Laws and Magic

[Steve]

I've been working on a campaign setting in the modern day that includes magic being known, and I'm trying to understand what criminal and civil laws might come into play. Suggestions are welcome.

 

Faerie Invasion: They came in the mid-1960s with the arrival of over two million refugees from Arcadia/Faerie into America and several more millions appearing around the planet, fleeing from the Dark Lord, a mighty Unseelie who had conquered their world. The opening of the gates caused a flood of magic to infuse Earth, strongest around the portals, and the energies did... something to the world.

 

Nuclear weapons were almost immdiately rendered useless in their silos, their payloads of enriched uranium and plutonium transmuted into lead overnight. Since Arrival Day, enriching uranium or plutonium past a certain point, well below where it would be usable as a weapon causes a cascade reaction, shortening the half-life into seconds.

 

The refugees included commoners as well as the survivors of noble Sidhe Houses. The lucky ones brought with them gold and jewels as well as trinkets of magic and tomes of sorcery, but many arrived in rags and destitute. Disembodied spirits of various sorts also arrived, but their presence was not well known.

 

Less than a year after Arrival Day, the Dark Lord forced his way into this world along with a ravening horde of his troops. Baba Yaga, one of his many followers, reputedly unleashed a devastating plague in Asia that killed over a billion people in Russia, Europe and China before the Seelie, working with humans, were able to halt it.

 

After four years of savage fighting, the war was brought to an end when the gates were sealed. The Dark Lord was believed killed along with many of his lieutenants, unable to survive being cut off from the full flows of magic into Earth. Many Seelie and Unseelie became ill as a result but recovered, discovering themselves to be diminished from their former glory and becoming more like mortal humans.

 

It is now fifty years later. Magic exists and is known, but it requires a special quality to work, either to be of Faerie blood or be born near one of the old faerie gate sites. Since the portals were sealed, magic became much weaker. Sorcerers like those in the Valdorian Age are more common, bargaining with spirits to work their magic. Faerie tale-like wizards also exist, but they are very few in number.

 

Much of Asia remains a ghost-haunted wilderness, tainted by darkness, and there are rumors that Baba Yaga survived, carving out an empire of witchcraft in the remains of the USSR. The southern regions of China broke apart into numerous small kingdoms, many ruled by Unseelie or human sorcerors and wizards. Attempts to explore have resulted in many deaths and madness in the few survivors able to make it back from the deepest interior of the affected regions.

 

The feeling I am striving for is something akin to Alien Nation, substituting faerie folk that have partially assimilated into our society, and much of the Earth has recovered from the war and destruction that occurred. Pockets of faerie glamour survive, along with the scar to the world that exists in Russia and northern China. A massive defensive zone exists around this region, patrolled by wary UN forces alert for incursions by zombies and demons that many fear are still leaking into the world.

[drunkonduty]

That's a pretty cool setting idea.

 

As for laws and magic, treat magic as another tool. For instance: a screwdriver is a common every day thing. Having one isn't a problem. Using one for it's intended purpose is fine. But stabbing someone with it is assault with a deadly weapon (or what ever, I'm no lawyer.) Similarly with magic. Of course the very slow, deliberate way in which magic needs to be harnessed in your setting could make it much easier to prove all sorts of intent /malice a forethought on the part of the user. "Heat of the moment" and "I didn't intend for it to go that far" become much harder to argue.

[mallet]

It can also depend on how easy it is to "trace" magic spells after they have been cast. 

Do spells leave "residue" that can be detected? If so, how much can you learn from the residue? Just that a spell was cast, or can you learn what the exact spell was? Or can you even learn who cast it? 

Also, how subtle are spells in the game? Can you cast a spell and almost no one know? Or is it a big, flash event and everyone around for a city block can tell? 

 

If spells are subtle and almost impossible to detect, then I'd bet the laws would be very harsh on people that do use them if they get caught, and there might be a group dedicated to tracking/keeping tabs on spell casters and/or spell casters might need to be registered and let everyone no what they can do in public. 

 

Because if a "mage" can mind control someone into robbing a bank or murder, and the spells leave no trace and can't be tracked back to the spell caster then law and order would fall apart. Any criminal could claim he was mind controlled to do it, and how could the police prove otherwise? 

