Would you Equalize a world of mages (RAR!)

[Zor]

In this scenario you are shown by ROB a habitable planet in another universe much like ours and is populated by some 500,000,000 humans at a 16th century level of technology. However on this world there is a society which is fairly different from ours, for on this world about one in a hundred people are born mages and have various supernatural powers.

There are six types of mages.

• CASTERS: Casters can cast spells with various direct effects. Lighting, fireballs, levitation spells, cooling spells which repels ambient heat and similar are all caster abilities. This ranges in power from being able to light a candle by pointing a finger at it when a meter away to being able to blast through brick walls and levitate things weighing up to a tonne. The maximum range for casting is about a kilometer
• CONJURERS: Conjurers can conjure up objects out of solidified mana. These objects have most of the properties of matter, but not all of them. They don't emit gravity and they are also temporary, usually decaying into nothingness after a day or so, breaking them apart accelerates the process considerably. Higher level Conjurers can conjure up objects that can last for up to a year. Solid objects are easy, complex objects are not. Conjuring a sword is easy but a working clock is very difficult even for a high level conjurer due to all the moving parts and similar involved in it's construction. A high level conjuror can conjure up to three tonnes of stuff a day.
• SEERS: Seers have various sensory abilities. These range from being able to being able to see in pure darkness and filtering out sounds move their points of vision from their heads, seeing through walls as well as "past vision", being able to look into the past up to three weeks back. Seers can not see the future as that has not happened yet. The maximum range of a seer's abilities is about 500 km.
• PSIONS: Psions have various psionic powers which relate directly to the human mind. This ranges to sensing people's emotions to being able to read peoples minds to being able to communicate telepathically, sending images and memories and exerting psionic. Psions can stun people into trances (and with more experience render people unconscious), make illusions, delete short-term memories, cause powerful headaches and even 'enthrall' people. Enthralled putting them in a trance in which they will do what others tell them to do. Said trance can not last more than a day and it is possible to snap people out of it through various stimuli (sudden loud noises, the sight of loved ones and pain can do it just fine) though the more powerful Psions can enthrall people more easily. Wearing a metallic helmet offers a lot of protection against psionic efforts. The maximum range of a psion's ability to read and effect minds is 100 meters
• HEALERS: Healers can heal people in close proximity (at most 4 meters). A low level healer can make a broken leg fix itself in a day, a high level healer can make a leg regrow in about a couple of hours. The problem with this is that healers can also cause people to "heal wrong" and that is not a pretty picture.
• MIXED MAGES: Mages which have a bit of each of the following categories. Generally specialized mages are more capable in their single field than mixed mages are in their various ones. Mixed mages range from those who are mostly in one field and can do a little of another to those who can do a fairly equal amount of all five and various other arrangements.

Mages are born into magic, it is impossible for mages to make a non mage into a mage. Mages are born randomly among the population. A couple of great mages are just as likely to give birth to another mage as a pair of unmagical peasants. Training does however improve a mage's powers. Outside their magical abilities, mages think and act in the exact same manner as regular human beings, for better and for worse.

As such, mages have managed to impose upon the various civilizations (with one exception) of this world various social orders with this common theme: mages are on top calling the shots while non magical people are subordinate. This ranges from societies in which mages always have distinct economic and political advantages written into law to theocratic states in which mages rule as priest and warrior castes lording over non magical serfs and slaves. The presence of mages has hindered the development of a scientific method.

In this scenario you are shown the one exception to the rule. There is an island chain in the middle of this world's largest ocean with about 500,000 square kilometers of land which is populated by the descendants of refugees which were displaced by wars on the mainland as well as fishermen and sailors blown off course. Among the plants native to this island is one one that produces a thick starchy root that was soon cultivated and became a staple of the local diet. The thing about this root is that it contains a chemical which is mostly benign but suppresses magical abilities and indeed, if enough of it is consumed it will permanently deaden them. Other than that the vegetable is perfectly palatable, being nutritious, easy to prepare and tasty. As such any mages born on this island chaiy lost their magical abilities early on.

This secluded society is undergoing a scientific revolution and has advanced considerably over the past four hundred years, spurred by a few local wars which advanced weapons technology and tactics before it was unified under one flag about 50 years ago, which is a largely egalitarian government run by an parliament. Among the factions that it defeated was a couple of factions those who attempted to raise mage armies to assume control, but these were overwhelmed by sheer numbers. They are now at a 19th century level of technological development.

