Sharad9
2018-02-02, 10:27 AM
The setting is one where only women can use magic. All females can access it as it is naturally inborn. It requires training, some females being stronger than others. Magic takes the form of spells and rituals, is time consuming, and requires multiple components. However, it is very powerful and forms the bedrock of society. It is often combined with technology to form a sort of magitech civilization.
Men would be relatively useless other than as cannon fodder compared to spellcasting women. On the other hand, you can afford to lose many men in a society and maintain birth rates, so losing them doesn't cost much.
Magic would be used to save women in child birth (as a wizard, I'd want to make childbirth safer, it would be a high priority). Magic using soldiers would be far more effective than non-magic using soldiers; societies that made the women march to war would wipe out ones that did not. On the other hand, spending women's lives cheaply would cost you your next generation of soldiers.
Finding ways to use relatively useless men to fight effectively would be highly useful; creating magical weapons and tools to give men a chance against female wizards would be useful. The loss of the magic-clad soldier could be cheaper than losing the powerful wizard who equipped them.
We should expect the usual hyperbolic social power curve. So we'd have many women who, despite using magic, are peasants, prior to the equivalent of an industrial revolution. Hedge magic to grow crops and the like. Again, being able to enchant tools to have the men do grunt work becomes useful here, boosting male productivity beyond the simple mundane. Such a society, where armies of expendible men fight for their wizard-queens, and lesser wizards generate weapons for them to use in these proxy-wars, while women who where less good at magic get relegated to hedge-magic, could go on for a while.
The creation of better enchanted tools, where a guide of male-dominated artificers who design and build mundane items to be enchanted, could lead to a technological signularity. As these tools become able to rival and eventually exceed the productivity of a competent wizard at doing various tasks, not only does half of the population become no longer a dead weight on society, but the ability to store value longer than a wizard concentrates on a spell grows the economy. First at a few percentage points faster than population growth, and eventually faster.
The society that embraces this technological revolution and (limited) men's liberation ould experience an increase in power. The art and craft of using magic and technology efficiently together, making lesser wizard's and mere men able to produce goods, weapons and resources at increasing rates, could raise a backwater isolated community to being a regional, then world power in the matter of centuries or decades.
Locally, socieities that mimic this technomagic revolution keep up; those that do not are overwealmed. The leaders of this revolution start to spread over the world, drawing on magical and technological resources via a growing trade network. The increased agricultural productivity and reduced death rate from pointless wars gives them a large population, and their trade craft can destroy entire wizard-citadels if they don't bow down and obey. Still, remnants remain. The idea that men are more expendible and women are in command (the matriarchy) is part and parcel of religion, society, military and trade.
Men carry the enchanted weapons of war and are the blunt edge of the knife. Women command and maintain these weapons and tools, and are only used in combat when everything else fails. Safe "core" zones are built (be they ships or forts), with soldiers deploying out from it in conflict. Women only engage in combat in extreme situations, or in defensive war; it is better to waste a hundred men clad in moonshine and steel than one combat wizard.
With a tradition of a large female:male ratio, the binary family is unlikely. So, women form "covens" of family support. These covens have a variable amount of men in service to them, of varying status, and the men are considered possessions of the coven that own them. A naval vessel will have one or more covens on it, with the crew being owned by that(ose) coven(s). Men can be traded or lent from one coven to another; but men without a coven are considered unnatural and unsafe (feral).
The magictech revolution resulted in men having more rights than they used to; covens can no longer do whatever they want to their men, they have some limited human rights. In some societies men may even have to actually consent to being owned by a coven. Extremely liberal covens exist that let their men have lots of freedom. Some women take a man into a coven and don't manage them at all, as part of "men's liberation". This satisfied the law, while thumbing its nose at tradition.
Given the scenario, what would make males valuable enough to be traded or lent among coves of witches?
Men would be relatively useless other than as cannon fodder compared to spellcasting women. On the other hand, you can afford to lose many men in a society and maintain birth rates, so losing them doesn't cost much.
Magic would be used to save women in child birth (as a wizard, I'd want to make childbirth safer, it would be a high priority). Magic using soldiers would be far more effective than non-magic using soldiers; societies that made the women march to war would wipe out ones that did not. On the other hand, spending women's lives cheaply would cost you your next generation of soldiers.
Finding ways to use relatively useless men to fight effectively would be highly useful; creating magical weapons and tools to give men a chance against female wizards would be useful. The loss of the magic-clad soldier could be cheaper than losing the powerful wizard who equipped them.
We should expect the usual hyperbolic social power curve. So we'd have many women who, despite using magic, are peasants, prior to the equivalent of an industrial revolution. Hedge magic to grow crops and the like. Again, being able to enchant tools to have the men do grunt work becomes useful here, boosting male productivity beyond the simple mundane. Such a society, where armies of expendible men fight for their wizard-queens, and lesser wizards generate weapons for them to use in these proxy-wars, while women who where less good at magic get relegated to hedge-magic, could go on for a while.
The creation of better enchanted tools, where a guide of male-dominated artificers who design and build mundane items to be enchanted, could lead to a technological signularity. As these tools become able to rival and eventually exceed the productivity of a competent wizard at doing various tasks, not only does half of the population become no longer a dead weight on society, but the ability to store value longer than a wizard concentrates on a spell grows the economy. First at a few percentage points faster than population growth, and eventually faster.
The society that embraces this technological revolution and (limited) men's liberation ould experience an increase in power. The art and craft of using magic and technology efficiently together, making lesser wizard's and mere men able to produce goods, weapons and resources at increasing rates, could raise a backwater isolated community to being a regional, then world power in the matter of centuries or decades.
Locally, socieities that mimic this technomagic revolution keep up; those that do not are overwealmed. The leaders of this revolution start to spread over the world, drawing on magical and technological resources via a growing trade network. The increased agricultural productivity and reduced death rate from pointless wars gives them a large population, and their trade craft can destroy entire wizard-citadels if they don't bow down and obey. Still, remnants remain. The idea that men are more expendible and women are in command (the matriarchy) is part and parcel of religion, society, military and trade.
Men carry the enchanted weapons of war and are the blunt edge of the knife. Women command and maintain these weapons and tools, and are only used in combat when everything else fails. Safe "core" zones are built (be they ships or forts), with soldiers deploying out from it in conflict. Women only engage in combat in extreme situations, or in defensive war; it is better to waste a hundred men clad in moonshine and steel than one combat wizard.
With a tradition of a large female:male ratio, the binary family is unlikely. So, women form "covens" of family support. These covens have a variable amount of men in service to them, of varying status, and the men are considered possessions of the coven that own them. A naval vessel will have one or more covens on it, with the crew being owned by that(ose) coven(s). Men can be traded or lent from one coven to another; but men without a coven are considered unnatural and unsafe (feral).
The magictech revolution resulted in men having more rights than they used to; covens can no longer do whatever they want to their men, they have some limited human rights. In some societies men may even have to actually consent to being owned by a coven. Extremely liberal covens exist that let their men have lots of freedom. Some women take a man into a coven and don't manage them at all, as part of "men's liberation". This satisfied the law, while thumbing its nose at tradition.
Given the scenario, what would make males valuable enough to be traded or lent among coves of witches?