 

Or what is the penalty for mind controlling a man/woman to have a one night stand with you? How can they prove it was a spell and not the caster's good looks and witty banter that attracted the victim? 

 

And, even if they can prove a mage committed a crime how to you imprison someone who can mind control guards, or teleport or walk through walls? 

 

It can quickly become a very problematic situation to try and work out for a campaign.

 

If you have access to some of the Shadowrun books they get into magic law and policing in a few of their sourcebooks that might be of some help to you and give you some ideas, but in Shadowrun they can trace spells back to the caster (magic has "fingerprints") but they also have enough magic in that setting that they can magically imprison sell casters and limit their powers, and/or in extreme cases surgically reduce their "essence" so they can no longer work magic at all. 

[Markdoc]

I don't think it's any more problematic than a regular fantasy game or superhero game, but it is clear that law enforcement is going to be very interested in keeping track of mages and fae, and will almost certainly employ them as well. It's a safe bet that the same is true for the criminal underworld. I think it's also likely that the general population would be strongly supportive of laws regarding registration, etc, given the background of war and loss associated with magic.

 

Cheers, Mark

[Steve]

The idea of magic having a signature is a good idea, but it would probably require a forensic mage to detect it. I could see police departments having special detective teams for dealing with Fae and mage-related crimes. I've seen a fiction series that had Special Weapons And Thaumaturgy (SWAT), but I can't recall the name of it now.

 

Magic use would be something more like witchcraft than more blatant wizardly stuff. Hexes and charms would be more the norm instead of fireballs and lightning bolts.

 

Registration of Fae and mages is a possibility, especially since a significant portion of the world population died due to Unseelie magic. While goblins and hobgoblins were the main shock troops and viewed with suspicion to this day, Unseelie Sidhe commanded them. Racism against many types of Fae exist as a result, but that gradually faded off during the 70s and 80s in America.

 

Other regions of the world are still in various states of paranoia about Fae, especially those nearest the scar on the world where Russia and China once reigned. The dead get possessed by evil spirits there and shamble about, and even the land is sickened and tainted behind the wall built to contain it. The taint is an idea I am borrowing from the way the Shadowlands are in the Legends of the Five Rings rpg.

 

That said, Unseelie tended to gravitate into crime after the fall of the Dark Lord, finding their talents worth money. Hobgoblins worked as legbreakers and hitmen, since they are able to blend into human society better than most other Unseelie, except for Unseelie Sidhe.

 

The Seelie Sidhe wanted to leave the horrors of the war behind them and worked hard to integrate themselves into human society. They had the easiest time of it, since they look much like humans, only more graceful and attractive on the average. Other types of Seelie had varying levels of success.

[DShomshak]

If you want a literary model for forensic maic and how it might affect criminal investigation, I recommend the "Lord Darcy" series by Randall Garrett. The titles I remember are Murder and Magic, Too Many Magicians, and Lord Darcy Investigates.

 

(Cough), You might also look at pages 176-177 of The Mystic World for some further questions to ask yourself.

 

Dean Shomshak

[Steve]

Yes, the Lord Darcy stories would be a good resource, and I'll check out Mystic World for more ideas. Thanks!

[Steve]

In thinking over magical effects and laws that could exists after a few decades of mages and Fae in society, some questions arise.

 

A spell that can determine truth. Is this an invasion of privacy? How would this affect courts and politics if lies could be called out through use of a spell? What if this spell has been proven to be infallible through testing and can be used in a court of law?

 

What if a variant of the spell causes pain or death? You are unharmed if you tell the truth, but you experience pain if you say something that is untrue? Keep it up long enough with lying, and you die. Would anyone dare go into politics if someone in the crowd can hit them with this spell?

 

A summoned being. Do they have rights as sentient individuals? What about necromancy? If Great-grandfather Bob can be summoned back from the dead to explain his will, would that be valid in probate? What if he didn't leave a will? Would his spirit's wishes be listened to?

 

Would healing magic have to be licensed?

[Steve]

Transformations and Shape Shift raise interesting issues. If a witch transforms someone into an animal, is that a form of battery? Could it be a kind of murder?

