The Price Of Magical Powers

[Tessar]

I like the idea of magic that involves some kind of price or danger, and the price/danger rises with the "potency" of the magical ability. Although it changed over time, I like/liked the Wheel of Time setting. There were clear dangers, both immediate and long-term.

I am working on a setting, and I have a couple of thoughts I'd like some feedback on.

Prophets

Only women are prophets, and they can see possible futures with potential crossroads where things could change. They bring on these "foretellings" by giving birth, and the "fuel" for the foretelling is the life-force of the baby.

The price for the women is obvious. They're constantly pregnant (they're revered, but also somewhat like slaves), but they cannot "keep" any child regardless of whether they want to or not. It's also dangerous because, aside from the risks of a regular birth, the foretelling takes a lot out of them.

There is also (for the potential storyline) one male prophet. His mother was murdered in the middle of giving birth, right before she could begin the foretelling, and her son survived. After a while (maybe 15-20 years) the child experienced a foretelling and it killed a random prophet.

The "price" for this guy is that now all of the female prophets want him dead (along with the Emperor, who loses a prophet every time the guy has a foretelling), and he is angry so he keeps finding ways to bring on foretellings to kill them off. He has fled to one of the border kingdoms where he is hiding. His foretellings are more powerful because he is (usually) taking two lives when he foretells: the female prophet and any baby she is carrying.

Magic

Magic is outlawed within the Empire because of a necromancer who almost destroyed the Empire, and also because the Church declares it as a blaspheme. Meaning every noble house with any power at all has a coterie of wizards, but the whole thing is kept secret and the discovery of a trained wizard working for you could be the end of your noble house. Magic is more common in non-Empire territory, but still viewed with great suspicion.

Magic is dangerous to the user because accessing more than a small piece of your strength is actually opening a connection to somewhere else. No one really knows where the power comes from, except that if you draw more than a little of your strength you start to feel "wind," and you hear whispering voices. The more you draw, the stronger you feel the wind, and the voices get louder and louder. Wizards who draw too much strength too frequently end up going insane, and sometimes wizards just die, or vanish. The theory is that it's possible to be bodily "drawn" into the other place if you open yourself too much, but no one wants to test the theory.

Wizards can tell if someone nearby is drawing on the power because they can faintly hear the wind, although not the whispering. I'm thinking that in some cases, where a lot of power is being drawn, the wind actually begins to affect the wizard drawing it, and the things directly touching them. Like you can see their hair/clothing moving in the wind, but nothing else around them is moving.

There's also a danger because another wizard can strip you completely of your powers by killing you and "sucking" your strength out of you. It can be done without killing if one of the wizards is super weak and the other is immensely powerful, but that's rare. But that's why, if you're a very weak wizard, it's usually not such a good idea to let other wizards know you can use magic... or you have to find a way to bluff them into thinking you're very strong.

There's also a big thing about not letting other wizards, even your friends, know exactly how powerful you are. It can sort of be guessed by what you can do without triggering the "wind," but that's just a rough guess (often wrong) that another wizard can make. There is a lot of bluffing and powerplay among wizards for status, all within the confines of trying not to be caught using magic.


Clerics

The big secret of the Church within the Empire (although not in the lands outside the Empire--a minority of the territory) is that it has magic users. If a young priest/priestess is discovered to have some sort of magical ability, they are given a kind of training that ties their abilities up in knots so that they can only access a small portion of it, and only through intense meditation... i.e. prayer. The portion they can access only reaches the limits of what they can do without triggering the "wind," so no one can tell they're using magic.

People don't know why, but sometimes miraculous cures do occur when you're under the care of a priest(ess), and it's because there is some minor magic at work. The priests and priestesses don't realize that they're magic users, they think it's just the work of prayer.

Although it's been hushed up almost completely, the necromancer who almost destroyed the Empire (several hundred years back) was actually a super powerful Cleric who accidentally broke through the "barriers" of his training (because he was so powerful) and accessed his full strength. Wizards and Clerics (who know the secret) still debate whether it was just insanity brought on by the sudden access of his powers, or whether he was actually possessed by something on the "other side."




One storyline idea that I'm sort of liking, but not too sure about, has to do with twin brothers (or maybe a brother and a sister) who were born within the Empire. Their mother and father are in the Emperor's coterie, and they are two of the most powerful. The twins would have been incredibly powerful each in their own right, but the Mother draws too much power during her pregnancy and triggers a reaction in the babies. One of the twins involuntarily pulls the magical power from the other one, and that makes him powerful enough to draw the strength from the mother. When the father rushes to her side, sensing something wrong, the baby draws the father's power in too when he touches the mother.

