Made a Slave

"Kehmor is my name. I am the slavemaster of Lord Ruerl, and that is all you pitiful wretches need to know of me. Gone are the days when your lives were made complex by the choices that freedom allowed you. Your life will be simple now: obey me or die."

— Warhammer: Dark Elves Army Book (6th Edition)

The main character ends up a slave at some point in the story. It doesn't necessarily stick.

There is often a scene in which the character is sold in the Slave Market, showcasing all the evils of slavery; the protagonist will witness how families are torn apart, will have to undress and be examined like an animal, and will perhaps be beaten. (Artists are particulary fond of the undress and be examined stage, for some reason. Especially for young women.) If he looks strong, he will be told that he will go to the galleys or the mines — a Fate Worse than Death — or perhaps to the Gladiator Games. If she (or occasionally he) is attractive, she will be told that she will make a buyer very happy indeed...

If they're lucky, slaves will be bought for a certain skill or craft they possess. If they're really lucky, they will be bought by someone who intends to set them free when no one is looking.^note Or maybe when everyone is looking; for example, Islam classes freeing slaves as a virtuous act, without actually prohibiting slavery, so this might be a display of conspicuous virtue in an old-time Muslim society. If they're unlucky, they'll be bought by someone who works his slaves to death or by a lecher or end up as gladiators.

If the character is female, this trope will probably lead to Go-Go Enslavement.

This is a common plot element in hentai and doujinshi, where the female victims are usually either blackmailed, drugged, or brainwashed into becoming Sex Slaves to their tormentors. This usually results in breaking the victims until they resign themselves to their fate or they snap and learn to love it.

The Back Story of many if not most slave major characters; very few are Born into Slavery, and most have a Secret Legacy of Blue Blood or Royal Blood. When a sorcerer or a supernatural entity forces the protagonist into servitude, the trope overlaps with Muggle in Mage Custody.

Because We Will Use Manual Labor in the Future, this can occur even in futuristic scenarios. When it's done to an entire race, see Slave Race. They may be used as Slave Mooks or Sympathetic Sentient Weapons or be the target of Superhuman Trafficking as well. Can lead to Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death! or even I Die Free or Happiness in Slavery. Indentured Servitude is a specific form. When done as a form of punishment for wrongdoing, see Prisoner's Work and Working on the Chain Gang.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• +Anima: All four main characters are made into slaves when they go to Sailand. Senri is the only one sold at a slave market though.
• Ai no Kusabi revolves around how Badass Biker Riki was forcibly Made A Sex Slave as a "Pet" through Break the Haughty and the effects it has on him, his master and his ex-lover.
• The Ancient Magus' Bride: Chise is enslaved in the first episode. In a twist, she sold herself entirely willingly, as a last, desperate attempt to find anyone who valued her in any way. She is purchased by Elias, the titular ancient magus, who wanted an apprentice. He treats her much more like an apprentice than an actual slave, though, and his "ownership" of her doesn't appear binding in any way.
• Attack on Titan:
  • Even in humanity's darkest hours, there are still some people making profit from selling others to the capital's underworld. Specifically this would have been the fate of Mikasa and her mother (if she wasn't killed) if not for Eren rescuing her and putting them down like the dogs they were.
  • The Eldians living in Marley are confined to internment camps, kept under strict watch and denied any sort of freedom or rights. This captive population is maintained because the backbone of the nation's military is the Titans, and each Eldian is a potential weapon.

• Vegeta's backstory in Dragon Ball Z, he was born the prince of the Saiyans destined to one day become their king, until he was handed over to the Evil Overlord, Frieza. Frieza would then kill all the other Saiyans, basically striping Vegeta of his rank, while also treating the Saiyan prince as little more than a slave for years.
• Fairy Tail: Pretty much everyone involved with the Tower of Heaven. In the backstory, a Zeref-worshiping cult kidnapped men, women, and children to serve as slave labor so they could build the Tower of Heaven and resurrect their master via the R-System. Among the children enslaved were Erza Scarlet and Jellal Fernandes with their friends Simon, Wally, Sho and Millianna. The wizard Rob, a member of Fairy Tail was also imprisoned there. The slaves were brutalized with Erza getting her right eye gouged out as punishment. Erza and her friends would rally a slave uprising to save Jellal who had been captured and tortured after a failed escape attempt. In the process, Rob was killed defending Erza and Jellal went evil after Ultear brainwashed him and killed the cult members, taking control of the Tower himself. Although Erza kills all the slavers to avenge Rob, He forced her to abandon her friends and throws her far away to the mainland where she would join Fairy Tail. Jellal would manipulate the former slaves to continue building the tower, claiming that Erza betrayed them, and handed over the children Erik, Richard, Macbeth, Sawyer, and Sorano to Brain, who used them to form the dark guild Oracion Seis.
• Kino's Journey: This almost happens to Kino when she helps a group of slavers from a life-threatening situation without knowing their true vocation, and they respond by trying to enslave her even as they spout praises for her kindness.
• Lupin III: Island of Assassins:
  • Ellen and her brother were sold into slavery as children, by their own father, who was an alcoholic. Which is how they were eventually conscripted by the Tarantulas and forced to become assassins.
  • Bomber and the other defectors were in the same boat, since the toxin contained in their tarantula tattoos made it so they couldn't leave the island. The only thing preventing it from killing them, was the island's natural gases and the only known antidote was in Gordeau's possession; leaving them no choice but to obey him.
• Mobile Suit Gundam: Iron-Blooded Orphans has this as a common enough practice in the poor Mars sphere that there is a name for it: Human Debris. We also get to see precisely what this entails. One of the leads, Akihiro, was kidnapped by pirates as a child, sold to the CGS, and forced into a risky procedure meant to improve combat reflexes. This has made him bitter and nihilistic. We later find out that something similar happened to his brother. One of the first things Kudelia does at the end of the series after becoming Chairwoman of Mars is abolish the Human Debris system.

• Negima! Magister Negi Magi:
  • Ako, Natsumi, and Akira sell themselves into slavery shortly after their arrival in the magic world to pay for a very ill Ako's expensive medicine. Tosaka abuses them on occasion, but their actual owner (a literal Mama Bear who's in charge of a tavern) beats the crap out of him for it. Even then, Tosaka only looks down on them because he was once a slave himself (and so was Mama, who knows him from these days). Negi eventually manages to buy their freedom, and that fires Tosaka's envy since it took him twenty years to buy his own freedom.
  • Later chapters reveal that the reason Jack Rakan is so crazy powerful is because he spent pretty much his whole life fighting as a gladiatorial slave, before winning his freedom and starting to fight in wars.
• Okane ga Nai: Ayase gets sold by an unscrupulous cousin to pay that cousin's Yakuza debts.
• One Piece: Several characters on separate occasions. Among them we have Nami, Fisher Tiger and other Fishmen, the Gorgon sisters Hancock, Sandersonia and Marigold, Robin (When she was sent to Tequila Wolf), and even Silvers Rayleigh (Though in his case, it was on purpose so he could steal money from whoever was stupid enough to buy him).
• Rebuild World: Technically slavery is illegal under the One Nation Under Copyright government, but Indentured Servitude from debt is not and virtually indistinguishable. Hunters like Shirakabe go to Human Traffickers to hire indebted hunters as Cannon Fodder. Being terrified of this fate is what drives Guyver into turning traitor and trying to ambush his own team and Akira. Once, some hunters raid Sheryl's base and after being captured, one hunter says he'd rather die, so Akira shoots him dead. Arms Dealer Katsuragi takes on Revin's debt to Akira and keeps increasing it in a Moving the Goalposts manner, once attempting to enslave Akira by taking advantage of him being Too Desperate to Be Picky buying arms, but Akira had the money. Viola and Carol work as a team to profit off of this trade: Carol gets hunters addicted to her The Oldest Profession work, raises her prices until they can't pay, then Viola takes on their debt and sells the hunter. Also, crossing the government makes one a Boxed Crook with Explosive Leash, which happens to Nelia.
• In The Rising of the Shield Hero, this happens to Raphtalia, twice. The first time is during her backstory when she is captured and sold to a slave trader. Fortunately, she finds an owner who treats her like a daughter, curing her illness, giving her chances to rest when she needs it and making sure she had plenty of food. Because of this, the second instance occurs when she is "freed" and promptly decides to go back to being enslaved as she preferred belonging to Naofumi to her alternative options.
  • Later in the series, Myne is temporarily made into a slave before a trial as the slave crest makes it very obvious to every witness when she is lying.
• Rurouni Kenshin:
  • Shinta is enslaved after his family and most of his village succumb to a cholera outbreak. Then the caravan was attacked by bandits and everyone but Shinta is slaughtered. Then Seijuuro Hiko steps into the scene, kills the bandits, and a short while later adopts Shinta as his pupil.
  • In the To Rule Flame prequel, centered on Yumi and the Juppongatana, two little girls that Yumi took care of in the Red Light District are captured by a paramilitary group that plans on selling them as slaves to foreign crews, who have "taken a fancy to Japanese things", like the two "porcelain dolls". Yumi foils this by pretty much selling her life to Shishio, who accepts to wipe out the group and send the little girls to safety in exchange.
• Snow White with the Red Hair: Kazuki ended up as a member of the vicious pirate group known as the Claws of the Sea when he was a child, and they sold him to some nobles who liked his Pretty Boy looks as "decoration". The reason he kindapped Shirayuki was because he thought she was being kept by nobles the same way and he didn't bother to talk to her before drugging her and "rescuing" her.
• Torikago Gakyuu: An interesting variant occurs when, after Mikage's Split Personality refuses to become Yuikai's slave, Yuikai himself offers to be Mikage's slave instead. In the chapters after this arc, he appears to like this arrangement just as well.
• Trapped in a Dating Sim: The World of Otome Games is Tough for Mobs:
  • Leon's first obstacle is his Wicked Step Mother Zola using an Arranged Marriage to set him up for an Uriah Gambit for widow pensions, and when Leon leaves to adventure, Zola plans on selling his little brother Colin to be a domestic slave in his place if he doesn't come back. All part of a misandrist conspiracy called the Forest of Ladies that does all this en masse.
  • Subverted with "Exclusive Servants" who Leon calls slaves… they're regulated and protected voluntary servants, thugs, or gigolos, who are definitely treated better than poor boys like Leon (who have to carry luggage in place of the servants).
  • When Leon captures a number of Sky Pirates alive, he sells them as slaves to a viscount who just struck riches to work in the new mines.
• Trigun: An extant threat on Gunsmoke; never really applied to any of the main characters even as a possibility, although it's manga Legato's backstory...although apparently since he was young enough that he didn't even have a name until after Knives accidentally rescued him, and then chose to spare him and let him tag along. And then there was Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds. Although it's not the mainline slave trade, Wolfwood got adopted under false pretenses and then Strapped to an Operating Table; that they then armed him and sent him out as a professional hitman was kind of their bad judgment, except he never actually did turn on the Eye — just his 'master,' and then only to get a shot at the Omnicidal Maniac they had a contract to.

