Chapter 127: Bonds Of Many Forms

### Story Date

Wednesday, 18 May, AD 1043/6551 ε.Κ/5 Shawwal 434 AH/6 Pu-Yue Huangyou Era Year 1/6 Skerpla ÅrO -1

## Appearances

### Locations

Koumbi Saleh
Berk
London
Vestribygð
Vedrarfjord

*Another less salutary aspect of both human and draconic societies was that both of them made use of forced labor by members of their own species as a direct result of social stratification. While humanity’s more intricate social structures allowed for more sophistication in the forms of unfree labor they used, ranging from direct chattel slavery to bonded labor, serfdom, forced marriage, and more across the vast majority of historical human civilizations in every inhabited region, dragons likewise made use of unwilling labor by their fellows. Thengills routinely required significant ‘rents’ in the form of food and other services to allow access to nesting sites, such as forcing dragons with significant adaptations towards tunneling and digging to expand the volume of the nest, despite the personal risks of entombment or asphyxiation, along with other abuses such as forced matings and brood parasitism.*

*Resultingly, it is generally seen as an inevitability that, following the Norse alliance with dragons as equal partners backing an ideological opposition to exploited labor, oppositional groups quickly arose based around humans exploiting dragons and, in mirror, dragons exploiting humans. After all, they were already used to exploiting their own species and extending that exploitation was a natural outgrowth.*

*—The Dragon Millennium, Manna-hata University Press Ltd.*

## Major Events

* Hiccup's retinue arrives in the Kingdom of Ghana.
* Esther invokes the Bog Burglar sanctuary clause to get out of a marriage her father was arranging for her, ignoring her wishes to not marry at all. Stoick adopts her into his clan.
* Magnus judges Cwen's case, and accepts her killing her former pimp as self-defence, but warns he will only be lenient that one time and she must pay weregild to his surviving family. He also allows her to take the former brothel women with her to Berk as women under sanctuary.
* Magnus judges Mildred’s case against her husband and finds in her favour, ruling that Food and Bed Rights payments are meant for the support of the actual person it is intended for. The payments can be held in trust, but to use it for personal benefit instead of the intended beneficiary is theft and will be treated as such.
* King Ghana Bhasi gifts Hiccup several slaves, including Isioma. Hiccup accepts to prevent insult, but frees them as soon as possible and gives them the choice of being helped home, working at the local mail station, or going with him to Berk.
* Dragons attack Vestribygð and capture the humans who live there, including Hjálmarr Vígisson.
* Uilleag discovers and reports the cause of the building collapse to Hakon and they get to work on addressing the issue.
* Hiccup's retinue start their journey back to Berk, with Isioma choosing to go with them and Prince Tunka accompanying.
* Tuffnut asks Isioma to teach him every language she knows.

## Characters

### Humans

* Isioma (first appearance)
* Unnamed Jong workers
* Hiccup clan Haddock
* Tunka Manin (first appearance)
* Dagur mac Oswald
* Fishwings clan Ingerman
* Tuffnut Thicknutsson
* Mwenda (first appearance)
* Ghana Bhasi (first appearance)
* Dovid ben Eliezer
* Menachem ben Moshe
* Esther bat Rivkah clan Haddock
* Stoick the Vast
* Big-Boobied Bertha
* Magnus the Good
* Cwen clan Tyrasdóttir
* Reeve Stithulf
* Sigvatr Þórðarson
* Wulfhild of Norway
* Astrid Hákonsdóttir clan Haddock
* Bracha bat Rivkah
* Maor ben Dovid
* Zeor
* Nathan
* Judah
* Hjálmarr Vígisson (first appearance)
* Valka Gawkeyesdóttir
* Markunda (first appearance)
* Folarin (first appearance)
* Káyọ̀dé (first appearance)
* Fintan mac Ionatan
* Hákon Mortensson
* Uilleag mac Flan
* Gunvor Dugaldsdóttir
* Padraig mac Bran

### Dragons

* Toothless
* Inkpot
* Swift
* Unnamed Buffalord

## Analysis

### Epigraph Tie-In

* The epigraph talks about the different forms of slavery humans and dragons inflicted on their own kind and each other. The chapter shows the following:
	+ The Kingdom of Ghana having slaves that they gift to Hiccup out of a misguided sense of goodwill.
	+ Dragons capturing and enslaving humans.

### Other

* The chapter title of "Bonds of Many Forms" has multiple meanings for the chapter:
	+ It refers to the family bonds between Esther and her family that are weakened due to Esther invoking the Bog Burglar sanctuary laws to avoid an unwanted marriage.
	+ It refers to slavery in all its forms, such as when humans enslave other humans or when dragons enslave humans.