Your choice here is simple. You can choose to cultivate in this new nation an ideology, or you can choose not too. Said ideology claims that on the mainland mages have held society back and unjustly lord over it by having an unfair advantage. As such that needs to be broken by force of arms and the mages in question shall be Equalized. Using their superior technology (Ironclads to dominate the sea, armies of steel helmeted troops armed with falling block rifles, gatling guns, interrupted screw breechloading cannons and a few experimental steam powered Land-Ironclads shall march over land and experimental airships are being tested) they are to go into the lands held by mages and by force of arms use this magic suppressing chemical (which they have managed to isolate and extract from the root-vegetable and can be delivered in injections and as an aerosol, though due to low concentrations it's effects in aerosol form will be fairly limited unless exposed to it for a day or so) to remove the magical potential for all mages permanently. Thus bringing a level playing field to mankind. If not the technological islander civilization will stay on it's island chain in seclusion.

So which do you choose?

Zor

[Kingmaker]

This sounds an awful lot like the backstory to City of Stairs.

[Grumman]

Absolutely not. I would support using it on people convicted of serious crimes - it's either that or kill them outright, if you need to contain a person who is anything but a Seer and maybe a Healer - but waging an aggressive war to cripple people to bring everyone down to your level is obscene.

[Me2005]

Nope. Their abilities are too useful. I might even go the other way and stop people eating the plant so the island can get mages and use them.

PS: Isn't this in the wrong forum? Fantasy might be better.

[orbitingpluto]

Science is based on the scientific method, that is: Observing the world around you, making a hypothesis, and testing them. Even babies are capable of using this process, even though their "Food tastes good, wonder what this thing on the ground tastes like?" type stuff is not quite figuring out a better plow or coming up with tasty baked goods recipe, or gunpowder or better stabby things if you military minded. If your saying all those peasants and magical lords are unable to do this, you've made a world of full idiots who can't reason- who also got to 16th century level of technological and civil sophistication with this handicap.

Answering your question, I'd take a third option and make traders of the island nation. If everyone else is stuck in the 16th century by author fiat, they are the best market for finished goods of all kinds- it's not like they can make anything better, or figure out the stuff they bought. Hell, if possible the islanders could go one better and also figure out how to make seedless staple crops, so the rest of the world is either stuck with local crops or buying the improved islander varieties. Since mages weren't eradicated to keep the rest of the world at their level, they will have to be an navy/aero service and a army to protect the merchants, but keeping a military will be eased by all the trade money coming in, and perhaps colonies will help bare the costs as well.

Oh, but it'll get get worse than a few sheepdogs to guard peaceful traders: Behind the public facade, dominance over nominally mage-held areas of the world will be enforced by threat of fuming mage held areas with the root aerosol, if not conventional military action, and to boot whatever military gear gets sold will be export versions made to be inferior to the good stuff the islanders keep for themselves. Even colonies of the island nation will only get export grade stuff, though better than the what can be had on the open market.

At some point, parliament will become a sham, as will private enterprise, as the state becomes an evil empire, committing vile acts on a daily basis to continue itself. Some time later, if not before, a rebellion will seek to end this terrible hegemony, and a interesting story might be told of this struggle between good and evil. And someone will point out how stupid the concept is, that most of the world even got to a 16th century level of sophistication with being able to think through the scientific method.

[Adam Reynolds]

I guess I am the only militantly pro-science one here. I would argue in favor of reducing the power of mages. Though I would stop short of full scale warfare unless forced into it. Though if we were attempted to reduce their power and influence with softer power, they might respond with force and force a war.

A pair of related scenarios come to mind that might be interesting. The first is more straightforward, after modern medicine has began to be developed in the island nation(admittedly more high tech than the idea here), a major disease breaks out in the magic continent. While the healer mages are able to save some, they are utterly overwhelmed. It is thus a scenario in which the island nation is in a position of power and attempts to help for humanitarian reasons while the mages struggle to hold onto their power despite the changes. The key idea would be a vaccine that people were hesitant to take as they saw it as another form of heretical magic.

The second scenario follows on here with something of a conspiracy. The tech nation begins developing a vaccine but infuse it with the root that would destroy magic in the next generation and take away the power of any living mages. Thus once the vaccine begins spreading you would have the masses who simply want to be saved against the minority who want to hold onto their power. We could see a scenario in which mages are thus hunted down.