• The Villainous Daughter's Butler, I'll Crush the Destruction Flags: It's noted to be common for parents in the slums to sell their children into slavery to escape debt, as Emma gets sold presumably to be a Sex Slave and runs away with her brother Roy before the protagonists rescue and train them as bodyguards. The two's parents were portrayed as people between a rock and a hard place who do care, and their owner Cyril buys them from, Nameless, will only agree to the deal if he hears what they'll be used for.
• Vinland Saga has this happen to multiple characters. As it is set in the Viking Age, thralldom is common and viewed as simply a fact of life, and several of the current main characters amongst them Thorfinn are former thralls.
• Yu-Gi-Oh!: In the backstory of the Dawn of the Duel arc, Priest Seto rescues Kisara from this fate at the hands of the brigands who destroyed his village and killed his parents. She repays him by unconsciously releasing her dragon spirit, which would eventually become his own ka and the spirit of Blue-Eyes White Dragon.

Arts

• Medici Chapels: The turban and band around "Dawn's" chest are evocative of slave garments, her sunken-in eyes, and forlorn face only cementing this.
• Many painters depicted those Slave Markets, usually in Orientalist scenes or ones from ancient Greek or Rome. The Other Wiki has a number here. Also the full Captive Andromache◊

Comic Books

• Asterix: Played for Laughs in "Asterix and the Laurel Wreath"; Asterix and Obelix need to infiltrate Roman society, so they apply to be slaves, much to the bewilderment of the slavemaster. Not that his other slaves took their roles seriously either. The British slave refused to let him sell off the protagonists until they had haggled for a decent price. (The slavemaster was ready to give the duo away for free, since they were causing trouble and beating up other slaves.)
• In Barracuda, Maria, Emilio (who is disguised as a girl at the time) and Maria's mother Dona Emilia are captured by Blackdog and sold to slave dealer Ferrango who sells them on. Emilio is brought by Mr. Flynn, Dona Emilia by monks, and Ferrango keeps Maria as his personal property.
• Conan the Barbarian: Zula was forced into slavery until he slew his former master.
• DC Comics:
  • In Conqueror of the Barren Earth, Zhengla captures Jinal and makes her his slave temporarily. Then they became lovers and join forces to conquer the world together.
  • Teen Titans: Part of Starfire's backstory. Her evil sister betrayed their planet, Tamaran, and helped hostile aliens conquer it, and as part of the terms of their defeat, the Tamaranians were required to surrender Starfire, their princess, into slavery.
  • Green Lantern: Earth One: Hal Jordan, after his ring loses its power, is captured by the Manhunters and forced to work as a slave miner alongside many other aliens. They fail to take the ring from him and once it recharges, Hal leads to a lot of problems for them.
  • Superman series The Krypton Chronicles, which explores the history of Krypton and the House of El, tells how Sul-El and his son Hatu-El were freemen until the Vrangs conquered Krypton and enslaved its inhabitants. Sul remained a slave until his death, but his son Hatu led a slave revolt that liberated Krypton.
  • Wonder Woman:
    • Sensation Comics: Zara turned to a life of crime and homicidal misandry after her own father sold her into slavery.
    • Wonder Woman (1942):
    • It turns out (after Hypnota had been imprisoned and slavery outlawed on Saturn) that on the side Hypnota had been using her powers to brainwash people into being obedient slaves and then selling them to Saturnian slavers like Eviless, who are furious at the loss of revenue caused by their trade being made illegal.
    • Uvo has made every woman in his empire, and every one he captures in combat, into a slave.
    • Wonder Woman (1987): Natasha and Diana are made into slaves by the Sangtee Empire, and go on to escape and start a rebellion that forces the empire to abolish their practice of enslaving all (non-kreel) women. Some of their fellow revolutionaries/pirates were also captured and made slaves by the empire before Diana's revolt, but others were born into slavery.
• In Jonah Hex, Jonah's father sold him into slavery with an Apache tribe at the age of 13, in 1851.
• Judge Dredd: In the story "Dead Zone", Yodie and his girlfriend Belle are captured by a slave ring that forces people to mine the mass grave of Chaos Day victims to loot the corpses.
• Marvel Comics:
  • Gambit had the misfortune of being a child slave twice. The first time, he was stolen from the hospital as a baby by the Thieves Guild and given to a child slave trafficker and sorceror known as The Antiquary. The second time, the Thieves Guild's benefactress Candra caught him and his cousin sneaking into her home and sold him to a disgusting, monstrous creature known as The Pig, who sold children to Hydra as soldiers. It was in escaping The Pig that Gambit learned to use playing cards as weapons.
  • Several mutant heroes were subjected to this by the government of Genosia (a nation where mutants were a Slave Race); victims have included Wolverine, Rogue, and their ally Madelyne Pryor (who were simply kidnapped) and later Storm, Meltdown, Rictor and Wolfsbane who were kidnapped and brainwashed, the resulting rescue mission toppling the original government, which as it turned out, was allied with anti-mutant hate group leader Cameron Hodge. Genosha was eventually destroyed shortly after the destruction of the Legacy Virus, and is now an uninhabited wasteland; it is doubtful the threat will arise again.
• In Star Wars: The Clone Wars "Slaves of the Republic", Obi-Wan Kenobi, Anakin Skywalker, Ahsoka Tano and Clone Commander Rex. Anakin and Ahsoka sneak into Zygerria as master and slave, but then get caught for real. Anakin ends up a servant of the queen, and Ahsoka is taken to a place where a group of kidnapped Togrutans are waiting to be sold. Obi-wan and Rex get captured and sold to work in the mines. Naturally, everyone escapes in the end. It was adapted into a three episode arc of the Star Wars: The Clone Wars animated series.
• ThunderCats (1985): In Thundercats — The Return, Lion-O enters a magical book to train and emerges ten years later to discover that the other Thundercats have been enslaved by Mumm-Ra and the mutants. Most of them have been put to work in mines, but Wilykit and Wilykat are Mumm-Ra's personal slaves, and he actually refers to Wilykit as his "concubine".
• In Tragg and the Sky Gods, the majority of Tragg's tribe is enslaved by the Yargonians and forced to toil in the mines for them. Freeing them becomes one of Tragg's priorities.

Comic Strips

• In Flash Gordon, Flash and other political prisoners are enslaved at the atomic furnace in the city of the hawkmen.

Fairy Tales

• In Fair Brow, the protagonist buys an enslaved woman; later, he and an old man are enslaved.
• In the German folk tale The Ice Child, a woman claimed to have been impregnated by ice while thinking of her absent husband. He raised the child for some years, took him on a journey, and sold him as a slave — claiming to his wife that the boy had melted.
• In the Italian fairy tale "The Slave Mother", collected in Italo Calvino's Italian Folktales, a peasant woman is asked by an owl whether she would rather be happy in youth or age; after she chooses age, she is carried off by pirates. Her husband and sons find, somewhat later, a treasure and move to the city; one day they buy a slave — at the husband's insistence, an old woman who can manage their household. In due course they figure out that she's their mother.

Fan Works

• Ahsoka Tano And Scorpios Riddle: The first titular character is captured and tortured by the second titular character into embracing her submissive side and pledging herself to him as his personal Sex Slave.
• Becoming a True Invader:
  • Played for Laughs as Gaz essentially makes Zim her slave in exchange for not beating him up over accidentally destroying her Game Slave. Things get a little more complicated later on, though.
  • Crax does this to this to all the other Vortians who survived the Employer's destruction of their planet by means of explosive collars.
• A Diplomatic Visit:
  • In the last chapter of the sequel Diplomat at Large, this is effectively what happened to Trixie when she was crowned Queen of Dimondia, the crown preventing her from leaving. Twilight is not amused when she finds out and arranges to free her and appoint Jim, the Diamond Dogs' royal chancellor, as King (with a non-enchanted crown) in her place.
  • As revealed in chapter 6 of the second sequel, Diplomacy Through Schooling, this is what happened to Neighsay and other ponies captured by the one who drained their magic, being forced to mine for them so the slavers can make the tools they intend to use to overthrow the Equestrian government.
• An Empire of Ice and Fire: Under Littlefinger's influence, Joffrey enslaves thousands of people, both native to Westeros and transported from Essos, and puts them to work building a giant pyramid as a monument to himself.
• Firefly writers like this. Besides the multiple examples of Kaylee, Inara and River being captured, Jayne and the guys sometimes get it too. Examples:
  • Mal buys back an enslaved and mentally broken Jayne in Salvage Mission. Jayne is so mentally broken that he expected to be ordered around by Mal and has to be told he’s free. Being tortured by the Alliance and made a Breeding Slave after being bought haven’t helped at all.
  • You Can’t Take The Sky From Me has the crew discover slaves in the crates they were paid to haul. They wonder how Jayne knew and accuse him of running with slavers, lashing out at him. River reveals that he was traded, not a trader. He and his mother were sold as slaves and he found an overseer raping her and stabbed him to death before escaping.
  • Not a Jayne one but Wash, River,Kaylee and Simon in Freedom To The Free. Poor Simon is hit the worst because he keeps submitting to protect the others. He ends up used for sex by one of the overseers after he’s told Kaylee and River will be raped,and rages over breaking his oath when ordered to castrate a man or Wash, who’s already been beaten in an escape attempt, will get the same treatment without anesthesia. Simon is not one to hold his tongue and he’s punished with a mask that essentially gags him. Fortunately a mad overseer gives Mal the location and Big Damn Heroes rescue ensues.
• In The Fledgling Year, Cor was kidnapped by slavers and spent several chapters MIA as a result until Aravis and Hana rescued him. The brutality of his experience is especially poignant not just because he’s his country’s crown prince, but also because he was raised as a slave by an abusive adoptive father, who actually tried to sell him to someone else, until he ran away. Getting dragged back into that life would be a Fate Worse than Death for him more so than for any other character in the fic.
• Game Of Doctors: In chapter 16, Gem Market, this almost happens to the 11th Doctor's companion Norine on the planet Sapphire, when she is kidnapped by the Quelta. This is apparently a common occurrence in the Gem Market. 11 rescues her and many other slaves.

