PDA

View Full Version : Isolated magic using society



Azel
2013-07-16, 07:56 AM
Hi all,
Long time lurker, first time poster here.
I'm planning to DM a campaign, working on the setting right now.

Imagine if you will, a magicless world, early bronze age.

Isolated island, imagine the size of Ireland maybe a bit smaller, with elves as the only sentient race, and with no contact with humans or anyone else yet.

Then I'm thinking that magic can be obtained via deals/pacts with nasty demons, eldritch abominations, extra-dimensional entities, something like that; if you've read any Elric stories, think along the lines of how he gets his magic.

This obviously would change the society of the elf island quite a bit, so then I'm imagining some pretty nasty wars, attempts by some to stop this "evil" magic, but failing.
The magic users, corrupted by their newfound power and greed, go on to perpetrate something along the lines of super sadistic ultra violence torture genocide upon the non magic users.
The surviving non magic using elves decide that this isn't good, and flee in boats.

So my question to you is;
If left in a highly strung, paranoid state, with everyone being a magic user who has sold their soul in effect or dying, what would the society look like after 1000 years?


Assuming it has no contact with outside peoples and remains highly fractous.

I'm thinking some kind of Byzantine plotting structure with elves plotting and scheming to gain and advantage over their neighbouring magic users.

But could a society where every single person is a powerful magic users, all of them antagonistic toward each other, ever possibly survive 1000 years?

Here is the rest of the setting, and where the players will fit in if you are interested.




Fleeing elves come to mainland, and find primitive humans lacking even bronze working technology and agriculture, so basically hunter gatherers.

The fleeing elves decide , hey after being almost wiped out by our brethrin some slaves would make building a new life easier.

Humans enslaved. The non magic using elves then begin to develop into a roman/greek style culture, but with the elf upper class maintaining large estates with many slaves. Think large plantations worked by humans, with elves controlling 99% of the wealth, but they vary between sadistic slave overseers and benevolent masters to indifferent this is the way it is, depending upon individual personality.

Fast forward ~1000 years, and the slave owning elves have not developed any magic due to the things they saw on their homeland ect. Due to the slave culture they ave not progressed technologically much either.

I then plan on having this elf slave culture interacting with various "barbarian" cultures who have just migrated to nearby and bring horses and a vibrant young people with them. Players are going to be slaves, then some plot along the lines of a slave rising and the clashes with barbarians.

Then some magic using elfs from the magic elf island will begin to turn up on the mainland, and will cause problems setting up a three culture conflict for the players to be dropped into.

Mostly evil magic using elves.
slave owning non magic, wealthy elves who hate magic.
Barbarian horse tribes.


Thanks for any replies!

DeusMortuusEst
2013-07-16, 09:55 AM
Firstly, 1000 years is a very long time. Keeping an entire civilization in stasis, more or less, is not very plausible. Looking at the backstory as a player, my first reaction would be: Why haven't their society stabilized over all those years and evolved(Or perhaps they are still incredibly primitive, like some of the polynesian [IIRC] tribes that remain in the stone age)?

Why haven't they left the island? This is especially valid if they have teleportation magic.

My guess would be that the island society has gone through several different types of government through the years. Monarchies, dicatorships, democracies etc. Each has been overthrown and replaced, sometimes with long periods of anarchy in between. Just pick the one you want them to have when you start the campaign. If you want them to be the 'bad guys' I suggest a dictatorship, or democracy to confuse the players :smallamused:

Look at how much we've accomplished over the last 1000 years. A lot of hit has been exploration. You need a really good explanation as to why they haven't left their island.

Azel
2013-07-16, 10:41 AM
Well for the lack of expansion, in the last 1000 years we have explored and developed a lot, but comparatively 4000 to 3000 years ago a lot less development occurred.

I agree that them not leaving an island for 1000 years is a bit contrived.
However for teleportation magic, I'm going to go with them not having any idea of what possible destinations could be, hence a sort of societal blindness towards teleport.
ie. " teleport? why would I want to learn how to do that? this is the only place of interest and I'm already here" sort of mentality. But first I need to come up with some reason as to why they didn't expand for a long time.

And I chose 1000 years as the time scale to allow for the long life span of elves, so it would be akin to when their great grandparents were alive sort of thing.

What do you think of the following;
Population of the island being mostly killed off due to factional infighting, and once one ultimate victor was able to emerge and establish a monarchy, they were few in number, perhaps only a few hundred remaining.

This could leave them collectively paranoid that the others would murder them to some small increase in social status perhaps; leaving a paranoid magic using society that can become decadant and inwardly focused.

Couple that with a long life span, low birth rate, and high murder rate, by 1000 years later they could be reduced to a few dozen ageing high level magic users.
I can then justify the youngest of them leaving to seek out other young ish elves perhaps....


