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Fable Wright
2014-08-15, 04:46 AM
The Setting: For millenia, the land has been at war. Powerful warlords leading tribal clans fight each other for food, resources, and slaves, keeping much of the land in a state of near-barbarism. Some clans, made of magical beings skilled and powerful enough to avoid the fighting of lesser tribes, have managed to develop fairly sophisticated societies, withdrawn from the world at large. However, within the last decade, the landscape has changed: a powerful warlord from a land unknown has shown strength enough to subdue all of the warlords in the land. This newcomer has divided the lands into parcels for the various warlords and disallowing the expansion of territory, set up neutral grounds, and created institutions arbitrating trade between the many warlords. This has created the foundations for a more advanced civilization, and could allow the land to do business with the more advanced civilizations beyond its borders in years to come. However, not all believe that the newcomers' power will last, and tensions among the various warlords is strained at best.

The Setup: Enter the Medusa. They're a race of craftsmen, and had an unassailable advanced civilization developed for centuries before the newcomer came to power. They have extraordinarily long lives, mental capacities above and beyond the standard humanoid races, and their ability to petrify people who meet their gaze makes even their noncombatants some of the more dangerous individuals on the planet. The problem is, they have a very low population and birth rate; there are roughly 4,000 members of the race in existence, with 3500 of them remaining within their home city-fortress. Despite this, they are among the two or three factions that could possibly overthrow or replace the newcomer, and easily the one most able and likely to. Their leader is currently allied to the newcomer, though the leader is ambitious, cunning, and constantly searching for ways to increase the influence of her race.

The Catalyzing Event: One day, a powerful spellcaster appears before the leader of the Medusa, seeking an alliance and offering to create one fully adult Medusa every day of the year for the rest of the spellcaster's life. The new Medusa has all the combat capabilities and cunning of natural-born Medusa, but they have to learn craftsmenship and skilled work from scratch, and have no real life experiences or memories.

The Problem: I am at a loss to describe how this plays out, given the assumption that the Medusa can easily support the influx in population. Within 10 years, the population of the Medusa race could nearly double, then triple in 20. I have no idea what precedents I can draw upon to model this situation's results, and I'm struggling with basic questions like "what biases might there be against the 'artificial' people?" The Playground hasn't let me down yet, so I'm hoping that this won't be the exception.

How do you guys see this scenario playing out?

Slipperychicken
2014-08-15, 05:49 AM
How does this guy "build" medusa? By breathing life into clay sculptures? By manipulating medusa stem cells? Why don't the medusa just demand that he show them how he does it? Any what's keeping these unparalleled craftsmen from reverse-engineering their new comrades?

Also, one presumes that the medusa have some need for population growth, if they're willing to exchange services for it. What are they doing with their new members? Dumping them on the street? Signing them up for armed service? Feeding them to their horrible undersea gods?

Fable Wright
2014-08-15, 12:53 PM
How does this guy "build" medusa? By breathing life into clay sculptures? By manipulating medusa stem cells? Why don't the medusa just demand that he show them how he does it? Any what's keeping these unparalleled craftsmen from reverse-engineering their new comrades?
The way it's done is no secret: this is set in D&D 5th edition, where the highest level spellcasters have access to one 9th level spell per day, and he's offering to use that to create one. Given the dearth of high-level spellcasters in the setting, this is a one-of-a-kind opportunity.

Also, one presumes that the medusa have some need for population growth, if they're willing to exchange services for it. What are they doing with their new members? Dumping them on the street? Signing them up for armed service? Feeding them to their horrible undersea gods?
This is one of the factors I have trouble with. The end goal of this population growth is to increase the presence of Medusa working in foreign lands, either as contractors, bureaucrats, or leaders. The dilemma is that though having naturalized Medusa working and becoming assimilated into other cultures is a good thing, they are likely to be more loyal to the spellcaster that created them and the institutions they work for more than they are the leader of their race. Assimilation into the larger culture of the Medusa race, however, takes time and manpower commitments that would grow steadily, and reduces the 'artificial' Medusa's ability to become naturalized in foreign cultures.

Cazero
2014-08-15, 02:56 PM
The dilemma is that though having naturalized Medusa working and becoming assimilated into other cultures is a good thing, they are likely to be more loyal to the spellcaster that created them and the institutions they work for more than they are the leader of their race. Assimilation into the larger culture of the Medusa race, however, takes time and manpower commitments that would grow steadily, and reduces the 'artificial' Medusa's ability to become naturalized in foreign cultures.
So on one hand, you have a loyalty issue that should be adressed by not sending newborn medusa as foreign agents, and on the other hand, keeping them in the medusa society is the most inefficient way to solve integration of the newborn and adress the new foreign policy.

For the foreign agents, it is a matter of timeframe and loyalty. Regardless of which medusa are sent where, they shouldn't be sent before some diplomatic exchanges and a few months of training/learning local customs and the like. An older, more loyal medusa would require a longer training to get used with the foreign culture, but might already qualify otherwise, wich in itself can save a lot of time. Chosing wether you send a newborn or an old medusa depends of the qualification level of the position, how critical that position is, and how fast you need it filled.

On the subject of integration of the newborn into medusa society, one solution they could quickly figure is petrification, since they are already familiar with it. They could "store" newborn for group release, wich would allow them to organize some kind of school like group teaching without having to let those "born later" unattended. This could greatly reduce the manpower commitment required to integrate them in the population.
Medusa are probably immune to the petrifying gaze of their own specie, but I doubt they are immune to all petrification effects. Nothing should stop them to capture a basilic or use spells for that.

Slipperychicken
2014-08-15, 05:49 PM
This is one of the factors I have trouble with. The end goal of this population growth is to increase the presence of Medusa working in foreign lands, either as contractors, bureaucrats, or leaders. The dilemma is that though having naturalized Medusa working and becoming assimilated into other cultures is a good thing, they are likely to be more loyal to the spellcaster that created them and the institutions they work for more than they are the leader of their race. Assimilation into the larger culture of the Medusa race, however, takes time and manpower commitments that would grow steadily, and reduces the 'artificial' Medusa's ability to become naturalized in foreign cultures.

How does that provide value if they aren't socialized into the medusa culture, or at least made loyal to the medusas' leaders?

If it were me, I'd probably regard the effort to socialize them into the desired societal niche as a long-term investment, while encouraging them to help with breeding to improve population growth. The idea is to take the spellcaster's population bump and convert it into an long-term exponential increase. And as you said, the new ones still need to be taught their technical skills anyhow, so they might as well be conditioned into being faithful toward the race (helping them avoid becoming too loyal to their "daddy" or their "new" foreign homes).

The medusa leaders might make one condition of their deal that the newly created medusa be loyal only to them, and ensure this by brainwashing the medusas as soon as they step off the production line.

As for manpower concerns, the medusa will be fine once they have an education/brainwashing system which can handle 365 new entrants per year.

Thrudd
2014-08-15, 07:15 PM
I hope the wizard has a built in "order 66"/creator override on his medusas, so when the time is right he can flip a magical switch and all the created medusa come under his command, take over the medusa kingdom and make him the leader.

raspberrybadger
2014-08-16, 02:40 AM
The way I see it, one possible use is quick military training, followed by either expansionist warfare or domineering foreign policy. That's not necessarily the smartest use, but because it is a possible use, when other polities start hearing about the population growth, they may try either banding together or individually attempting to disrupt the medusa plan. At that point, it gets complicated fast. Keeping the population growth secret for some time might therefore be advantageous, but that also ups the paranoia factor when the secret does get out.