Darekun wrote: ↑Sat Jun 10, 2017 3:00 am
I think it'd be great
for Eric if Mike hires on as a paid employee. Currently, Eric seems to feel squeezed between two conflicting forces; the drive to continue selfishly benefiting from the system cuts against the drive to do what's right. Well, he's already been providing Mike room and board, and look at the growing shock on Mike's face — he's not going to demand hefty disposable pay. If the difference is just A) Eric doesn't pay up-front but instead pays maybe double the ROI ongoingly, and B) employees have more rights but still are basically there to do what the employer needs, then I think pressure from the first drive will let up :J
There's a practical issue with Mike staying on as Eric's employee. Courtesy of (Dark) Trace, it's illegal to free a slave. Mike is presumably known to be one of Eric's slaves in the area around Eric's base of operations. Eric will need to return there at some point, but If he does so with Mike as a paid employee, rather than a slave, it's likely to get them both in legal trouble. Currently, Eric has the fig leaf of having sold Mike to Trace, thus shifting the legal consequences of freeing him to someone else, but that's not likely to hold up if he keeps Mike around.
It's not an insurmountable problem, but the workarounds that occur to me offhand have flaws. Mike could pretend to be a slave while in Eric's home town, but I think that would be bad for him. Eric could assign him to work elsewhere, but anyone he's assigned to work under will almost certainly realize that he's an illegally freed slave, and Mike may not be prepared to work independently. (Indeed, the fact that Mike seems unready to be on his own is one reason we're having this discussion.)
Ultimately, Mike is caught between worlds. He wants to live in human society, because it's all he knows, but human society as we've seen it is inherently dangerous to him. He is likely to be seen as a slave (or potential slave) anywhere he goes. On the other hand, as he himself has pointed out, he doesn't have the background to survive if he tries to join canine society. As matters stand, the best answer for him may well be the same as for Trace and Flora: Lyn'knoll.
I suspect that the world is going to undergo considerable change before any of our friends see the Orchard Valley, though.