 

If an individual is able to duplicate the appearance of someone else, reasonable doubt goes right out the window. Even harmless stuff like celebrity impersonators takes on a whole new meaning with beings who can shape shift. Espionage would have a whole new area of paranoia.

[Greywind]

I'd suggest watching Cast a Deadly Spell if you can find a copy of it.

 

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0101550/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1

 

You could look to things like Dresden. Those that use magic have their own legal system.

[mallet]

In thinking over magical effects and laws that could exists after a few decades of mages and Fae in society, some questions arise.

 

A spell that can determine truth. Is this an invasion of privacy? How would this affect courts and politics if lies could be called out through use of a spell? What if this spell has been proven to be infallible through testing and can be used in a court of law?

 

What if a variant of the spell causes pain or death? You are unharmed if you tell the truth, but you experience pain if you say something that is untrue? Keep it up long enough with lying, and you die. Would anyone dare go into politics if someone in the crowd can hit them with this spell?

 

A summoned being. Do they have rights as sentient individuals? What about necromancy? If Great-grandfather Bob can be summoned back from the dead to explain his will, would that be valid in probate? What if he didn't leave a will? Would his spirit's wishes be listened to?

 

Would healing magic have to be licensed?

 

Well, then you have the issue of who is casting the spell, and can the spellcaster manipulate the results (or pretend to cast one spell, while really casting different one?)

For example, is it a truth spell, or a lying spell? Or a form of mind control and the person just says what ever the mage tells them to. Can a non-mage ever tell the difference? 

 

Is that really you Great-Grandfather Bob, or a different entity pretending to be him? is there any real way to tell if it is one or the other? 

 

If there is a spell that has been proven to force people to tell the truth would you even need trials anymore? Or would you end up with a "Judge Dredd" situation, where the cops can cast a spell and see if someone is guilty and punish them right there on the spot? 

[Christopher]

Nuclear weapons were almost immdiately rendered useless in their silos, their payloads of enriched uranium and plutonium transmuted into lead overnight. Since Arrival Day, enriching uranium or plutonium past a certain point, well below where it would be usable as a weapon causes a cascade reaction, shortening the half-life into seconds.

Such a drastic effect is not nessesary. While Nuclear weapons are the most devastating weapons we have, they are also the hardest to detonate. There is a short phase between "just ciritcal enough to cause a chain reaction" and "Ideal Critical Mass to start the chain reaction". If a random decay event starts the chain reaction before the later point you get a dirty bomb with a few kg TNT equivalent of force isntead of a few thousand tons of TNT equivalent.

Afaik the Gun Design (the easier A-bomb design) Little Boy had a whopping 14% Chance* to become such a dirty dud. And you cannot build Gun Desing Atomic weapons out of certain common forms of Plutonium because you would end up with a 100% chance of dirty dud (Plutonium decays so much it's near impossible to get to ideal cirtical mass with gun Design).

 

The more complex implosion design is more reliable and works even with those fast-decaying materials like Plutonium.

But like I said: it is more complex. More chance for magic to skew up the calculations we had refined over decades.

And since magic is a late arriver and works only locally (at earth) there are none of the usual problems of changing the laws of physics slightly.

 

*That was that chance that between "just critical" and "ideally cirtical" a nuclear decay would start the reaction early.

 

This solves the issue of "could not nuke the Dark Kings Invasion" while requiring less suspension of disbelieve, leaves nuclear reactors running and also allows for nuclear weapons to be re-developed now (since magic got a bit weaker and is better understood, so we can figure it into the calculations).

 

 

A spell that can determine truth. Is this an invasion of privacy? How would this affect courts and politics if lies could be called out through use of a spell? What if this spell has been proven to be infallible through testing and can be used in a court of law?

It would certainly violate the right "to not incriminate one self (or ones Family members)":

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-incrimination

 

Also, even if one specific spell is infallible, the caster is not.

He might use one of the fallible versions. Or itentionally use a different spell, for whatever reason.

To cite Discworld text: "There are twelve ways of performing the Rite of AshkEnte (Summon death to ask Questions), but eight of them cause instant death and the ninth is very hard to remember."

