4
$\begingroup$

In my world everyone has magic powers. They aren't super powerful (no murder on sight spells...) but every single person has limited magic. What political, social, military and agricultural things should I worry about when trying to make this world realistic?

The World

  • At the age of 14 people choose a god
  • This god provides a connection to ley lines and allow the people to use magic
  • There are certain materials that can block magic, but the population don't know about them
  • The technology level is quite basic - catapults and metallurgy are advanced, but no gunpowder or computer.

Magic

  1. People all have access to limited telekinesis and telepathy. [By limited this means that they can do it within a 10ft ranges, and only a weight/volume that they would normally be able to lift with their hands.
  2. Everyone has one other power - different depending on your god and the job given to you by the god.
  3. The other powers can be things like (but not limited to) flying, strength, speed, fire breathing, etc.

My question An ideal answer would explain the general (no need for details, but a general overview) of what this magic would do to the world. Any powers which could change the makeup of the world would be identified (e.g. giving characters the ability to kill on touch would change the face of war entirely. As such it is probably better to not give this power, or at least limit it, so it cannot destroy armies in a day)

Improve this question
$\endgroup$
15
  • 1
    $\begingroup$ Harry Potter.... $\endgroup$
    – user81643
    Jan 18, 2021 at 9:58
  • $\begingroup$ Also, in a world where everyone can do something, that something is considered a basic function... So your answer is that in that world you would be asking what would life be without those superpowers. $\endgroup$
    – user81643
    Jan 18, 2021 at 10:00
  • 3
    $\begingroup$ It would look mostly green, brown and grey, with splashes of other colours here and there. $\endgroup$
    – Kilisi
    Jan 18, 2021 at 11:09
  • 1
    $\begingroup$ If you took our present day world and explained it a bit differently to somebody, it would definitely sound like almost everyone possesses magic. There is limited telepathy, and you can you can even invoke somebody's True Name to communicate or even bind to do your service. You can conjure up money from thin air. What is it? Telephones. Telecommunication = telepathy. Knowing somebody's phone number or nickname on a platfrom allows you to talk to them. You can even pay wirelessly. Sounds mundane to us but surely "everybody has magic" will feel mundane for inhabitants of the setting. $\endgroup$
    – VLAZ
    Jan 18, 2021 at 14:43
  • 1
    $\begingroup$ This is an example of a high-concept question. You're asking us to create your entire world given a premise. That's not what this site is for. If you want to know the impacts of a specific ability on a specific aspect of your world, you might ask that as a separate question. But asking for everything given everyone can do anything is far outside this site's scope. $\endgroup$
    – Frostfyre
    Jan 18, 2021 at 16:46

3 Answers 3

Reset to default
6
$\begingroup$

This type of magic is no different from technology.

Talking with people on different continents, who you won't ever meet personally, but they can pay your work. Eavesdropping others by tricky video calls and shared cloud accounts. States in cold war use the Internet as a battlefield to eavesdrop and manipulate each other.

The parallelism between our current world and yours are these:

Ours Yours
Roughly at reaching adulthood, people choose a profession At the age of 14 people choose a god
Learning a lot about our profession gives us special abilities This god provides a connection to ley lines and allow the people to use magic
There are certain things/situations where your profession can be made non-working and you have no chance to avoid these There are certain materials that can block magic, but the population don't know about them
The magic level is zero, you might believe and pray The technology level is quite basic - catapults and metallurgy are advanced, but no gunpowder or computer.
Most people have access to phones, internet and machines. People all have access to limited telekinesis and telepathy.
Most professions has some correlation to certain devices, we can't use, or only inefficiently can use the machines of other professions Everyone has one other power - different depending on your god and the job given to you by the god.
All the machines can do something, like cut hair, drill holes in a wall, or kill the internet connection of a server on another continent The other powers can be things like (but not limited to) flying, strength, speed, fire breathing, etc.

So, get any story in our current world, adapt the parallelisms and you have your synapse.

