About Slavery

Mom and I have talked a LOT about this.  For a while, i considered ditching it altogether because it's a difficult topic to sustain (how do I explain a large amount of "secret" slaves?  Should I make it not secret?  Should I ditch slavery altogether?  Should I make it more vicious?).  In the end, Mom really thinks the slavery angle is a strong, mysterious story line, and she convinced me to build it instead, and make it part of the central storyline.  I already planned to have a future major character's central goal the fight against slavery, but hadn't taken it any further than that.  From Mom's opinion and my half-formed plans for that character, I've decided to take her advice and incorporate the idea a little deeper into the storyline.  I think there are ways i can do it that may be unusual but not so far-fetched that it's not believable.  So read the slavery stuff in Ch 10-14 with a grain of salt, because I plan to do something with it that I haven't really hinted at up to this point.  Look for more in later chapters, but for now it's mostly irrelevant until much later.