A Little Magic

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What a difference a little magic makes.

Associated topics Standard Numbers

Alusia is (or at least the Western Kingdoms are) largely based in terms of technology and culture in the late Middle Ages, and appears for the most part, despite the influence of other cultures and certain rogue genii, to be happy there. However magic, no matter how rare it might be, is responsible for important changes between the source history (RL?) and game.

This page is a working document that hopes to examine some of the differences that have affected the game to date and discuss others that might not have appeared yet or been completely fleshed out. Feel free to link out to specific examples rather than embedding them in this page

Healing

Life Prolonging

The big change here is not resurrection but life prolonging and it's effect on human populations. If someone could retain a noble seat for 2-300 years the place would be awash with annoyed heirs who stand virtually no chance of ever gaining the title. As Life Prolonging (a Rank 2 ability) is great deal easier to achieve, it will naturally be more prevalent.

  1. One possibility is that assassination becomes the norm in terms of the death of a ruler. This leads to a very dark game with a greater level of suspicion and paranoia than appears to be the standard in DQ at the moment.
  2. Nobles are expected to voluntarily step down when they get to a certain age. This does provide for a number of adventuring hooks around nobles who are not going voluntarily but it seems strange that a society would develop in this way without a driver for it. It also generates situations where a Baron may have 6 generations of former barons sitting behind them critiquing everything they do.
  3. Healers above the lowest ranks are exceptionally rare and necromancers even rarer. Assassins wouldn't target the nobles directly but their healers thus taking out all those whose lives have been prolonged. Healers of good rank would be like caged birds, treated very well but kept secure. However the game so far has shown no such lack of healers.
  4. Life prolonging renders the recipient irreversibly infertile, or simply fails to prevent fertility from declining as effectively as it does the rest of the body.
  5. Half the adult population died from violence. Life expectancy was ~40. Those nobles who made it through died between 50 and 80 of "old-age". If you have a 2%/year chance of dying as an adult, then (a) life prolonging only helps the cautious, (b) some of the truly powerful may choose to skip life prolonging and go for resurrection.
  6. The Destinian Dons live to several hundred. It doesn't seem to make much difference to them.
  7. Another possiblity is that as prolonging life doesn't protect from the infirmities of age, unless you have access to a healer of close to master quality while one may not die until one is over 200, one will have spent the majority of the last 100 years bed riden, blind, deaf, senile and eating mush. The lack of very old nobles may be due to a quality of life issue. Helen

Mortality

Low Infant Mortality

Above a certain level of wealth, infant mortality should drop off to near zero due to the influence of healers. Any child born to a noble stands a very good chance of surviving to adulthood. Also we can expect more conceptions due to fertility potions, where a couple would be barren otherwise.

With life prolonging a particuarly fecund and wealthy family could have in excess of 30 children. With all of them surviving this creates a different set of problems than those of the historical period.

  • Can you tell a man wrote the above! Female fertility would be the controling factor that governs the number of children a wealth family would have. A woman carries a child for nine months, and Charms against miscarrage would see most babies going to term. However one can still only pop out so many babies before age starts to catch up and the likely hood of defects creeps in. Also Mothers just like children are less likely to die; so far fewer of those young second or third wives. Yes great grandma might live to be well over 100 but not even a witches brew has been able to quicken her woom since she hit menapause. I think the current record is about 19 or 20 children from a single woman.Helen
  • It is also well documented that children born to middle aged women are far more likely to suffer from a number of mental disablilties. There's a 'county myth' that the youngest child of a large family is often "slow" or "touched" but it's sadly not untrue. Rosemary

Warning - Spurious Logic Ahead!

1) A noble family is never short of heirs. Coupled with the avaliability of resurrection could lead to heirs not being as protected as they were. An heir might even be required to 'earn' their right to inherit, because if they don't, a more ambitious sibling will.

2) Fratricide is likely to be a leading cause of death as ambitious younger sibs assassinate their way to an inheritence. (Also fraticide post-inheritence to secure position - see Ottomans - EGC).

  • I expect Dukes and higher nobles will investigate such deaths closely (with magical assistance), so I'm not sure about this point --Errol 17:35, 3 Aug 2006 (NZST))

3) A larger number of noble warriors would lead to even larger top heavy armies than historically. This is liable to adversly affect tactics or familiarity with different units. It will also lead to states of near constant warfare as various lesser sibs seek to impress the senior ruling nob.

This leads to nobles having an active reason to adventure, hire mercanaries (and assasins/intriguers) and be dangerous and exciting to be around.

Birth Control

Another factor to this is Birth Control. In a world where Wiccans and Herbalist can provide potions, spells and charms to affect your fertility, anyone middle class and up who wants to should be able to control when they have children.

Nobles may choose to only have 3 or 4 children. One to inherit, one for the military, one to marry off, and one for the priesthood or magical training.

Alusian society has more gender equality than our history does. It is more likely to have women who choose not to have children to pursue their 'career' particularly those at the top end of society.

Societal patterns in Alusia are a blend of modern post sexual revolution society and sanitised medieval society.

  • On the other hand there are wiccan magics of increased fertility and herbalist potions of ensuring a 'bountiful harvest'. While female PCs may not be interested in such effects it is not to say the rest of the populace won't be.