• In Lost Boy, not having been Born into Slavery, Hiccup was sold by his village as a tiff for peace against an invading tribe after his aunt and uncle die, where he is passed from village to village before he wound up in the whorehouse Stoick found him in.
• Lost Storms: Stormy's Forgotten Past starts with Stormy being kidnapped by traffickers and sold to Murky. She eventually meets Rainbow Brite and escapes Murky.
• Loved and Lost: Prince Jewelius usurps Equestria's throne and sentences Twilight's friends and brother to slavery as punishment for their "treason" of inadvertently letting the Changeling invasion take place. Applejack and Pinkie Pie become galley slaves, Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy are forced to fight as gladiators for the dragons' entertainment, and Rarity is sent to work in the Diamond Dogs' mines (again) along with Shining Armor. They're all rescued a week later by the three deposed princesses and Spike.
• Ma'at: In the first chapter, after Dani is captured for royal tribute:
  [...] the oppressive reality of the gate. It was smaller than some she'd seen in her travels, but this one was real and signaled the new, grim reality.
  The reality of being a piece of property.
  A slave.
• Marvel Comics: The fandom has enough slave fics to make their own subgenres, most notably "Loki becomes the slave of one (or more) of the Avengers", generally as punishment for his crimes during their titular movie, and "Loki becomes slave to Thor" (or vice versa) in various AUs that take place entirely on Asgard and/or Jotunheim. Though there are a smattering of "one (or more) of the Avengers becomes slave to Loki" as well.
  • Limmet's Poetic Justice (2013) is one of the genre codifiers, where Loki accepts slavery as the alternative to execution, but also expects his master (Tony Stark) to beat him up and likely turn him into a bed slave. When Tony gets the anger out of his system and gives Loki light housework instead, Loki gets increasingly troubled by his expectations, but it takes a long time before Tony figures out what exactly is getting under Loki's skin.
  • As You Wish (orphaned by an anonymous author) has Loki enslaved (by oath) to all the Avengers at once, but (unlike most such fics) he's still got his magic and relative freedom within that confine. But with the Avengers not well understanding how the oath works, and Loki refusing to "beg" (read: actually discuss the problems with them), he ends up laboring under a variety of restrictions such as "don't use the furniture," "don't use hot water," and "don't eat good food." The scenes where the Avengers come to grips with their own insensitivity are great, but the real knife to the gut is when Loki learns that the Avengers set up a room entirely for him, kitted out with a nice bed, a TV, and a ton of bespoke clothing (while he's been making due with one set of clothes and sleeping in the utility room), and realizes that they're not as bad as they seem — that he's been making a lot of his own misery.
  • Nonymos's Screaming Mute and Seeing Blind (2014) is a rare example of Loki being enslaved to Clint Barton, as well as one of the more brutal takes on the idea: If he fails to obey, or gets too far from his master, the rune on his cheek will start burning him until he's in compliance again (or dead, over the course of hours). That's just one of the inhuman punishments that Odin created for him.
  • EndlessStairway's Butterfly (2018) is an example of Loki as both slave (to Tony) and parent, trying to protect his child. Several slave Loki fics include a child, making use of the Intersex Loki idea (somewhat borrowed from mythology).
  • EndlessStairway's Tony's Thrall and kuzibah's The Thrall Prince are examples of slave Loki with a thrall collar that forces him to follow commands. Marzipanda's Things Left Buried uses the same collar, but eschews the typical sentence of slavery in favor of Loki stumbling across a trapped artifact and having to turn himself over to the Avengers to meet the criteria of the collar until they can find a way to remove it. In many such fics, the collar prevents Loki from communicating in certain ways, making the whole problem harder to solve.
  • As an example of a Marvel slave fic that doesn't involve Loki, Dira Sudis's Prima Nocta (series: All These Burning Hearts in Hell) fits in a Slavery AU where Tony Stark uses his resources to run a secret underground railroad to free slaves (while developing the reputation of being such a hard master that his slaves frequently die or disappear), and he happens across Steve Rogers (enslaved back when slavery was even worse) and Bucky Barnes (trained to be the perfect bed slave) at the same time, neither knowing that the other is in Tony's care. An intriguing exploration of how to deprogram someone that thoroughly traumatized, as well as some of the slavery-is-normal culture clashes (e.g. most slaves go on a protest strike during Independence Day).
• Ma'at: From the first chapter, although, not longer than that, and not really slave-y:
  The earlier exuberance she'd felt vanished in the oppressive reality of the gate. It was smaller than some she'd seen in her travels, but this one was real and signaled the new, grim reality.
  
  The reality of being a piece of property.
  
  A slave.
• The Supernatural fanfic Maybe Sprout Wings reimagines Dean's suffering in Hell as suffering earthly slavery, and a human Castiel purchases him with the intent of freeing him.
• Mr and Mrs Gold: Subverted. The Dark One is capable of giving others their mark, making them their Familiar and their slave. This process not only imbues them with a small amount of their power, but it gives them the ability to know when their master requires them. Rumpelstiltskin does this to Belle at their wedding not to enslave her, but to make sure that he could keep an eye on her and come when she needs him (and vice-versa).
• The Pieces Lie Where They Fell: In Picking Up the Pieces, when Wind Breaker reads his Hatchery file, it's revealed that while many of the Hatchery griffons were essentially Born into Slavery (due to their eggs being sold by their parents, previous Hatchery griffons who did so in order to reduce their debt), Wind Breaker is among the many who were kidnapped from free griffons as infants or eggs and essentially sold to the Hatcheries. Discord later reveals that his mother had actually escaped the Hatchery system, but her egg was stolen by money-grubbing griffons — race traitors, as Discord calls them — who sent it back to Equestria.
• RONMAN THE BARBARIAN!: This is the fate of Ronman and Ruthless after being on the losing side of the Battle of Go City. They free themselves soon enough. This happened to Wadelin, too, in the backstory.
• Royal Pains, a Mystery Skulls Animated fanfic, features this trope as Arthur's backstory; he literally can't remember being anything but a slave. And a Sex Slave to boot.
• Vow of Nudity: Sarah's backstory involves her village being raided and enslaved by the Genasi.
• Yognapped: In the second installment, Peva enslaves the surviving Yogscasters and forces them to work in his mines until they break bedrock, a seemingly impossible task. They accomplish it after nearly a month of work, resulting in Peva and the Ironstorm Remnants getting absolutely annihilated by the freed Herobrine. Peva survives, suffering a Villainous Breakdown after the incident.
• Zim the Warlord: Irken Reversion: Played for Laughs, as Zim cheerfully intends to make Gaz his slave (or as he alternately says, his "trophy" or "pet") once he conquers Earth. Dib is horrified by this, but Gaz herself shrugs it off, not taking Zim seriously enough to feel threatened by the prospect.

Films — Animation

• In My Little Pony: The Movie (2017), the Mane Six are nearly sold off into slavery in Klugetown.
• In Tangled, the Stabbington brothers threaten Rapunzel with this.

Films — Live-Action

• 12 Years a Slave: The premise. Solomon Northup is a freeborn black man of New York, until he is drugged, kidnapped, and sold at auction as a Georgia runaway slave called Platt. He spends the next twelve years on three separate plantations, always seeking a path to return to his family.
• In Against All Flags, Roc Brasiliano has the handmaidens he captured auctioned off as wives for the pirates of Diego Suarez.
• Amistad: Zigzagged. Although John Quincy Adams successfully argues in a court of law that the Africans aboard the titular ship acted in self-defense and deserve to be set free instead of being sold off as salvaged cargo, the epilogue states that Cinque's family was likely captured by another raiding party and sold into the new world.
• In Anne of the Indies, Anne attempts to sell Molly into slavery, and Molly is forced to endure a degrading slave market scene. However, Pierre's intervention forces Anne to abandon her plans, and she flees with Molly still her captive.
• Army of Darkness: Ash, which was a pretty significant Retcon from the end of Evil Dead 2, which ended with him being hailed as a hero. A subversion, as he isn't really a slave, just a battlefield captive whom the medieval screwheads have yoked and shackled for the hike back to the castle. In his mind, chains + whips = slavery.

• Captain America: The Winter Soldier: Although never explicitly acknowledged as such, the Winter Soldier ( Bucky Barnes) was turned into what for all practical purposes is a brainwashed and heavily conditioned slave.
• Captain Blood: Peter Blood; he's examined by Colonel Bishop, eventually bought by Bishop's niece (narrowly escaping the evil Dixon?s mines), and is employed by the Governor of Jamaica as a doctor.
• Conan the Barbarian (1982): Conan was taken as a kid after Thulsa Doom doomed his village, was made to work on the Wheel of Pain, and then was made a gladiator, all of which contributed to making him a supreme badass by the time he was freed by his master.
• Cutthroat Island: Doctor Edward Shaw was a teacher and medical doctor before being sentenced to slavery for "theft and moral turpitude" (it's implied that he seduced a nobleman's teenaged daughter) prior to the beginning of the movie's plot. By the end of the movie, he's free again, having become a member of a pirate band.
• In Don Juan DeMarco, the title character relates a yarn about being captured by slave dealers and sold into the 'service' of a lusty Sultana. Not that he seems to have minded much. It probably helped that the Sultana kept him hidden in her husband's large harem (apparently she didn't object to sharing.) This incident also occurs in Lord Byron's epic poem Don Juan, upon which the movie is partially based.
• Gladiator: Maximus was found by slave merchants at his burned down estate after he arrived too late to prevent Commodus' Praetorians from killing his wife and child. He gets sold to Proximo, the gladiator trainer, and thus becomes a gladiator.
• In Dracula Untold, Vlad in his youth was given as tribute along with 999 other Transylvanian boys to be trained as members of the Ottoman Janissary corps. The Ottomans try to do the same again when Vlad is ruler, but he defies them.
• In The Ice Pirates, political prisoners and others are sold into slavery after being "redesigned" lobotomized and neutered, however, females remain "fully functional." They don't "redesign" clergy (shown by a captive monk) "just in case." Unfortunately for the monk shown, a much larger prisoner beats him up, changes clothes with him and escapes.
• The Island (1980): After Maynard kills a pirate in self-defence, a Kangaroo Court of pirates sentences him to be the slave of Beth, the dead pirate's widow.
• In Kaamelott: Premier Volet, it turns out King Arthur was enslaved sometime after the end of Season 6 of the series during the ten-year hiatus until the events of the film. Oddly, he doesn't seem to have minded, only escaping after people come looking for the rightful king of Britain, and the slave driver doesn't even send anyone after him, telling Quarto the slave merchant that if he wants to free a slave it's his right to do so.
• In Mortal Engines, Hester and Tom get put on the auction block at Rustwater, though Hester is deemed only useful for Human Resources due to her sliced-up face.
• Mythica: It turns out that Marek was sold as a slave by Hammerhead after her mother died giving birth to her. She grew up in slave camps and was eventually sold to an apothecary, then later a pimp who had much worse intentions for her than just being an assistant. Dagen's elf mother was also captured and sold into slavery by orcs.
• Prehistoric Women: After David rejects Queen Kari's advances, she has him put in shackles and cast into a cave with the other male slaves until he changes his mind.

• RoboCop: Upon his gruesome death, Alex Murphy's body is proclaimed the property of Omni-Consumer Products and what little remains viable (most of his brain, his spinal cord, and several organs) transformed into the titular cyborg. Robocop has no human rights and is considered OCP's property. Murphy's brain was mind-wiped, with a series of directives programmed into him to make him beholden to OCP. His memories and humanity slowly begin to return, but Murphy has no way to reclaim his old life, his family, or his rights.
• Star Wars: While slavery is outlawed under the Republics' laws, the fringes of galactic civilization are often rife with it anyway — the Hutts in particular are prolific slave-mongers — and the victims of pirate raids are often captured for the slave markets. The Empire also enslaves aliens it conquers, and makes extensive use of forced labor in its legal systems.
  • Return of the Jedi: Leia is the best-known example. Jabba catches her after she snuck into his palace dressed as a bounty hunter and he intends to keep her as his slave after killing the others. But while they're making their dramatic escape, Leia uses the chain Jabba put on her to strangle him.
  • Solo: Chewbacca was ensilaved by the Imperials, and was later rescued by Han when he was about to be killed, resulting in the life debt. Kessel is also staffed by large numbers of enslaved workers.
  • Shmi Skywalker was enslaved sometime before Anakin's birth, or else was born a slave herself. She was rescued by her future husband who bought her from Watto and freed her after Anakin was freed and left home.
• TRON: This is something of a running theme.
  • TRON: Kevin Flynn is rounded up as a "stray program" and sent to fight to the death in the Games Grid. User-Believer Programs (including Tron and Ram) are conscripted into the Games as a way to get them killed.
  • TRON: Legacy: Sam Flynn, on arriving in Cyberspace, meets the same welcome his father did.
  • TRON: Uprising: Beck is made into a game slave when he gets captured.
  • In the Alternate Continuity of TRON 2.0, Jet is spared from execution when Mercury suggests this as his punishment instead.
• In Young Guns, Yen Sun (Doc's Love Interest) becomes this to Lawrence Murphy when reputetly her mother (a washerwoman) ruined his shirt.

