Warning, this post has spoilers! I'm new (first post, woo!), so I don't know how to do the hide-things-away feature that I've seen some people do for spoiler-related content. I'm not sure if this is the right place to post about this, but it looked right to me! Also, I've seen a few posts about a similar topic, but I don't know the rules about adding on to an older topic, sooo, I made a new one.
/end disclaimer

This quest was very upsetting for me to do, with the only thing keeping me going through it was the hope that there would be more quests after, that resolved things. There are not.

I get that I can't have everything my way in a game like this, so I gritted my teeth and took it every time I came across heart-wrenching things like: NPC beggars pleading for gold, and although I have gold to spare, I don't have the option to give them any (yet the game includes the option to pickpocket or even kill them); wounded NPCs that die from their injuries (even though I'm a healer with oodles of health restoring skills and soul gems); cages containing slaves that I don't have the option of breaking or even picking the lock on; etc.

But the Telvanni questline, "Objections and Obstacles" in particular, really moved me and I couldn't just be silent about it (I actually made this forum account just so I could express my unhappiness, discomfort, and hope for a resolution). I've read a few other posts about this quest and how unrealistic and upsetting it was (to the point where they almost didn't finish the quest) to let the Khajiit slaves be recaptured without a fight or even a follow-up quest to save them. Yes, I get it's a game, but even a game has a reality with its own rules and norms, which, if not followed, causes the game to seem not right/breaks the immersion, especially for good games like the Elder Scrolls series. I mean, the immersion is broken even if you are pro-slavery, like some PCs may make their Dunmers to be, since they wouldn't be helping Sun-In-Shadows in the first place. No matter how you slice this, the choices we're given here are not consistent with the Elder Scrolls universe.

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/352936/events-you-have-no-power-over
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/351761/why-is-there-no-option-to-kill-sun-in-shadow/p2
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/347231/no-way-to-free-the-slaves-warning-spoilers/p1

are just a few I've found so far with excellent points.

I've read that ESO takes place years before most of the other single player Elder Scrolls games, and that the slavery issue is resolved in one of the later games (Morrowind, I believe), so I'm not asking for all the slaves everywhere to be freed (I mean hey, that would be my preferred choice; lots can happen over the span of a couple hundred years, so we totally could free all the slaves, things hit the fan later, slavery comes back, and the Elder Scrolls timeline is maintained), I just want an option to free the slaves that we encountered during this part of the quest (Zashanti and her fellow Khajiit escapees).

It was heartbreaking to watch poor, pleading Zashanti and her fellows taken away without even the option to fight the guards (who would never have found them if it weren't for the pc; which makes me feel like I'm being punished for doing that quest). I even turned off the don't-attack-innocents setting, hoping that I could engage the guards. But nothing. Then they disappear into thin air, never to be seen again. This was incredibly upsetting! I can't check up on them, I can't find them, there's not even a quest that lets me free them later.

Perhaps I'm being ridiculous, but I feel very strongly about this powerlessness to help Zashanti and the others. I get that in a game there are scripted deaths, but they usually make sense, like I'm physically barred or restrained, or SOMETHING! But here, there was no excuse for our inaction. I mean, we kill a Telvanni higher-up in the very next part of the quest, so it's not like we'd be in any worse political doo-doo for killing these peon Telvanni guards. At the very least, we should get a quest later that lets us free them; after all, it was our fault that they got recaptured.

Maybe I feel so strongly about this due to my real life experiences with people who have been in slavery-like situations, or my own powerlessness in such terrible situations. I play video games to get away from those kind of things, because I don't really have oodles of gold or healing powers. Feeling that powerlessness here is super upsetting and makes me worry about other quests that will ring true with my own personal unpleasant experiences. I'm too worthless to make a difference in real life, so I play video games where I CAN save and help people. Having that taken away from me here is incredibly upsetting. Again, I get/understand/am okay with the scripted deaths where it makes sense why I couldn't prevent terrible thing x (I'm restrained/knocked out/whatever), but this is not the case. There was no reason I couldn't have saved those poor Khajiit. Our characters just stand there. Doing nothing. No quest later to save them. Nothing.

An option to save them at the time (fight the guards), or an optional quest (perhaps in a later dlc; optional, so that pro-slave PCs don't have to be forced to be good), are a few starting ideas (I mean, Vivec totally owes us a favor, he could pull some strings or something). I would pay for a dlc that included a quest where I can save them.

I would have included a poll for this (to see if others would do a quest to save them, or if I'm just being a weenie), but I'm new to the forums and I don't know how to set one up and still have this wall of text (congrats on getting through it all, by the way!).

Please let this post be an inspiration to save Zashanti and her fellow escapees.