Obviously the two stories would be on opposite sides of the debate. The first would be pro-science and rationality, featuring heroic scientists who are doing their best to confront the darkness of the magical setting. The second would be far more tragic, featuring heroic mages, who were attempting to hold onto their last vestiges of power in a world that no longer seemed to need or want them. It would also be in the face of a conspiracy by a group that suddenly had far more power than anyone could have ever predicted.

Absolutely not. I would support using it on people convicted of serious crimes - it's either that or kill them outright, if you need to contain a person who is anything but a Seer and maybe a Healer - but waging an aggressive war to cripple people to bring everyone down to your level is obscene.

But in the societies that have been created, mages rule. In at least some of the societies present they presumably would be exempt from prosecution from serious crimes. Possibly even including murder.

I also wonder if healers could weaponize their abilities and use it to kill. In a primitive society they could kill without anyone determining the cause was anything but natural. Even a more advanced society with the ability to do autopsies might be hard pressed to determine the cause of death. Unless they developed a means to discover if magic had somehow been used. This then might allow it to be neutralized.

Nope. Their abilities are too useful. I might even go the other way and stop people eating the plant so the island can get mages and use them.

PS: Isn't this in the wrong forum? Fantasy might be better.

Useful in what sense? In terms of benefiting humanity it doesn't hold a candle to modern technology. Modern medicine has all but slain a horseman of the apoloclypse actually wiping out diseases in their entirety*, not to mention what was possible with the Green Revolution in agriculture continuing to feed the world despite an ever growing populace. Given the choice, as the mages have forced in this scenario, I would consider it highly ethical to stop them.

*If nothing else, smallpox, which in the 1960s killed millions of people. Not to mention that most things are at least somewhat treatable. Modern medcine vs healer mages depends on just how likely bad healing is. If it is every third patient, I would take my chances with modern medicine.

Science is based on the scientific method, that is: Observing the world around you, making a hypothesis, and testing them. Even babies are capable of using this process, even though their "Food tastes good, wonder what this thing on the ground tastes like?" type stuff is not quite figuring out a better plow or coming up with tasty baked goods recipe, or gunpowder or better stabby things if you military minded. If your saying all those peasants and magical lords are unable to do this, you've made a world of full idiots who can't reason- who also got to 16th century level of technological and civil sophistication with this handicap.

The impression I had was that it was more because the mages had the political power to suppress science to prevent it from making them less powerful. Though I have to say that I like the idea of using trade to weaken their power over time. That would also be an interesting scenario in which the last mages are attempting to hold onto their withering political power as freedom is on the rise. And with rising technology their relative abilities are becoming even weaker. This actually reminds me of the idea of the argument made in The End of Power, about how traditional institutions are less powerful in relative terms than at any previous point in history.

Though this leads to another question. If these mages exist, shouldn't it be possible to determine the source of their powers and develop technology that can tap into it? I suppose this could be exempted by rule of plot, but it is an inherently anti-scientific concept. If it actually exists, it can be studied by science.

[Starglider]

You want to start a war which will likely cause millions of casualties in order to forcefully lobotomise and arguably genocide a minority group, for a possible improvement in science and technology that could be accomplished much more reliably and with much less bloodshed by other means. Said improvement is highly speculative as the attackers might lose the war, the nation-building effort might fail, and either way you are going to lose most of the existing medical capability and a significant chunk of the production capability.

Obviously the answer is 'fuck no'.

[Purple]

Well actually when you described it that way you have me hooked.

[Me2005]

Nope. Their abilities are too useful. I might even go the other way and stop people eating the plant so the island can get mages and use them.

Useful in what sense? In terms of benefiting humanity it doesn't hold a candle to modern technology. Modern medicine has all but slain a horseman of the apoloclypse actually wiping out diseases in their entirety*, not to mention what was possible with the Green Revolution in agriculture continuing to feed the world despite an ever growing populace. Given the choice, as the mages have forced in this scenario, I would consider it highly ethical to stop them.

Useful in the sense of they can violate physics. Yes, science has done/can do its thing, but it can't do the things the mages can do. Convincing the mages to work together with the tech would be the best possible outcome, as they could create fantastical machines and technology we only have in fiction.