Gamebooks

• A few Fighting Fantasy gamebooks features the hero getting enslaved against their will:
  • Trial of Champions: Your ship gets wrecked by pirates in the opening prologue, who proceeds to abduct you for slavery before you were sold to the ruthless Lord Carnuss, and must partake in a series of Gladiator Games to win your freedom.
  • Master of Chaos: The story begins in a slave galley where you deliberately infiltrate in order to reach your next destination. You'll be put through a series of grueling tasks, but depending on your decisions, you can be set free by befriending the slaver captain (via helping him fend off a Krakken tentacle) or escape on your own.
  • The Crimson Tide: The book has numerous endings, some of the bad ones ending with you being flung into the slave mines. One of the outcomes is that you become a fighting slave in a gladiatorial arena.

Literature

• Andre Norton:
  • In Judgment On Janus, Niall sells himself to buy enough drugs for his mother to have a peaceful death.
  • In Ordeal in Otherwhere, Charis signs an indefinite term labor contract; she is being traded for slaves for agricultural labor.
• In the Belisarius Series, this is the fate of many on the losing side of battles. Notable examples include Dadaji Holkar and his family (all eventually escaped or freed), a troop of Kushan soldiers (freed after working for Belisarius in the attack on Charax), and the few survivors of Ranapur.
• In Beowulf, Hrothgar's queen is described as queenly and wearing gold, but her name is "Wealhtheow", which means "foreign slave." This is a possible Back Story for her, especially since the name is unique to her in Anglo-Saxon literature.
• In Beyond Thirty, Turck and Victory fall separately into the hands of soldiers of the Abyssinian Empire, with Turck being sold as a slave to an Abyssinian colonel, and Victory being sent to Emperor's harem.
• The Book of Negroes: Aminata Diallo is made a slave early on, and stays as one for roughly half the book.
• In A Brother's Price Jerin fears this fate - if he becomes unmarriageable by being Defiled Forever, his sisters will have no other choice than to sell him as Sex Slave. There is even an offer by some women they meet to rent Jerin for a night. His eldest sister is not amused. He is kidnapped later on, which would eventually lead to some form of slavery, but he is rescued.
• Captive of the Orcs: Dallet is enslaved by the Orcs in the opening pages, and stays that way through the whole of the story.
• Captive Prince: Damen, the Crown Prince of Akielos, is betrayed by his Bastard Bastard brother and sold into slavery in an enemy country at the beginning of the series. It's a Cruel Mercy, as his people believe him to be dead, as well as a part of political ploys in both countries.
• Chalion: The Curse of Chalion being sold to the galleys is part of the main character's backstory. The resulting scars are a minor plot point a few times, and then a major plot point in the end (spoilered because once you know this the logic is obvious).
• A Chorus of Dragons: Khirin is sold as a slave midway into the narrative of The Ruin of Kings — that is, at the beginning of the first consecutive thread and at the end of the second — in order to quickly get him out of Quur.
• Chronicles of Chaos: In The Orphans of Chaos, Miss Daw's Backstory. She can't help the children because she would break her oath. This would mean the next time they would not have mercy on the defeated side but just kill them all.
• The Chronicles of Narnia:
  • This occurs to the main characters in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. Good thing that the man who purchased Caspian was an old friend of his dead father; he releases the young king and decides to help.
  • Shasta overhears the discussion to sell him as the newest slave of a rich Calormene military man in The Horse and His Boy and decides, with said man's mount Bree's help, to run away. It is Bree and Hwin's Back Story, as they were kidnapped from their valleys when very young and then used as Calormene mounts. And Queen Susan has reason to fear it, considering that Prince Rabadash is a Yandere for her and wants her as his puppet at any cost.
• Citizen of the Galaxy: Thorby has gotten halfway through the process described. The opening line:
  "Lot number ninety-seven," the auctioneer announced, "a boy."
• Conan the Barbarian:
  • In "The People of the Black Circle", the villain intends to keep the captured princess Yasmina as a slave.
    "But for all your stupidity, you are a woman fair to look upon. It is my whim to keep you for my slave."
    The daughter of a thousand proud emperors gasped with shame and fury at the word.
    "You dare not!"
    His mocking laughter cut her like a whip across her naked shoulders.
  • "The Devil in Iron": Octavia's Back Story. Also, the extent of a nation’s conquests is shown by its slave supplies:
    In the glutted slave markets of Aghrapur, Sultanapur, Khawarizm, Shahpur, and Khorusun, women were sold for three small silver coins — blonde Brythunians, tawny Stygians, dark-haired Zamorians, ebon Kushites, olive-skinned Shemites.
  • "Shadows In The Moonlight": Olivia's Back Story; of Royal Blood, she refused an Arranged Marriage. It begins to seem that attractive princesses are doomed to this trope, doesn’t it?
  • "The Phoenix on the Sword": Thoth-amon's Back Story; he lost his Ring of Power.
  • In "The Scarlet Citadel" Conan remembers these markets.
    It was exactly such laughter as he had heard bubble obscenely from the fat lips of the salacious women of Shadizar, City of Wickedness, when captive girls were stripped naked on the public auction block.
• The Crimson Shadow: This is the fate of all Huegoth captives. Some prisoners are also sentenced to slavery by Duke Morkney.
• Deverry: Rhodry spends most of one book enslaved and amnesiac. He's not happy when he gets his memory back.
• Discworld: Cohen the Barbarian spent some years as a slave in his backstory.

• The Draka: The Draka were founded on slavery and oppression, and they enslave the people of every nation they conquer.
• Earthsea: In The Farthest Shore, Prince Arren is briefly sold as a galley slave, until Ged turns up, lays a smackdown on the slavers, and frees Arren and the other slaves.
• Edgar Rice Burroughs:
  • In At the Earth's Core, David Innes fights for Dian. He does not realize that after it, he could take her hand to claim her as his wife, take her hand and let go to free her, or do nothing to make her his slave. He does nothing. She is not pleased.
  • John Carter of Mars:
    • In Chessmen of Mars, The Mole who saves Gahan and Tara was a childhood friend of Gahan's, enslaved.
    • A Fighting Man Of Mars: Tavia's Back Story, though she was too young to remember. And also that of Tavan, a minor but significant character; John Carter frees him for his services and because he was obviously of noble birth gave him a place in the fleet. Plus, he turns out to be Tavia's father.
• Farsala Trilogy: This happens to Soraya's mother and brother. She arranges to be sold into slavery herself so that she might spy and gain information to free them.
• In The Girl from the Miracles District, Zelda, like many of her co-workers, has been kidnapped from her home and kept in the Miracles District until it "claimed" her, making her unable to leave and in effect perpetually enslaving her. She was lucky to have an excellent singing voice, which is why she was picked up by one of the better and thus more humane establishments in the district, but it's noted that many other women end up in a far worse position.
• The Gladiators: A young man from Celtic Britain is captured by invading Romans and eventually becomes an emancipated gladiator.
• Gor: Free people being forced into bondage is a recurring element. Tarl's Heroic BSoD comes when he chooses "the ignominy of slavery" over "the freedom of honorable death". A recurring plot, it even occurs to Cabot more than once. Typically by the end of the book female characters learn to accept their place while male characters earn their freedom and otherwise rise above their slavery.
• The Han Solo Trilogy: All the Pilgrims who go to Ylesia really are being enslaved. The religion they follow is just a scam, and they're addicted to control them by what's passed off as a spiritual gift. After a year they get sold off planet to brothels and mines. If any realize earlier it's all a scam, they're threatened into staying. The Empire has also enslaved many Wookies (they were declared a slave race, although a lot are still free, and others like Chewie have escaped).
• In A Harvest of War thousands of Draeze citizens are marched out of the city into slavery. It doesn't stick.
• Heimskringla: Olaf Tryggvason, later to be king of Norway (ruled c. 995-1000 AD), as a boy was captured by Estonian vikings in the Baltic, and spent seven years as a slave in Estonia before he was found and ransomed by his uncle.
• The Hunger Games: Lavinia. Avoxes are the slaves of Panem.
• Hurog: Oreg in Dragon Bones has this as his backstory. When he was about seventeen, his father gave him some (apparently drugged) soup, and when Oreg woke up he was the castle in which his father lived. And magically bound slave to the respective owner of the castle.
• Iron Dawn: Kepru is surprised that Barra wants to avoid the slave market, and assumes she was a victim of this trope. ("Nothing to be ashamed of: it could happen to anyone!") Subverted in that no, Barra was never a slave; she wants to avoid the market because she knows she won't be able to resist buying some out of pity.
• The King Must Die is replete with Deliberate Values Dissonance here. Which is to say that since Theseus is a nice guy, when he picks his woman out of the choices, before he fights with another man, he gives orders that if he loses, they are to give her to one man and not make common sport of her, and when he survives he takes to her bed and promises that night never to give her to a guest against her will. (And the other slave women in his household don't get this, hmm?)
• Kull: In "The Shadow Kingdom", the Snakemen can enslave the ghosts of those they kill. After Kull and Brule see a king bound a thousand years ago, they promise to kill each other if the other is mortally wounded.
• Kushiel's Legacy: Phedre no Delauney is made the Sex Slave of Skaldic (Viking) raiders.
• Land of Oz:
  • In The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Dorothy is told it is easy to find the Witch: just go into her lands and she'll enslave you. The Witch ordered her servants to kill them, except for the Lion, who she thought was useful. The Winged Monkeys were only able to incapacitate the Scarecrow and the Tin Man (who Dorothy and the Witch's liberated slaves were able to find and repair later); Dorothy was spared because a blessing put upon her by the Witch of the North prevented them - or the villain - from hurting her. Taking her prisoner was the only option at that point, and the Witch simply had to bide her time until she could find a way around it.
  • In Ozma of Oz, the Nome King justifies turning the queen of Ev and her children to ornaments because they had been sold to him as slaves, and it was more humane than slaving in the mines.
• The Light Of Eidon: Abramm is kidnapped and sold as a slave (first as a scribe, later to be trained as the in-universe equivalent of a gladiator) at the order of his older brother who's gone insane.

• In the Hindu epic Mahabharata all five of the Pandava princes and their wife Draupadi end up enslaved to their cousin and nemesis Duryodhana after first staking all their wealth, their kingdom, their personal possessions and ultimately their freedom in a dice game, which they lose to Duryodhana. Duryodhana then proceeds to order Draupadi stripped off her clothes in the Royal court, since he now owns her. Luckily for her, Krishna intervenes to ensure that Draupadi remains fully clothed. Later on, Duryodhana is shamed into releasing the Pandavas into a long exile instead.
• The Mark of the Lion: Two characters at the beginning of A Voice in the Wind: a young Jewess named Hadassah is enslaved along with many of her people when her hometown is raided; Germanic tribal warrior Atretes is taken as a prisoner of war and forced into the gladiatorial arena.
• The Monk And The Viking: Brother Aiden is captured after vikings raid his monastery and made into a thrall.
• Neverwhere: Richard notes and carefully avoids a slave market.
• The Obsidian Chronicles: The protagonist was the sole survivor of a dragon attack on his village. The men who came to check for survivors found him... and promptly sold him as a slave to a nearby mine.
• Only Walk So Far: This happening to Renn is the Inciting Incident.
• Oroonoko: The enslavement of the titular character and his love interest is the majority of the story.
• The Persian Boy: Bagoas describes in precise detail how he was taken by his father's enemies, sold at market and castrated. At ten years old.
• Pilgrim's Progress: One character recounts his managing to evade this trope:
  It came burning hot into my mind, whatever he said, and however he flattered, when he got me home to his House, he would sell me for a Slave.
• Planet Pirates: Sassinak is captured and enslaved by the eponymous bad guys.