People in general tend to have as many children as they can afford, if not more. However there are good reasons for a noble to limit his offspring. The first is to prevent day to day assination attempts in the nursery and civil war on the noble's death and the other is that with longevity and absolute fertility it is easy to crank out a new heir (or even five).

  • Not necessarily. Post Black Death, when peasants' standard of living improved, they married later, had fewer children, and generally did what has been happening in Europe & Japan for the last 50 years. Speculation - they didn't need as many kids to look after them in their old age, or they chose to spend their new wealth on themselves - 1350s was a me-generation.
  • People tend to forget the darker periods of some cultures histories when while it wasn't possibly to prevent conception, infantacide by exposure was a valid method of disposing of unwanted newborns. Birth Control seems a much nicer alternative to the grim reality of times pass. Helen

And then there is the problem that humans and advanced food production cause population growth figures not normally seen outside a petri dish. Perhaps the Wild Elves were on to something with their regular cullings of the humans after all...

Other stuff

  • *Why investigate assainations? When you have the potential for 30 children, why investigate so closely? In any case, the assassian is ambitious and capable, while the victim is not so good heir material since they clearly got tired of looking for ground glass in their porridge.

What I want is the oppotunity for viscious political infighting and short nasty wars where life is exceedingly cheap.

The guild's gender equality, tolerance of race, religion and desire to end the universe is a bizzaro artifact of the game. I dont think it should be applied to the campaign society at large.

William

"Cosmetic" Differences

People without access to magical healing will appear, due to the ravages of a "minor" diseases (ones with catchy names like Impetigo, Scroffula, and various types of Pox) and injuries, to be markedly different to those who do. The wealthy Middle class and Nobility would likely seem to glow with good health and be miracluously free of the blights of the less fortunate.

The Renaisence

Transport

This is one area not too badly messed with by Magic as the trandportation of bulk items is still fairly trickly. The main impacts are probably shipboard mages. Realistically if you company has an Air/Water Mage they would train as many of their officers as possbile in the important spells.

Gender

In the Guild, you can come from anywhere and be anyone you want because its a game.

And also because it's a game, the question of how hard it would be to be a female adventurer is often avoided because it is considered to be obnxious to behave in as sexist a fashion as was common 100 years ago, let alone 500. Even if you are "just pretending".

While the Guild is in no way the norm for it's society, but it does reflect some of the changes that magic might have wrought. Magic is a great leveller over physical strength and exposure to elder races, who's sexes are apparently as powerful and awesome as each other, may have prevent such inequalities from becoming as entrenched in societies on Alusia.

So you can play a female hobbit who decided to see the world rather than stay at home making, um, more hobbits. It's your character, go ahead. Just accept that you're a little wierd. That you are not the norm.

Of course if there is potential for super-sized families then mabye it isn't so wierd for a certain level of society. The young noblewoman who is the 22nd daughter of Baron Whocareswhere doesn't have any real prospects of inheriting or getting married off and so may be free to make her own way.

Concepts to provide solutions

The Renaissance

The campaign could be set in an similar period. College magic, semi magical skills like healer a were very rare to non existant in society until only recently in the baronies. As a result the magical 'technology' of the area has undergone a rapid jump recently and almost everyone is scrambling to catch up and catch on to what all the new possiabilities are.

If abundantly availiable college magic is only recently availiable then we have room for old style castles and suspicious peasants right along side those embracing the new knowledge (like the guild).

We can then don't have to spend too much time being concerned on how wierd a society with magic would be if it had been that way for the last few centuries, because it hasn't. If it is a recent thing then people won't of had time to work out all the kinks and immortal barons or ones fielding entire soccer divisions of offspring are rare aberations rather than the norm.

We get to play in a fantasy setting which isn't too wierd while having the oppotunity for a few odd occurances.

It also gives us a chance to make the non human societies of the game more than 'people with beards or spock ears'.

Dwarves could be extremly long lived because of life prolonging and have cultural positions such as 'living anscestor', where a particuarly valuable member of dwarven society is effectivly immortal. In dwarven society, while a long life is a given, all the extras, including children, have to be earned. And dwarves live in their mountain homes because anything smaller is just too vulnerable to magical assault.

As for giants, why are there no giant civilisations except in really remote areas? It could be that they have already been down the super magical food and families route. Every giant these days is still scarred from the memories of the "Great Hunger" when their society collapsed and stoically refuse to breed anything in those numbers ever again. Or live that long, or get anything resembling an agrian society.

With Elves, again it gets interesting. They 'know' that reproduction beyond replacement is a Bad Thing. From an Immortals point of view, it is. The Wild Hunt was probably a cruel but needed element from the veiwpoint of an individual who could easily garuntee he'ld be around in 12,000 years. However the recent (yes, to an immortal 20,000 years is recent) scism of elven society and demon war has neatly removed everyone who actually knew that and all we have now is 2000 yr old whippersnappers trying to remember why uncle Vernon said to do things this way. Of course it might be a schock for anyone to discover that elves regard diplomacy in the same way most think of gardening.

Orcs can get back to their true roots as sick degraded elves who have chucked all this 'care for your home' shit and gone for totally viral like fecundity. They have drastically shortened thier lives to add a certain built in imperitive to the cause of outbreeding every other bastard on the planet. All the 'prospect of being hanged in a fortnight' schtick and all that. Orcs breed, to breed and gain power solely for the cause of breeding. As a result an orc will go the path of having super family any time it's offered.

- William