Improve this answer
$\endgroup$
5
  • 1
    $\begingroup$ The "god" aspect could even be choosing your <insert technology> manufacturer or maintainer. For example, with phones - choosing the brand of a phone an impact of what you have available. It's not quite exclusive and you can also change easily but it's still a parallel one can draw. The same can be observed with other types of hardware - PCs might differ in functionality between Windows, Mac, *nix. Ever further back you'd have to choose hardware manufacturer which defined what you can even run. $\endgroup$
    – VLAZ
    Jan 18, 2021 at 14:47
  • $\begingroup$ @VLAZ Well, I tried to make my answer more generic - being in the IT is only a subset of the professions. $\endgroup$
    – Gray Sheep
    Jan 18, 2021 at 14:58
  • $\begingroup$ To be clear, I absolutely agree with the answer. I just wanted to mention another parallel that can be alluded to. Just stuff one can choose to model the "god" analogy to. Although, yes - yours is generic enough. My comment just serves as supplemental information. $\endgroup$
    – VLAZ
    Jan 18, 2021 at 15:07
  • $\begingroup$ The difference is that our world requires learning. The OP's world just has one choose a god, at an age before they've learned to think. $\endgroup$
    – NomadMaker
    Jan 18, 2021 at 19:10
  • $\begingroup$ @NomadMaker choosing a high school happens around the same age for people IRL. In some cases the education you pursue has very little practical effect. In other cases, it can shape your future career more. That's still something you choose around the age of 12-14. That's today - in times past people would have even less of a choice of what career to pursue after their twenties and choices even earlier than 14 would influence them more. $\endgroup$
    – VLAZ
    Jan 19, 2021 at 12:05
3
$\begingroup$

What political, social, military and agricultural things should I worry about when trying to make this world realistic?

Political positions affected by magical powers

I guess a great way to "balance" things out would be to not allow a person to have a unique power, let's say there's a single person in the world that can change someone's thoughts for 10 minutes, something along this way, but he is the only one that can do it. Therefore, it would be "easy" to him to grab a great political position just by using his powers to himself because there would be no one that knows about it, but if there was more people with this power, it would be easier to detect such things and prevent one person from dominating such powerful positions easily. Maybe there's a way to know a person's power just by looking at them? Or maybe every single power has a negative effect after using too much

Military positions

Well, here is the easy one, in a military stance I guess it would be simple to just take everyone that has combat magic powers, like you described:

The other powers can be things like (but not limited to) flying, strength, speed, fire breathing, etc.

I guess all of those would fit perfectly at a military position and since every army would have similar magical powers it would be already balanced and "realistic".

Agricultural impact

Now that's where the fun begins, here you will need to let your criativity take place.

Manipulating nature: If there's a power such as this, you could turn a 5 year tree growing process to an almost instant process, or let's say you think bananas are too small then people could manipulate it to be bigger or to have more nutrients, things like that. Note that this would have a heavy impact in economy, I think.

Elements controlling: Air and water controlling could be really good at someone's farm, no rain for days? No worry, you can make your own rain. A tornado is coming to destroy your crops and your house? No worry, you can control it and make it disappear.

Simply talking to plants and animals: Now this is a good one, let's say you have hundreds of cows or sheeps or chickens or any crops at all, you could just talk to them and know what's actually hapenning and if they need something, you could know exactly how an animal is feeling so if one of them is sick you would know pretty early the simptons they are feeling and therefore take action before it agravates.

Medical properties: It would be way easier to identify and use plants for medical purposes using magic without the need of any scientific apparatus.

This list could go on forever, but I think these are great starter points, from here on you can just use your imagination, hope this helps you.

Improve this answer
$\endgroup$
2
  • $\begingroup$ your first point was helpful. Do you have any comments on there being guardian powers given to some - natural policemen etc... or does that make sense? I'd appreciate any input $\endgroup$
    – ArtickokeAndAnchovyPizzaMonica
    Jan 18, 2021 at 13:21
  • 1
    $\begingroup$ I think it does make sense, let's say some people were given these guardian powers now the policemen knows when someone is using his "mind-control" power on someone else, preventing them from being controlled to do bad things like assaulting or robbing stuff. Or maybe a super firefighter which could blow away the fire just with air from his lungs and be resistant to fire, idk. It's up to how you would fit them into your world. $\endgroup$
    – Archerspk
    Jan 18, 2021 at 13:44
0
$\begingroup$

Decades ago, probably in the previous millennium, I read an article in a science fiction magazine which described a typical day in the life of a wizard using magic, and then pointed out that the readers were just as much wizards as the one whose day was described, doing everything that the wizard did, only with advanced technology and not magic.

In advanced present day societies, everyone has access to technology that would have been considered magical centuries ago, and might have been considered to be silly and impossible science fiction that could never happen mere decades before it was invented.

Even in poor and backwards countries, many people have some degree of access to advanced technology that might have seemed magical a few decades or centureis earlier.

So your world sounds like it could be similar to our world in some ways. So maybe your world would resemble our world in some ways.

Improve this answer
$\endgroup$

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .