If you’re freaking out at Bastion, I sure hope you never discover what crap happens in the biblical and other forms of afterlifes in irl religions 
The Biblical Afterlife has the ones not saved sent to Hades to either go to Abraham’s Bosom or to overheat in Fire until the End Times upon which they get judged then if not found in the Book of Life get obliterated by the Lake of Fire and Brimstone.
The ones saved by Christ are among the first to be resurrected and rule Earth after the Beast and False Prophet are thrown into the Lake of Fire.
Coming back to this thread because some people have been raving about slavery in Bastion where it relates to the Stewards. I just did some quests for Ember Court. Folks can rage all they want on Bastion (TBH I think what they really want to do is to religion bash Christianity or any similar theistic system, while pretending it’s a discussion about the game).
That being said, it’s a straight up lie to claim that the Stewards are slaves.
The Venthyr’s Ember Court Quest with Sika showcases that Stewards are revered and get asked to take vacations regularly for their hard work. Furthermore, the Kyrians including the Ascended are more than happy to step up and do the work themselves.
Judging the wording of the quest text, it seems like the minute the Kyrians even think one of their feathered friends is overwhelmed, or cannot do things ‘they’ want to do in their life they jump in to offer help. Service is what their all about, and so they want to serve others. Not through forcible inducement, but just to be helpful to others.
Sika tries to do it all, and is sad they cannot go to Ember Court. Not because they can’t but because they believe they have too much work to do, and no time to attend it, though they want to.
So you go talk to the other Kyrian and their like: “OMG. Seriously Sika? No. No. No! We’ll do this for you. You go have fun! Now go. Enjoy yourself. Seriously! Crap with all you do, you more than deserve it, and please tell us if you need help in the future! We are so sorry we were so busy we didn’t notice sooner!”
So really it seems like Stewards are simply abject workaholics who love to help, but also hate to ask for help and often try to shoulder all that they can, and it is because of how selfless they are. They feel like if they take time for themselves they are being selfish.
This is different from slavery. Slaves don’t get a choice. The Stewards by contrast do, and they are revered by the Kyrians for their selfless nature. The Kyrians have even gone so far as to build several ‘resorts’ for the Stewards to relax and vacation at, and honor the Stewards. Honestly they are gorgeous too.
Perhaps all this faux outrage and self-righteous indignation, is tied to the human condition of a guilty conscience. Some people get mad when they see someone who is a better human than them, so they have to call those people disparaging names to excuse their own nature or attack them. The quintessential double standard.
Any-hoo! Now you know and knowing ‘is’ half the battle. 
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Haha I know right? What’s particularly awful is how SOME of the students will be like, “omg I’m sorry!” and become neutral, but then others refuse and you have to kill them.
I know we’ve murdered people before in WoW for like pants and chickens and stuff, but this place, in the afterlife, having the same pettiness is pretty awful and hilarious.
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The Quest in the Temple of Wisdom I can relate to however on the other hand.
I can completely understand the eyebrow raising on that one. That was like a record-scratch moment. But then, I feel like the quest may of been rushed and what we’re seeing is a lousy communication of the story the developers want to tell, because the way the game is designed can’t explain it (which as a statement makes no sense as other similar quests exist where the idea is communicated perfectly).
Honestly I feel like the Aspirants should be hostile, or be hopped up on fear and doubt, if we’re going to attack them. Panic and fear make people do strange things, and I wouldn’t be surprised if this was tied to the Old Gods in some way, seeing as Kyrians are spawing basically “Sha” of a different name.
I think the real issue is that the mobs being neutral ‘may’ be a bug, but it may not be also. We can’t say one way or another, but if I hold it up next to other similar cases in Bastion, and the quest text (which at the moment is out of step with the actions you take to fill the quest)… It certainly looks like the ‘core’ intent was to tell a story at the Temple of Wisdom where some Aspirants decided “Our Paragon is wrong. We want to view our memories. Forsworn said it’s better.”