It turns out that one of the prophets foretold the possibility of that happening, and so the Emperor found a way to make it happen so that he could have a super-powered wizard. He tries to keep the one twin and get rid of the other, but (drawing on the other storyline) because of the male prophet having a foretelling about the twins, both of the boys are saved and they're taken into hiding.

Because he is so immensely powerful, the one twin is actually slowly being drawn into the "other place," and is going insane regardless of whether he draws on his powers or not. Then, when he does draw on his powers very strongly during an attempt to overthrow the Emperor (the twins get involved with a rebel kingdom), the wizard twin unleashes a demon into the world.

Then some other twists happen, but that's the basic idea. The storyline is about the two boys, or a boy and a girl, and their relationship/outlook on life. The one twin has no magical powers whatsoever (or maybe, in a twist of irony, he/she has just a tiny, tiny amount of ability left... so little that he/she's considered worthless) and the other one is so powerful that it's slowly driving him/her insane.




Another idea I had for a sort of similar storyline involves people making deals with demons for some magical abilities. But a lot of times the price is something directly related to the ability, and often comes with sort of a hook.

A couple of ideas:

Someone who gains the ability to heal other people (so that he could save his wife), but the downside is that he can only use his power using blood from someone that he has just killed. So he becomes a healer in the employ of the Emperor, and if someone needs to be healed the Emperor has a prisoner or criminal dragged up from the dungeon for the guy to kill.

Someone who can tell when anyone is watching him or someone that he focuses on. So he is employed by the Emperor to sense spies and assassins, but he becomes so paranoid (because he can ALWAYS feel someone watching either him or the Emperor) that he leads a horrible life.

Someone who gains the ability to (roughly) communicate with animals, but she loses the ability to see, speak, or hear for herself, so she must constantly be in contact with the creatures around her. She eventually starts to actually be taken over by the animals instead of the other way around. As her powers "grow" they actually sort of turn around till she ends up becoming kind of a weird "forest spirit," that is mentally part animal, part human.

[Earniel]

I like the idea of power, even magical powers, have to be balanced by something. But I am somewhat leery of stories about magic users that break the mold and become far more powerful than anyone else, they've been overdone IMO. Especially if their ascent is predicted in prophesies. I myself have a preference for vague, possibly dubious, possibly entirely wrong prophesies. (In a work in progress, my fairy detective threatens her half-elf associate that if she ever finds out they offered her the job because of some prophesy calling her 'The One' or involving some Long-Lost Heir of any kind, the fairy kingdom can go... well, that part is censored.)

I was really intrigued by one writer who looked into the idea that while some magic is useful, for every powerful arch-wizard there probably are plenty of other people who have a lousy or a pretty useless magical talent. She wrote a few exerpts about people whose only magical talent is making dead horses walk, baking bread or painting living tattoos etc and who try to make a living with those limited talents. I was struck at how imaginative that was.

Originally Posted by Tessar

Only women are prophets, and they can see possible futures with potential crossroads where things could change. They bring on these "foretellings" by giving birth, and the "fuel" for the foretelling is the life-force of the baby.

The price for the women is obvious. They're constantly pregnant (they're revered, but also somewhat like slaves), but they cannot "keep" any child regardless of whether they want to or not. It's also dangerous because, aside from the risks of a regular birth, the foretelling takes a lot out of them.

Mmkay,as a woman myself, that is not something I'd write, unless I ramped up the benefits for the women. Otherwise there'd be no reason any woman would want anyone to know she's a prophet. Although the idea of underground prophets that don't want the Empire to know they exist may be interesting too...

Anyway, being revered can go a lot of ways. Hermits were revered to, but that doesn't mean their life was particularly grand. If I was writing something like that -so make of this what you will- I'd make the women extremely well-cared for, perhaps even pampered, like in a harem, but also with political power of their own. Maybe even the power to choose whatever man they want to father their children and he has to comply by imperial command. Could be fun.

There's also another issue you'll have to deal with. Unless it is well obvious that a woman is a prophet before she gives birth and does her first foretelling, she's likely going to be married by the time her talent is discovered. What happens to the husband if his wife-now-prophet is whisked off to the Empirial Court? He probably also lost whatever chance he had on an heir too if every child his wife bears won't survive the birth.

