Quote:
Originally Posted by Astromancer
According to my reading, Chariot Racers, Hookers, and Wrestlers, were all stereotypically assumed to use magic and cast cures to further their "careers." All these groups lived risk fulled highly vulnerable lives. Thus they, out of desperation, turned to the only means of controlling that riskiness. It doesn't matter that control was an illusion, it was all they had.
Period literature reflected this reality. Several literary witches make clear that they used to be courtesans, their detractors deny that and say the witches were mere streetwalkers. Buying a spell of dubious potency from an elderly crippled ex-athlete is also a period stereotype/trope.
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I guess I shouldn't be surprised. I mean, even in the modern world, many professional athletes cling to whatever superstitions they think will give them a better chance at victory.
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Speaking of supernatural stuff...I recently realized I had the CK2 DLC that enables a quest-for-immortality event chain. While I was deciding how to use this (ie, wait for the event to come naturally and savescum like crazy vs. cheat the trait in vs. ???), I read some things other people have done with immortal characters. This got me to thinking about how a few immortals could affect history.
For the sake of argument, let's assume that immortals have age
with youth, are immune to organ failure and most mundane diseases (including things like cancer and heart disease), but not to violence and perhaps not some remarkable diseases (e.g, the Black Death). Let's also say that becoming immortal is no small feat (a world where
everyone is immortal is a different beast), but where continuing to be immortal is trivial. That should leave plenty of flexibility for your worldbuilding needs.
Regardless, we will also be assuming that the immortal's mind can change. This is good and bad. On the good side, they can continue to learn and improve themselves, meaning they could be unparalleled at multiple skills vital to the sorts of plots immortals would want to get up to; diplomacy, deception, military strategy, turning around in tall chairs just as the heroes enter the room, etc. On the bad side...well, sometimes people are same, and sometimes those people stop being sane. The longer you live, the more likely you are to drift from the carefully-balanced set of behaviors conventionally referred to as "maintaining possession of your marbles". It's hard to imagine why an immortal, whose mind has to process so many more centuries than our ancestors's brains evolved to handle, would be any different.
Let's start by imagining the first immortal as a minor nobleman in early medieval Ireland (sometimes known as Newbie Isle among CK2 players). Not one of the petty kings, not even a powerful earl; one of the lesser earls or lords-mayor or something. This immortal noble might try to push himself into power by force of time and intrigue, but his obvious not-dying-ness would probably get in the way of such plans. If the immortal was concerned about this, he would probably end up as a power behind the throne for his descendants, influencing events to get his favorite great-grandkids on the thrones of all the kingdoms of Ireland before bringing them together to vote on a High King for him to advise. He could then work to spread his dynasty further, bringing other realms into his Kingdom of Kingdoms by sending other descendants to marry into foreign families (and making sure all the great-great-great-grandkids had reason to fear and love their immortal father). This could go until the patriarch's age caught up with him, by which time he could easily affect the history of the British Isles (and, hence, Europe; and, hence, the world).
Alternatively, the immortal could go "Screw it" and aim for an endless reign under himself. With patience and constant self-improvement, and with a list of familial allies to rival Walder Frey, he would likely prove capable of taking control of a respectable chunk of Ireland. He could not, however, do so without catching the attention of Great Britain and a decent chunk of the Continent. Many others would seek this immortality, and those who found it would set up immortal fiefs of their own. Meanwhile, the original immortal would rack up enemies in both church and state, both priests suspecting him of witchcraft most foul and nobles who his machinations disempowered. As long as the immortal maintained his faculties (and avoided ******* off too big of fish), he could probably maintain his position; however, once his senility and other issues caught up with him, he would not be long for this world. If the immortal hadn't made it clear which of his descendants would be next in line for the throne, his kingdom would have quite a succession crisis on its hands...and when the next generation of successful immortality-seekers started to reach the age of senility, all Europe may fall into chaos.
But let us imagine that Europe entered the age of immortals more smoothly. What then? The secret of immortality would creep throughout the Old World, with each ruler who finds it (and presumably shares with his wife/favorite mistress, closest friend(s), wisest and most trusted advisers, probably some of his descendants/possible heirs...) making the secret just a little bit less secret. I could easily see successful questers springing up from Mali to Scandinavia to western India within several decades of immortality becoming public knowledge, and with Chinese alchemists figuring it out within a century.
The influence of aristocratic immortality on feudal politics (or society in general) is, obviously, hard to determine. After all, we don't have any comparable phenomena in real life. However, we can make some guesses:
- Eventually, spiritual leaders would find a justification to accept the immortals. Historically and over long enough periods of time, humanity has been pretty good at not letting the fact that something is technically against our religious doctrine stop us from doing something useful.
- Immortals are good at amassing wealth and power for themselves. After all, long cons and lengthy investments pay out well.
- Monarchy would probably be less bad, on average. In OTL, you have to deal with your good and bad kings, and the incentive for removing bad kings ahead of time isn't that much higher than the incentive for removing good kings. But if your descendants (and possibly you, if you're one of the immortal elite) would have to put up with centuries of Joffery's rule, you'd be a bit more eager to find chances to poison his wine.
- Eras would be defined by the leading monarchs, even more than in OTL. This is partly because those monarchs would probably have more influence over their nations, and partly because they would be able to live through entire social movements. (Those two factors are, of course, not unrelated.)
- Social change would likely be slowed. Part of this is because plenty of influential people would have been raised with morals a century or more out of date; however, part of it would simply be because those in power would be that much better at resisting change.
- Colonialism would probably still be a thing. Europe would have one more tool in its arsenal against the native Americans, but native Africans and Asians would have that tool as well! Hard to say how this would affect things in those places; could go either way, could do nothing at all.
- If the great powers never had a long-reigning monarch who foresaw the need to give the common people more power...well, we could see events like the (first) French Revolution and the Russian Revolution happening all across the world. This could lead to a worldwide confederation of like-minded idealists leading and supporting revolutionaries around the world to create a worldwide utopia...but more likely, it would lead to several such confederations united by mutually-incompatible ideologies, each split among deep factional lines. (This time of revolution and chaos would be a good place to put a campaign, BTW.)