Ok wait hold on a minute:
Maybe I’m overthinking this, but if mages in this world are capable of summoning elementals, wouldn’t that mean they’d have magic slaves to do their manual labor for them?
In that case, why are these big kingdoms / organizations making their prisoners do this?
Like, I get cause you want to make use of your prisoners, but isn’t it more costly to buy them all pickaxes and managing over them? Why not just shut them into prison bars, and then just use elementals to gather these resources for you? This isn’t even to mention that the prisoners might try to revolt against you and all that, while elementals would be completely loyal
Now you could argue, “But wait a minute, the Summon Elemental Spell is a lost spell, it’d be hard to find,” but we know that whatever organization this is, they’re probably extremely powerful if they’re able to capture the protagonist. Considering that, is it that hard to believe they might have one Mage or something with enough money to just trade for the lost spell?
the summon elemental spell is a lost spell, it’d be hard to find
also the elementals wouldn’t last forever, you’d need a very strong mage in order to maintain them long enough to get any work done, so slaves were ultimately easier
Yes, this is why you pour your resources into hunting for them. If the protagonist can dig up treasure chests, why can’t a power organization do it better
We don’t know how the spell functions. How costly is it? Is it a single use to activate or does it constantly drain you? Just how accessible is it? How many can you create? How long do they last? What can they do?
All things to consider tbh. If it wasn’t too costly, easily accessible, didn’t require any consentration, lasted for a long time (month+), and could keep on creating them then yeah I could see a reason why someone might use them for manual labor or as foot soldiers
But if they last for only a few moments, had a moderate to high cost, rare as fuck, could only make a handful at most with creating anymore instantly destroying the ones you had, and required you to focus on it then I don’t see a reason why you’d ever even consider it.
it would be more efficient for them to just
make magic-controlled constructs that do whatever they want, exactly how they want, capable of doing it without any sleep/upkeep, and without any chance of rebellion
Magic energy drain. You likely wouldn’t be able to have an elemental or multiple out for a long period of time, it might even be more energy-consuming than just doing that task yourself (or forcing humans to do it)
Limited cognitive ability. Elementals might only capable of simple combat tasks like ‘attack this guy’ or ‘give me cover’, and not capable of tasks that are complex or require advanced thinking skills.
Limited motor skills. Depending on the shape of an elemental, it might be less efficient at humans than completing tasks and could even make things harder. They can’t be around sensitive or fragile materials since they can be made of very dangerous elements, and they might not be physically capable of doing things such as lifting cargo etc.
Tldr; using human labour is probably just more efficient than going through the work of using elementals (which could potentially cost a good deal of resources to even find). You could argue they could be good for things such as demolition, but what could they do that a regular blast or explosion spell can’t? If I was the king of an oppressive kingdom it just wouldn’t be worth the trouble imo.
