The impact of Youth [Magic/Thaumatology]

[AlexanderHowl]

Youth is a VH spell from the Healing College that costs 100 FP and may only be cast on a specific subject once per month. It reduces the age of the target by one year and, while it has a steep cost, it is within the range of one mage and one hundred mudane assistants, so it should be commercially available in any setting where it exists. It requires Magery 3, Halt Aging, and 8 other Healing Spells, so anyone who knows it at 20+ (meaning that they can cast it from the safety of a low mana area) will be able to name their price.

Due to its a) high energy cost and b) high desirability, Youth would likely end up costing around $20,000 per casting (much higher than the $1/energy rate suggested in Magic), with everyone involved in the casting making a substantial amount of money. Conversely, Youth may be a spell known to the priests a specific religion, giving that religion a) a powerful recruitment tool and b) a powerful incentive for recruiting people with Magery 3. In either case, the existence of Youth should have a great impact on a setting, as it will allow the wealthy and powerful to live practically forever.

Do you allow Youth in your settings? If so, do you have it as a religious spell requiring obedience or a secular spell requiring money? What impact, if any, does the availability of Youth have on your setting?

[RedMattis]

My settings has most mages at least attempting to extend their lives. Usually if they've survived long enough that they actually need to they'll be successful.

Generally they don't do it using the Youth spell though, because while the regular magic system (and a low-powered rune-casting system) exists and is reliable it is generally considered to be useful mostly for "convenience" magic.

The real experiments, including age-extension and trans-humanism, are usually done using some sort of alchemy/enchanting, large rituals, or reality-warping Realm Magic. The problem is usually that things go horribly wrong before they are old enough that age is a problem. Generally becoming unaging involves becoming something not-quite human, though using f.ex. Realm Magic to rewind a body, or 'polymorph' into a young person works if the mage/customer is content with that.

The Realm Magic has Severe Criticals as a built in disadvantage, even a regular failure is almost a critical failure. The users are often too tempted to use their powers and end up dying to some trivial mishap or permanently turning themselves into a statue, or insane monster f.ex.

The alchemists(/enchanters) tend to end up turning themselves or others into magical monsters in pursuit of power once they start meddling with their own or the bodies of others. Generally either the church kills them or they eventually die in some failed attempt to become a godlike being.

Ritual (Book/Path) mages have less inherent danger, but have a tendency to end up deciding to take it to the 'next level' by summoning spirits (necromancy/elementalism/...) or demons. The former is extremely dangerous since spirits are unpredictable and often insane (dead/fused souls) or of inhuman mentality (nature spirits). The demons can be surprisingly friendly to mages, but it tends to end with either the mage siding with the demons against the church, often turning demonic or straight up demon themselves. Without dealing with spirits or dangerous transformative rituals their options for becoming ageless are generally more limited.

So how about non-mages? Some get immortality from mages, but the church outlaws 'immortality', and the very-real god of the realm doesn't like to see immortal or extremely long-lived rulers (especially not demonic or undead ones!). As a result most immortal nobles are hiding behind the curtain, and not standing out on the stage. Mages tend to gather in groups and magically grow food or whatever so it can be hard to non-mages to persuade the mages to make them younger; since the mages don't 'need' much and mostly tend to want to improve their craft or at least stick to legally permitted stuff rather than deal with such a risky affair. Skilled Artisans (Smiths f.ex.) or nobles are usually the ones most likely to manage to persuade the mages to spend time making them unaging/youthful.

So in summary the Youth Spell and life extension doesn't change society much. There are some extremely old mages and non-mages around, but they are uncommon (and often ended up non-human in the process). Generally people assume everyone normal-looking around them lives a fairly normal life-span.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

Do you allow Youth in your settings? If so, do you have it as a religious spell requiring obedience or a secular spell requiring money? What impact, if any, does the availability of Youth have on your setting?

It would be allowed in any of my settings that used Gurps Magic but has not come up as being publicly available. I had one 500 year-old Archmage who had used Halt Aging and.or Youth to get where he was but he had 85 FP and access to Merlin-1 tech so he never did it ceremonailly.

In the World of D'y'r't Aldehar the Incendiary got hold of a Great Wish and got Unaging for lack of anything more clever to do with it. If anyone wonders Gage, King of Rogues asked for 20pts worth of favors from the PTB and Nyx the Barbarian asked for a doggie.

In the World of D'y'r't if anyone did try and buy the Youth spell he'd probably end up dealing with a Dragon who wouldn't need ceremonial assisstance.

It probably is straight forward to purchase this spell but I bet they'd do it with Draw Power rather than Ceremonial Magic. On Merlin-1 you'd have all sorts of bureacracy involved in hiring 100 people.

Of course, the "Ceremonail Magic Reign of Terror" was discussed multiple times on the old Pyramid boards and probably on Gurpsnet before that.Extensive Wwrk was done there on commericlaizing CM.