I like your suggestion of having a democratic society though, I think using that for the slace owning elves would be best. Just like the ancient athienians, everyone gets a vote, except the slaves, which are the most numerous group.

Arkhosia
2013-07-16, 11:31 AM
Well for the lack of expansion, in the last 1000 years we have explored and developed a lot, but comparatively 4000 to 3000 years ago a lot less development occurred.

I agree that them not leaving an island for 1000 years is a bit contrived.
However for teleportation magic, I'm going to go with them not having any idea of what possible destinations could be, hence a sort of societal blindness towards teleport.
ie. " teleport? why would I want to learn how to do that? this is the only place of interest and I'm already here" sort of mentality. But first I need to come up with some reason as to why they didn't expand for a long time.

And I chose 1000 years as the time scale to allow for the long life span of elves, so it would be akin to when their great grandparents were alive sort of thing.

What do you think of the following;
Population of the island being mostly killed off due to factional infighting, and once one ultimate victor was able to emerge and establish a monarchy, they were few in number, perhaps only a few hundred remaining.

This could leave them collectively paranoid that the others would murder them to some small increase in social status perhaps; leaving a paranoid magic using society that can become decadant and inwardly focused.

Couple that with a long life span, low birth rate, and high murder rate, by 1000 years later they could be reduced to a few dozen ageing high level magic users.
I can then justify the youngest of them leaving to seek out other young ish elves perhaps....


I like your suggestion of having a democratic society though, I think using that for the slace owning elves would be best. Just like the ancient athienians, everyone gets a vote, except the slaves, which are the most numerous group.
Have you been reading up on Drow Societies? :smallbiggrin:

Azel
2013-07-16, 02:07 PM
Nope, I have no idea about how drow societies function.... well, other than they are underground Oo.

JusticeZero
2013-07-16, 02:09 PM
A thousand years is a silly long time. Just come up with a civilization with absolutely none of the traits of the starting one and drop it there. Completely different language, different government, different customs, et cetera.

JusticeZero
2013-07-16, 02:25 PM
in the last 1000 years we have explored and developed a lot, but comparatively 4000 to 3000 years ago a lot less development occurred.Not true. The technology advanced hugely, albeit in areas that we are presently apathetic about. A language only takes a few hundred years to twist to become completely incomprehensible to the people before. Politics shift and change drastically. Customs flipflop all over the place.

..a sort of societal blindness towards teleport.Fifty years and it will be in fashion to scry the depths of the universe to travel as far as possible. People throw out these obscenely large numbers for societies, not realizing that the amount of change in culture that we have seen in the past 100 years is not actually all that unusual in a lot of ways; the difference we've seen is the development of technologies at the same time that have rearranged the infrastructure, which previous developments did not do in so drastic of a manner. From a grand narrative, things look pretty steady, but as you start to focus in, lots of change and upheaval becomes apparent.

Arkhosia
2013-07-16, 03:57 PM
Nope, I have no idea about how drow societies function.... well, other than they are underground Oo.

Drow houses are always vying for favor of Lolth, stepping on each other to get an advantage over the other. For example, a lower-ranking house will besiege another and exterminate it to get a slightly better status, a drow training to be a scout will assassinate another student to eliminate a possible threat to their status, a cleric of Lolth will poison a priestess to advance in rank. Heck, a drow will even betray his best friend if they so much as turn their back to him.
And the theocracy doesn't try to stop these murderous bids for power. There is no protection for you except if you are vigilant, have lots of money/troops/favor of Lolth, or a powerful ally, and you can't even trust said ally.

To sum it all up, the drow will crush you under their heel if it means the difference between one less crossbow pointing at your back, one less powerful group to fear, or one less person between you and the high priestess-ship

TheStranger
2013-07-16, 04:03 PM
Not true. The technology advanced hugely, albeit in areas that we are presently apathetic about. A language only takes a few hundred years to twist to become completely incomprehensible to the people before. Politics shift and change drastically. Customs flipflop all over the place.
Fifty years and it will be in fashion to scry the depths of the universe to travel as far as possible. People throw out these obscenely large numbers for societies, not realizing that the amount of change in culture that we have seen in the past 100 years is not actually all that unusual in a lot of ways; the difference we've seen is the development of technologies at the same time that have rearranged the infrastructure, which previous developments did not do in so drastic of a manner. From a grand narrative, things look pretty steady, but as you start to focus in, lots of change and upheaval becomes apparent.

Everything you say is true, but one of the tropes of D&D (and the fantasy genre in general) is a level of technological stagnation that's not at all realistic. If I'm a player in that game, I can probably accept that these elves have been sitting on this island for a thousand years.