I suspect the reason the populous is held back technologically is because the mages are so powerful that there isn't drive to develop non-mage solutions to the problems they solve. If you can go to a guy and he'll heal you of just about any malady, another and he'll create some useful tool out of nothing, and a third who can move your heavy stuff without effort, you don't need to figure out medicine, manufacturing, and heavy machinery.

Put another way, it isn't financially viable to develop any non-mage solutions to problems mages solve, so no one tries to do it. And this is surely bolstered by the mages' hampering any real effective efforts in the same way companies have always done to competitors - they fear something that will change the status quo. Since the mages are in charge, this is surely easy for them.

[Adam Reynolds]

Useful in the sense of they can violate physics. Yes, science has done/can do its thing, but it can't do the things the mages can do. Convincing the mages to work together with the tech would be the best possible outcome, as they could create fantastical machines and technology we only have in fiction.

This would be the best case scenario. I was making my argument based on the binary choice. If scientists could understand the forces they tap into, it might be possible to take out the middle man and devise technologies that directly tap into those abilities and do so far more effectively than individuals.

I suspect the reason the populous is held back technologically is because the mages are so powerful that there isn't drive to develop non-mage solutions to the problems they solve. If you can go to a guy and he'll heal you of just about any malady, another and he'll create some useful tool out of nothing, and a third who can move your heavy stuff without effort, you don't need to figure out medicine, manufacturing, and heavy machinery.

But there is no way that they really could equal the advantage of modern technology. Especially in agriculture. Unless casters or healers could also work their magic on crops, without the green revolution, starvation would still be a major problem. And modern technology is superior in almost all respects to these mages. Enough so that it would be worth losing magic to gain it. Would you rather live in Middle Earth or modern America?

Even the healers have the problem that it is possible for them to make mistakes and make things far worse. If that failure rate is high enough, it would be worth it to trade magic for modern medicine.

Put another way, it isn't financially viable to develop any non-mage solutions to problems mages solve, so no one tries to do it. And this is surely bolstered by the mages' hampering any real effective efforts in the same way companies have always done to competitors - they fear something that will change the status quo. Since the mages are in charge, this is surely easy for them.

And that is what needs to be stopped as the mages are not as effective as a real technological solution. I would not like to wipe out the mages in their entirety, as if they could be combined with a scientific perspective it would be more effective than pure technology.

[Me2005]

Useful in the sense of they can violate physics. Yes, science has done/can do its thing, but it can't do the things the mages can do. Convincing the mages to work together with the tech would be the best possible outcome, as they could create fantastical machines and technology we only have in fiction.

This would be the best case scenario. I was making my argument based on the binary choice. If scientists could understand the forces they tap into, it might be possible to take out the middle man and devise technologies that directly tap into those abilities and do so far more effectively than individuals.

Then we essentially agree on that. I'm saying keep them because we can't do what they can, I read you as saying study them but it's outside the scope of the RAR's either-or scenario.

I suspect the reason the populous is held back technologically is because the mages are so powerful that there isn't drive to develop non-mage solutions to the problems they solve. If you can go to a guy and he'll heal you of just about any malady, another and he'll create some useful tool out of nothing, and a third who can move your heavy stuff without effort, you don't need to figure out medicine, manufacturing, and heavy machinery.

But there is no way that they really could equal the advantage of modern technology. Especially in agriculture. Unless casters or healers could also work their magic on crops, without the green revolution, starvation would still be a major problem. And modern technology is superior in almost all respects to these mages. Enough so that it would be worth losing magic to gain it. Would you rather live in Middle Earth or modern America?

Even the healers have the problem that it is possible for them to make mistakes and make things far worse. If that failure rate is high enough, it would be worth it to trade magic for modern medicine.

My argument is that the Mages aren't so ineffective, as we can see from the fact that they've stagnated technological progress. It's possible that they are ineffective, but they're just also powerful (and plentiful) enough that they can suppress any technological advances by force or intrigue. If it's B then yes, removing them would be better (were it not borderline genocidal). I doubt it is though, as they're present and powerful in all types of societies and forms of rule.

Put another way, it isn't financially viable to develop any non-mage solutions to problems mages solve, so no one tries to do it. And this is surely bolstered by the mages' hampering any real effective efforts in the same way companies have always done to competitors - they fear something that will change the status quo. Since the mages are in charge, this is surely easy for them.

And that is what needs to be stopped as the mages are not as effective as a real technological solution. I would not like to wipe out the mages in their entirety, as if they could be combined with a scientific perspective it would be more effective than pure technology.

