ESCAPED SLAVE

The vile practice of slavery is endemic throughout Thule. Some slaves are resigned to their lot and make the best of things that they can, but that was never your way. You spent years dreaming of freedom, and making plans to escape your bondage. Now that you are your own master, you can go anywhere you want and make anything you want of yourself. You are poor, desperate, and surrounded by enemies—but you are determined to die a free man. he great majority of slaves are common laborers, uneducated and unskilled. With little training in any kind of profession, escaped slaves often fall back on physical strength or native cunning to ind their way in the world. As a result, barbarians, fighters, and rogues make up the majority of the heroes with this narrative. But, because escaped slaves come from almost any of the peoples of Thule and are subjected to a wide range of conditions or training, it’s possible to ind a character of almost any class or race as an escaped slave.
Key Identity: Human, barbarian, fighter, rogue.
ESCAPED SLAVE BENEFITS Most escaped slaves begin their free lives in desperate poverty. Deprived of the opportunity to acquire any property or goods of their own, they are poorer than all but the most wretched beggars. However, some slaves manage to steal clothing, arms, or small valuables from their masters as they make their way to freedom.
Skill Training (1st level): Years of oppression imparted hard lessons in how to endure your labors and deceive your masters. You are trained in your choice of two of the following skills: Athletics, Sleight of Hand, Stealth, or Deception.
Blend with the Crowd (1st level): You excel at looking like you’re where you’re supposed to be and doing what you’re supposed to be doing—casual observers mistake you for a poor laborer, ield slave, or house servant and pay you no mind. You can use an action on your turn to become hidden by blending into any modest crowd of laborers or servants, such as a typical city street, a tavern, a work gang, or the slaves attending to a noble banquet. You can’t use this ability in combat unless you are out of the line of sight of your enemies. You gain tactical advantage on Charisma/Deception checks to pass yourself of as part of the crowd while you’re blending if someone has reason to be suspicious. You can use Blend with the Crowd once, and then you must rest before you can use it again.
Brotherhood in Bonds (6th level): You enjoy only significantEven those who do not dare to attempt escape are always looking for other ways to strike back at their masters, and are willing to take deadly risks to help you. You have tactical advantage on any ability or skill check made to interact with slaves.
New Identity (10th level): Your days as a slave are long behind you; you are no longer at risk of being returned to captivity, and have made a new place for yourself in the world. Choose one of the following narratives: Dhari hunter, free blade, jungle trader, panjandrum, Quodethi thief, or soothsayer. You gain the 6th-level feature of the narrative you choose as your new identity. When you reach 15th level, you gain the 10th-level beneit of the narrative you chose for your new identity.
ESCAPED SLAVES IN THE WORLD After years of oppression, you are free—but your freedom hangs by a thread. Throughout Thule, slaveholders claim the right to pursue and recapture their property, and the laws of most cities support them. As a result, the authorities are rarely your friend. You must also be wary of slave-catchers (thugs who specialize in tracking down and recapturing escapees), who have a keen eye for marks of ownership. Escaped slaves have no legal protection from being retaken and sold again. If they are still alive, your original people may or may not be glad to see you again. In some warlike cultures, the humiliation of being enslaved is intolerable; many Dhari or Nimothan tribes regard their enslaved fellows as cowards or weaklings for having been captured in the first place, and drive them away if they ever manage to ind their way home.
PERSONALIZING THE ESCAPED SLAVE The story of an escaped slave begins with three simple questions: From whom was the slave originally captured? Who enslaved him or her? And, finally, how did the slave manage to escape?
Dhari Orphan: he raiders came in the hour before dawn. hey massacred the warriors of your village and dragged away the children—including you—to be sold in the slave markets of the cities. hat was many years ago, and you grew to adulthood in chains. But your heart yearned for the day when you could escape and make your way back to your people. When that day finally came, you found that your village was a ruin and your people were gone. Who did this to your people—and how will you make them pay?
Ikathi Pleasure Slave: You suffered through perhaps the most degrading and unspeakable form of enslavement imaginable. As a member of a harem or the property of a brothel, you endured things that should have crushed your spirit forever, but somehow you survived. Your break for freedom began with a dagger in the darkness of a bedchamber and led you into a desperate light across hule. Your striking good looks or exotic appearance are your curse; the same qualities that first caught the eye of your masters in Ikath often draw the interest of others who deal in the trade of flesh.
Unbroken Thrall: Your body may have been in chains, but never your spirit. Born to a life of brutality in the quarries of Nim or the fields of Quodeth, you never stopped fighting back. You threw yourself at your overseers the moment their backs were turned; you ran away a dozen times, and endured a dozen floggings when you were recaptured. Now that you have won your own freedom—for the moment, at least—you are determined to crush out slavery wherever it is practiced. Where will you begin?