• Ranger's Apprentice: In the first book, Will is kidnapped by Skandians after they find him burning down a bridge.
• In Ready Player One, the protagonist arranges this fate for himself to hack into an inaccessible computer system.

• Robinson Crusoe is briefly enslaved by Arabs at the start of the book.
• In The Roman Mysteries, Nubia starts the series as a slave. Many other children are also kidnapped and enslaved, forming the basis of the plots for The Pirates of Pompeii and The Colossus of Rhodes. The Four Detectives are briefly captured in The Pirates of Pompeii and are going to be sold as slaves. Jonathan is also briefly enslaved in The Assassins of Rome and at the end of The Enemies of Jupiter he uses the brand mark to pose as a slave. Three of the Four Detectives are captured yet again in The Colossus of Rhodes.
• In The Red Vixen Adventures Alinadar is a Child Soldier Space Pirate until she was wounded and captured by the titular Red Vixen, who decided to keep Ali as a slave as the girl was quite insane by this point.
• Rosemary Sutcliff has this happen with some regularity to his protagonists (or their Heterosexual Life-Partners), sometimes with tragic consequences, sometimes not: Esca in The Eagle of the Ninth, Beric in Outcast, Aquila in The Lantern Bearers, Owain and Regina in Dawn Wind, Conn in The Shining Company, Jestyn in Blood Feud, Arcadius and Timandra in The Flowers Of Adonis, and Lubrin's entire tribe in Sun Horse Moon Horse.
• The Saga of the Faroe Islanders: Subverted Thrand of Gotu intends to rid himself of the boys Sigmund and Thorir, his kinsmen whose fathers have been killed with his accompliceship, by selling them as slaves. But the merchant Hrafn does not want to buy them unless Thrand gives him money to take the boys, and ultimately Hrafn thwarts Thrand's plan by setting the boys free in Norway.

• Sarum includes a few characters who are enslaved, and treats them more realistically than many writers (e.g. a pregnant woman is terrified to be made a slave, knowing her master will probably have her baby killed at birth rather than let a useless infant become a drain on his household).

• The Seer and the Sword: The king returns with the enslaved prince of the conquered country, and gives him to his daughter.

• "Silly Novels by Lady Novelists": George Eliot complains of a work supposed to be instructive because "the hero is a Jewish captive".
• A Song of Ice and Fire:
  • The reason Jorah Mormont was exiled to Essos was because he enslaved poachers as a way to finance his wife's lavish lifestyle. Upon learning about this, Ned Stark threatened to behead him, so Jorah immediately packed up and left Westeros.
  • Daenerys Targaryen's handmaid and friend Missandei was captured from her homeland of Naath and enslaved, alongside her brothers. It's explained that Naath is an easy prey, because its people are Actual Pacifists who won't even harm plants for food, so they don't resist being enslaved. After freeing her, Daenerys offers to send Missandei back to Naath, but she refuses.
  • Tyrion Lannister and Jorah Mormont get caught by slavers and sold in A Dance with Dragons. Both eventually get out by joining the Second Sons.
• Soul Rider begins with the main character, Cassie, being thrown into slavery after she discovers the corruption endemic in Mother Church. She eventually overcomes this to become the most powerful woman on World and in the Church, only to be put back into slavery by New Eden when she loses both her power and her ambition to hold it. In addition, pretty much the entire female population of New Eden can be said to be enslaved, complete with magical modifications to make it stick.
• In Spartan, Talos, the protagonist, is abandoned by his father as an enfant, because he was born cripple. Thankfully, he is rescued by a helot.
• Stardoc: Dr. Cherijo Grey Veil gets enslaved by the Hsk'skt. She doesn't make a very good slave.

• The Stormlight Archive: Kaladin spends the first book as a slave, having been enslaved by a treacherous aristocrat in the backstory. Highmarshal Amaram was being attacked by a full Shardbearer — a man wearing Magitek Powered Armor and a sword that can cut through anything. Kaladin led his squad of spearmen against the Shardbearer. Most of them died, but Kaladin himself managed to kill the Shardbearer, meaning the Shards now belonged to him. He refused them, as they reminded him too much of his lost friends. Amaram then killed the survivors of Kaladin's squad, took the Shards, and branded Kaladin a slave as a "mercy", since one slave won't be believed. It's no wonder that Kaladin violently hates nobles.
• Star Wars Legends:
  • Black Fleet Crisis: The Yevetha were enslaved under the Empire for their high level of technical skills. After rising up, they then enslaved the Imperial personnel who weren't killed. Later they also enslave colonists from other planets in their home star cluster (with most slaughtered).
  • The Courtship of Princess Leia: Teneniel makes Luke and Isolder into her slaves. In the first case, he quickly gets free (being a Jedi). However, Isolder is left as formally her slave until she frees him. Han initially is also designated a slave, though Leia pleads for him with the elders of the Singing Mountain clan, who agree to treat him as a free man. The Nightsisters disputed it, saying that he was their slave because the stormtroopers they own captured him.
• Tailchaser's Song: One night, Tailchaser, Pouncequick, Roofshadow, and Eatbugs are captured by the Clawguard and forced underground. It turns out that Hearteater is using cats as slaves to help with his scheme. The ones he doesn't eat or use to sit on, he makes dig tunnels all over the land for him. Tailchaser is forced into slavery, but his friends are imprisoned. Before Tailchaser's friends can be killed, Hearteater is defeated and the surviving cats escape.
• Time Machine Series: Quest for King Arthur has the player end up as a Saxon's farmhand in the Dark Ages.
• Tolkien's Legendarium:
  • In The Silmarillion, both Men and Elves are enslaved by Morgoth and his minions.
  • The Children of Húrin: Gwindor is captured during the Battle of Unnumbered Tears and forced to work in the forges of Angband, but later escapes.
  • In The Fall of Gondolin, Tuor is separated from his adoptive family during an Orc ambush, and is captured and brought before Lorgan, chief of the Easterlings ruling Dor-lómin. Lorgan takes Tuor as his slave, intending to break his spirit, but Tuor endures patiently and quietly his abuse as waiting for a chance to escape. Three years later, Tuor is sent with other thralls into the woods, and he picks an axe, kills the guards and flees into the hills.
• Tortall Universe: Aly, the protagonist of Trickster's Choice, is kidnapped and sold into slavery in a neighboring nation. This actually forms the premise of the whole duet. Luckily the people she ends up with are fairly nice as things go, although extenuating circumstances mean she is treated better than most. She still deliberately gets herself injured during her first night in the slave pens, though, because she wants to avoid any owners who think she'd make a good bed-warmer; she deliberately makes her bruises look worse than they are, so that she'll give the impression of someone who would be more trouble than it's worth. She only finds out later that she didn't even need to do this—probably—because the Trickster god of the area is watching over her and wants her help. She's not happy to find out that she could have survived without needing to break her nose.
• The Tough Guide to Fantasyland lists it twice:
  • Male Tourists, who become either galley slaves or gladiators.
  • Female Tourists captured by bandits or pirates will be sold as slaves in the Other Continent. The women are then treated well, however, free from beatings, rape and other hardship. While put to work, it will be at a useful skill, and they may even learn Magic. An enemy of their owner will soon raid the villa where the slave now is, and they can escape in the confusion.
  • The daughters of merchants who were brought along with the caravan; these appear to be the only source of harem slaves.
• The Treachery of Beautiful Things: Kobolds are enslaved tree spirits, made by carving the wood of their trees. Oberon has enslaved them all. Also, Titania enslaved the changelings, entrapping them all in delusions.
• In Victoria, this is what happens to Azanians who refuse to bend, after their Lady Land is conquered by the Northern Confederation. The latter, a reactionary Christian Dominionist state, are outraged that something so evil as a country of lesbian Amazons can even exist, and are very thorough in dismantling it. The survivors are given the choice between assimilation (which amounts to becoming good Christian housewives, more or less) and being sold as property.
• The Vipers Scheme: Esares disguised himself as a slave in order to infiltrate an enemy country and assassinate their chosen one, but when his ruse is discovered, his master decides to make him a slave for real instead of killing him.
• Warhammer 40,000:
  • Alaric's fate in Ben Counter's Hammer of Daemons, in Gladiator Games. But he leads a Gladiator Revolt.
  • In Sandy Mitchell's Ciaphas Cain novel Death or Glory, the orks have enslaved civilians.
  • In Dan Abnett's Gaunt's Ghosts novel Traitor General, the surviving inhabitants of Gereon have been enslaved to destroy its Imperial temples. Later they were forced to work under excruciating conditions, and those who managed to live long enough to see the Imperial liberation became physical and emotional cripples.
  • In John French's Thousand Sons novel Ahriman: Exile, Hemellion, the king of the planet Vohal, is enslaved by the Prodigal Sons after they kill his world and exterminate his people. Ahriman gives Hemellion over to Sanakht to act as his personal servant.
  • In Space Wolf, the presumed fate of the survivors of Ragnar's tribe. Motivating his desire for revenge.
  • In Aaron Dembski-Bowden's Night Lords novel Soul Hunter, the navigator Eurydice is captured by the Night Lord Talos, who already has a slave named Septimus — Primus, Secondus, etc have already died. Septimus doesn't even have to ask to start calling her Octavia. On the other hand, she was always treated as a pawn while free, so when the two slaves are attacked, and Talos treats Septimus's injuries, sets out into a stronghold of his enemies to save her from Attempted Rape, and gives Septimus the best quality augmentics for his body parts injured beyond repair — better than many rich can get — it's not too surprising that she becomes a loyal slave and even accepts Octavia.
  • This seems to be the fate of Tsu'gan in Nick Kyme's Firedrake.
  • In James Swallow's short story "The Returned" Tarikus remembers his Back Story: being captured by the Red Corsairs and sold like cattle to Fabius Bile.
  • In Graham McNeill's Horus Heresy novel False Gods, Maggard is an indentured servant, but his vocal cords have been removed to keep him from speaking in the presence of his mistress, and she uses him as a Sex Slave.
• Warrior Woman: The amnesiac protagonist is sold as a pleasure slave to the gladiators. She becomes a gladiator herself when she halves a newbie's skull with his own sword during inspection.
• We Are Legion (We Are Bob): The original reason that Bob's consciousness was downloaded from his cryofreezed head was to be a slave AI for FAITH. Luckily, Dr. Landers tells him about the loyalty switches, and Bob manages to remove them all by the time he leaves Sol.
• The Wheel of Time:
  • In book two, Egwene al'Vere is made a damane — an enslaved spellcaster — by the Seanchan and treated like a dog. Although she's saved by the end of the book, it's tough on her mentally.
  • Several characters are also captured and made slaves for the Shaido Aiel in the later books.
• The Witches of Karres: The hero's problems start when he helps a girl who had suffered this. Then she persuades him to help her two sisters.
• Worlds of Shadow: In the first book, the characters suffer this after their ship is hijacked by pirates. The main character is sold as a mining slave, the female characters are made sex slaves and raped repeatedly before the Empire comes to rescue them all. The main character's daughter is also murdered.