And what happens to the prophets who no longer are able to bear child? Do they get to retire? Are they sent back to their family or do they take care of the younger prophets?

In any case the idea has a lot of potential for building the social and political structures of your world.

After a while (maybe 15-20 years) the child experienced a foretelling and it killed a random prophet.

Another price you can add to this, is that he feels pretty bad himself after giving a foretelling. It would be rather unfair if he gets to do foretellings at no personal cost, but women have to go through the agony of childbirth every time they can do a foretelling.

Meaning every noble house with any power at all has a coterie of wizards, but the whole thing is kept secret and the discovery of a trained wizard working for you could be the end of your noble house.

I like this idea, it reminds me of England under Elisabeth the First, when rich catholic families had to resort to building priest holes to hide their family priests from prosecution. The nobles themselves risked being charged with high treason if a priest was found in their house.

I'm thinking that in some cases, where a lot of power is being drawn, the wind actually begins to affect the wizard drawing it, and the things directly touching them. Like you can see their hair/clothing moving in the wind, but nothing else around them is moving.

Would be a useful visual aspect when your story gets filmed.

[inked]

Think Faust.

[Earniel]

Hey Tessar, I wondered if you ever gotten any further on this story idea?

[Tessar]

Nowhere, unfortunately. I have not written in forever.

One thing I remember liking about my idea for my old Ice Village story, which I'm still fond of today, was the idea that people who had any kind of magical ability were "locked" into their fate. I.E. Even if they can see the future they have no ability to change it. The only people who can affect the future are people who have no magical ability. That's why, in my Ice Village story, the girl was going to be so influential... I forget her name. Marianna? Mariel? Think it was Mariel.

If I recall correctly, my idea in that story was that the main character (Danlor) was basically raised and trained to go fight in a big battle and die, and he knew it (although he was not supposed to)... and there were two other people, a brother and sister, who were mages and they were also trained to go fight and die in the big battle to reseal the "big evil thing" back away forever, although they did not realize that they were going to die.

Mariel was supposed to have the potential to become a really powerful mage, but she was warned ahead of time that if she became a mage she would lose her ability to influence the events that were unfolding. So by choosing not to fight she ended up saving the day... although I don't remember quite how that happened.



I remember that my preference used to be for magical powers that came at no cost, but as I get a little older I find that my preference has shifted way over in the other direction. I don't mind super-powered magic, but I want it to come at some kind of severe cost... although I did already have that in Ice Village. Danlor was the most powerful Master Psionic alive, but he knew that everything he did would only bring him closer to his death.

If I recall correctly, there was an "angel" in the story. One of the Ancients, and "he" ("it" really) was the last of its kind that had not moved on (giving up its power to remain, only to be regained when it left). It was the one who trained Danlor and the two wizards, and it had intended to use Mariel to save Danlor, but that didn't work for some reason.

[Earniel]

Originally Posted by Tessar

One thing I remember liking about my idea for my old Ice Village story, which I'm still fond of today, was the idea that people who had any kind of magical ability were "locked" into their fate. I.E. Even if they can see the future they have no ability to change it. The only people who can affect the future are people who have no magical ability. That's why, in my Ice Village story, the girl was going to be so influential... I forget her name. Marianna? Mariel? Think it was Mariel.

I like the idea, it's a nice trade-of. You either get to have cool magical powers and be a pawn of destiny, or be a boringly normal person who can actually change things. That would make you think twice before you decide to go the magical route just because it's cool.

You hadn't gotten to that point in Ice Village yet, had you? I don't recall it, but then it has been a while since I read it.

[Tessar]

No, I had not gotten that far. I believe I wrote a handful of chapters, and I had it planned out as a three "book" series with ten chapters each. I believe the first book was going to be all about Danlor and Mariel, the second book would have brought a heavier focus on the mage twins, and the third book was where it all got really ugly and (at the end) just about everyone dies.

[inked]

Faust with twins? and no redemption, eh?

[Tessar]

No redemption is necessary since there's no dealing with the devil, and the heros of the story sacrifice their lives willingly for the good of their world... Faustian deals require faustian situations.

[inked]

Hmmmm, Tessar, are you acquainted with the idea of redemption?

The concept of self-sacrifice for the good of the world is in there, whereas a deal with the devil is not intrinsic.

Voldemort made evil very nicely with his natural abilities and desire to domination. The Potterverse still required redemption. Are you along similar lines?