Well, yeah, but then my mc plans to end the slave state as not doing so would be a Pyrrhic victory that would ensure he’d remain a slave himself…
But In this world, if anything, technological progress seems more rapid then in ours in spite of the pervasive slave-state. To bad I can’t quote old threads directly but here’s Havenstone piece about the pace of technological advances. So it seems it took Karagond less than half the time to hit some of the same milestone’s as our historical Europe did.
Point is Karagond is keeping the provinces technologically backwards on purpose and that likely goes even for the provincial nobility.
Whereas I very much can. The Xthonic religion has undergone major changes from the Shayardene original and the Laconniers in particular seem to value their bloodline not the family name, as would be custom in today’s Hegemony. It has also been blood-magic that allowed the culture to become more egalitarian and less sexist (for the upper classes anyway). So I could well see Shayardene traditional culture and the original version of the Shayardene Codex as having the same crap about marriage is between a man and a woman and the value of pure bloodlines as some of our cultures.
This seems to be a prime question to ask @Havenstone himself though we’ll probably get a cryptic answer at best.