern fantasy]]
'''Clive Staples Lewis''' (better known as "C. S.", "Jack" to his friends), not to be confused with [[C.S. Goto]] (how dare you confuse the two), nor with Lewis Carroll, was [[J. R. R. Tolkien]]'s good friend and another influential early modern fantasy writer. He was also an essayist and a theologian, one of the best of the last century, writing on subjects such as the relationship between science and religion in the modern age, the nature of the afterlife, and [http://scientificintegrity.blogspot.com/2010/04/religion-and-rocketry-by-cs-lewis.html arguing that the existence of aliens wouldn't clash with Christian beliefs.] Almost all of Lewis' works tend to come across as astoundingly well-thought out; many of his more devoted fans would argue that reading his work is like reading the Necronomicon, except it ''increases'' your sanity.

== His Fictional Works ==
*The Space Trilogy
**Out of the Silent Planet (1938)
**Perelandra (1972) (C.S Lewis' favorite book by his own admission)
**That Hideous Strength (1974) (AKA That Hideous Book, according to JRR Tolkien).
*The Chronicles of Narnia (1950-1956)
**The Magician's Nephew (actually written after ''The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe'', but its events take place first)
**The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
**The Horse and His Boy
**Prince Caspian
**The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
**The Silver Chair
**The Last Battle
*The Screwtape Letters
*The Pilgrim's Regress
*The Great Divorce
*Till We Have Faces

== Why He Was Influential ==
With the Narnia series, C. S. Lewis brought to the table the "everything in mythology but the kitchen sink" approach to fantasy writing. Norse Mythology, Greco-Roman Mythology, Judeo-Christian Theology, even modern folklore like Santa Claus got worked in. It's to his everlasting credit that he threw all these things into a blender and came up with something really awesome (even Santa Claus). Basically, if Tolkien gave modern fantasy [[RPG]]s [[Halfling]]s, [[Orc]]s and Dark Lords, Lewis gave it [[Centaurs]], [[Minotaur|Minotaurs]] (and potentially non-evil ones at that), [[Merfolk]], and talking animals. Narnia also included one of the earliest and most logically consistent examples of the "secret magical world parallel to our own" trope. And it is also an early form of the [[Isekai]] genre.

== On His Writing ==
[[Image:NarniaMap.jpg|thumb|Right|300px|A map of Narnia]]
When compared to his friend [[J.R.R. Tolkien]], Lewis was more of a philosopher and theologian than a world-builder. While Tolkien had beliefs and viewpoints which manifested in his writings, they usually came up as background details and a component of greater world building. Lewis, in contrast, wrote his works with the primary intent of arguing a point or presenting an idea rather than creating a fantasy world. This isn't to say that Lewis' writings have poor world-building, it just wasn't as much of a priority for him as having a clear and consistent theme. Although his writings tend to be far more overt with their religious message, it should be noted that they're not written in a [[Cult of the Redemption|judgemental fire-and-brimstone]] style, but more like a neutral-toned fable or philosophy lecture. The Narnia series might basically be about a fantasy land with lion Jesus and ice witch Satan, but it is generally more readable than [[The Lord of the Rings]], as Lewis didn't feel the need to include songs on every other page, or detail the name and lineage of every single person who participated in each battle.

He is also known for The Space Trilogy, which is arguably the earliest example of Christian science fiction (a subgenre that exists but is almost unheard of in mainstream media). The first book ('''Out of the Silent Planet''') is about a man named Ransom being kidnapped and taken to a planet (called Malacandra by its inhabitants, the one we call Mars) where he meets aliens, the angel in charge of Mars under God and learns more about the way the universe works and the situation of Earth. The second book (''Perelandra'') is about Ransom being taken to the planet Perelandra (the one we call Venus, which has a livable atmosphere due to Venus' actual deadly climate being unknown at the time) to stop a demon from recreating The Fall of Man with Venus' equivalent of Adam and Eve. In the third book (''That Hideous Strength'') the main characters Ransom and Mark have to work together against a scientific institute which is actually a front for sinister supernatural forces.

Fun fact: the Space Trilogy makes reference to what would have been the Time Travel trilogy by J.R.R. Tolkien, except we never got anything more than unfinished manuscripts. Basically it would have been Tolkien's way of tying in the history of the Lord of the Rings with the known history and medieval legends of today's world. The closest thing we get is ''[[The Silmarillion]]''.

Also of note are Lewis' books about the afterlife, as they were unique... at the time. ''The Screwtape Letters'', for example, is a fictional series of letters written by a demon, Screwtape, to his nephew Wormwood, giving him advice on seducing a man to the ways of [[Heresy|sin]] and [[Chaos|damnation]]. [[Warp|Hell]] isn't depicted as a brutal prison as in Dante's Inferno, but more like a [[Administratum|diabolical bureaucracy]]; where [[Dark Eldar|demons consume human souls as we would consume wine]], and the more evil they are, the finer their vintage. Screwtape gives excellent advice on how to manipulate good intentions into bad deeds, and the book's unusual point of view lends itself to some creative ideas. In particular, the subplot where Wormwood and Screwtape subtly try to undermine the other by reporting them to Hell's [[Inquisition]] while maintaining correspondence is quite entertaining. Suffice to say, it's an excellent read for [[GM|GMs]] wishing to run a particularly [[Tzeentch|cunning or manipulative]] demon.

==Legacy==
C.S Lewis' works have found use in various fields, from the fantasy genre to works outside fiction such as Christian apologetics. The Chronicles of Narnia have seen numerous adaptations and served as inspiration for numerous other world fantasy stories.

His non-fictional works have also gained notoriety, such as his book "Mere Christianity" which explores Christian worldview from a philosophical perspective, but puts it in layman terms. Some of his arguments have been cited by theologians and Christian apologists of various stripes.

Some of his fictional works have even led to some "follow the leader" style copycats. One such is author Randy Alcorn has "updated" ''Screwtape'' in the book duology revolving around the not-Screwtape demon Foulgrin and his subordinate Squaltaint. Intended as a guide against modern evils, despite offering the human characters perspective that The Screwtape Letters lacked it is less sophisticated than Lewis' work and tarred undeserving or contentious targets with the same brush... like [[Dungeons & Dragons]] (Foulgrin claims Dungeons and Dragons is a gateway-drug type path to black magic).

== See Also ==
*[https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCw-kYN6wWXWDyp_lB0wnlxw CS Lewis Doodle,] a YouTube channel which animates several of his essays and written works.

[[Category:Writers]]