I think it's dubious whether they are more or less effective - we'd need to know more about the breakdowns in society and the role mages accept to uphold it. If they're just lording it over all the peasants and using them as expendable fodder, they're obviously worse than if they're accepting a great burden and helping keep society going strong (while still being leaders in society). It seems that the world Zor has outlined has both kinds, and I'd take the good with the bad as long as there was good to be had.

If they're working to uphold society, they might well be better than a real solution; maybe they do heal the crops and otherwise aid in making survival easier for everyone. It is to their benefit to do so, as no mage can control who else in society will become a mage.

[Zixinus]

Fight a war? The mages unite (because they might be fighting each other for a long time but they will be all frightened of something that will threaten their privileged status which they think they rightfully earned) and fuck you over hard, then they make the plant high regulated. I am sure that the highly-competitive mages will use the plant as just another weapon against each other.

The most you did is just create another class of people in the mage-dominated society that can be broadly labeled (by us) as "engineers". The mages will still stay around unless you can get a global culture to fanatically eat the plant. Mages outnumber you and are already in power, already define a society that is older than you. You'll cause an upheval with the plant, sure, but that does not mean that you can control it completely or even survive as a nation to see it blossom.

The most you would do is be a notable footnote in the history of a world "here was a small island chain that had this peculiar plant that somehow blocked the Divine Gifts From the True Gods. Heathenous by the lack of Golden People, they turned to scorging the lands with machines that desperately tried to mimic the efforts of the Divine Gifts and in their heresy, made unprovoked attact. To counter this threat the First Confederacy was formed that eventually crushed their might, their more useful novelties were taken and made the work of high-thinking Mundanes. They have improved society and the plant has been found to be useful for those that abuse their Divine Gift and sway from the Golden Path".


Better alternative: be a somewhat isolationist, mysterious but careful trade partner that is an oddity for the mages, someone they don't see as a threat but can't afford to invade.

The best way to preserver your status is to be a complete isolanist, at least for a while. The best thing you can do is try to exploit your situation, perhaps rising to as close to a legitimate peer to the various magician-states as possible. If you are dead-set on conquering land, do it in a way that makes such a conquest at least semi-legitimate to the mages. Treat the colonists differently.

Militarily, you cannot truly hope to win some world-taking conquest that would overthrow the mages completely, if for no other reason than one:

Your main advantages, scientific thinking and technology, can be simply stolen and copied. It would take a while with the distance and iron-hat wearing society, but it would be inevetible.
You cannot make people (even just your engineers) wear iron helmets all their life (unless you find a way to rivet it to their heads); you cannot hide the workings of your machines from seers (they need to smuggle just a few in, 500 km is a pretty big distance) and this is not getting into plain-old dissidents that will sell your secrets for one reason or another (even if against their will).

Look at the Chinese and the secret of silk. There was a massive, powerful government making every effort possible to hide the secret of their prized goods but it got out anyway. You'll have the same problem but magnified thousandfold. The defense the plant gives does not outweigh the fact that mage-states outnumber you.

You'll have an advantage in that the mages don't know about your capabilities or are uninterested in them so far. It will take them time until they realize what is happening, realize that your prime advantage is in knowledge and time for them to penetrate your defenses.

It is in that envelope you need a plan for the future of your nation. Trying to make a wild bid for conquest will just make you the evil usurper, changing the rightful order of the world. What you need to do is carve a rightful place in it instead. Create ideology, play careful political games with the mage-states, try to take land and make colonies in a way they will see as natural action. Sell or smuggle plant everywhere you can. You cannot hope to destroy mages by radical action, that would be the upsurpsion of what everybody sees as the rightful social order. You need to make yourself a sanctuary from those sick of magic and mages. What's more, be an idea taht you can spread and spread the idea.

Instead, offer the mages to have their smarter mundanes be taught some of your ways, some of your technologies so they can take advantage of it too. A machine that allows a skilled but weakling craftsman to do what otherwise requires either rare strong-and-skilled craftsmen or some sort of mage's intervention? Sounds good, let me send you a few of our quick-thinking Mundanes so they use it to make better swords/increase crop yields/help deal with plagues/etc! Meanwhile, their mundanes return with valuable knowledge but also with some ideas.

You can then work out ways to fit into the worlds history and preserving the quality of your nation.

