Laws and Magic

[DShomshak]

What if an elemental gets loose?

 

Read "Operation: Salamander," in Poul Anderson's Operation: Chaos.

 

In other matters, have any all-Fae nations appeared and sought UN representation? Selkies and other sea-fairies (and there are many different kinds!) might seek to claim sections of ocean as sovereign territories. Or the jinn might try claiming the Empty Quarter in Arabia, sections of the Sahara or other deserts as territory for their kingdoms. (I especially recommend the lost city of Ubar in Arabia as a breach-point, and a great place for one of the jinn kings to place a capital.) Several Muslim countries might side with the jinn in this political effort: The Koran includes a chapter addressed to the jinn, and Muslim doctrine holds that many jinn are Muslims. (There are also Christian, Jewish and pagan jinn, which could add some extra excitement to Middle Eastern politics.)

 

Dean Shomshak

[Steve]

I did plan on having the Jinn appear. The two most common of them would be the Djinn and the Effreet. Of the Jinn, those that sided with the Dark Lord would be known as the Shaytan.

 

Thanks for the city suggestion of Ubar. With magic, such a lost city in the desert could be raised overnight, especially during the years of the war when magic was more powerful than it is now. I did not know there could be Jewish or Christian Jinn, since I thought they would either be pagan or Muslim. The idea of fire-using Effreet getting involved with terrorists is a scary idea.

 

In the fifty years since Arrival Day, the oceans did become inhabited by Fae and half-Fae who can thrive in water. While they haven't gone so far as to declare a single nation of Atlantis, there are city-states that have formed on the continental shelves. Half-Fae of an aquatic kind would probably follow an Aquaman set of abilities, being able to survive on both land and sea.

[Lucius]

Being rational, freewilled creatures just like Humans, all manner of Fae, including Djinn, are as apt to follow and practice any given belief system as Humans are. The Djinn in the Arabian Nights practiced every religion known to the cultures the tales originated in.(I do seem to recall a lot of Yazidi and Zoroastrians, but the "good" Djinn were of course always good Muslims)

 

Some of them are probably going to take up Human systems (for some reason I like the idea of a group of Marxist Atheist Djinn) and conversely many Humans are likely to take up systems originating with the Fae (now try to figure out what kind of religion they have that justifies some of the odd taboos that turn up in folklore, such as never give a Faerie clothing. And is the aversion to iron - another trait the Djinn share with Celtic Sidhe - an innate weakness or a culture based fear? Or both?)

 

And of course the interaction of the two worlds will inevitably spawn new religious systems and transform, in some cases re-invigorate, old ones. Magic ability turns up mostly in females? Want to bet that has an impact on the popularity of those Pagan religions such as Wicca that emphasize Goddess worship?

 

Lucius Alexander

 

The palindromedary notes that Lucius Alexander was a Religious Studies Major - all he ever thinks about is sects, sects, sects.

[DShomshak]

I've encountered the suggestion -- not entirely serious -- that Marxism should be considered the fourth great Abrahamic religion.

 

According to The Wild Rue: A Study of Mohammedan Magic and Folklore in Iran by Bess Allen Donaldson (1938), Tututash is the king of the Jewish jinn. Masidus is kin of the Christian jinn. Mohammed himself converted the jinn kings Abdur-Rahman and Abdul-Kadir to Islam. The book also mentions kings named Talu Khush and Masitash, but if their religion was given it didn't make it into my notes. It is said of Masitash, however, that he has 300,000 slaves, each a king of other jinn. In related beings, Iblis rules the evil Divs and Malik Afshan rules the benign Peris.

 

Dean Shomshak

[TheQuestionMan]

Djinn Subspecies

Efrit - Fire Elemental

Divs - Air Elemental

Malik - Earth Elemental

Peris - Water Elemental

[Steve]

Having a type of jinn for each elemental type makes a certain sense. I was previously only aware of Djinn and Efreet, not the water and earth types.

[Steve]

Getting back to legal issues, would a trial requiring a jury of your peers need twelve spellcasters when the accused is a wizard?

[Ndreare]

Would a trial of a woman require 12 women jurors or a white male in his 30s require nothing but white males in their 30s?

 

Seperating the jury pool would inherntly say that spell casters are either superior or inferior to the general population.

[Steve]

Women and white men aren't able to magically charm people or call down a deadly curse on someone that offends them, so that is why I am wondering if a "peer" may need to be redefined a bit when magic ability is real and staring society in the face.

 

If a percentage of the population is able to wield magic, why not have special courts for trying those who use magic to commit crimes? You'd need bailiffs who are able to control the prisoner and a judge who can resist mental domination. If ordinary people have no defense against magical mental domination or magical threats, having jurors be spellcasters themselves might be necessary to ensure a fair trial.

