Pre-amble - Mages in the Government
Disclaimer: This is now my second massive wall of text, and although it’s a bit shorter than the first, you should still read at your own risk.
No pictures this time, since I can’t draw and graphs and charts won’t exactly cut it here. This might change though.
How do/did they work? I specify national in order to discount the A.G. and whatever their equivalent is in Arcane Odyssey if applicable. I imagine they existed before the A.G. was instated, and the cataclysmic events triggered both by the fall of Mount Olympus could not have been enough to dissolve every trace of a system of government in every continent. I know this from making two observations:
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Although we are told in the lore document that Durza was able to steal all 7 primary magics in the Y1018 period because “…the world had no organized government…” (Page 3), we also know that massive inventions that would require large-scale production and thus government had already commenced 400 years before then, in the Y600 period (Lore Doc., Page 2). To avoid a contradiction, one must take this to mean that there was no world-wide government of any kind (I don’t see how this would make Durza’s task easy though…).
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The war took the lives of 40% of the human population (Page 2), but this isn’t nearly enough to cause complete dissolution of all forms of government (though it might have led to mass destabilization of governments due to the loss of resources from the war).
I’m assuming here that Theos’ fight against Durza was enough to completely dismantle most goverments, partly due to the population loss and partly due to the forcible splitting up of territory. This might also have been a major contributing factor in the ease at which the A.G. brought the world to it’s knees (after all, you simply can’t tell me that even MOST strong wizards still surviving decided to side with the A.G. instead of ensuring the most amount of power for their family/clan/nation). Even still, new nations and governing powers would still have risen from the ashes of their dead fore-bearers, whether with or without the A.G.'s assistance.
I’m not interested in the Post-Theos v. Durza governments for two primary reasons:
- They’re probably really fucking boring and would have to either bend over for the A.G. or try to evade detection from them when making any substantial decisions.
- The A.G. acts like a great beacon of light attracting fledgling wizards from far and wide with promises of riches, prestige, and protection from the strongest army in the world, so it automatically siphons a great proportion of any nation’s store of magic wizards.
- Even if Point (2) somehow wasn’t enough to put a serious damper on all the nations’ military might, the A.G. probably wouldn’t even allow any governments to have a substantial military force for fear that said military force be used against them (which is a real and active threat since no one likes to be forced to bootlick forever).
I’m more interested in the forms of government that came before that period, specifically how the genetic heritability of wizardry would impact how wizards are treated within their nations.
Part 1: Magic Families
The concept of magic families with significant sway in their national government’s decision making and/or executive undertakings isn’t exactly ubiquitous in the realm of magic-centric fantasy stories, but I think they really should exist in the AU as a natural consequence of how magic works. We know at least four things concerning magic:
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Magic ability is inherently exclusive. One cannot learn it if one does not have an in-born tendency towards it. I will not cite this source right now because this seems to be common knowledge to most people familiar to the lore, but I will certainly endeavour to find one.
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Magic ability is genetically transferable. Although we know that mages used to offer Aurem to the gods to be gifted with magic ability, which would drain on their souls, we also know that the ability to use magic is genetic, from something Vetex said once (dude just trust me).
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Magic skill takes time to master. Like any other skill, it is best learned by children, who more readily absorb information. Improvement in this skill, like any other non-trivial skill, is aided incrementally by having a coach that will hold your hand throughout the process.
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It is significantly easier to fight using magic than without it. Not only does magic have more destructive potential, it’s just significantly more effective at breaking and making things than all the non-magic abilities. As a level 1 mage for instance, you can shoot literal balls of fire. As a level 1 non-mage, you can punch pretty good. It’s incomparable.
It is from these four facts that I conclude that magic is best learned either in a school-like structure or, more efficiently, in a family unit. In this sense, the existence of magic families is something of an inevitability, and they will continue to intensify in political power and relevance as the magic gene gradually thins out of the population.
This conclusion will be used extensively throughout the rest of the document.
Of course, this is something that the A.G. would definitely put a stop to, hence my little disclaimer at the beginning of this topic.
Part 2: Stabilizing a Nation
One of the most important tasks for any nation to accomplish is to keep itself from tearing apart from the inside. This task is made doubly difficult by the existence of mages, super-powered citizens who form the minority of human beings but can cause unprecedented chaos and destruction if not regulated with a firm hand.
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Any attempt to kill them off will only create a persecution complex within the population of mages, which could result in them fighting back. This is something you want to avoid.
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Mobilizing your forces just to kill a few thousand people would be too heavy a risk since, realistically, you will need a lot more people to ward them off. If you aren’t a particularly large country, neighbouring countries might exploit that temporary vulnerability, and attempt to invade. Furthermore, there’s the risk of inciting more fear into the people by having your men lose against them in an uphill battle.
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Any form of bribery will only endow them with more power and resources to overtake the nation than they previously possessed.
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Banishing them will simply provide enemy nations with willing and potentially vengeful magic warriors.