 

What if a variant of the spell causes pain or death? You are unharmed if you tell the truth, but you experience pain if you say something that is untrue? Keep it up long enough with lying, and you die. Would anyone dare go into politics if someone in the crowd can hit them with this spell?

What if you remain silent? What if you are unable to respond?

In any case it sounds like it goes into torture. Again the caster might fudge the results.

Secret Police style states could even put on a show with thier "Confess what we want you to confess or suffer pain" spell and claim it the "Truth or Pain" spell.

 

A summoned being. Do they have rights as sentient individuals? What about necromancy? If Great-grandfather Bob can be summoned back from the dead to explain his will, would that be valid in probate? What if he didn't leave a will? Would his spirit's wishes be listened to?

First you have to proove that they are the same person.

Shandowrun 4E dealt with it in some detail (both with Spirits and the "mind got stuck in the matrix during Crash 2.0" AI's.

Basically it says: No. It's has not been possible to properly proove those are the same persons.

If it can be prooven, that would give every murder case a new defense (see about the witch question).

 

Would healing magic have to be licensed?

If magical healing can backfire as easily as normal healing, certainly! And given that magic is magic, there should be no reason it cannot backfire horribly.

It would propably just become another area of healing studies. maybe a extra prefix: "Dr. Thau." for general Medicine pratitioners that use magic(Thaumaturgy).

 

Transformations and Shape Shift raise interesting issues. If a witch transforms someone into an animal, is that a form of battery? Could it be a kind of murder?

We needed an unambigious definition of "death" for this thread:

http://www.herogames.com/forums/topic/55495-calling-all-lawyers-supers-and-unique-legal-issues/

 

The best we got was: "What defines death is it's irreversibility".

If the transform can be healed it would propably a very severe form of battery (it takes away speech, physical abilities and propably reasoning).

In turn if the dead could just be summoned, that would make true murder cases impossible (they could all argue down to attempted muder now).

 

If an individual is able to duplicate the appearance of someone else, reasonable doubt goes right out the window. Even harmless stuff like celebrity impersonators takes on a whole new meaning with beings who can shape shift. Espionage would have a whole new area of paranoia.

Shape Shift cannot grant you the ability to know the password of the day. Password systems have been used as far back as the middle ages (or propably the stone ages), when it might not be possible that a guard knew every allowed person by face.

Just stop using Palmprint and Iris scanners already (yes I mean you, World of X-Men 1 and 2 movies) and go back to simpler but reliable stuff.

 

 

About general laws regarding magic in other settings:

The Black Eye RPG (middle ages + magic + fantasy races) has among the first things you have to do to cast magic "Choosing to do so"*. Wich means if you use magic against another being, it is always handeled as intentional attack.

On the other hand there is a concept of guild mages. If you are one you are put before a court of the Guild, wich is much more lenient in such cases and allows "Self Defense" as claim. It's possible to get Guild membership if you were not trained by one, wich is about as hard as Dirvers Test or "Get Citizenship Test".

If you lost your guild membership, never had one (that worlds Driuds, Witches and the like) and have no other laws applying to you (Dwarves and Elves are usually tried among peers) you are pretty much hosed and can expect the most severe punishment. And then they propably kill you for being a unregistered magic user on religios/power preservation reasons.

Of course even Guilds can't just give you a slap on the wrist for everything and while they tend to be somewhat "cross national" in thier influence, even thier reach has limits.

 

*Not exact words, don't have the books handy to cite.

[Steve]

I would imagine that after fifty years of society adapting to the presence of magic, licensing it would become standard, and I could say that unlicensed magic use would have penalties. Would they be more severe than the practice of unlicensed medicine? Fines and jail time, rather than death penalties, seems like it would be more the norm for punishment.

 

Black magic would probably start at felonies, since I'm not sure what would qualify as misdemeanor black magic. Some schools of magic might be more heavily regulated, necromancy and healing arts probably being only second to black magic. Controlling minds with charms would also seem to be an area of policing that would attract attention.

 

Cosmetic sorcery, limited forms of Transformations, might make for a booming business. Picture a weight loss spell, transforming a person into someone who is twenty or a hundred or more pounds lighter, the "heal" effect being to continue to over-eat. That would probably be a cosmetic form of Transform or Minor.

