High Fantasy and Mutually Assured Destruction

[madd0ct0r]

Inspired by the world of Salt in Wounds: http://www.saltinwoundssetting.com/2016 ... ynoma.html
I've been thinking about MAD in a fantasy setting.

Plenty of fantasy worlds have world ending threats, and many more have spells and artefacts that could be if combined in terrible, brilliant ways.
For MAD to work it does have to be mutual. There needs to be time for the other empires to react and there needs to be no cheap counter to your offense. Asimov wrote plenty of stories about how MAD broke down one forcefields were invented.


So each player names their city state or larger empire, and the magic/artefact/weirdling they hold that makes attacking them untenable. If you are playing in the current STGODS game (or would like to) even better

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Hyenorks. Hyenorks get MAD. They live in a desolate artic tundra, the kind with a winter that chews up your army and swallows bits whole. They sleep in snowdrifts and shrug off small wounds. An invasion of their land is incredibly costly and temporary at best. Winter is always coming, and when snow lies deep around your own keep in your soft southern lands, then comes a hungry enemy that can move freely through the storms.

It is said invading Hyenork lands costs three times. Once for the invading army, the second for the rescue force, the third for the subsequent raiding and consumption of the farming population and their animals.

[biostem]

Incendia:

Incendia is a city roughly on par with 19th century London, but instead of coal and oil, the inhabitant of this city-state have learned how to tap into an elemental plane of fire. Unlike some other settings, there are no actual fire elementals or intelligences in the plane, merely an inexhaustible source of fire and heat. Using a series of "apertures", (sophisticated mechanical devices that allow safe and stable access to the fire plane), Incendians have crafted all manner of devices - from closed-circuit steam engines that can collect, condense, and reuse limited supplies of water, to more advanced but still experimental aperture-jets.

The Incendian MAD device consists of a series of high speed craft, which fly to a destination and drop special mega-aperture linking modules, which, when activated, convert the encircled area into one massive aperture and turn it on. Thus, the encircled area becomes one humongous portal to the plane of fire, and is thus consumed by the rapid influx of intense heat and flame, (not to mention the consumption of all oxygen in the local area). This fire is hit enough to boil the water at even deep sea locations, and though it consumes oxygen at the location it is set off, these otherworldly flames do not actually need oxygen to persist. These aperture modules can be self-destructed remotely, should the need arise.

[Simon_Jester]

Honestly I don't believe in mutually assured destruction via weapons of mass destruction in fantasy.

Fantasy exists as a genre in large part because of the human desire to escape from the downsides of modernity.

Classic fantasy was in large part an escape from the fear of annihilation by nuclear weapons, and the degradation of human ties and values imposed by industrialization and consumerism.

The rise of the popularity of modern 'urban' fantasy or of secret enclaves of magicians/vampires/whatever keeping up a 'masquerade' to hide themselves from the mundane public, likewise. It ties into the desire to escape from the privacy-free character of the modern world, the desire to have something secret and special that others cannot duplicate just by taking a few college courses, a desire that for most people is frustrated.

So for me, things like this are... counterproductive. Which is not to say I want other people to stop having fun, just that I don't play the same games.

[Lord Revan]

That said for story purposes you could have a MAD situation with something like highly destructive magic, you can even use it as justification as to why some types of magic is "forbidden".

And if you absolutely need to have an item, have a magical talisman of some sort that can be use to cast a spell that acts of the nuke analog.

[The Romulan Republic]

Something that comes to mind here is the "Deplorable Word" from The Chronicles of Narnia.

In the book "The Magician's Nephew", its revealed that before the White Witch came to Narnia, she wiped out every other person in her former world by using the word when she was about to lose a war.

[Purple]

I know this isn't exactly an established setting but I am running a RPG now that is happening in fantasy medieval China and they have MAD in the form of mages. Simply put each nation has a bunch of magic users that on their own are just strong enough to make any war involving them devolve into an apocalyptic deal nobody wants to partake in. I imagine you could apply the same logic to a lot of D&D settings or really any high magic settings too.

[Kojiro]

I would think the classic fantasy MAD scenario involves some sort of ancient threat or portal. Some great wyrm in slumber that, if awoken, will burn the world or a sect of monks who chant the prescribed prayer of barring in front of a hellmouth 24/7. The fantasy equivalent of holding the lever on a grenade the pin is already out of- if control is lost, everyone goes boom. At least that's my take on them usually.

[Purple]

And each nation having a couple of lvl20 D&D mages on hand does NOT qualify for that?

[Elheru Aran]

And each nation having a couple of lvl20 D&D mages on hand does NOT qualify for that?

Mages are a bit different. They can decide not to use their magic, after all. A bomb just goes boom when you drop/launch it. It doesn't really have that much discretion.

Of course, if you've got magic, you've probably got mind-control and all kinds of fun things.

Plus doesn't DnD go higher than 20 these days? Like up to 80 or 100 if you count all the expansions...

EDIT: I suppose I mixed that up with WoW or something. Apparently 20 is the customary maximum, but there are provisions for levels above that up to roughly 30. In theory, you can level up to infinity, but it takes an absurd amount of experience points and all that-- for level 40 the XP estimate is ~4 or 5 million. Not quite the sort of thing one picks up swatting kobolds.

EDIT2: 'Gods' and such in DnD are supposed to be ~60 and have a lot of bonus feats and what not that they're capable of, for example. Basically once you level up high enough you're going to have a LOT of options because you're picking up all kinds of stuff you can do. The average player, no matter how committed, is probably not going to have enough time in group to get their char up nearly that high...

[Kojiro]

Sorry if that seemed like a response to you Purple, it was more a general observation/response to the OP. My post was made as yours was, not in response.

[Elheru Aran]

Oh, another thought regarding mages for MAD-- unless you've got a wonky magic system where your users cannot deliberately cast a lower-level spell, then mages aren't a guarantee of MAD. A 30-level mage could well choose to just fire off level 2 fireballs because they do the job and he'd rather not get a level 20 to the face in response, thank you very much.

Now if it's a situation where a level-30 mage could only cast level-30 fireballs, not lower at all, then yeah, that gets more questionable, and they'd be a much closer parallel to nuclear weapons.

[Q99]

The comic Gold Digger by Fred Perry has, in it's backstory, 'the Age of Wonders,' on Earth, preceding the Age of Magic and then the modern low-magic age (with magic still in existence but rare).

In the Age of Wonders, magic got really advanced, different civilizations developed all kinds of enchantments, war constructs, and fantastic spells. A variety of magical weapons-of-mass-destruction were created. Living directable hurricanes were one such example. Kaiju-sized golems too.

One side developed the ability to restore land that'd been apocalyptically destroyed via plant-druidry, and with this, thought they were able to turn the MAD situation into something winnable.


Oops?


Suffice to say that the Age of Magic was the post-apocalypse of the Age of Wonders, where the survivors built from the ground up and and made their own civs and gradually forgot about the Age of Wonders, but never reached the level of the AoW.

[Broomstick]

Something that comes to mind here is the "Deplorable Word" from The Chronicles of Narnia.

In the book "The Magician's Nephew", its revealed that before the White Witch came to Narnia, she wiped out every other person in her former world by using the word when she was about to lose a war.

[nitpick] She actually wiped out every living thing other than herself, not just other people. Implying she destroy life down to the bacteria and virus level, utterly sterilizing the planet. Except for herself. Bitch. [/nitpick]

[Purple]

Oh, another thought regarding mages for MAD-- unless you've got a wonky magic system where your users cannot deliberately cast a lower-level spell, then mages aren't a guarantee of MAD. A 30-level mage could well choose to just fire off level 2 fireballs because they do the job and he'd rather not get a level 20 to the face in response, thank you very much.

Now if it's a situation where a level-30 mage could only cast level-30 fireballs, not lower at all, then yeah, that gets more questionable, and they'd be a much closer parallel to nuclear weapons.

That argument is false and actually has a parallel with the real world. And its one that might surprise you. It's the reason why nobody has ICBM's with conventional warheads.

Now, an ICBM with its long range would be an ideal way to deploy a big conventional warhead, right? Who needs drones or aircraft or anything when you can just pop one down from orbit. And yet nobody does it. Nobody ever did, not even at the height of the cold war. So why is this so?

Well it's simple. MAD does not rely on the enemy taking a hit. It relies on his belief that he is about to take one and retaliating in an attempt to preempt it. An ICBM can carry a hand grenade in its warhead instead of a nuke. But launching one at an enemy nation, or in fact in its general direction is still going to trigger MAD because they aren't going to wait for the dam thing to land and explode so they can check.

And the same thing is true for high level mages. Yes the guy has a lvl2 fireball but he also has a lvl20 "destroy city". So when he shows up in front of your city gates you are not going to wait and see which one he picks lest you end up a city short for your patience.

[nitpick] She actually wiped out every living thing other than herself, not just other people. Implying she destroy life down to the bacteria and virus level, utterly sterilizing the planet. Except for herself. Bitch. [/nitpick]

Wow. Now that's a girl after my tastes.

[Zixinus]

Wow. Now that's a girl after my tastes.

So because she was losing a war, she wiped out all life on the world? Purple, I always sort of had a soft spot for you because I often feel outcasts and weird, but when you say stuff like this I have a hard time not taking accusations of sociopathy on your part seriously.

[Purple]

Wow. Now that's a girl after my tastes.

So because she was losing a war, she wiped out all life on the world? Purple, I always sort of had a soft spot for you because I often feel outcasts and weird, but when you say stuff like this I have a hard time not taking accusations of sociopathy on your part seriously.

