Assessing Stock

My family fortune lost I had gone into trade

My profession was a surveyor, travelling Baalos on behalf of my clients and to assess their purchases of land and assets.

These ranged from mines to plantations to mills and the slaves employed there. It was my task to count and judge the value of the assets in the flesh so to speak.

Few wealthy owners enjoyed travelling from the great cities into the interiors where their investments were. Travel was unpleasant in the heat of Baalos and there was little comfort at your journey's end.

So that is how I found myself at the plantation of the Sagro family, watching the gangs of field slaves toil at the harvest. The slaves seemed healthy and little marked from the lash. The overseer told me many were bred on the plantation though new stock had had to be acquired when the sweating sickness struck a season ago. I took it upon myself to assess one or more of slaves and had the overseer bring several wenches to me.

Raising my pomade to my face, I could inspect the slaves without the distraction of their animal odor. I had them open their mouths to check for disease. As I had noticed before  few had flesh whip weals on their backs and even fewer wore irons.
The young field slave stood before me. Her naked flesh shone with sweat from toiling in the harvest. I inspected her and noted she was healthy and might last many more seasons

I spent four nights at the plantation, enjoying the rude pleasures of the plantation house where the overseer let me partake of his house slave to ease the rigour of working in that damnable humid heat

The plantation had 300 head of stock. I judged them to be largely of good quality and that coffles sold from the plantation would fetch high prices. Most were bred on the estate but the family had invested in fresh breeds and taken new slaves from the market. The recent wars had meant an estate like this could buy barbarian stock unfit for maybe the house but good for the field.


New slaves worked the fields in chains to stop runaways. That and the overseers willingness to use the cross to punish captured runaways kept this problem in check. As war booty this slave had been branded on her chest to commemorate the fall of her city and her enslavement




These new slaves wore irons the better to prevent runaways. And the overseers said the case of runaways were few especially as the last to run was caught and then nailed to a cross as an example


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