A question of terminology

I was just curious why we (in the UD) use the term rothe for slave. In FR lore, rothe is a kind of cattle. Thrall is the drow term for slave. So riddle me this

because the yath characters say so?

Ha, good answer

I think the answer is just that. A slave is treated like that cattle animal - as a rothe.

I would think it more because a "thrall" is what the drow think of, as we think of "slave". Therefore, a drow held captive by an illithid is a thrall. However, a surfacer is a rothe in captivity to the drow.

I'm reading War of the Spider queen now, and a priestess refers several time to the deaf mute human giving her a massage as a thrall, so that last statement isn't true. Also, in the Drizzt novels, they explain that rothe are the cattle like animals on the donigardens.

I... actually did not know this. Nice catch Devious

The creature Rothe was in NWN 1. It's like a mix between a bison and a cow or ox.

I think people may have shied away from Thrall since that is what Vampires call their slaves. Or I may be full of pumkin pie

I do agree with vermathax, in that thrall is what drow think of as slave, but whether it be a illithid's slave, or a drow's... The word still means slave. A rothe is a very specific creature, google search it. That's like a surfacer calling a slave a cow... While a great insult to sling at them, it is not an accurate description of them. Slaves perform numerous menial tasks, and let's face it a cow is mostly used for food, and occasionally pulling heavy things.

You are correct pathkiller, but it is also used in several Drow based novels to describe their slaves.

I guess what I'm getting at is I'm going to refer to slaves as thrall IG, and just don't want to confuse anyone. After all, if we actually had rothe, we wouldn't be stuck eating Beatle meat. Lol

Thats achually neat I think, and while I may know absolutely nothing about drow culture and drow RP I think that having your slaves called thralls sounds better from what was said, but you can still call them rothe as some sort of insult or an other, like how we would say your a cow or something, and make them think that their masters are thinking like they are as good as basically cattle and they are possibly close to that ever so happy lolth alter. but once again, I know like nothing about drow RP and dont want to tell you how to rp treating your slaves since your much better at it frankly. But, thats just my thoughts.

I think rothe and wrothe are two diffrent words.
i think the one with the w is the beast of burden and food soruce
the other is just a beast of burden... and torment

Pathkiller wrote:

I think people may have shied away from Thrall since that is what Vampires call their slaves. Or I may be full of pumkin pie

I would say there is probably alot of truth to this. Also yes, calling your slave a ROTHE, would not only be an insult, but it would designate him as a beast of burden. Your tool, to do work that is not deemed worthy of a drow to have to do.

Everyone will know what you mean when you say Thrall. I tend to avoid Thrall myself because it reminds me of mindflayers, not really sure why but that is the reason.

Also I believe it was based off of this translator, [url=House Maerdyn]http://www.grey-company.org/Maerdyn/resources/translator/index.cgi?text=slave&lang=Drow[/url]

as well as this: The Drow Dictionary

and Chosen of Eilistraee

True, but the url thing gets confusing, cause there are like a dozen terms that follow the url to specify which type of slave it is ( worker, maseur, cook, etc.) IE: url'blahblah.

Well there are 3 different urls links here, some are better than others. But when you put in slave, rothe is the return. Again, it could have been due to 1. matter of preference, 2. The lemming effect.

Good point.

DM_AXE wrote:

Everyone will know what you mean when you say Thrall. I tend to avoid Thrall myself because it reminds me of mindflayers, not really sure why but that is the reason.

Mindflayers don't keep thralls.... they make thralls. The Mindflayer is actually called such for a very good reason, it literally peals away the mind of whatever creature it's chosen to make a thrall, and leaves it an empty husk, totally subservient to the Mindflayer's will. So thus in this case the term "Thrall" has a completely different meaning, it means a creature that's had it's mind and will totally discarded and is now dominated by another, completely foreign mind.

This alone makes me not want to use it, because it's too easy to mix up, beyond that the Mindflayers don't much care where their thralls come from and are just as likely to grab a Drow and wander off with it as a Human, so I could easily see not wanting to be associated with creatures that you're not only fighting for turf (since they also inhabit the Underdark), but also for the right to keep your mind whole and intact.