Why not summon?

[Anonymouswizard]

I'm currently creating a Fate Campaign to run next academic year, and I'm planning to use the Stormcalling and Storm Summoning magic systems from the Fate System Toolkit. The current back story is that about 300 years ago the Maji Empire conquered most of the continent with the power of their highly trained Stormcallers, compared to the 'southern countries' who mainly relied on conjuring (although bargins to become summoners were relatively common) due to their worship of the Storms. The short version is, harnessing the Storms directly turned out to be far more useful on the battlefield than summoning elementals.

The thing is, the aesthetics I want for the Maji mean that their magicians can't really have access to conjuring in the 'present' day, despite it being much more versatile and generally useful than Stormcallimg. They will be repressing it, but what I want are ideas for why a nation would reject a more versatile magic that they have access to significant evidence that it is safe (with the slight exception of making pacts, which isn't required).

Both magic systems are being made available to PCs, although Maji nobles cannot take Conjuring/Summoning (although they are the only ones allowed to start with Great Stormcalling).

[BayardSPSR]

I'm currently creating a Fate Campaign to run next academic year, and I'm planning to use the Stormcalling and Storm Summoning magic systems from the Fate System Toolkit. The current back story is that about 300 years ago the Maji Empire conquered most of the continent with the power of their highly trained Stormcallers, compared to the 'southern countries' who mainly relied on conjuring (although bargains to become summoners were relatively common) due to their worship of the Storms. The short version is, harnessing the Storms directly turned out to be far more useful on the battlefield than summoning elementals.

The thing is, the aesthetics I want for the Maji mean that their magicians can't really have access to conjuring in the 'present' day, despite it being much more versatile and generally useful than Stormcalling. They will be repressing it, but what I want are ideas for why a nation would reject a more versatile magic that they have access to significant evidence that it is safe (with the slight exception of making pacts, which isn't required).

If conjuring is a characteristic practice of an oppressed minority group, that could be enough to justify banning it. If anything, that's one of the main reasons otherwise inoffensive practices have been banned in various countries historically and at present. Even if it would be helpful to permit it, if the Maji state is so dominant that they're never come under enough pressure to resort to allowing it, their legislators might accept that as the price to pay for keeping [undesirable group] down.

[Anonymouswizard]

If conjuring is a characteristic practice of an oppressed minority group, that could be enough to justify banning it. If anything, that's one of the main reasons otherwise inoffensive practices have been banned in various countries historically and at present. Even if it would be helpful to permit it, if the Maji state is so dominant that they're never come under enough pressure to resort to allowing it, their legislators might accept that as the price to pay for keeping [undesirable group] down.

It's an interesting idea, it would require conjuring to be less common than I'd originally planned, but I think I can pull it back to a couple of ethnic groups/religions (when I define the other pre-Maji religions then they'll consider elementals to be demons). And yes, the Maji are exactly that dominant, but stretched thin, the PCs can theoretically free the south from the Empire, but the Maji themselves cannot be brought down in the north due to having ruled there for over 2000 years (they just have too much infrastructure and a united Senate).

Speaking of which, I can't believe that I forgot religious reasons. The Maji already 12 gods that have nothing to do with the Five Storms, and so might not like the idea of the Storms housing sentient beings, seeing them as simply a source of energy.

Spoiler

Show

The Maji gods don't exist, but neither do the 'Elemental Embodiments' venerated by Storm worshippers. Who said fantasy religions had to be true?

[AceOfFools]

Look at why real things that aren't actually dangerous get banned:

People could wrongfully believe it is dangerous (this "almost" happened to DnD).

Powerful people could have a financial interest in getting it banned (this sorta happened to margarine when it was introduced in the US).

Powerful people could have a political interest in getting it banned (e.g. if conjuring is associated with group A, you support a ban to curry favor with their enemies who don't or can't use it).

Similarly, even if it's not dangerous a priori, circumstances can make the ban make sense strategically. E.g. all the best magic users of school X support a rival nation, so you claim its dangerous and needs to be banned (possibly while studying it in secret) to try to deny these enemies ability to operate openly, and give you an excuse to imprison them and steal their assets.

Powerful people can just not like it for personal reasons, even if they don't think it's dangerous (this is why it's illegal to own ferrets in NYC).

Idealogical reasons: it's believed to be immoral in some way.

...as an aside, it was harder than I thought to write that list without talking about real world politics >.>

[Flickerdart]

There are a whole bunch of reasons, but the foremost is efficiency. The Maji defeated their southern enemies with their stormcalling, so studying stromcalling results in more powerful soldiers. Why waste time studying an ability that's less powerful, and watering down your combat potential? If the empire has any powerful external enemies, or is driven to conquer constantly, this is a very solid reason. With summoning being given a lack of respect, there are no schools that teach it, which creates a self-reinforcing cycle.

It could also be a matter of history. Some time ago, a ruling caste decided that summoning was so awesome that they were going to do it themselves, and nobody else was allowed to do it. This worked for a while, and all knowledge of summoning was purged from the land. Then one day there was an uprising, and all the nobles who knew summoning were killed or fled the violence. As a result, not only is there no one left who could teach summoning, but summoning is considered to be a tyrant's practice and unfit for the newly "free" people.