World Building introducing magic

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So I have been playing around with the idea of a setting where you introduce magic for the first time. Let's say magic suddenly appears in Medieval Europe overnight what would happen in the setting over a period of lets say 100 years. Here is what I was thinking so far I would love to get more ideas.


5-10 years see first children born with magical gift (first sorcerers and other 'natural casters emerge')
50-100 years the study of magic start to lead to systematized magical training (start to see cantrips being understood Magical training feat)
First 5 years 'the voice of god'/magical blessing by 'god' cause religious revolution and chaos through the world
10+ governments magical arms raise begins, wars over control over magic and magical persons
5+ years magical bigotry begins could be antimagic movements or magical peoples looking down on nonmagical

[PairO'Dice Lost]

The effects and timeline would vary dramatically depending on what kind of magic shows up, in whom, where, and with what frequency.

A handful of villagers are born every decade with the power to cast random cantrips? Medieval Europeans already believed in witchcraft, the offending peasants probably get burned at the stake and nothing noticeably changes.

A bunch of nobles are born every few years with the power to cast random mid-level spells? The nobles (after most likely keeping the phenomenon secret as long as they could until they had some idea of what was gong on and could talk among themselves without the Church poking its nose in) parade this around as further proof of the intrinsic superiority of those of noble birth and the continent goes full-on magocracy, though whether that takes the form of a nice big happy overclass keeping the peasants under their collective heel or a series of major succession wars depends on how well the various nobles and noble families play nicely with one another.

Dozens of priests-in-training are gifted every year with tightly-themed sets of spells of varying levels? If the spells are stuff like healing, water control, food creation, and other obviously-biblical miracles, the Church takes this as evidence that a new age of miracles has come, grants these people sainthood, thanks God for his blessings in difficult times, and tightens its grip over the continent until it's a theocracy without peer. If the spells are stuff like lightning calling, demon summoning, undead animation, and other forms of very-obviously-not-biblical magic, expect the greatest religious schism the world has ever seen as one part of the church sees this as the End Times, another part sees it as evidence that their god is false and Thor or Ahura Mazda or whoever is sending them signs, and so forth.

So to get any idea of exactly how things would look, you really have to nail down a lot of demographic, geographic, and magical details, and once you do that things should shake out pretty obviously from there.

[DarkOne-Rob]

Though not as "well-known" or as popular as the narrative of how Europeans rejected all forms of "magic" or "science" in the Middle Ages, there were cultures both in Europe and elsewhere that would have welcomed such developments too. There were Jewish and Christian "mystics" that were received well by their communities, as well as non-Judeo-Christian traditions like the Celts. I think it really depends on the details and who receives the power of magic. There is a ton of room for creative license in such a scenario.

[liquidformat]

Though not as "well-known" or as popular as the narrative of how Europeans rejected all forms of "magic" or "science" in the Middle Ages, there were cultures both in Europe and elsewhere that would have welcomed such developments too. There were Jewish and Christian "mystics" that were received well by their communities, as well as non-Judeo-Christian traditions like the Celts. I think it really depends on the details and who receives the power of magic. There is a ton of room for creative license in such a scenario.

Yeah that was what I was thinking for example if the vikings suddenly found themselves with magic before they started excepting Christian beliefs they would have been very accepting of them. Similarly, depending on the timing magic taking root in the middle east would also be widely accepted.

I was thinking of having magic taking root in places, ancient battle fields and graveyards being hot spots of negative energy and death causing undead to rise. Ancient forests emanating with life and flourishing with magic give birth to fey, magical beasts, and perhaps even plant creatures. The strong held beliefs in ancient stories of evil creatures that go bump in the night give rise to aberrations. Fiends seeking more souls to damn pretend to be gods, or offer unsuspecting people deals to good to be true. Sure most fiends can't grant spells but the powers of a warlock could seem like gifts from a god.

[DarkOne-Rob]

I think the...motives(?)...of the magical effects and creatures in question will make a big difference too. Most of your examples above are neutral-to-evil themed so far. If magic appeared like that, I would expect a very hostile reaction from non-magical folks. If you want a more mixed response (that makes sense) then you will need some "good" (or at least helpful) magic mixed in too.

[Endarire]

Magic is potential energy. It's power. What sort of results do you get with this power? That determines much of its perception.

[Feldar]

So I have been playing around with the idea of a setting where you introduce magic for the first time. Let's say magic suddenly appears in Medieval Europe overnight what would happen in the setting over a period of lets say 100 years.

What makes you think this didn't happen in fact and it was suppressed by the church?

Regardless, I think the concept is cool but your timeline is off. 50-100 years is far too soon (it's probably off by a power of 10!) for any kind of organized schooling to start on this except possibly within the confines of the church for divine magic.

It would start with rumours of witchcraft. Open practitioners would be hunted down by the Church, which would probably suppress any research done. Until it gained some kind of acceptance by the Church, any kind of open teaching would be verboten. Of course, in places where the Church did not hold sway it would move faster, but it would still be a very slow start.

[liquidformat]

I think the...motives(?)...of the magical effects and creatures in question will make a big difference too. Most of your examples above are neutral-to-evil themed so far. If magic appeared like that, I would expect a very hostile reaction from non-magical folks. If you want a more mixed response (that makes sense) then you will need some "good" (or at least helpful) magic mixed in too.
Yeah very true, though I tend think of/to gravitate more to the neutral and evil magic than the good. They tend to seem a bit more natural to me. A place where large numbers of people are buried or die violent deaths would have some of that energy of death and negative emotions stuck to it. Natural places untouched and uncorrupted by man would be a natural foci of the power of nature.

