piratekitten has declared February world-building month.

Every day in February, I will answer one question about any one of my settings.

The question post is here, please feel free to add more questions!

The twenty-third question comes from cluudle and is for Tir na Cali.

Is there a stereotype for who the slavers take? Is it the young, the handsome, the pretty, or do you have to worry about your children, worry about your grandparents, worry about your spouse and boss and lawyer?

The stereotype from the American point of view, which is generally accurate to the Cali slavers’ point of view, is that the slavers tend to take those who are older than puberty but younger than grey hair – generally between sixteen and thirty years of age. They appear to tend towards the attractive, although that is not always the case (at least not for American standards of beauty), the healthy, and the unwise.

It is common knowledge in America that going out to a bar without a group of people can get you “disappeared;” that taking a drink from a stranger is a good way to wake up somewhere unpleasant, that going home with the wrong person can mean you never actually see home again.

But of course, kids will be kids, and college boys and girls continue to go out to bars and take drinks from strangers and, even in prudish America, sometimes sneak out with a stranger. And if they’re lucky, their parents will get a polite note from the police department that got a polite note from a slave raider.

That’s the American story.

The Californian raiders, if asked, might say things a bit differently: they look for people who are alone, who will be missed but not quickly. They look for the unmarried, and do not take those wearing wedding bands; the Californians hold marriage in very high estimation. They don’t always pick up in bars, not by far – they prefer joggers running alone, shoppers in a dark corner of the mall, smokers out alone in the parking lot – people who aren’t surrounded by other people, people who are a lower risk. They like the young and healthy, of course, but minor ailments can be cured, and attractiveness can be fixed to whatever the buyer finds prettiest.

Very few people in the Tír na Cali-verse America worry about their lawyer or spouse or boss being taken, but every once in a while, the raiders will take some sort of brain trust specialist – scientist, engineer – regardless of other qualifications. And even more rarely, they’ll snatch a politician’s kid for leverage.

This started out as a hostage-taking situation, after all.

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