Slavery around the world

Slavery has always been forbidden in the world, it’s one of the moral cornerstones that all the world shares. But many sins unanimously considered as such are nonetheless practiced. The prospect of free labor has always been very tempting and every culture has found a way to obtain some, using a veneer of euphemisms to cover the nature of what they were doing.

All nations have some form of forced labor for criminals and war prisoners. Heinous crimes and aggression against the country itself are grounds enough for having one’s “personhood” revoked, and so coerced work becomes morally acceptable.
Dwarves are quick to condemn people to work in the mines, even for financial crimes like tax evasion, fraudulent insolvency, counterfeiting, falsification of account books, etc. “You can always pay it back with pick and sweat,” they say.
In the Angelic Unison, there are many labor camps to the point some towns up north are built around them. But those people are not aware they are forced to work there: through different forms of conditioning, some mundane and other magical, people are convinced to be there of their own free will. Some think they choose this way to atone for their sins, others may have their minds so scrubbed they are persuaded to be just doing a job, and others still may be infused by religious fervor and think they are heroically sacrificing for the greater good.
One would think the Empire is the worst in treating this sort of coerced work since the punishment can extend even after death through zombification but, arguably, the Elves of the Kahante are even more cruel.
The elves of the steppes don’t care who you are: if you cross their sacred path, you are theirs and they can do with you what they please. Usually, the slavery period is brief, as they will soon slaughter you to feed the ghosts. The fact you will be kept in high regard once you become a ghost yourself is of little comfort.

Indenture servitude has some diffusion, especially among the Empire, the Confederacy, and the Uxalian Nations. The indenture contract is conceptualized as selling your labor in advance, receiving beforehand all the salaries you would earn for a contracted number of years.
The conditions you will live in after you sell all those years of your life may vary: you could get lucky and live a humble but dignified life or you can end up treated like a beast of burden. In the Empire, where contracts have a special cultural place, your duties and the responsibilities of your “employer” are clearly stated, and a serf can challenge a contract in court or demand compliance with the terms.
The worst place to get in this situation is the Confederacy, where the contract is just your “expiration date”, a document that says the year you will be free. In the meantime, you (technically, your contract) can be sold and bought by anyone to anyone for any reason. Pirates are both the biggest beneficiaries and biggest opposers of this practice, with each person, crew, or settlement switching position whenever it suits them, in their trademark opportunistic way. But they also love rebels: so if some slaves escape, they will pursue them for only a day, after which they have earned their freedom.

The worst form of servitude, where the term slave can be used without caveats, happens when some populations are not considered “humans” and are therefore “free game”.
In the past, Erebosians have used the “not quite human” proposition to subject the Beast Folk to horrible living conditions, but both Imperial condemnations and brutal relations from the Beats’ Nation have put an end to the practice.
Emifolks have been (and still are, albeit to a minor degree) the main target of slavers. The most black-earthed pirates will raid coastal towns to kidnap satyrs, centaurs, and harpies and draft them fake indenture contracts with outrageously long durations. Buyers must be equally uncaring to pick these people up, but they are convenient and at least the contracts give them some legitimacy. The existence of these preposterous contracts is a small mercy as the buyers will usually oblige them, eventually freeing the slaves and avoiding multi-generational slavery.

But some cultures are even less caring. Sobekians hate humanity, the defilers of creation, and their culture not only allows but encourages taking slaves.
Due to their geographical proximity and shared history, Sobekians usually go after the gnomes, who they consider especially malicious and devious.
The Crocodile folk have a sadistic thrill in seeing the small and gracile gnomes break their back to build stone temples, crushed by the weight of the blocks and lashed until they bleed.
Survivors say the slaves live in huts made out of the bones and skulls of the one who preceded them.
Other gnomes, high-status or those considered beautiful, are used as servants or sometimes just as decorations, nice dolls to put on display.
While traditional brutality is usually enough to make the slaves comply, Sobekians also employ their blood magic.
Shamans can obtain the deepest and most complete form of domination by manipulating not the mind but the brain itself, rewiring it so that even the most basic instincts are redirected toward obedience.

Gnolls, nihilistic and hedonistic as they are, take slaves for entertainment, subjecting their prey (usually dwarves) to all kinds of “amusing” humiliation, the most famous of which are probably the arena where they are put against beasts or each other.