[IndianaJoe3]

Seperating the jury pool would inherntly say that spell casters are either superior or inferior to the general population.

 

That wouldn't make it inappropriate in a fantasy world.

[NuSoardGraphite]

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?

I would go with option C: both are battling it out to dominate the marketplace.

 

Here's the problem with the two technologies:

 

Elemental engines have moral questions, and Faerie-Rights groups claim that such engines are tantamount to slavery.  They claim that elementals have intelligence and thus are eligible for the same rights as any other sentient being. While not created by the opposing Magic Engine industry, it is heavily funded by them (and also by the waning fossil fuel industry)

 

Magic Engines seem the answer to everything.  Except for the fact that they draw on the ambient magical energies of the universe.  If the magic-engines reach global saturation, they will use that energy faster than the earth can replenish it....meaning that eventually all life on the earth will begin to wither and die....and much faster than the Climate Change scenario created by the unrestricted use of fossil fuels...

 

The answer could be a new magical Fusion Engine, that uses minor elementals with no (very low?) intelligence and the Zero-point magic engine that pulls in ambient magical energy, but at a much slower rate than the stand alone Magic Engine.  The Magic Engine feeds constant energy to the Elemental which keeps the elemental from being used up within the engine.  And the unintelligent minor elemental is just as happy powering an engine as it is regulating a camp bonfire...

[Christopher]

Women and white men aren't able to magically charm people or call down a deadly curse on someone that offends them, so that is why I am wondering if a "peer" may need to be redefined a bit when magic ability is real and staring society in the face.

 

If a percentage of the population is able to wield magic, why not have special courts for trying those who use magic to commit crimes? You'd need bailiffs who are able to control the prisoner and a judge who can resist mental domination. If ordinary people have no defense against magical mental domination or magical threats, having jurors be spellcasters themselves might be necessary to ensure a fair trial.

Do you need a jury of Programmers and System Administrators to judge a Hacker? More likely both sides would call in experts of the field to give thier opinion.

 

There is the possibility of influencing the Jury or Judge, but there might be counter measures:

Putting the Accused in a Glasscage with magic proof material, for example. As long as magic is around, someone should have figured out how to enchant material magic proof (at least tremporarily) or how to work those 1-2 antimagic Elements into Glass. The Fae had to incacerate thier Criminals some way as well, so they might have experience how to do it.

Or if Video links are not enough to target spells*, having the Accused join via Video Link is a possibility.

 

*It is default Hero Rule that Clairsentiences cannot be used for a targetting Lock, even if bought for a Targetting Sense. (Unless you buy Targetting on Clairsentience in addition to the actual Sense you use through it).

 

Magic Engines seem the answer to everything.  Except for the fact that they draw on the ambient magical energies of the universe.  If the magic-engines reach global saturation, they will use that energy faster than the earth can replenish it....meaning that eventually all life on the earth will begin to wither and die....and much faster than the Climate Change scenario created by the unrestricted use of fossil fuels...

I think you misread that part. They do not feed of the Earths Magic Field. They draw power from a Dimension that became accessible due to magic being around (and it skewing with all kinds of Universal Constants, at least on earth).

Also, the Earth started non-magical in the first place. It had an influx of magic when the protals were opened plus perhaps some "leaking" through the seals. The only beings dependant on magic are the Fae and other dimensional immigrants. Normal earth lifeforms developed without magic and can propably go back to work without it easily.

[NuSoardGraphite]

 

 

I think you misread that part. They do not feed of the Earths Magic Field. They draw power from a Dimension that became accessible due to magic being around (and it skewing with all kinds of Universal Constants, at least on earth).

Also, the Earth started non-magical in the first place. It had an influx of magic when the protals were opened plus perhaps some "leaking" through the seals. The only beings dependant on magic are the Fae and other dimensional immigrants. Normal earth lifeforms developed without magic and can propably go back to work without it easily.

Oh, I read it.  Just throwing ideas out into the wind.

[NuSoardGraphite]

 

 

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.

 

 

And this sounds to me like the Earth does have ambient magical energy that flows through it.  So my suggestions still stand.

[Steve]

After some consideration, I think it would probably make more sense to keep juries as being randomly selected from the total population instead of limiting the pool to just spellcasters for jurors. A magic-resistant box to hold the defendant or having really powerful spellcasters attend via closed-circuit TV is a workable idea.

 

If jurors were only spellcasters, any non-guilty verdict would probably attract accusations of different standards for spellcasters.

