[World Building] Alt-History TL 8 Earth with open RPM

[ajardoor]

Originally Posted by Prince Charon

The problem is, that magic is being done by people who are, to varying degrees, practically slaves. This does not have good precedents for that society (there's no direct equivalent, but slave-soldiers are fairly close, historically).

You have to look at it not only from the mundane PoV ('Those people are useful, but terribly dangerous!'), but also from the mages' viewpoints ('I will not be a slave any longer!').

It's not so much "slaves" so much as it is "giving up a significant degree of freedom and pledging service in exchange for a high standard of living and guaranteed high income" - the governments essentially want magi to be inside the tent spitting outward, rather than outside the tent spitting inside (bread and circuses, as cynical people might see it). Being a Mage means you get a chance to make lots of money and live in comfort the more you submit to government oversight and regulation. I believe Banestorm has similiar elements - magi have to serve their local lords for years in order to practice freely, IIRC.

Yes, it can suck - that's why regulations mandate psychiatric evaluations (why wouldn't they?) and magi need stress relief (both magical and mundane) in the long term. Yes, some magi DO turn it down and crawl off to some obscure dark corner of the outer planes so they don't have to comprise their freedom (and some magi supremacy groups DO exist, but haven't yet gained a serious foothold). The pushback against these comprises DOES happen, from time to time, because of political shakeups and grumblings - this usually ends in a sway towards leniency (less restrictive oversight and more privacy) for a while, until either demand for more or a public scandal causes the winds to blow the other way. It's a pendulum - freedom and security (or just more pressure to profit) swap priority in accordance with public opinion. If the pendulum swings too hard in one direction, then that will cause trouble, yes. The way I see it, a good lot of institutions related to magic have to deal with this kind of tension as a matter of course - a lot of (potentially dirty) manoeuvring goes on behind the scenes (by the PCs, if necessary) to ensure neither magi get too power hungry nor the mundanes get too draconian. It is not perfect or certain, but it is a preferable situation to a war, a violent descent into chaos, or a dictatorship.