The first is more straightforward, after modern medicine has began to be developed in the island nation(admittedly more high tech than the idea here), a major disease breaks out in the magic continent. While the healer mages are able to save some, they are utterly overwhelmed.[/qoute]

The thing is that by random chance, this has probably happened before, probably several times throughout the world and the mages built up (and will still build up) preparations. Unless you engineer the disease, which might be strongly unlikely by 19th century technology.

It is thus a scenario in which the island nation is in a position of power and attempts to help for humanitarian reasons while the mages struggle to hold onto their power despite the changes. The key idea would be a vaccine that people were hesitant to take as they saw it as another form of heretical magic.

Why would be people be hesitant to take it? Remember, magic is normal to these people in the world. Going to a healer would be as natural (and even arguably more sensible in some circumstances) as going to a doctor to us. They might find vaccines strange but in a genuinely society-destroying plague people will try anything, not rarely completely insane things in desperation. Getting poked and injected by something to ward off the disease is not that weird historically. Probably in this world it might end up being a saner alternative to what mages would try to cure the disease.

The second scenario follows on here with something of a conspiracy. The tech nation begins developing a vaccine but infuse it with the root that would destroy magic in the next generation and take away the power of any living mages.

You assume that you can do that. A vaccine needs to be given once or twice, for the plant to truly deaden mage-talent it needs to be fed for a long time and in more quantity than you can smuggle into a vaccine.

You are more likely to gain influence and power just by producing a vaccine, assuming similar measures did not exist before.

I also wonder if healers could weaponize their abilities and use it to kill. In a primitive society they could kill without anyone determining the cause was anything but natural.

You assume that in a "primitive" (that term is always relative) society they would need to be so subtle or even do so at all. These people will be seen Divinely Gifted to Help Others, it actually defines their ability. I am sure that there will be always Mundanes who emerge to protect and avenge anyone hurting a healer for the benefit of all. Or do the bloody work of someone who should be Divinely Nice To People Because They're Healers.

[Zor]

Fight a war? The mages unite (because they might be fighting each other for a long time but they will be all frightened of something that will threaten their privileged status which they think they rightfully earned) and fuck you over hard, then they make the plant high regulated. I am sure that the highly-competitive mages will use the plant as just another weapon against each other.

The mage free republic can build a fleet of Ironclad warships which can blast apart any ship the mages can build easily. More-over they can field a greater percentage of their population as soldiers and more easily replace losses (training a new rifleman can be done in a month or two, a new mages has to be born and grow up before s/he can be sent to the battlefield). It also assumes that none of the mage-societies will try to use this development to their advantage in some way, for example attacking their rivals who send off their armies to fight the invaders.

Look at the Chinese and the secret of silk. There was a massive, powerful government making every effort possible to hide the secret of their prized goods but it got out anyway. You'll have the same problem but magnified thousandfold. The defense the plant gives does not outweigh the fact that mage-states outnumber you.

That government broke down several times when dynasties shifted. In any case silk involved smuggling silkworms out, breeding them and feeding them mulberry leaves. Developing steam engines and similar is a bit more complex than that.

Zor

[Me2005]

Fight a war? The mages unite (because they might be fighting each other for a long time but they will be all frightened of something that will threaten their privileged status which they think they rightfully earned) and fuck you over hard, then they make the plant high regulated. I am sure that the highly-competitive mages will use the plant as just another weapon against each other.

The mage free republic can build a fleet of Ironclad warships which can blast apart any ship the mages can build easily. More-over they can field a greater percentage of their population as soldiers and more easily replace losses (training a new rifleman can be done in a month or two, a new mages has to be born and grow up before s/he can be sent to the battlefield). It also assumes that none of the mage-societies will try to use this development to their advantage in some way, for example attacking their rivals who send off their armies to fight the invaders.

They don't need to field just mages. For every mage there's 100 peasants whose arrows can be just as deadly to your riflemen as anyone else. And those mages can do some really crazy stuff - heal wounds from gunfire and send troops back onto the field that day, rain fire/ice/whatever down from a distance far surpassing your rifle's effective ranges, create shields and weapons or other useful items on the fly out of nothing, detect incoming troops (and weapons fire, and can see at night) from across the ocean, and then read their minds once they've gotten close.