[Steve]

Regarding Magitech, when Arcadia's energies spilled into Earth, it did a couple of things. First, it reconfigured Earth's natural energies into a higher state. It was like Earth was an electron that jumped to a higher energy state. Second, it weakened the barriers that separate Earth from other dimensions, making them more permeable.

 

I've been contemplating the Sephirotic Tree of Life structure that was written about in Hero sourcebooks. This version of Earth was previously a non-magical Malkuth world, but then it received a massive influx of energy from Arcadia, a world higher up on the Tree. I've been pondering options for how high up it was (Yesod? Tiferet?). Those energies changed this Earth's magical energy state into a higher one.

 

Magitech draws its power from another dimension now accessible because of the change in permeability. Elementals are summoned from another dimension and draw power from Earth's now higher mana state.

 

It was this higher energy state that allowed the immigrants from Arcadia to survive, albeit in a reduced form. Many became ill during this transition down to a lower-state world than the one they lived in before. Many lost their ability to perform "magic" and were left with only a few minor talents.

 

Some of the groups that came from Arcadia could not adapt and vaporized when the portals were sealed.

[DShomshak]

"Having a type of jinn for each elemental type makes a certain sense. I was previously only aware of Djinn and Efreet, not the water and earth types."

 

I think this may be QM's own notion, not folklore. It's a plausible notion: Tradition says that some jinn live on Earth (they favor tombs, deserts, ruins, neglected gardens, and other derelict places), deep underground, in water, or in the upper air. However, God made all jinn from smokeless fire. One oddball classification divides jinn into those with wings who fly, jinn who appear as snakes or dogs, and jinn who travel constantly. But no other source pays any attention to this classification.

 

If QM has a source that isn't from a game (D&D and, Wikipedia says, at least one video game have jinn of the four elements) I'd like to know of it. Share, man!

 

Jinn are also called Efreet (Afrit, Ifrit, other variations), Marid, and other names. According to Sir Richard Burton's notes to the Arabian Nights, though, an "Ifrit" is just an especially powerful jinn (and likelymalevolent), while a "Marid" (Arabic, "Contumelious One") is just an especially bad tempered jinn.

 

Getting back to laws and magic, I don't think there'd be special all-spellcaster juries for cases of magical crime. At least not in the US. That would come very close to the "Blue Ribbon" juries composed all of professional people and pillars of the community that the Supreme Court found unconstitutional.

 

Dean Shomshak

[Steve]

To me, having Jinn be spirits made of smokeless fire would tend to translate to them all being gifted with fire magic, some just emphasize their fire more than others. Djinn or Efreet could then just be a tribal thing, with all of them having the same abilities.

 

How would Houri fit into this? They are another type of Jinn I thought.

[DShomshak]

I'd never heard that until I saw houris listed in the "varieties of jinn" links at the bottom of the Wikipedia page. Following the link, the "Houri" page says that mortals and jinn can both be transfigured into houris in Paradise. (Which was news to me. What can I say, I'm more interested in jinn mythology than Muslim theology.)

 

Another possibility is that someone, some time, used "jinn" to mean all kinds of supernatural entities. This sort of linguistic sloppiness is common among people who don't realize that gamers will come along later and insist on well-defined categories!

 

Whatever the reason, houris still seem to be creatures of Heaven rather than of Faerie. At least that's how the description and explanation feels to me.

 

On other matters, did you know there's a mountain range in Norway called the Jotun Fjells? Literally, the Mountains of the Giants. This seems just too perfect as a place for the dwarfs, trolls, frost giants (hrimthurssar, if you want to distinguish them from other giants) and other Nordic faerie-folk to invade.

 

Dean Shomshak

[Markdoc]

Another possibility is that someone, some time, used "jinn" to mean all kinds of supernatural entities. This sort of linguistic sloppiness is common among people who don't realize that gamers will come along later and insist on well-defined categories!

 

This. Just like the confusion over the word troll (which, as used in early Scandinavian folklore means basically "magic being"), Jinn, were "magic beings. All-powerful genies with awesome cosmic powers and itty-bitty living spaces, yes, but also local nature spirits and undead could all be "jinn" in Arab myth. Basically,the Arab tradition is as fuzzy as the European ones with regard to supernatural beings. 

 

Popular islamic myth placed the jinn (the hidden ones) between the malayka (angels), and banu adam (humankind or “children of adam”). So basically, you can, very easily, make an equivalence between fae in celtic-derived mythology, trolls (in Scandinavian-derived mythology) and jinn (in Arab-derived mythology). They’re all just human names for the same sort of mutable, magical beings. This is actually exactly what I have done in my game: the fae are a race of shapeshifters, and like humans, come in a variety of levels of ability. Some can change shape nearly at will, others change as they grow, and thereafter change with difficulty, it at all. So to humans, a lithe, beautiful fae is an elf. A short, ugly fae is a dwarf or a goblin. A big ugly fae is a troll or an ogre, and a really big fae is a giant (ugly is optional there).