Live-Action TV

• Angel: Fred and Cordelia both end up having this happen when they go through a portal to Pylea, a demon dimension that keeps humans as slaves. Fred manages to disable her explosive collar and lives hiding out in a cave for five years, while Cordelia is seen having a vision and is declared a prophesied Chosen One. Fred, whose mental state is not great after the experience, meekly lampshades the disparity when she finds out, "They made her a Princess? Oh... that's nice for her... they didn't... didn't do that for me..."
• Breaking Bad: This happens to Jesse in "Ozymandias", when he's taken prisoner by the Neo-Nazi gang and forced to cook them meth, all the while they torture, humiliate, and starve him, and tell him if he tries to escape, they'll kill his ex-girlfriend and her son, a threat they make good on and force him to watch. Fortunately, he's able to escape in the finale, when Walt arrives and guns down all the Nazis.
• Doctor Who:
  • "The Ark": Between the two time periods, humanity has been enslaved.
  • "The Dominators": The Dominators enslave the Doctor and Jamie.
  • "The Mutants": Ky complains this has been done to his people.
  • In "Planet of the Daleks", the Spiridons.
  • "Underworld": Most of the people on the planet are enslaved to labour. They think the "sky falls" (tunnel collapses) are done to keep their number low, just enough to labour.
  • "Warriors' Gate": The Tharls had enslaved people in the past — "The weak enslave themselves" — and now are slaves themselves. The Doctor gives them an Ironic Echo, and one concedes the justice, but they have suffered enough.
  • In "Frontios", to captured humans.
  • In "Planet of the Ood", it's revealed that the titular species were enslaved by humanity and lobotomized by the corporation managing the slave trade to keep them complacent.
• Emerald City: In "Science and Magic", after Jack catches the attention of Lady Ev, she decides to make Jack her property.
• Game of Thrones: This is quite common in Essos, where slavery has been practiced widely for centuries, with frequent raids to gain slaves for the places where it's the basis of the economy.
  • Doreah was sold to a brothel at age nine (by her own mother) and first "touched a man" three years later.
  • Grey Worm and Missandei were also captured through raids as children, then made slaves.
  • The Dothraki take many Lhazareen as slaves to be sold for buying ships so they can buy ships which will take them off to Westeros, horrifying Daenerys (this helps fuel her later anti-slavery campaign).
  • Tyrion and Jorah are later caught by raiders then sold outside Mereen, but it doesn't last long.
• Highlander:
  • Methos captured Cassandra when the Four Horsemen burned her village. Thousands of years later, she still wants his head.
  • Methos himself in Ancient Rome. He makes a remark to Duncan about “a senator, his wife and a slave boy” and though the scene was cut from the episode, he’s confirmed as the slave boy in the book “Zealot”.
  • Duncan in the period The “Finale” flashbacks happen in. He was captured by Barbary pirates thanks to a woman who wanted to marry an Arab and arranged the attack so she could get away from her bodyguard, Duncan. He was rescued from the market by the immortal Hamza, who eventually became a friend.
• Intergalactic: Tula puts her own daughter Genevieve up as collateral on a debt, which she loses, and the crime boss Zedda whom she's playing against then takes her away.
• Jessica Jones (2015): Kilgrave frequently controls the same people for long periods of time to cater or support him during his endeavors.
  • Jessica Jones was Kilgrave's all-purpose slave while he had her under control, serving as his Sex Slave and Slave Mook in addition to fulfilling his fantasy that they were in a romantic relationship.
  • On multiple occasions he is shown taking over an apartment and having the previous occupants cook and clean for him.
  • One man in the Kilgrave support group was forced to be his chauffeur for more than a week.
  • At least one woman he had follow him around for long periods just because he liked the way she smiled.
  • When Kilgrave and Jessica speak later in the series she explicitly refers to these sorts of people as slaves (although, ironically, in that particular instance the two people under discussion - Hank and the bodyguards - were not, as Kilgrave had hired those two with actual money in order to defuse this specific accusation from Jessica). Double subverted later on, though, when it turns out he did have them under his control; just not in the way Jessica expected. He uses his powers as the primary way of controlling them, and he pays them so they continue to carry out his orders even when he isn't capable of giving them.
• Kingdom Adventure: Zordock's said his long-term goal is to make all the citizens of Lumia his slaves. He seems to change his plans for the main characters specifically between making them his slaves or killing them; probably either one would make him happy. Dagger was called Zordock's slave at one point, as well.
• The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power: The Orcs kidnap and force innocent people to dig tunnels for unknown reasons. The Elf Arondir is made a slave too in episode 3.
• The Outer Limits (1995):
  • In "The Deprogrammers", Evan Cooper and millions of other humans were enslaved when the Torkor conquered Earth.
  • In "The Grell", Jesha's grandfather was made a slave as a boy, as were the rest of the Grell alive at that time.
  • In "The Human Operators" the backstory has the surviving humans on the AI ships made their slaves, then forced to conceive more so they could make repairs.
• The Outpost:
  • The Mistress "adopted" Janzo, but didn't want a girl, so she sold his sister as a slave.
  • In the Season 3 premiere, the entire Human population of the Outpost have been made slaves of the invading Blackbloods, who are forcing them to mine an ore they need for them.
  • This gets turned around on the Blackbloods later on in the same season, when Jaaris's rogue Prime Order soldiers take over the outpost and sentence all the Blackbloods to fight to the death for his amusement.
• Princess Agents: Chu Qiao and many other innocent people are kidnapped and forced into slavery.
• Roots (1977): This famous story based on the novel of Alex Haley was made into an award winning TV series in 1976 and tells the story about black slavery in 19th century America. It was famous for being the first TV show to make slavery a topic.
• Roots (2016) makes several revisions from the original, such as Kunta's capture being the product of a grudge between his father and someone from a neighboring clan who sold him to British slave traders, instead of being captured by the white slave traders themselves (which was actually uncommon).
• The Shannara Chronicles: After being captured by the Elf Hunters, Eretria's hauled to Utopia and sold as a slave. This doesn't last long however, as Tye bought her to spare her from worse, and she's freed after that.
• Spartacus: Blood and Sand: This is Spartacus' story, a mercenary in Roman service enslaved for desertion. It goes for pretty much all slaves in the series too.
• Star Trek: Enterprise: In one episode, nine Enterprise crewmen are captured by Orion slavers. One (T'Pol) sells for a high figure, presumably as a sex slave. Before her new owner can even complete filling out the paperwork, the Enterprise attacks.
• Survivors: Tom, who gets this treatment as punishment for a murder he committed. Greg too, for trying to help him escape.
• Willow: The trolls have enslaved many people for work in the mines of Skellin on the Crone's behalf.

Music

• Bob Marley wrote a lot of songs in which he referenced black slavery: "Concrete Jungle", "Slave Driver" (Catch a Fire), "Crazy Baldheads" (Rastaman Vibration) "Buffalo Soldier", "Redemption Song" ("Confrontation") and even into the sleeve notes of the album "Survival".
• Kids Praise: Charity Churchmouse has a nightmare where she gets tricked into signing a contract that essentially enslaves her to Risky Rat.

Myths & Religion

• Classical Mythology:
  • Heracles/Hercules had to deal with this one a lot. Due to both his violent temper and extremely self-effacing personality he was often reduced to slavery to make penance for things he did on impulse.
  • His famous 12 Labors were the result of enslaving himself to his cousin Eurystheus to atone for killing his wife and children. This one wasn't actually his fault — Hera drove him into a fit of insanity — but it's really hard to forgive yourself for killing your wife and kids. One of the actual labors was cleaning out the manure from a stable, a menial task which was meant to humiliate Heracles. This one didn't didn't work out, as Hercules diverted a river to flush the stables like a giant toilet. That actually backfired, as Eurystheus decided that it ultimately "didn't count" because the river cleaned the stables rather than Hercules himself, meaning he had to extend his servitude a bit.
  • On another occasion he was forced to atone for a murder by becoming the slave of a queen named Omphale for a time, which had a more humbling effect (in some versions Omphale forces him to wear a dress and perform tasks normally reserved for women).
  • In another myth, he's tasked with impregnating 50 women (as the amazon queen assumed this would take him a long time, leaving her plenty of time to seduce his attractive friend). He managed it in a single night and departed for his next task the next day.
  • After Persephone's abduction, Demeter wandered the earth, and when she finally stopped at a household, she told them she had escaped slavers who had captured her. That, obviously, wasn't true, but it was the easiest way to fulfill Sacred Hospitality without admitting who she really was.
  • Theseus abducted Helen intending to make her his wife. When her brothers Castor and Pollux freed her, she retaliated by enslaving his mother, Aethra. Aethra remained her slave and went with her to Troy, until she was finally freed at the end of the Trojan War by her grandsons Acamas and Demophon.
• The Odyssey: Both Odysseus' swineherd Eumaius and his nurse Eurycleia were born royals but later enslaved in the Back Story.
• Hecuba and all the princesses of Troy after The Trojan War. Except for the one who is sacrificed at Achilles' tomb — in some versions, she tells Hecuba at least she's escaping slavery.
• The Iliad:
  • Hector foresees and laments such a fate for Andromache.
    Well do I know that the day will surely come when mighty Ilius shall be destroyed with Priam and Priam's people, but I grieve for none of these — not even for Hecuba, nor King Priam, nor for my brothers many and brave who may fall in the dust before their foes — for none of these do I grieve as for yourself when the day shall come on which some one of the Achaeans shall rob you forever of your freedom, and bear you weeping away. It may be that you will have to ply the loom in Argos at the bidding of a mistress, or to fetch water from the springs Messeis or Hypereia, treated brutally by some cruel task-master; then will one say who sees you weeping, 'She was wife to Hector, the bravest warrior among the Trojans during the war before Ilius.' On this your tears will break forth anew for him who would have put away the day of captivity from you. May I lie dead under the barrow that is heaped over my body ere I hear your cry as they carry you into bondage.
  • The women in the Greek camp.
  • Also, Tecmessa, who was Ajax's captive.
  • A dispute over slaves is actually what causes the major conflict of the poem.
• The Bible:
  • Joseph gets bought for his prettiness — as a kind of home accessory.
  • The Jews in general in Egypt (early in the Book of Exodus) and again when conquered by the Assyrians and Babylonians.
• Norse Mythology: While on a journey with Loki, Thor rests at the home of a farmer and his family, and offers the goats that pull his chariots as a meal, telling them simply not to break the bones. The son, Thjalfi, disobeys, and when Thor revives the goats, he notices one has a limp. Depending on which version of the myth you read, Thor either flies into a murderous rage and is only pacified by the father offering Thjalfi and his sister as slaves, or Thjalfi pre-emptively confesses the moment he notices Thor's change in demeanor, and Thor simply requires him to become his slave in compensation. Either way, Thjalfi becomes Thor's slave alongside his sister.