On the other hand I can't confidently say even a church would be a natural foci of 'good energy' especially in medieval times when religion was used to justify many evil deeds. Places that are natural foci of 'good' seem less natural to me than neutrality and evil. In a strange way I guess I question whether 'good' is natural...

I suppose if we look at say harvest festival or other festivals that would be wide spread events of celebration throughout a country that could very well be a focal point of 'good' magic. That actually seems like an interesting concept, performing magic by leveraging the magical power created by festivals and celebrations. Perhaps that is where the first cases of accepted magic would appear in society. And yet on the flipside public shaming and execution of criminals was very common in society until very recently and that could also be used to magically fuel darker more nefarious rituals... Hmm interesting concept and I think it could be worked into the existing Incantation rules pretty seamlessly. Simply requiring crowds of certain sizes and performing certain acts to be used as the 'magical fuel source' of different spells cast using incantations.


What makes you think this didn't happen in fact and it was suppressed by the church?

Regardless, I think the concept is cool but your timeline is off. 50-100 years is far too soon (it's probably off by a power of 10!) for any kind of organized schooling to start on this except possibly within the confines of the church for divine magic.

It would start with rumours of witchcraft. Open practitioners would be hunted down by the Church, which would probably suppress any research done. Until it gained some kind of acceptance by the Church, any kind of open teaching would be verboten. Of course, in places where the Church did not hold sway it would move faster, but it would still be a very slow start.

Very true, though I was thinking more of, start to see research done in that 50-100 years not so much have full on wizards, so maybe somewhere in there you could start seeing people crop up with say the Magical Training feat?

[PairO'Dice Lost]

Yeah very true, though I tend think of/to gravitate more to the neutral and evil magic than the good. They tend to seem a bit more natural to me. A place where large numbers of people are buried or die violent deaths would have some of that energy of death and negative emotions stuck to it. Natural places untouched and uncorrupted by man would be a natural foci of the power of nature.

On the other hand I can't confidently say even a church would be a natural foci of 'good energy' especially in medieval times when religion was used to justify many evil deeds. Places that are natural foci of 'good' seem less natural to me than neutrality and evil. In a strange way I guess I question whether 'good' is natural...

The moral bent of a font of "naturally"-arising magic would likely be really dependent on how it's viewed, both out-of-game and in-. You say that battlegrounds would be places of negative emotion and evil while remote wild places would be relatively morally neutral compared to a city, and things certainly could shake out that way, but one could easily posit instead that a battleground could be a place of powerful positive emotion and goodness if it was a place where a great many devoted soldiers died in the defense of their homeland and that the deep wilderness would be sources of cruel and destructive magics (storms and earthquakes and "nature red in tooth and claw" and all that) while a town would be a source of beneficial and cooperative magics having been built collaboratively by its inhabitants as a bastion of peace and civilization.

Likewise with the community rites you mentioned. A harvest festival would give off very different kinds of magic if it was a cheery event thanking Demeter for all the food vs. a raucous party where everyone gets drunk and crazy in the name of Dionysus vs. a solemn ceremony where everyone begs Odin to let their meager crops last through the harsh winter, and an execution would give off very different kinds of magic if it involves jeering at criminals while they fight each other to the death for the crowd's amusement vs. solemnly watching while an enemy of the kingdom is executed for rebellion vs. celebrating as a defeated Dark Lord is finally brought to justice.

So if you were to make a setting full of these sorts of fonts of natural magic, I'd say it would make more sense for every different site to have a different flavor of magic (morally and otherwise) and in fact for magical scholars not to even be able to generalize "Oh, X places give off Y magic" without knowing the specific history or circumstances of a given font. The more variety you have in these magic fonts, the more variety you can have in the times and places they're used and the more interesting plots you can make with them.

[DarkOne-Rob]

On the other hand I can't confidently say even a church would be a natural foci of 'good energy' especially in medieval times when religion was used to justify many evil deeds. Places that are natural foci of 'good' seem less natural to me than neutrality and evil. In a strange way I guess I question whether 'good' is natural...
I think it is really important to realize that the value-judgements we make today on the actions of organized churches hundreds, if not thousands, of years ago are going to be inaccurate. Not "might be" inaccurate - they will be inaccurate.

That doesn't mean that I think the history of the organized Christian church is spotless or anything, but for every well-known negative we have record of today there would have been countless examples of good that were done away from the politicized hierarchy of Rome. Small parishes, honest and well-intended priests and congregations, the daily actions of men and women trying to help their neighbors out of passionate religious faith. It is actions like these - not the formal, rituals taking place in organized conferences of Cardinals - that would cause powerful magic to form.

I'm a father, and one of my favorite concepts is that there is more magic in the unbridled laughter of a little baby than in all of Merlin's studies. If [good] magic is a thing, it doesn't flow from sources of power - it explodes from the pure goodness that makes life worth living. And I mean "explodes" - don't underestimate the power of simple goodness. Tolkien wrote about it with the hobbits, its a common theme in all sorts of other literature, and it is what inspires mothers to lift cars off their children. That is power that evil doesn't understand. If your concept of magic being introduced into the world were to be applied, IMO [good] magic comes from sources like that.