I keep some concept in the back of my head as modular units to be plugged into "generic" settings. The one labelled "Ceremonial Magic" has the 100 helpers needing 1 pt in a skill of Religious Ritual or possibly for some Magic University town "Hermetic Ceremony". No sweeping up people off the street and handing them candles. That's something that I tend to think "weirds" settings.

What you might see on a generic Fantasy world is a "Green" priesthood that was rural and used CM on Bless Plants etc and a more urban "White" one that specialized in Healing magic both of course aided by their faithful (or possibly self-interested) worshippers. It'd be an awfully mercenary Power that sold Youth.

[Plane]

I could see Halt Aging having a bigger impact just due to the accessibility of it.

Even though by baseline costs Youth is more economical (100 energy for 12 months vs 20 energy for 1 month) it's just a lot easier to set up the casting of Halt Aging without needing a massive ceremonial assembly or powerstone, plus there's the M2/M3 barrier.

[Apollonian]

It occurs to me that there ought to be a Magery 1 "Slow Aging" spell that halves your aging rate as a beginning step on the Halt Aging/Youth chain. What would that look like?

[RedMattis]

As written Youth is something so tremendously desirable that if there is a free market for it you're almost guaranteed to see immortal god-rulers and cult/conspiracy leaders.

I think the big question is 'what does the regular people do about it?'. If Magery 2/3 is common enough and the spell is legal and taught then pretty much every mage will be "persuaded" to keep themselves and a patron unaging. This however is VERY far from keeping everyone, even all the nobility ageless.

What does does the nobles who don't have the means to be ageless think? What does the peasants and moderately wealthy merchants think? Religion was often used to keep peasants... occupied. Is the king deified? How do they avoid accusations from rivals accusing them of being f.ex. a demon (which is LITERALLY possible in vanilla GURPS Magic)

[RedMattis]

Originally Posted by Apollonian

It occurs to me that there ought to be a Magery 1 "Slow Aging" spell that halves your aging rate as a beginning step on the Halt Aging/Youth chain. What would that look like?

Practically speaking that would be a bit underwhelming wouldn't it? Either you get a cheap spell that basically all mages with access to it use to live to twice their normal mages, or you get something that is just a poor investment compared to youth/halt aging. Well, aside from being available for people with Magery 1 (in a setting where Magery can't be increased).

[Rupert]

Originally Posted by Plane

I could see Halt Aging having a bigger impact just due to the accessibility of it.

Even though by baseline costs Youth is more economical (100 energy for 12 months vs 20 energy for 1 month) it's just a lot easier to set up the casting of Halt Aging without needing a massive ceremonial assembly or powerstone, plus there's the M2/M3 barrier.

My biggest issue is that Steal Youth requires that you first have Youth, and that while easier to cast its cost is still not trivial and the costs of a critical failure are really heavy. That means you'll really, really want to be casting it at as high a strength as you can, so you can cast it as seldom as possible.

Steal Beauty vs Alter Visage shows the same sort of problem, where the spell that is taking the 'short cut' costs a lot and has a guaranteed very serious critical failure effect.

[AlexanderHowl]

I generally assume that people with limited Magery 0+ make up 4% of the human population and that people with unlimited Magery 0+ make up 1% of the human population. I also assume that each level of Magery above 0 is a tenth as common as the proceeding level. In that case, people capable of casting Youth without restrictions are around 1:100,000 of so. People who actually end up learning Youth to the required level are likely 1:1,000,000 or less.

In the case of a character with Youth 15+ (20+ in low mana regions), they are capable of 12,000 castings per year (doing 11,400 successful castings per year). Youth is actually not that bad when cast on the wrong target or when reversed, so it is a healing spell that probably does not need low mana for safety reasons. Of course, this means that only ~1% of a population would benefit from Youth.

A mage that possesses Youth is likely going to Status 4 and Wealth (Filthy Rich) and their 100 assistants will likely have Status 2 and Wealth (Wealthy). If labor costs are 50% of total costs, they will only have to charge $1200 per casting, though I imagine that demand will actually increase the price by quite a lot.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Rupert

My biggest issue is that Steal Youth requires that you first have Youth, and that while easier to cast its cost is still not trivial and the costs of a critical failure are really heavy. That means you'll really, really want to be casting it at as high a strength as you can, so you can cast it as seldom as possible.

Steal Beauty vs Alter Visage shows the same sort of problem, where the spell that is taking the 'short cut' costs a lot and has a guaranteed very serious critical failure effect.

I assume that these spells (and much of the Necromancy college) exist for the benefit of those with Magery (Necromancy only). Now only NPCs and PCs who want an excuse to wear black and be "bad" take (Necromancy only) but apparently in-universe some people don't get to choose their Ads and Disads.