[ErhnamDJ]

Originally Posted by Whyte

Excuse me? I am the army-shattering mage responsible for keeping your kingdom intact, and you expect me to stay your slave? I do have a spell here somewhere that says otherwise, 'Your Majesty'. :)

I would expect three responses to this.

1) The aristocracy will have powerful magic items which would help them prevent an uprising. The king and his family are decked out in who knows what all sort of magical equipment. Look at the prices you get in Magic. Those are nothing for a Pharaoh.

2) The wizards allowed to learn the most dangerous spells are aristocracy themselves. Remember, ten or fifteen percent of your wizards are going to be members of the political class. They're the children of senators. The nieces and nephews of viscounts, and so on. They're taught the spells that can bring down empires. And those spells are very closely guarded secrets. The higher up you are, the more dangerous the spells you get to know.

3) There's always a knife at every wizard's throat. There's hundreds of the king's most loyal (potentially mind controlled, but not necessarily) men with crossbows pointed at each one's throat. They don't get to learn Missile Shield. These people are slaves. They've been raised from birth to their station. Depending on the amount of wizards you have, these people are only allowed to know their one spell and its prerequisites. A slave might know Create Animal, but he's not going to know how to dodge a hundred crossbow bolts. I'm sure there would be individualized ways of keeping these slaves in line. Maybe move their families to remote villages and let them know they'll be killed if they ever try anything. The elites have communications abilities. Some lowly slave with Explosive Fireball doesn't. He might be able to kill fifty people, but that's all he'll ever do. And other than that, there's really no reason to treat the slaves poorly. You do need them to work for you, after all. They just have to know their place.

And everyone is going to have their place. Even if the princess knows Enslave, her guards are going to be trained to take her out if she uses it on anyone of import.

Seriously, absent from some mind control (which might mess up with magic), this is a very bad idea. Just take a look at Janissaries and Mamluks to see what happens to Caliphs and Sultans who rely extensively on elite slave armies. Also, can you imagine a slave revolt, but this time with your elite mages leading it, instead of some illiterate peasants?

You only allow your elite people to become elite mages. Then you have political squabbles, not slave revolts. I imagine a slave revolt where the masters are armed like modern soldiers with their magic, and the slaves are trying to sharpen sticks. Slaves revolting would have no chance of success.

All of this would require effort to maintain, but not much more than keeping other slaves. You just don't teach the slaves anything dangerous. At most they would ever get one spell off before their handlers killed them or incapacitated them. That's all you'd have to plan for.

It does make it a rather expensive proposition, raising wizards. As I imagine it would be, anyway.


The goal of the rulers is to maintain their own power. Whenever magic is discovered, since it has to be discovered to get to anything that looks like TL 1 or 2 or 3 with it, then they immediately take control of it. Once this political system is in place, then we can start looking at what can be achieved through the use of Ceremonial magic with armies.

I'd also be enforcing pretty spectacular crit fails, too. The kinds that wipe out your own army/castle if you happen to be unlucky.

I guess they'll be keeping Bless on all of their wizards.