 

But they area ll basically one race, and all share certain features in common – a violent allergy to certain salts and metals, a natural facility with magic, the ability to see in near-darkness, a tendency to burn and go blind in direct sunlight, a very long lifespan and a tendency to wild impulsiveness that (to humans) verges on madness, etc.

 

Interestingly the history of the fae in my game world (which is a distant future Earth, inspired in many ways by Jack Vance’s fantasies) the Fae entered the world through gates in a similar way to the situation we are discussing here, and a Dark Lord was also responsible. However, they were a little less benign: having arrived, they cast major ritual magics to create a black disc in Earth orbit that blocked out much of the sunlight, plunging the world into crisis (an event known in-game as the Dark Millenium) and killing off much of the human population in the process. Eventually, the humans were able to close their gates (cutting off reinforcements, if not magic) and shut down the darkness spell. The fae are now lurkers in forgotten places and only come out by night, or if protected by magic. The Dark millennium was thousands of years ago in the setting's timeline, so only historians and the more pedantic sorts of mage know that fae are not native to Earth (nor are many of the things that came through the gates with them – vampires and lycanthropes among them) but the two sentient races have never been friends. Despite this, friendship between individual humans and fae exists – end even love on occasion: fae in my game world can breed with almost anything, so they are responsible not just for humans with fae blood and strange powers, but also for beasts with mystical powers.

 

Cheers, Mark

[Steve]

Having Fae/Trolls/Jinn and others be offshoots of a common race is what I've been trying to set up. Many cultures around the world have some sort of "Fae" being in its folk tales.

 

I was picturing "Arcadia" as being a semi-twisted mirror image of Earth, so different regions have their own people's just as Earth does. So the Fae and Trolls were in Europe, the different tribes of the Jinn were in the Middle East and so on.

[Markdoc]

Sure: I do the same shtick. Fae in different regions have different cultures. You wouldn't expect the culture of the fae of the burning desert to resemble that the fae of the vast, quiet northern forests. But as natural magicians and natural shapeshifters, that cultural difference spills over into their magic and their actual forms. So "Jinn" typically look physically different from "fire giants" even though both cultures are obsessed with fire magic, bulging pectorals, and roasting impudent humans who trespass on their domains, without the required degree of grovelling.

 

cheers, Mark

[NuSoardGraphite]

I generally translate "Fae, Jinn, Troll, Kami, Hsien, " etc to be "magical being".  They are all essentially the same thing (not necessarily the same breed or species, but their source of power is probably similar) just informed by the culture/religion/mythology of the people who named them such.

 

For an example of this, the Syfy/Canadian series Lost Girl* assumes that all supernatural creatures in the world are Fae of one type or another, including beings such as Succubi (the main character is a succubus) Lycanthropes and Vampires...

 

*if you haven't seen it, I suggest giving Lost Girl a viewing.  It can be found on Netflix, it's how I'm watching it now.  It's not particularly great, but it has it's moments (and it will make you face-palm at times as well...especially when the characters mispronounce the names of well-known supernaturals) It shows a pretty decent example of how supernaturals integrate themselves into society (albeit on the downlow in this series) with a dynamic of Seelie and Unseelie vying for political advantage over one another.

[Steve]

I've only watched the first couple of episodes of Lost Girl so far, but it hasn't been able to hold my interest very well.

[Steve]

Shifting to another legally thorny issue: Homonculi and Fetches.

 

Beings that are unable to reproduce and can only be made through magic, how might the legal system deem them after a few decades to adapt to their presence?

 

In my "Age of Aquarius" setting, a homunculus is a commercial product. By using a bit of blood, a very small amount of flesh and the proper alchemical reagents, a humanoid being can be produced. This can be something as small as a doll or as large as human-sized.

 

In a sense, they are replicants created through alchemy. They can bleed, feel pain and die, but they are unable to have children of their own. They need sustenance like any other living thing.

 

The alchemy that makes them allows for mass production, and it can also gift them with certain enhancements. For example, a homonculus can be made that can survive under water or in hostile environments like deep mines and such. The price of a homunculus is roughly equivalent to a car. The more expensive ones have more abilities and higher intelligence than your average human.

 

A fetch is more limited and less permanent, crafted from various materials and enchanted to appear lifelike. They have short lifespans, maybe a year or two. A fetch is also much cheaper to buy.