With all that, I'd actually doubt the engineer's ability to blast any ship easily. Sure their weapons can technically break them without trouble, but they're outmatched logistically and possibly also in terms of firepower. They've got to get into range without being detected and evaded, they've got to open fire without their projectiles being blocked or deflected by some magic obstacle, and they've got to avoid being fired on at a range of up to 1km by all sorts of troublesome stuff. And that troublesome stuff can come from a 3-man rowboat or a single guy floating on a buoy that the engineers would be hard-pressed to detect.

Look at the Chinese and the secret of silk. There was a massive, powerful government making every effort possible to hide the secret of their prized goods but it got out anyway. You'll have the same problem but magnified thousandfold. The defense the plant gives does not outweigh the fact that mage-states outnumber you.

That government broke down several times when dynasties shifted. In any case silk involved smuggling silkworms out, breeding them and feeding them mulberry leaves. Developing steam engines and similar is a bit more complex than that.

Zor

Eh, not really. I can conceivably make a steam engine out of just about anything lying around and it'll work (poorly). I don't need to possess one to be able to figure out how one works - seeing a simple one would give me the idea. And the mages have ways of both seeing into the engines to know how they work more than I ever could (and just regular seeing them pretty well from a huge distance) and seeing into the minds of the people who made them. Which they can also then recover from wreckage and the wounded in battle with healing powers unheard of in modern medicine. And then they can 'rapid prototype' through iterations of the tech like nobody's business. The silk worms are the only way to get silk, so without stealing them, you can't get it.

[Zixinus]

The mage free republic can build a fleet of Ironclad warships which can blast apart any ship the mages can build easily. More-over they can field a greater percentage of their population as soldiers and more easily replace losses (training a new rifleman can be done in a month or two, a new mages has to be born and grow up before s/he can be sent to the battlefield). It also assumes that none of the mage-societies will try to use this development to their advantage in some way, for example attacking their rivals who send off their armies to fight the invaders.

Except they'll still have sheer numbers on their side and sheer bulk. Technology requires infrastructure to work and in that respect, you are more limited than the mage-states. They have their own infrastructure worked out for centuries, you have to build it as you go along.

Which can work if you use those ironclads defensively or with careful expansion, but not if you are trying to mount a conquest set to destroy all mage-states. Then you are locked into a conquest that has to span the entirety of the known world and there is no way to create supplies fast enough that the mage-states won't mount a counter-attack.

That government broke down several times when dynasties shifted. In any case silk involved smuggling silkworms out, breeding them and feeding them mulberry leaves. Developing steam engines and similar is a bit more complex than that.

My point wasn't specifics of technology, but that if there is enough external interest and pressure, someone will eventually brake a nation-wide secret about technology.

Getting out the silk worms and keeping them alive long enough to breed was more challenging that keeping the secret of a steam engine: in one case you are tied to a material source that the technology revolves around. In the other, it is merely an idea that requires tech that was available to 16th century. It would be bad steam engine, but it could be made to work and can improve on it. They made simple steam engines in Ancient Greece, an interested coalition of mages could manage if they believed they had enough.

Remember that 16th century may be called the "dark ages" but people will still smart, they still researched and developed things. They tied it into a bunch of stuff that we now consider stupid and inferior (alchemy, astrology, etc), but it was still a study of the universe, however clouded it was by theological insight and other things. If you explain the idea properly, there will be people that can take the idea and work with it.

The only question is whether those people will be given the resources to do so. That is one of the characteristics of science that people often forget: it wasn't just a line of great ideas, but a society that allowed and given resources for those ideas to come forward and be explored.

[K. A. Pital]

The exact same plot was already used in Avatar, Legend of Korra. I sympathized with the "bad guy". The answer is equalize.

[Simon_Jester]

Why?

[Starglider]

Why?

Because Stas is also a cruel sociopathic fraud, using ideology and fakery to dupe and manipulate followers, taking pleasure from crippling and torturing his enemies in the most painful way possible, dismissing the deaths of millions of innocents as unimportant or even deserved, hungering only for power and driven by a twisted and misplaced notion of justice?

Seems pretty straightforward to me.

[K. A. Pital]

Yeah, bad bad me. I will quote if you allow me to:

As such, mages have managed to impose upon the various civilizations (with one exception) of this world various social orders with this common theme: mages are on top calling the shots while non magical people are subordinate. This ranges from societies in which mages always have distinct economic and political advantages written into law to theocratic states in which mages rule as priest and warrior castes lording over non magical serfs and slaves. The presence of mages has hindered the development of a scientific method.