That said, it's pretty hard to imagine a society lasting very long without some level of cooperation. At the end of the day, somebody has to dig the ditches, repair the roads, plant the crops, build the cabinets, and empty the chamber pots - why would anybody do those things for people he's in open conflict with? You could argue that magic is going to replace a lot of that, but I think some level of cooperation is still necessary. Otherwise, you don't really have a "society" in any real sense. Even in "evil" societies, the majority of the population is working towards the survival of the whole, either for their own benefit or because they're forced into it by their evil overlords.

I'd play it as several competing factions, either in open conflict or some type of stalemate. There can be conflict and power struggles within each faction, but there's still some level of unity, if only to keep from being overrun by the other factions.

JusticeZero
2013-07-16, 08:34 PM
You can have perfect technology stagnation and still have rapid social change. Social change is powered by fashion and teenage rebellion, not technology.

tasw
2013-07-16, 10:23 PM
I'd definitely use the drow houses as an example.

Make the magic have a side effect, like say the already low birth rate of elves is made even worse and elves have a slow metabolism, they might be pregnant and vulnerable (and uncomfortable as hell) for 10 years instead of 1 like a human. Add in a violent society that encourages preying on each other and you have a society with a low birth rate AND a strong social push away from bearing children.

In this case they didnt wipe each out totally because they have evolved elaborate rules for social or ritual combat that risks shame and dishonor if your caught not following (of course they still break them, but quietly and rarely).


Then I would have the houses be basically independent city states with lots of magicced up slave labor for the jobs elves dont want to do.

Perhaps you also make there be some essential, extremely rare resource in the island, maybe even essential for their magic so they dont leave the island because they want to control it rather then giving up their shot at it.

I would make allowances for them having some colonial territory outside of the island though. Even if its fairly limited.

Also side note, if you have any black players, you might not want to make them play slaves in the beginning. Still sort of a social sore spot, especially with elves being pale blond people......

Azel
2013-07-18, 12:54 PM
You have all raised valid points.

One thing about rapid technological and societal change is that our only reference point is for human society, I would argue that elf's as a longer lives species, would experience that much less change due to fewer young people with new ideas.

Perhaps instead of 1000 years, a couple centuries would make sense. That was humans would have burnt through several generations, while elves that were young at the start are middle aged.

Also If I had any black players they'd get to be slaves, just like everyone else. I was envisioning my elves more like olive skinned Greeks than Aryans.

magicked up slave labour, and turning the dial down from 11 on the paranoia and violence, would surely allow a society to form, as opposed to a ... non society.

Thanks for your input peoples! It's helpful to point out to glaring flaws in my attempt at worldbuilding :P

endoperez
2013-07-18, 04:53 PM
Good thinking there Azel. If it's only a few hundred years, and if you play up the long lives of elves, you could end up in a situation where the few "first generation" elves managed to gather lots of powers to themselves, and are using that power to keep any others from getting too uppity.
For example, if one specific elf made a pact with a hideously powerful demon that controls time or prophecies or something like that. His pact ensures that whenever an elf makes a pact with a demon, he'll know both of their names 48 hours before the pact comes into power.

If there are several powerful demon-wizards like that, and they're extremely conservative. Perhaps their pacts only let them control people born on the island. If their culture got out of the island, they wouldn't be able to prevent others from becoming just as powerful as them... It would mean that the weaker elves might've tried to escape from the island several times, but horrible things happened every time.

tasw
2013-07-19, 12:01 AM
You have all raised valid points.

One thing about rapid technological and societal change is that our only reference point is for human society, I would argue that elf's as a longer lives species, would experience that much less change due to fewer young people with new ideas.

Perhaps instead of 1000 years, a couple centuries would make sense. That was humans would have burnt through several generations, while elves that were young at the start are middle aged.

Also If I had any black players they'd get to be slaves, just like everyone else. I was envisioning my elves more like olive skinned Greeks than Aryans.

magicked up slave labour, and turning the dial down from 11 on the paranoia and violence, would surely allow a society to form, as opposed to a ... non society.

Thanks for your input peoples! It's helpful to point out to glaring flaws in my attempt at worldbuilding :P

The slave idea might play better in the UK, I cant say. But I know in America telling a black player he was a slave to a greek looking elf instead of a german looking elf wouldnt make much difference.

Sounds like your on a good track with the rest though.

Arkhosia
2013-07-19, 12:15 AM
The slave idea might play better in the UK, I cant say. But I know in America telling a black player he was a slave to a greek looking elf instead of a german looking elf wouldnt make much difference.

Sounds like your on a good track with the rest though.

I wouldn't see how it would cause problems of members of different races' PC's are also suffering the same fate, and that there is not likely to be descrimination between races when it comes to in-game slavery.(the isolated society would most likely not risk enslaving people from other lands in case of the numerous possible dangers that they may not know about in that land, so it seems likely that some of their own race would be enslaved as well).