 

More radical changes like complete gender transformation or making a woman of sixty appear twenty again would seem to be Major Transforms. In fiction, potions can do such things, so alchemy could become quite popular, but regulated, probably quite heavily.

 

Imagine slipping someone something in a drink that turns them into a teenager or the opposite gender. If its time limited, like it only lasts an hour or two, what kind of crime would that be?

[DShomshak]

Fifty years is a good timescale. A lot of the obvious stuff has been worked out, but not everything. You can still have courtroom dramas and political conflict where some legal issue is being hashed out for the first time.

 

In Lois McMaster Bujold's "Vorkosigan" SF series, there's a drug called "fast-penta" that temporarily makes a person unable to lie. It's even difficult not to respond. However, people can still misunderstand questions or give otherwise unhelpful answers, so fast-penta interrogation still requires special training. Also, a few people have naturally screwy responses (series hero Miles Vorkosigan is one such, and beats a hostile interrogation by giving free rein to his pre-existing motor-mouth tendencies. Every question sparks such a flood of free-asociation babble that the answers never get out.) Also, people in high-security positions sometimes receive an induced allergy so fast-penta kills them before they can talk.

 

All the possible ways that truth spells could be hoaxed or misused are just variations on the ways mundane forensic evidence, witness testimony or confessions can be hoaxed or misused. The magic makes everything simple if the court system is honest. If it isn't, the magic doesn't matter. For instance, the defense team could include a sorcerer to make sure the prosecution's sorcerer really casts a truth-spell. But if it's the sham trial of a police state, the defense's sorcerer is just another part of the fraud.

 

Dean Shomshak

[Steve]

Locking up magic-using humans and Fae will require special precautions, something like superhuman worlds use. Given that the magic in the world I am crafting is not heavy-duty, the use of warding spells or placing prisons in magic-poor or magic-dead areas would be common.

 

Since I stated in an earlier post that there remained regions of Fae glamour, it seems logical to me that magic dead regions would exist as well. They would be kind of like negative ley line spaces, where the flows of the world's magic doesn't go for some reason or another.

 

Alcatraz Island seems like it would be a great place to repurpose as a prison for wizards and Fae who break the law. I've been thinking that islands would make good places to set such prisons. The island could be in the middle of a natural dead zone or maybe the entire island is warded against spell use. If I go with the latter, perhaps special counter-wards can be carried by certain staff members to allow them to use magic, which a clever prisoner could steal to escape.

 

Similarly, when schools that teach magic use to gifted children begin opening (something that will start in the late 70s in my timeline), setting them on islands makes for a good location. I'm not too familiar with islands outside of California, so the only magic school I've come up with so far will be on the island of Catalina, since the town of Avalon there just sounds like a great place to set a magic school. Avalon Academy of Magic sounds like a preppy sort of school name. Any suggestions for islands elsewhere in the US or the world are welcome.

[Christopher]

I would imagine that after fifty years of society adapting to the presence of magic, licensing it would become standard, and I could say that unlicensed magic use would have penalties. Would they be more severe than the practice of unlicensed medicine? Fines and jail time, rather than death penalties, seems like it would be more the norm for punishment.

 

[...]

 

Imagine slipping someone something in a drink that turns them into a teenager or the opposite gender. If its time limited, like it only lasts an hour or two, what kind of crime would that be?

I think it would depend on what area of Magic.

Most person targetting magic would propably be counted as Medicine and you need a license to sell medicine or practice anything medical

Secretly drugging someone in real life is an Assault. Plus whatever you do with them while they are drugged.

 

Black magic would probably start at felonies, since I'm not sure what would qualify as misdemeanor black magic. Some schools of magic might be more heavily regulated, necromancy and healing arts probably being only second to black magic. Controlling minds with charms would also seem to be an area of policing that would attract attention.

Black Magic or "most uses of Black Magic"? It seems atypical for our modern, western world to outlaw something "because it is evil" (ignoring fanatics).