So the enemies are at best apartheid states, at worst they practice theocratic serfdom and slavery. I do not see a reason to not try and cause an upheaval to this social order which I find abhorrent.

Of course, cruelty is allowing anything like that to continue existing, when in fact the dissappearance of of a born-into power caste will pave the way to a scientific revolution that will change millions of lives, especially those of the muggle underclass.

Oh, and while I am at my cruel sociopathic something, fuck Harry Potter and fuck Hogwarts.

I wonder though why all of you are so happy about the demise of the Confederacy. Or South Africa for that matter. After all, these are the nations that we are willing to protect because the slavers are magicians...

[Korto]

No. I'm an outsider, and it sounds like a whole heap of none of my fucking business.

[Simon_Jester]

The problem I see is that the mages' legally protected status is separate from the fact that this is a primitive society. Removing the mages' powers as a way of removing their legal status isn't going to 'fix' the world any more than guillotining all the aristocrats they could reach enabled the French revolutionaries to 'fix' France.

What ultimately fixes countries is when you build up, steadily and over time, a set of economic and technical and political systems that allow the people to remove injustice for themselves.

[K. A. Pital]

As far as I can see, it is not a "guillotine" solution, more like deleting their magical powers that they use to control people and make them believe things. Removing the power is a good solution. Even the French Revolution worked out much better than expected, and the revolutionaries had no way of permanently removing the foundations of aristocratic power. In this case, the foundations can be removed.

Abolition of slavery is unconditional; with the magic powers gone, former slavers will find it much harder to reclaim power and privilege.

[Zixinus]

Here is a problem: the magical abilities are just damn useful and valuable. Say you erase the past and now have a modern society where everybody is equal but the magical abilities would be seen as abilities that would solve problems that technology couldn't (healing, telepathy, seer's sight). Say you manage to conquer the known world and instill new society. How can you enforce everyone eating the crop and not prevent magicians popping up in secret, or just over regions that you have no control over? Their abilities are useful and if you demonize them, you would end up antagonizing the people against the new system, people who probably will believe the fairy-tale versions above the propaganda of the conquering new system.

What is more likely to happen anyway is that you can change the role magicians play in society rather then try to exterminate them. You can integrate them somehow into the new form of society.

[Simon_Jester]

Here, the foundation of magocratic power is a thing that simply exists, it is part of the natural order of the world and you will be hard pressed to suppress it indefinitely or over the entire world. I mean, most people would find a law mandating that everyone eat a certain type of tuber burdensome for that reason alone, let alone if the reason for the law is "so you don't develop superpowers."

There's a reason Harrison Bergeron is widely regarded as a compelling story. Most people resent the idea of being forcibly mutilated or crippled, so that they can be brought down to the lowest common denominator of human ability, for fear that they might acquire some unfair advantage. Especially since magical ability is a thing that is born to people at random- anyone can cherish the idea that their child will be a magician, and the odds are good that most people in the magocratic world know someone this has happened to.

Therefore, by trying to forcibly remove the magical powers from the equation forever throughout humanity, you are operating in direct contradiction to the basic impulses of nearly all humans.

[K. A. Pital]

Am I now? The muggle population is being opressed by the magi. People resent the idea of being "crippled" if it is them who are losing something. Magi are losing, but the vast majority of people are not losing anything as they can never become magi. It would be reasonable to assume that, given the class animosity and oppression, muggle slave parents would be killing their own children if they are born magi.

I also understood that spraying or vaccinating everything from people to crops with anti-magical substance is a viable solution. It will not take long to cripple the magi militarily, and long exposure removes the abilities permanently.

There is nothing natural about the enslavement of the ordinary people, so my actions will probably be met with acceptance given enough propaganda. I mean, nobody sheds a tear about apartheid South Africa except white racist emigrants. I am sure there will be even less tears shed for the magi.

I do not need to suppress this indefinetely: if I cripple the magi once, they lose magic abilities permanently. With no magi, their power structure will collapse. After that spraying the crops to ensure the abilities never resurface will be a matter of decree. Chemtrails, Karl!

Integrating the magi is an option, but not until the current generation of upper castes permanently loses magic. Because once they lose power, it will be a matter of education to ensure the newborn magi never capture power again. Needs to have several generations passed without magic so that the old magi die and cannot tell the young magi that they used to be a higher caste with muggle servants and slaves.