Now if those characters started hostile and then went neutral and despawned, that’d be one thing. But the hang up for a lot of players I think is that the mobs are neutral and your attacking them. Seems a bit disjointed from story, so I am inclined to think “bug” or rushed content.
That or Thenios is secretly evil. I’m inclined to think the quest was just poorly conceptualized until Blizzard outright says that this is completely intended and we as players are suppressing non-violent memory viewers.
Regardless, this is why I suggest we all take a ‘lets wait and see’ approach to the story.
I don’t think anyone is disputing that the Stewards are truly happy to serve. It’s clear that there’s no overt coercion.
The issue is that they don’t have free will. The compulsion to serve, the workaholism, comes from inside. They are enslaved by their very nature. They have to serve, or their own minds will make them miserable. And that’s pretty messed up.
Perhaps. But that’s not a Kyrian issue, that’s because they were literally created that way by the Shadowlands. It’s a good point you raise, I’ll give you that Matri. At the same time, I feel like such an argument is akin to telling a Black Hole it’s in the wrong to consume planets with life. It’s nature to devour and consume things in massive gravity.
We can’t say how much free-will they have or don’t have, because they are a part of the cosmic force that makes up reality. Reality isn’t always nice. But I feel like the Stewards must have free-will since some of the Stewards have actively chosen to aid the Forsworn.
It’s either that, or the Stewards are all fragments of a singular Shadowlands Entity or (maybe even a universal) consciousness that merely respawns itself when it’s last vessel dies, not unlike Nova possessing new forms in Alita: Battle-Angel.
I suppose it really goes back to the argument Sylvanas makes when she discusses her true agenda with Anduin in Torghast. “Is the Shadowlands a system that should be broken, or no? Do any of us really have free will?”
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Path is Flawed, it’s the facts. My druid is “Kyrian”, and man do I hate their society.
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I swear some game dev read Dianetics and then created this faction.
By that logic you also don’t have free will, and everything you “choose” to do, including writing this very post, is you being enslaved by your nature.
They do what they want. The fact that what they want is different from what you want doesn’t make them somehow wrong for wanting it.
You’re onto something there, I think. Canonically they (and the Dredgers of Revendreth) don’t have souls, and their essence returns and is reformed as a new one of whatever type of creature they are when they die.
It’s because they’re so endearing that this is disturbing. It’s hard to remember that they’re not beings like us, with souls and independent desires.
Edited to add: The game seems to label Forsworn-allied Stewards as ‘misled’, so it seems that they’re childlike and not really able to exercise judgement.
Sylvanas’ argument is at the very crux of, well, everything. Blizzard has certainly set the conflict up in plain sight.
Well, you can argue that I wasn’t compelled to post. I felt like it, but my mind wasn’t going to torment me until I did.
They genuinely do want to work, but it’s also compulsive. That’s where it gets into problematic territory; that they can’t resist this desire even if they want to, and it also can be taken advantage of by other beings.
Hmm, you know not only are they child-like, but they come into existence as literal babies. You can find baby stewards learning how to scrub floors at Steward town. (they also hang out with the fallen stewards there as if it’s no big deal.)
Why would something like that be popped in as a child? The Dredgers are full grown when they come into existence, but stewards do mention being birthed from anima.
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The only thing logical concerning Stewards is to target the consciousness of the Shadowlands and that is clearly not the Arbiter nor the Eternal Ones!
Smacking the thing Brain Dead and shattering it’s Soul to split among the Shadowlands Natives would work!
Oh but I can’t though. You choose to do it because it was in your nature to do it. You made that decision based on who you were.
We can ride this rabbit hole down as far as we want, but the fact is either stewards aren’t slaves or you are.
Either we somehow have choice that exists outside of ourselves and our natures, and “who we are” isn’t actually the thing making decisions, or the Stewards choosing to help is fine because that’s just their nature.