Uses of Black Magic would fall under whatever law they would fall if they had a different Special Effect. Reanimating a corpse would be like digging out a corpse or otherwise stealing it. Crimes that were comitted by the walking Corpse/Golem (with or without knowledge of the Necromant) would propably be put onto the Necromancer.

 

If I only use my "Lance of Desintegration" to open beer can's it get not the same problems as if I use it to pop peoples heads off.

 

Cosmetic sorcery, limited forms of Transformations, might make for a booming business. Picture a weight loss spell, transforming a person into someone who is twenty or a hundred or more pounds lighter, the "heal" effect being to continue to over-eat. That would probably be a cosmetic form of Transform or Minor.

 

More radical changes like complete gender transformation or making a woman of sixty appear twenty again would seem to be Major Transforms. In fiction, potions can do such things, so alchemy could become quite popular, but regulated, probably quite heavily.

And as usual there is a great deal of differences in quality. A "bad" potion of youth might overshoot. Or only last five hours. Or not do anything at first, then make your purple. And there might be incompatibility with other magic, like there is incopatibility between medicines (i.e. don't take with X, otherwise you might die).

 

Also, people in high-security positions sometimes receive an induced allergy so fast-penta kills them before they can talk.

A similar case can be found in the Star Wars Expanded Universe. Important NPC was hunted by the Imperium regarding info's about his friends.

He expected to be tortured to near death, then healed and repeated. He asumed he could sustaint till the first Bacta bath, but was uncertain about further rounds.

He intentionally infected himself with Bacta Allergy knowing they would do that and when they caught him they did exactly that and killed him when they tried to prep him up for the next round.

 

Locking up magic-using humans and Fae will require special precautions, something like superhuman worlds use. Given that the magic in the world I am crafting is not heavy-duty, the use of warding spells or placing prisons in magic-poor or magic-dead areas would be common.

You could just go by with 1-2 sufficiently rare Anti-Super metals, especially as you have a single source of powers (magic). It helps that magic users tend to overly rely on thier magic (have spend a lot of points in it), so they lack in other skills.

i.e. that anti magic metal might make miserable locks (so you have to use wild west style cell bars), but no mage has any strenght or skill at picking locks without thier spells.

 

One Piece is a Super-Setting and has the Devil Fruits powers. But everyone who has them goes totally limp and unable to move when under water - or touching a certain rare stone. The stone can be weaponized and cells can be laced with it. Of course powers cannot easily get "past" bars (and if they do, just put it on thier ankle restraints).

If you want to make the Antimagic material easier to use, say it produce a sort of "Antimatgic Field" when enough is present at once. Every cell/prison could be it's own "dead zone" this way. One example was in Bleach where the "Super Power immune wall" also projected a "shield" that blocked incursions from Air (and I asume from underground as well). The characters end up punching through it with the right specialist, and a lot more power then was expected from them and still barely make it.

[DShomshak]

Islands suitable for magic academies?

 

Wizard Island, in Crater Lake, Oregon.

 

Dean Shomshak

[drunkonduty]

I can see the Fae being especially drawn to the Isle of Avalon.You know, from nostalgia and all.

[Steve]

Regarding the breakdown of radioactive substances, I'm considering a larger effect in that all transuranic elements break down. Nuclear reactions for power generation or weapons and the revised physics caused by the Sidhe gates flooding Earth with magic just don't mix. Such elements still exist in small quantities, but large concentrations causes a rapid breakdown due to an accelerated half-life.

 

However, borrowing a concept from CthulhuTech, in the mid-1980s a new power source was discovered that became known popularly as Magitech, although it more closely matches the idea of Zero-Point Energy. It draws power from a subdimension now accessible as a result of the introduction of magic and enables the generation of electricity as well as powering vehicles with Magitech motors.

 

Except for the manufacture of plastics and other chemicals obtained from crude oil, the need for fossil fuels dried up within a decade in many countries.

[Markdoc]

Except for the manufacture of plastics and other chemicals obtained from crude oil, the need for fossil fuels dried up within a decade in many countries.

 

That's going to have pretty major effects: Russia's gone already, so they are out of the picture, but economies across the middle east, parts of Africa and Latin America - not to mention the US southwest, Alaska and Canada - are going to shrink like popped balloons. That's going to add substantially to social and civic unrest on top of that already generated by the war. On the other side, some people are going to get very, very rich off magitech, which mean new corporations and influence groups.

