The Slave Lords are a secretive and far-reaching consortium of powerful rulers, merchants, and underworld figures who control the intergalactic slave trade. Their influence stretches across the stars — operating openly and legally on worlds where slavery is permitted, and covertly and brutally on those where it is not. For countless systems, they are the silent brokers of lives, the unseen hand behind the shackles.
At the heart of the network lies The Council of Slave Lords, a shadowy assembly of the most successful slavers in the galaxy. Each member is a Lord of Flesh and Fortune, having built an empire upon the trade of sentient life. The council operates by one guiding principle:
“To benefit the Slave Lords is to benefit oneself.”
Membership is strictly by invitation and extends only to those who have proven both their ruthlessness and discretion. Once inducted, a Slave Lord gains access to the consortium’s combined protection, intelligence networks, and vast wealth, pooling resources in mutual interest while maintaining independence.
The identities of the Slave Lords are veiled in secrecy, protected by layers of intermediaries, proxies, and false fronts. If a member’s identity is ever exposed or compromised, it is customary for the others to silence them permanently — not out of malice, but necessity. The survival of the whole takes precedence over the life of one.
The Slave Lords’ operations are highly adaptive, morphing to fit the laws of each world they touch:
On lawful slave worlds, the organization functions as a legitimate trade syndicate — maintaining auctions, contracts, and registered holdings under the guise of “indentured service.”
On worlds where slavery is forbidden, their operations turn to the shadows — run by pirate raiders, bounty kidnappers, and front companies. Victims are abducted, their records erased, and they are quietly transported through untraceable Hyperlanes to black markets on slave-tolerant planets.
Many of these raids target outer rim colonies and unprotected settlements, where law and communication are sparse. Entire communities can vanish overnight, leaving behind only scorched ruins and unanswered distress signals.
In the sprawling underbelly of galactic trade hubs exists the Unholy Market — a network of hidden slave exchanges known only to the upper echelons of the criminal underworld. Here, sapient beings of every race and background are traded for fortunes in credits, rare goods, or political leverage. Some Slave Lords even specialize in certain “commodities,” such as psionically gifted captives or exotic alien species, fetching astronomical prices among collectors and warlords.
Those purchased may end up as servants, gladiators, workers, concubines, or experimental subjects, depending on the buyer. The Slave Lords themselves rarely oversee these transactions directly; they delegate to Handlers — ruthless middlemen who act as brokers, enforcers, and transport captains. Psionically gifted slaves are equipped with a specialized slave collar known as a Suppression Collar, a device that clamps around the neck preventing the caster from casting spells, allowing the owner to control when and how their caster slave can access the Psionica.
While the Slave Lords operate in violation of countless interstellar laws, their web of bribery, extortion, and mutual blackmail ensures few dare to challenge them openly. Many worlds, even those claiming moral opposition, quietly tolerate their presence — either out of fear or the profit that flows through their ports.
In times of conflict, the Slave Lords pool their resources for mutual defense, hiring mercenary fleets, corrupting officials, and even employing rogue Psi-casters to destroy evidence or silence whistleblowers. Their hidden bases are known to exist deep in asteroid belts, forgotten moons, hidden bunkers, and drifting derelicts — each one heavily guarded and self-sufficient.
The Council of Slave Lords is less a government and more a loose confederation of egos and ambitions bound by mutual need. No central hierarchy exists; instead, decisions are made by consensus or convenience, with each Lord commanding their own domain of influence.
Disputes between Slave Lords are settled in one of two ways — negotiation through proxies, or blood through intermediaries. Direct violence between Lords is forbidden, as it risks exposing the organization, but their agents often wage silent wars of sabotage, assassination, and economic ruin in the shadows.
Every few years, the Slave Lords convene at a secret summit known as the Gathering of Chains, held in neutral space. There, masked and cloaked, they exchange intelligence, forge alliances, and set galactic prices for their “commodities.” Attendance is by coded invitation only — and betrayal is punished with death.
The Raiders of the Void are the Slave Lords’ most feared enforcers — mercenary captains and pirate crews employed to abduct victims from lawless worlds. These raiders strike fast and vanish faster, using Warp Resonator-shielded ships to avoid detection in Hyperspace.
Captured souls are sedated, processed, and shipped to the nearest holding world, often branded with the sigil of their captor before auction. The Iltaran Concord and Mercenary Guild have both placed bounties on known Raider fleets, though few who chase them return alive.