Mageborn are like Coins - Worldbuilding TL 3

[ericthered]

Originally Posted by hal

Now imagine what kinds of skills both women will have as a consequence.

Believe me, I've been looking at it. For most people I've been using half of their available points. I think for Jannete this will work. For Ressie I'm going to have to figure something out. She might be the last coin I "Spend".

In the meantime, one has to wonder what cultural pressures the one woman faces when she discovers that she can't have children? Would that have pressured her into chasing after solutions to her problem? At what point would she maybe have consulted a mageborn gifted with divinations to ask "will I ever bear children" only to perhaps get a "no" answer over and over.

Divination is a hard spell. I've got a wealth of mages and no one who can cast it. You need IQ 12 and magery 1, plus 8 points in prerequisites. Diviners WILL make money, but they're going to be specialists.



Gurps doesn't have a spell to cure bareness... the "strike barren" spell is a necromancy spell with prereqs like "steal vitality". Removing it is done via restoration or remove curse... so maybe restoration can do it.



Having known people who struggled with fertility, I'd think the divination spell always coming back "No" would be a comfort: you can move on and adopt or know you just won't have any.

I also wonder - the FAMILY TREE article presumes that the woman will bear children on a regular basis without thought to the other issue involved: In early medieval times, a certain plant went extinct due to excessive harvest as it was an abortificant. That raises the question of why each woman has such a high probability of super large families... **shrug**

It went extinct, as you say.



Social pressures matter a lot here. From a "retirement" perspective, having at least a few kids was a good idea, and you never who who you would or wouldn't outlive. I'm inclined to have Jannette not worry about having so many children: in the historical perspective, she doesn't have that many, she just has a lot THAT LIVE.

Sadly, GURPS never went into much detail on how much spell books cost, but if they have magery 1, that's roughly 10% of the 2% population that have magery. In short, magery 1, while not uncommon, will definitely be relatively rare amongst the mageborn. In your case, there is an abundance of magery 1 (Yay!). You have the necessary teachers to be able to teach magery 1 spells. But if there had been no magery 1 teachers on hand for these "students" - how did they get the spells they have?

4e has gone there.



Dungeon Fantasy has prices for spell books: $100 for a 3lb book that lets you learn the spell and lets you cast from default. Yes, this is DF and isn't great in terms of historical fidelity, and should probably be assumed to have access to a printing press (or better). They have "Normal" books costing $25 for 3lbs.



Low Tech talks about a printed diagnostic manual costing $35 and weighing 2lbs, with a hand-written one costing $350 and weighing 8 lbs. High Tech and Low-Tech Compendium 1 give costs for Libraries rather than books, measured in linear feet of printed books. LTC1 says to multiply the cost of a book by 10 if its hand-written.



So we are looking at $1,000 (72d) for a spell book. There is an argument to be made for halving or quartering that price for a very common spell though, as a +3 CF was slapped on it in DF4 just for dealing with magic (for contrast, Alchemy and Surgery are at just +1 CF).

My guess at this point is that nearby villages may very well have the requisite teachers - implying that your village will be a nexus of sorts for other villages with young apprentices who need Magery 1 training.

Lacking that - then someone is going to have to have a repository of spells in the form of a spell library - or...

The spell casters will have to re-invent the wheel every time they can't find a book or teacher. (for purposes of this "simulation" I would suggest using GURPS CLASSIC MAGIC rules for spell invention).

Yeah, I'm looking at teachers and apprentices being the main way spells are taught. Cathaoir was almost certainly sent off to be the squire of a battle-mage who taught him how to fight. The other spells rely on being industrial spells that can keep a mage busy making a living on every single manor.


Its looking like healing spells belong to specialists who don't live on manors (I did not expect that) and who serve the nobility, on military campaigns, or in towns that can have something for them to cast every single day.



I think books on useful Magery 1 spells are probably fairly common... that they let you try to cast spells from default is quite interesting. I don't know that the magery 1 mages will learn to read though: most will stick to the basics, I'd guess.



Divination is probably also the reserve of a specialist, and its looking like a community with a Diviner is self-sustaining: people get used to going to that site, and it recruits new Diviners as apprentices... or I'm under estimating the demand and there is one under every Baron (but not knight). That's still a journey. Also, pretty expensive spell with a super-long casting time.

[ericthered]

Minus-15 "spent coins":

• Garrit (25 points, Age 35): seek earth(1), shape earth (1), earth to stone -12 (16), Seek Pass (1), Walk Through Earth (1), Earth Vision (1), Essential Earth -9 (4)
• Jannete (19 points, Age 30): Seek Plant (1), Identify Plant (1), Heal Plant (1), Bless Plants -12 (12), [Either Plant Growth-10 (4) or seek earth (1), shape earth (1), Seek Pass(1), Earth Vision(1)]
• Ressie (9 points, age 27): seek earth (1), shape earth -12 (4), architecture -12 (4)
• Giles (9 points, age 19): Seek Plant (1), Identify Plant (1), Heal Plant (1), Bless Plants -10 (4)
• Cathoair (16 points, Age 27): Shield-12 (4), Knife-10 (1), and [Itch(1), Spasm(1), Pain(1), Stun-12 (4), Hair growth-12 (4)] OR [Ignite fire (1), Create Fire-12 (4), seek earth(1), shape earth-12 (4), architecture-11* (2)]
• Llenlleawg (3 points, Age 12): seek earth (1), shape earth (1), earth to stone (1)

notes:

• Ressie's first child is at 19. If we say that she was trained as a full mage (half of all points towards proffession) up until that point, she has 8 points of uninterupted training. Which is to say, she can be a house-making machine. Puts a whole new meaning to the term "Home-maker". I feel like I can justify at least one more point in the subsequent years.
• Essential earth is a tricky spell to get: It has a LONG prereq chain of 6 spells, and its never the TOP priority to get.
• Bless plants is weird, because you never want to be without it, but you also really only need one caster.
• Ceremonially casting Plant growth at skill-10 might be viable, because failures only cost a quarter of the possible FP.
• Cathoair has some very interesting choices. I'm not sure which way is better. I do know that giving him those two are better than trying to work him towards essential earth. I gave him the minimal needed to stay alive in combat. I'm actually not sure if the stun build or the create fire build is stronger.
• I'm going to have a LOT more magic available in 15 years.