 

I can see two interesting possibilities. If the Seelie were awake to the possibilities of magitech, or were needed to get it working, they might control some of the world's largest companies, a fact which might not be loved by the general population. On the other hand, they come from a feudal culture, and might not have been alive to the ideas of corporations and mass production: if was humans who exploited this, the Fae might feel like part of their birthright has been stolen ...

 

cheers, Mark

[Steve]

I would see the Seelie as necessary partners for the creation of Magitech, and I might even have a company called that in this world that licenses the technology. Having one or more Seelie noble families involved with the company would make sense.

 

While the elimination of the need for burning fossil fuels to provide power would depress a number of regional economies that depended on producing coal, oil and natural gas, I could also see an economic bonanza for those regions that embraced it. A Magitech power source would provide cheap electricity, and cheap power fuels economic booms.

 

As of this world's version of 2013, a Magitech engine can be made small enough to fit into a car or large enough to power a city. While it requires no fuel to run, drawing its power from a subdimension, it would require regular monitoring and service by certified technicians to maintain the containment spells, a job opportunity for the magically able. The green energy crowd might also love it.

 

Because of the social upheavals due to the war and the invention of Magitech, some regions might be very unstable and economically depressed. The untainted regions of China outside the barrier wall containing the Dark Lord's former realm are ruled by warlords and other countries of the Earth have probably broken apart into smaller pieces. Europe, sitting next to a goblin and witch-haunted nightmare realm was probably slow to recover, although Britain, separated by ocean, might have rebounded quicker. They might have also been more welcoming of the Sidhe.

[DShomshak]

Historically, it's always taken 40-50 years for new technologies to go from "lab curiosity/prototype" to economically valuable, widely-used technology. (See history of electricity, automobile, nuclear power, computer.) So while you might have magitech power follow a faster course for reasons of romance, it might be interesting to have this revolution still be ongoing. Fossil fuel-producing regions are seeing their economies collapse *now,* and ditto the companies that were slow to adapt and shift their business plan. Which means, for instance, the rulers of Middle Eastern petro-states are going bugnuts as they see their chief form of influence melting away.

 

Environmental groups will love magitech generators. The movement has always been hampered by seeming to want a magic energy-producing box with no environmental impact of any kind, which does not exist. Now apparently it does! Now, nothing is ever truly easy or cost-free. Magitech energy will have costs and problems that don't seem obvious at first. (Remember the law of the goblin market. The deal that seems too good to be true, is. The price that seems right may be very, very wrong.) Being human, when the true costs of magitech power come out, environmental groups will use all their political influence (now much magnified), media voice and outright deceit to cover it up -- just as the fossil fuel industry and its defenders try to discredit climate change. Or are the supposed costs just an elaborate hoax crafted by the desperate fossil fuel industry in a last-ditch attempt to save itself? Or for even greater complication, is there both a hoax campaign and a real, deeply hidden cost waiting to be discovered?

 

Dean Shomshak

[Ndreare]

The cost is little fairies souls! Or better yet the soul of unborn children. What do you do when all these children are born without mirror neurons?

[bluesguy]

Extended use of Magitech power causes the dimensional 'wall' to weaken.  Possibly allowing much worse things to come thru.

[Steve]

There were actually two ways I was considering going with Magitech as to how it worked.

 

1) Each Magitech generator contained a mindless fire elemental to provide heat that powered a steam energy system. Instead of fuel and air, the elemental drew on the ambient mana around it. Particularly mana-rich zones would thus be ideal places to set up massive generation stations to power cities, since they would be able to use much larger elementals. Silver becomes a valuable material because it is used in the runes containing the elemental within the generator.

 

2) The idea I presented earlier, a form of zero-point energy that draws upon a subdimension to generate power directly. This one is more like the version presented in CthulhuTech.

 

In thinking about it, I suppose both methods could be battling it out in the marketplace. Perhaps America came up with Magitech and a country like Japan or Germany invented the elemental version. That one could be cheaper but have more immediate risks. Like, what if an elemental got loose?