It’s either disingenuous or naive to think that distaste for the empire is due solely to slavery, but slavery (not ‘bondsmen’ - do you buy and sell bondsmen by the ton?) is just an expression of a political construct: it’s the whole package that must be rejected.
Throughout history there is not one empire that has not been created and maintained without violent domination, without the idea that the dominant group is superior to the dominated. (There is one empire in India that is said to have been benign, but only after a great deal of bloodshed and a great deal of myth.) Slavery (and the much-abused bondsman system) can only exist within a culture that believes that people have only a monetary value, and is an inevitable product of a corrupt and corrupting system.
This is not to say that other systems are not corrupt - there will always be those who will seek advantage through exploitation - but it is tolerated less in some regimes.
But slavery is one of the key factors to take into consideration. The fact that slavery is still apparent today, albeit usually not legal, should be a source of shame for the whole planet. It’s part of the package of Empire that I find so abhorrent in RL that I can’t begin to think about contemplating supporting even in role play, and I believe that I am not a lone voice on this forum. There is a thread in General Discussion -
viewtopic.php?f=5&t=1926 - that questions the close relationship between the Mobius Group name and (I think) the Empire.
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?! Only 2 ships 