Tabletop Games

• Dungeons & Dragons:
  • This will definitely happening to anyone (Player Characters or otherwise) who are taken alive by the neogi, an evil race of bug-like creatures who first appeared in the Spelljammer setting but now appear elsewhere. Turning other races into slaves is their hat, so to speak, and powerful neogi even do it to weaker neogi. (They view the whole universe in terms of ownership; in their culture, the strong possess and dominate the weak.)
  • The dao (a type of genie of elemental Earth) are another race known for being notorious slavers. Ironically, the dao themselves were forced into a type of divine slavery when their ruler was defeated by the Faceless God of the yikaria (or yak-folk), requiring the dao to serve the yikaria for "a thousand years and a year". (How much of that sentence had already passed at mainstream time is not known.) Due to this agreement, every yikaria has the ability to summon a dao — so long as he does not already have one as a servant — who must serve unquestionably until the sun has set twice.
  • In the 4th Edition guidebook Monster Manual 2, Slavers are one of several varieties of humans that are outlined as possible antagonists. The Lore section states, "Slavers are themselves slaves to greed and power", which is true, more often than not.
  • Better known than any of the above examples are the Drow, who keep slaves of every type from other drow to surface elves and humans to such powerful beings as giants and the occasional dragon. Given their enjoyment of enslaving the most powerful beings they can find, it should come as no surprise that many a noble house has been toppled by slave revolt.
• GURPS: The medieval fantasy Banestorm setting includes four different kinds of slavery: Slave By Law (sentenced to slavery), Slave By Capture (made a slave by abduction or war), Slave By Birth (born to a slave parent), and Slave By Choice (selling yourself into slavery to pay debts). Not every realm recognizes all four types, and in the principality of Cardiel, all forms of slavery are illegal.
• Pathfinder:
  • The Lawful Neutral shaitan genies who rule the Elemental Plane of Earth make extensive use of slavery, with many of their empire's cities and mines being built and maintained by slave labor. Enslavement is a common punishment for breaking one of the shaitans' many draconian laws, and the earth genies actively exploit this when seeking to get new slaves. For instance, the imp-like mephits that share their plane are often found in violation of some law or another and forced into labor. The shaitans also maintain a literal city of gold to which they attract travelers by spreading tales and propaganda of it in the hopes that some visitors will take away a bit of the locally valueless gold, at which point they can charge them with theft and enslave them, their companions to said city, anyone they sold the gold to...
  • The empire of the Lawful Evil efreet genies in the Plane of Fire is likewise built on the backs of slaves, and the efreeti will cheerfully enslave anyone who can't stop them from doing so. Most notable is their enslavement of the azer, a race of elementals resembling dwarves with flaming beards and hair, whose fortresses they systematically overran in the distant past, reducing the azer to an oppressed slave class in their empire. Those few azers not enslaved by the efreeti are instead slaves of the fire mephits who make up the Plane of Fire's other major power.
  • The duergar — Lawful Evil dwarves who live in Darklands — are notorious slavers. Their entire society and religion is based on constant toil to begin with, and their cities are built and maintained by the toil of legions of slaves. Duergar see enslaving other beings and forcing them to work for them as a high personal accomplishment.
• Space 1889: The great European powers, particularly the British, are trying to stop slavery in general and slave trade in particular. However, it is alive and well on Mars. At least one Red Sand scenario can start when the players are captured and enslaved by High Martians. There is another adventure in Challenge 42 where the players are captured by bandits who intend to sell them as slaves.
• Talislanta: The Imrians are a race of slavers who prey primarily upon the primitive inhabitants of the southern coasts and islands. Even among those who use slaves, Imrians are regarded as backwards and disgusting.
• Warhammer:
  • The Dark Elves are prolific slavers. Their fleets and Black Arks haunt the seas, attacking passing vessels, raiding coastal villages and taking as many captives as they can. It's not uncommon for entire coastline to be filled with sudden ghost towns after Dark Elf corsairs pass by. Once a ship's holds are filled it returns to the Dark Elf city-states, chiefly the port of Karond Kar, where great slave markets and a life of backbreaking toil await them.
  • While the Dark Elves are mostly a coastal issue, nobody is safe from Skaven slave raids. Skaven civilization is built on the backs of slaves, which the Under-Empire acquires by sending raiding parties to the surface world (the Skaven live Beneath the Earth) to raid slums and isolated villages for slaves. The topside governments' denial that the Skaven exist tends to run into strain when entire villages and neighborhoods have their populations vanish overnight.
  • In the first few editions, before some significant changes in worldbuilding, the Slann army was augmented by Lizardmen and Troglodytes forcefully recruited from defeated tribes and by human captives who have been lobotomized, castrated and turned into expandable slave warriors. Later editions made Slann, Lizardmen and Troglodytes (renamed Kroxigor) part of a single species and removed the human slaves altogether.
• Warhammer 40,000:
  • Orks enslave humans on planets they fight on.
  • Dark Eldar enslave with Pirate raids to capture.
  • Chaos forces enslave the population when they take a planet.
  • The Imperium enslaves convicts.
  • Even Imperial Space Marines have slaves to do work that a Space Marine is not needed for. Though the Marines' slaves are generally failed Marine candidates who somehow survived washing out who are often more than happy to help, since they're still in a better position than the vast majority of Imperial citizens. Most such slaves who appear in the fluff are immensely valued personal assistance who even receive longevity treatments that only the rich normally get. Space Marine serfs are also, in some cases, even better trained than the Imperial Guard in combat, being expected to join the defence of their masters' fortress-monasteries if an enemy ever manages to get close enough to be a threat to them. In some fluff it is revealed that some Chapters have serfs who are born, raised, live their lives and die in the Chapter's service.
  • In the Back Story of the universe, Angron's childhood in the Gladiator Games and his leadership in the Gladiator Revolt stemmed from this.
  • Gue'vesa, humans who have been folded into the Tau Empire's sphere of influence. Many Gue'vesa, and fans, might not see it that way.

Theatre

• In Aida (Verdi), this is how the princess, Aida, ended up in Egypt.
• Euripides:
  • In Andromache, Andromache is the victim of her master's jealous wife, Hermione. Who was a Spartan — at the time of the Athenian-Spartan wars. Naturally, Andromache comes off well.
  • The Trojan Women's entire premise is that the Trojan princesses being divided up among the victors.
• Shakespeare:
  • Othello: In the Back Story, Othello won Desdemona by telling his Back Story — including this.
    Wherein I spoke of most disastrous chances,
    Of moving accidents by flood and field,
    Of hair-breadth ’scapes i' th' imminent deadly breach,
    Of being taken by the insolent foe
    And sold to slavery, of my redemption thence
    And portance in my traveler’s history.
  • Pericles, Prince of Tyre: Happens to Marina, who is sold to a brothel after bring captured by pirates. Luckily, her Incorruptible Pure Pureness persuades all the potential "customers" to seek a life of virtue rather than take advantage of her.
• Plautus has this as a standard plot in his play, this being the best way to ensure that the adulescens can make a legitimate marriage with the "flute girl" he's fallen for: she turns out to have been captured by Pirates at a young age and is revealed to be the long-lost daughter of the next-door neighbor. A twist that was later recycled (along with a lot of other Plautus gags) in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum.

Video Games

• Aveyond: Rhen is kidnapped from her village and is sold into slavery.
• Divinity: Original Sin II: Sebille, one of your selectable origins and recruitable party members, was made a slave by the Lizard Folk via a mind controlling Slave Brand, and then made to kill her own people. She escaped slavery before the start of the game, and is now hunting her master down both for her freedom and revenge.
• Dragon Age II: Fenris got a double dose of this. Being an elf in Tevinter, he was already born a slave. Then his master Danarius augmented him with lyrium tattoos in a painful ritual that literally burned his memories away. An "honor" Fenris competed for so he could win his mother and sister's freedom. The person Fenris was ceased to exist, leaving a powerful and completely obedient Blank Slate. Fenris didn't develop a taste for freedom until a My God, What Have I Done? moment prompted him to flee Tevinter and never look back. He can be Made a Slave again if Hawke allows Danarius to reclaim him. Fenris will be so disheartened by the betrayal that he'll surrender without a fight. A grateful Danarius will send a letter to Hawke mentioning that Fenris' memories were wiped again and he is once more an obedient slave, and he extends an invitation to Hawke to visit his estate in Tevinter.
• Dragon Quest V: You're the son of a hero and you travel with him. A short way through the game you meet the Big Bad Guy, get your ass handed to you and spend the next ten years as a slave.
• Fallout 3: Upon entering the Pitt, the player character is jumped and enslaved. This is pretty egregious Cutscene Incompetence and a massive But Thou Must!, since the way you're "supposed" to do it is by willingly dressing up as a slave and turning yourself in as a failed "escapee". And needless to say, you're immediately "volunteered" for the most dangerous job available, and then again "volunteered" participate in the Gladiator Games — only by a fellow slave! Granted, you're the only one capable of doing the jobs, and this was pretty much the entire escape plan from the start, considering that winning in the Gladiator Games means you're freed from slavery and can become one of the slavers, where you then have free run of the Pitt and can do anything and everything you want to free and cure the sick slaves. If only it were that simple.
• Fire Emblem:
  • Generic Bandits try to do this to pretty much any female character. They have nothing to do with the plot, they serve no purpose except to teach the player the ins and outs of the system, and it happens so frequently that it's become a Running Gag among the fanbase.
  • In the Tellius subseries, the laguz, a race of animalistic humanoids that can shapeshift into animals, have been bought and sold as slaves in the beorc (human) nation of Begnion. A few playable laguz, including Muarim and Vika, are former slaves having escaped and become a part of the Laguz Emancipation Army, dedicated to the liberation of all laguz slaves.
  • Rafiel, the eldest prince of the heron laguz in Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn, was kidnapped from the heron homeland Serenes Forest, and was sold as a slave to a Begnion nobleman, Hetzel. Hetzel did treat Rafiel kindly, to the point that he was going to return him to the forest...and then the Serenes Massacre happened. Rafiel was allowed to leave, and ended up in the far-off desert land of Hatari with wolf laguz queen Nailah.
  • During Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance, the raven laguz king Naesala sells his Childhood Friend Reyson, youngest prince of the heron laguz, to the Begnion nobleman Oliver, Duke of Tanas. To his credit, Naesala is literally forced to serve Begnion due to his blood pact, and was probably going to rescue Reyson later, had he not been liberated by the protagonist Ike and his army barging through Oliver's mansion.
• Hegemony Series: If you manage to capture retreating enemies, you get to do this to them. It's a cheap alternative to hiring workers for the mines or supply duties.
• In King's Quest III: To Heir Is Human, Manannan prefers to enslave young boys to do his menial work, calling them all "Gwydion," and killing them on their 18th birthday or if they learn too much. His latest is the Player Character, and it’s up to him to break the cycle and ensure Manannan won’t enslave any more boys.
• Knights of the Old Republic:
  • Juhani's Back Story. Turns out Revan was the one who freed her from it. You also can skewer the guy who tried to buy her on your lightsabers. You also find a small child who ran away from Mandalorian raiders who speaks mostly gibberish, a few people who were sold into slavery as punishment for debts, and you have to free Bastila from the swoop gang planning to auction her off on the galactic slave market.
  • Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords: Mira was technically a slave of the Mandalorian raiders who destroyed her home. Unlike most examples, they weren't abusive to her, teaching her how to fight and handle explosives as though she were a Mandalorian child.
  • Star Wars: The Old Republic: The backstory of the Sith Inquisitor is that they were a former slave, who earned their freedom when they were discovered to be force-sensitive. They were then given two options; Go to the Sith Academy on Korriban for Training from Hell... or die!
• The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky: The backstory of the Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds Angel of Slaughter was that her own parents sold her into slavery as a young girl, which was a Cynicism Catalyst. Eventually the Big Bad and his enforcers rescued her, brutally killing her tormentors, the relief from which left her a Sadist who joined them as Enforcer number XV.
• The Legend of Spyro: The Manweersmalls have an unfortunate tendency to find themselves enslaves by the villains du jour. In A New Beginning, they're enslaved by the Apes to do mining for them. Spyro frees them, but in the next game it turns out that they were captured again by the Skavangers and, since they're too weak to make entertaining gladiators, have been forced to be valets instead.
• Marco and the Galaxy Dragon opens with Marco being kidnapped by aliens and sold into slavery. Many other children were kidnapped at the same time, though Marco is the only one still alive by the present day. The kidnappings were orchestrated by Astaroth, who’d intended Marco to be the personal slave of his daughter Haqua.
• Neverwinter Nights:
  • In Shadows of Undrentide, the asabi merchant/treasure hunter Ashtara un-petrifies the heroes at the start of Chapter Two — then clamps a Slave Collar around their necks and forces you to help him search the ruins of Undrentide. He frees you, however, after you destroy the city's ancient guardian golems so that his other slaves can get on with looting the place.
  • The community module A Dance with Rogues has a particularly memorable long and unskippable cutscene where you are being sold at the drow slave market.
    "Buy one kobold, get one free!"
• New Legends have you suffering this fate in the You Can't Thwart Stage One level. After Xao Gon killed your father the Emperor and took over your kingdom, he decide to have you flung into his labor camps for no reason other than to rub in his victory.
• Splatterhouse: In the remake, it's eventually revealed that the Terror Mask knows so much about the Corrupted because it was enslaved by them. For eons, by its own account. So it uses Rick to enact its own Roaring Rampage of Revenge against them.
• Transarctica: You can capture the crews of Viking trains and enslave them to work in your coal mines, or purchase slaves in towns to the same effect. Additionally, it's possible to capture slaves while fighting the Mole Men in underground tunnels.
• Valkyrie Profile: This shows up in the plots of a few characters, mainly in the main character's, in which she ends up getting herself killed in order to avoid being sold off by her parents.