It's not what you think. Basically I have a soft spot for fantasy characters that are batshit crazy. I know full well that in reality they would be considered insane, evil or both. But in fiction I can't help but smile when I see someone who only really wants to see the world burn.

[Zixinus]

Still not helping with the sociopathy angle. I can understand wanting a bit of the world to burn. Maybe a good-sized chunks of it or even a whole lot of it. But the whole world? Unless your world is pure hell anyway, this is the point to give some thought about whether it's better to try and fix yourself.

[Purple]

Still not helping with the sociopathy angle. I can understand wanting a bit of the world to burn. Maybe a good-sized chunks of it or even a whole lot of it. But the whole world? Unless your world is pure hell anyway, this is the point to give some thought about whether it's better to try and fix yourself.

I am honestly puzzled why you think that my taste in fiction has anything to do with my personality. By that logic everyone who ever liked Darth Vader as a kid secretly wants to choke out his wife, torture his daughter and disarm his son in the most literal sense. It's the same kind of bullshit that makes people say that if you play counter-strike you're going to end up walking into the street with a machinegun shooting people.

[Broomstick]

Unless your world is pure hell anyway, this is the point to give some thought about whether it's better to try and fix yourself.

It was sort of implied that Jadis' world was hellish, unless you were in the ruling elite. Not that that makes anything of what she did OK. She really was both batshit evil and insane.

[Zixinus]

I am honestly puzzled why you think that my taste in fiction has anything to do with my personality.

Your taste in fiction has nothing to do with this. Expressing approval towards people that commit genocide because they are batshit insane is what's worrying. Expressing admiration towards Hitler and Stalin for their atrocious acts is usually what's termed as a "red flag". You see my problem here?

[Purple]

I am honestly puzzled why you think that my taste in fiction has anything to do with my personality.

Your taste in fiction has nothing to do with this. Expressing approval towards people that commit genocide because they are batshit insane is what's worrying. Expressing admiration towards Hitler and Stalin for their atrocious acts is usually what's termed as a "red flag". You see my problem here?

What are you talking about? I explicitly pointed out that I only like that sort of fantasy character. Like seriously, do you even into reading?

[biostem]

I am honestly puzzled why you think that my taste in fiction has anything to do with my personality.

Your taste in fiction has nothing to do with this. Expressing approval towards people that commit genocide because they are batshit insane is what's worrying. Expressing admiration towards Hitler and Stalin for their atrocious acts is usually what's termed as a "red flag". You see my problem here?

What are you talking about? I explicitly pointed out that I only like that sort of fantasy character. Like seriously, do you even into reading?

I agree with Purple's sentiments here - I can appreciate Dr. Doom and his efforts to conquer the world, (in his fictional setting), while soundly denouncing and abhorring totalitarian despots and megalomaniacs in real life. I can enjoy the sordid tales of Batman's brutal beatings of the scum of Gotham's underbelly, while being 100% against vigilantism in the real world. I can root *for* Jason in the various Friday the 13th films, while condemning the killing of, well, anybody, (even Jason himself, were he a real life serial killer).

[Simon_Jester]

Put this way.

There's appreciating a character whose grandiose and megalomaniac ambitions make him a threat- but a threat that has a certain streak of perverse nobility and dignity, and who serves as a foil for one or more genuine heroes.

Then there's "appreciating" a character who is so self-centered and evil that she will literally kill the entire world rather than allow another to rule it.

It takes someone like Purple to do the latter.

[Terralthra]

In terms of high fantasy MAD, Urtho's ultimate weapon from The Black Gryphon more or less takes the cake. It's a simple device that when activated, undoes all magic in a fairly large radius (most of a continent), including emptying ley lines and nodes (magic in Valdemar is given off by living beings, flows into ley lines and from thence into pools called nodes; how powerful a mage you are is largely determined by whether you can tap ley lines and/or nodes to power your magic). So, after triggering his doomsday device, all active spells and artifacts nearby are worthless, and you can't cast any new magic of any consequence, because there're no ley lines nor nodes upon which to draw.

Oh, and the energy inherent in the magical devices, leylines, nodes, and spells emptied this way manifests in the world explosively.

There are hints in the Mage Storms trilogy that Urtho, an artificer of some skill, created several other doomsday weapons of similar impact, but the exact effects are not described.

[Purple]

Put this way.

There's appreciating a character whose grandiose and megalomaniac ambitions make him a threat- but a threat that has a certain streak of perverse nobility and dignity, and who serves as a foil for one or more genuine heroes.

Then there's "appreciating" a character who is so self-centered and evil that she will literally kill the entire world rather than allow another to rule it.

It takes someone like Purple to do the latter.

What's the difference? Fact of the matter is that one of the primary mental faculties that we require people to exhibit in order for them to be consider mentally sane is the capability to separate fantasy from reality.