Any solution that involves acting violently against the population of mages will never end well. The imbalance of power is too unfair - as discussed in Part 1, they can do great amounts of damage with absolutely minimal training. Any solution that involves pandering or pampering them too much might result in them getting too much political power to be controlled, which can lead to them attempting to take over.
Optimally, you want to both placate them and regulate them firmly, such that they, for the most part, do what you want them to be doing. Although seemingly contradictory, there are ways that this can be accomplished:
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Establish them as royalty:
Perhaps the royal bloodline only passes on to those that have magic, and the ability to use magic is seen as a sign of nobility and status. You can’t reasonably make every mage part of the royal family without greatly reducing the number of mages, however. -
Establish them as nobility but not royalty:
This might ensure that they have a vested interest in serving the interests of the country (or whatever sector of the country they happen to govern). Presumably they would be spread out evenly throughout the nobility, so that not one single family has enough power to take over the entire nation. -
Have no mages:
This can be achieved via pure luck or active ethnic cleansing. It wouldn’t be easy, however, and could very well drive your country to ruin if not handled well. -
Make them the main military force.
Any alternate suggestions at this point would be appreciated.
Option 2 is certainly interesting, and I might later add a segment on it in this post, but I personally find Option 4 more interesting, perhaps mostly because it’s a less obvious solution to the problem and would have very interesting consequences to the role of mages in such a society (and perhaps the entire world, depending on how powerful said country were).
Part 3: Magic Militaries
The idea of a national magic military might seem ridiculously risky and unnecessary at first (after all, why give an already dangerous caste such a powerful position), but it can actually be quite useful in keeping the mages away from the inner affairs of the nation and making them focus on external disputes. After all, if they’re busy dying in the battlefield outside the national territory, they won’t have the resources or time to plot any violent takeovers.
There are multiple additions that are necessary to maintain this, however.
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Their attention must always be diverted towards themselves, and away from you.
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The rewards that come with orchestrating a violent takeover must always be at least balanced out by the risks of doing so.
The first scenario can be actualized in two steps: centralizing the military and maximizing inter-familial conflict.
Centralized Military
One easy way to ensure greater control over this national magic military is to centralize them somehow. This is somewhat similar to a strategy that Louis XVI used to keep his nobles on a leash, in which he offered them the privilege of living in Versailles for a non-trivial amount of money, and then ensured they could only keep up with the cost of living by waiting on him hand and foot. He also prohibited having private armies, for easily discernible reasons.
Of course, unlike the situation in France, a nation with mages will not be at any significant advantage by prohibiting private armies, since the magic users are the army. The strategy would not work since they do not need the significant amount of resources that a normal aristocrat might need to create an army and cause a revolt. Furthermore, keeping the mages too close to the royal family might have drastic consequences, and might actually make it easier for them to revolt.
Consequently, the form of centralization used here will have to involve keeping them away from your royal court while also keeping them close to each other. Specifically, I mean keeping them physically locked together in villages and towns specifically made to house them, preferably in multiple such villages so as to not allow too much coordination.
Like in most military systems, this one will need a chain of command. This could be closely modelled after those that exist in real life, but, seeing as your soldiers live in separate village settlements, you might want to install a general ruler that resides over all these military settlements. Perhaps you could have lower level authorities in each settlement that ultimately answer under this general ruler. In any case, this structure serves three main functions:
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Creates efficiency
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Pits magic families against each other
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Act as a reasonable reward for the mages
Since the ruler gains a great deal of sway from their position, all magic families will aim to become either general ruler or ruler of one single settlement. It might be a good idea to ensure that the magic families aren’t being too rowdy (like not allowing any other families to reach positions, enacting heavily biased policies, etc), but the government would also be wise to not overstep too much.
The second point will be explored in greater detail in the next subsection.
Interfamilial Conflict
Although the mages now live as a separate cast from the rest of the citizens and now enjoy numerous privileges in comparison to the normal citizen, they are still composed of separate families which will seek to make decisions that will be to their own advantage. There are many ways in which prominent families might skew laws to their advantage:
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Engaging in unbridled nepotism
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Making policies that unfairly advantage one family over the others
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Polarizing specific settlements, i.e. ensuring that specific settlements consist of majority single families.
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Downplaying/Overplaying the achievements of specific families
This list isn’t exhaustive, but the point is that magic families will likely engage in serious levels of corruption, and the government might be able to curb this a little bit, but they probably can’t fully put a stop to it. One way to balance this out is to ensure that there is always more than 1 clan with significant power (though preferably more than 5 clans), which will create a deadlock of sorts, one which each clan will fight to break.
Because of how integral the magic families are to this structure, class mobility within this military sector will be brutal. Any magic families that might develop amongst the normal hoi polloi would probably want to get into the military sector for the financial benefits (though they might choose not to on rare occasions), but would be unlikely to get representation in any positions of power very quickly, unless they exploited a power vacuum or allied themselves with a powerful clan.