Webcomics

• Aisopos: Aesop becomes the slave of Yadmon, the person who killed his parents. Now, that's bad luck!
• Baalbuddy: "Company of Humans Enslaves Elf" has an elf girl reduced to slavery. Instead of the standard hentai trope of her becoming a sex slave, however, she's forced into tech support.
• In Dragon Mango, some captured goblins are forced to work until they pay off their debt.
• The Dreamland Chronicles: The pirates' threat of this inspires him to fight here.
• Drowtales: Slavery is a well-established practice among the drow cultures. Debtors risk enslavement to their creditors if unable to pay back what they own, wars often see victorious armies enslaving captives from enemy armies and citizenry alike, and slave raids on orc and human settlements are common practice.
• In Endstone, they think they can enslave Kyri because she's a higher animal and one customer doesn't want her slaughtered yet.

• I Don't Want This Kind of Hero: Guineung, as a child, due to being a half-breed. During her mission as Napkin (the team before Spoon was formed), Dana saved him, and he felt grateful. He works for Dana to show his gratitude, hence why he's been with Dana ever since.

• Lustomic: Male submission/forced slaves.

• The Order of the Stick:
  • After the Order defeats an outlaw band, Belkar proposes selling them into slavery.
  • The first step gets foiled here by Belkar's Berserk Button.
  • When they get to the Empire of Blood, Roy and Belkar get captured and become gladiators.
• Terinu: Teri's best friend Matt is a notable case. He was indentured to a psychotic Space Pirate when he was eight to pay for his father's drinking induced debts. It says something about how sucktacular his family's life was that this was an improvement.
• Unsounded: Starfish's victims were abducted and enslaved by him, then cut open to smuggle First Silver hidden inside their still living bodies.
• Vattu: Vattu is sold into slavery by her tribe as payment to the Sahtan empire.
• Wapsi Square: The golem girls were used as enslaved guardians, only Bud recognized it for what it was.

Web Original

• Statless and Tactless: Joe talks the group into enslave Mari because it actually protect her more then harm her. Also it would piss off her player, Ian. Although this is technically supposed to just be for appearances and not actual slavery, Soo immediately takes a liking to the idea of owning someone.
• The Innocent: The children turn all adults into slaves during the war on adults. Justified, as the children used to be slaves of them, and dislike their authority, causing the conflict to happen.

Western Animation

• Batman: The Animated Series: In one episode Batman, disguised as a civilian, is investigating a number of mostly homeless or jobless people have gone missing. He ends up captured by the villains and amnesiac, forced into mining gold for a Fat, Sweaty Southerner in a White Suit who throws dissenters into dumpsters to die of heat stroke if they so much as look at him the wrong way.
• Bear Story: The bear is kidnapped from his home and family and enslaved, forced to perform in a circus.
• In Beast Wars, this is how Rampage winds up serving Megatron. Rampage's spark is immortal, so Megatron cuts off a piece of it and places it in a box that he can use to inflict excruciating pain on Rampage if he disobeys.
• Courage the Cowardly Dog: Enslavement happens to Courage and his family at times. Notable slavemakers include a giant alien robot and a clan of bullfrogs.
• Futurama:
  • "A Pharaoh to Remember": Fry, Leela and Bender are made slaves in an Ancient Egypt-like planet. The Pharaoh is about to free them when he dies, but Bender scams his way into being the next Pharaoh, leaving Fry and Leela as slaves until the end of the episode.
  • "How Hermes Requisitioned His Groove Back": Hermes and LaBarbara are tricked into attending a "resort" where visitors are forced into hard labor. Hermes uses his powers of Bureaucracy to "efficiently" dump all the work on one Australian guy and free everyone else.
• G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero shows that Cobra does this to civilians, and they do it to Scarlet in the Five-Episode Pilot. This comes back to bite them — in one scene, a gutsy female slave working as a maid throws water upon the M.A.S.S. device, causing it to break down and foiling Cobra Commander's attempt to vaporize New York City. In the conclusion of the same arc, they have a full slave revolt on their hands when the heroes storm their compound.
• Hunky and Spunky: Spunky the burro is kidnapped by a mean prospector and turned into a pack mule. Spunky's mother Hunky comes charging to the rescue.
• My Little Pony:
  • My Little Pony 'n Friends: This is a common game plan for villains, such as Catrina in "My Little Pony: Escape From Catrina" and the goblins in "The Golden Horseshoes, Part 2", who often plot to enslave the ponies and force them to work for them.
  • My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic: In "A Dog and Pony Show", Diamond Dogs (a pack of dog-like creatures who love jewels) see Rarity using her magic to find gems, so they capture her and force her to work for them. It's never directly called slavery, but still. She manages to get them to let her go (and go off with all the gems) through the power of whining.
• Over the Garden Wall: A witch captures Wirt and Greg so she can fill their heads with wool and turn them into mindless servants.
• Teen Titans (2003): Before the series began, Blackfire gave her younger sister Starfire to the Gordonians as a peace offering to keep them from invading Tamaran, and also to get Starfire out of the way. In the origin episode "Go!", Starfire manages to escape and make it to Earth, where she meets the rest of the Teen Titans.

Real Life

• Most ancient societies in the Near East had slavery as an institution. People could become slaves due to debts, certain crimes, or being taken as prisoners in war. This was also the case for both ancient Greece and Rome. However there were also usually mechanisms to gain freedom. In ancient Greece and Rome slaves were in fact paid a stipend they could save up to buy their freedom — after which they still had limited civil rights though. (Free-born Romans were incredibly snobby about freedmen.) It was also not legal in most cases to simply kidnap people and sell them into slavery (not that it didn't happen sometimes of course). The idea about being sent to the mines as an effective death sentence is pure Truth in Television, though; ancient mining didn’t have anything in the way of health and safety rules, so only slaves would put up with the conditions, and they were worked to death.
• Jewish law forbade fellow Hebrews from being enslaved (though indentured servants were allowed, to serve six-year terms). However foreigners could still be bought as slaves and inherited. This rule was then adopted by Christians as forbidding them enslaving fellow believers. However it was then made a racial institution again during colonization of the Americas, so even if slaves then became Christians it didn't automatically free them, due to their race. Islam also had much the same rules.
• The idea of being sent to the galleys as bad news is true enough, but with nuances. In the late Middle Ages and some time after, nations on all sides of the Mediterranean, Christian and Muslim, had an unending need for galley oarsmen, and so would raid each other for slaves on any excuse. Experienced sailors, who already had the training, were preferred. It was doubtless brutally hard and soul-sappingly boring work, but some slaves survived for years, so it wasn’t an automatic death sentence. (After all, who’d want their ship’s propulsion system dying in mid voyage?) And arrangements could be and were made for galley slaves to be ransomed to freedom. This all happened to Miguel de Cervantes, author of Don Quixote. Convicts could also be sent to the galleys in some cases, which was effectively slavery even if they sentence was supposedly for a limited period, because they often died before completing their sentence, and the authorities were frequently careless about checking when anyone’s sentence was up.
• Plato was invited to Sicily because the tyrant Dionysius the Elder wanted philosophers at his court. Plato showed up, gave him advice, and sufficiently offended Dionysius that he sold him into slavery, and his friends had to buy him back. This did not stop him from going to advise Dionysius the Younger a generation later, too, which ended more peacefully, if no more successfully.
• When the Greek philosopher Phaedo of Elis was young, he was taken prisoner in war and was subsequently sold into slavery in Athens, where he was forced into prostitution. Eventually he met Socrates, who took a liking to him and had him freed.
• Unfortunately it still happens everywhere, yes even in first world countries. As many as 27,000,000 of them.
• A convoluted example comes from the early history of the United States. The first slaves in Britain's American colonies were prisoners transported to the New World and sold to the plantation owners as craftsmen, house servants, and field workers. While these "indentured servants" never regained their freedom, upon reaching adulthood any children born to them became free after a period of six years spent working for their parents' owners as "repayment" for the food, shelter, and education they were provided as children. Once it grew into African slaves, this became hereditary.
• Modern example: this is a huge problem in the cocoa industry. Children are bought cheap (or kidnapped) in Ivory Coast and forced to work. It is estimated that 95% of the kids are not paid for the work, and due to the heavy loads they carry and machetes they use they often get injuries that go untreated. Around 42% or so of cocoa comes from this place.
• La Malinche, a Nahua woman who lived in what is now Mexico, was given to the Spanish conquistadors as a "servant". She ended up serving Hernan Cortes as a translator and eventually became his mistress, and bore him a child.
• Los Zetas, a major Mexican crime syndicate, has been known to kidnap telecom engineers to build and maintain their communications network. Unlike their usual kidnapping victims, ransoms are not offered and the victims are believed to be killed when they have outlived their usefulness.
• The Islamic State in Iraq and Levant has been known, and proclaimed publicly, to set up slave markets where female sex slaves captured from Yezidi communities were to be sold.
• Similarly, Nigerian Islamic militants Boko Harem have grown to be notorious for capturing girls who are used as sex slaves.
• This even happens in the animal kingdom: slave-making ants are so-called 'brood parasites'; they do seasonal raids on the ants of other species, snatch their larvae, and bring them back to their nest. The larvae are then inundated with pheromones to 'brainwash' them into slaves that do everything for the slaver ants, including mouth-to-mouth feeding them. Some species are so dependant on slaves that, without them, they would completely die out.

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