The Magic of Magicbuilding: Interdimensional Diplomacy

Welcome to the Magic of Magicbuilding, our little spinoff feature that focuses specifically on building a magical system for a fantasy setting.  This week, we're taking a look at something that leans toward worldbuilding: how the sapient creatures of different worlds will interact.

What We Have So Far

The world we are setting our magic system in is not a vacuum.  We've spent months building it, in fact.  Rather than have you read all of that, however, we'll summarize the important parts for this week's discussion.  Our world is massive, with 100 times the space and resources of Earth, and three sapient species call it home: arboreal "furries," amphibious "scalies," and a species of humans adapted to our world, which we've been labeling "nu humans."  These three species regularly interact and do not engage in heavy competition, resulting in mostly peaceful coexistence.  More broadly, the humongous scale of the planet lends itself to solving systemic problems by moving instead of large-scale violence, and as a result, war is not a major driving force in our world.

Into this world, we have begun placing small pockets of extradimensional energy.  Where that energy bleeds through, conditions corresponding to the other dimension hold sway.  This ultimately encourages creatures capable of using that energy to do so until they have become monsters, creatures of both our world and the other dimension.  In addition, three of the dimensions are home to creatures that can traverse the bleed to enter our world.  Broadly, we've assigned them attributes similar to the classic monstrous designations of fae, undead, and Deep Ones.

Last but not least, we've decided that our dimension possesses a semi-natural antipathy toward such creatures.  This manifests itself specifically in the form of dungeons, which draw in, trap, and absorb the elements of other dimensions, and more broadly in an innate sense of "wrongness" that all natural creatures pick up on in the vicinity of such energies and beings.

While this innate sense is likely sufficient for less intelligent creatures to avoid or attack extra-dimensional creatures, magical development presupposes that sapient creatures tend to ignore or even subvert that sense, in a similar fashion to our tendency to take the defensive measures of various species and use them to make our meals spicier.  If that's the case for magical energy, how will we respond to magical creatures?

Feeding Habits

Something that will influence the behavior of our three native species even more than the innate senses they have will be enlightened self-interest.  By a non-coincidence, the three magical species that we've introduced all have something in common: they are inherently dangerous to the species of our world.  To the fae, creatures capable of emotion are sources of sustenance, since they feed off of emotional and mental states. To the undead, bodies are incredibly useful methods of locomotion, and bodies capable of tool use are more useful still.  To the alien creatures of the Many Voids, it is less an inherent desire to do our world and its inhabitants harm and more the fact that they are simply incompatible with a healthy coexistence... assuming you don't want that existence to involve sprouting random mouths and tentacles.

Understandably, these dangers make peaceful interaction with the three species more difficult.  Difficult isn't the same as impossible, of course, but would the species of our world be inclined to try?  Let's take a look at each of the three dimensional intruders in turn, with an eye toward why our native species would (or wouldn't) want to have anything to do with them.

  Fae.  Fae are the most predatory of the three species.  However, they are, by design, predators of thought and feeling, not the creature itself.  A fae creature is inclined to keep its prey alive, because a dead creature cannot feel.  Slavery and imprisonment would be their preference.  That said, each variety of fae has a desire for a specific emotional or mental state, and they would be adept at evoking that specific state.

Consider a fae that feeds on fear.  To it, dragging a sentient creature kicking and screaming into a dark hole from which they never emerge is a desirable outcome.  It would take on a form that inspires fear, no doubt one with overt predatory traits, such as large teeth and powerful limbs.

Now consider a fae that feeds on love.  Dragging a sentient creature kicking and screaming into a dark hole from which they never emerge is not going to evoke feelings of love; that fae is going to starve if they tried such a thing.  Instead, the fae is going to want to ensure that their prey loves them, since such an outcome leads to an indefinite source of food.  Imprisonment to this fae would likely take the form of matrimony, and they'll assume a form that their prey will want to love.

Now consider a fae that feeds on awe.  Again, straightforward imprisonment won't work.  A fae that seeks to evoke awe will behave in such a fashion as to inspire worship.  In fact, fae such as these may well try to install themselves as gods, since organized worship leads to far greater amounts of food.

For each of these fae, the basic desire to feed will lead to wildly different interactions with our native species.  Some will be the most horrific predators we can think of, some will be soulmates, and some will be deific.  Treating them as equally dangerous is likely the intelligent move, but realistically, reactions will vary.

  Undead.  The undead are much more uniform in their desire, though how far they're willing to go to satisfy that desire (and how open they are to negotiation) will vary.  Unlike typical undead, the undead of our magic system are masters of not just the realm between living and death, but life energy in general.  Undead are natural healers, in other words, and though they wouldn't naturally be inclined to restore health and vigor to a body they could use, intelligent undead are more than bright enough to make deals that could benefit them in a variety of ways.  Given that they don't have any inherent needs for anything else, it's even possible that an undead already in possession of a body could be benevolent, or at least neutral, when encountered.

Of course, that presupposes that the body they have is sufficient for their needs.  That also presupposes that the undead are inclined to be benevolent or neutral; their desires are foreign to normal life, since they don't have any of the needs that living creatures do.  Ultimately, this means that the undead are dangerous because they are, to living creatures, unpredictable.  If you never know what they want, you'll never be able to gauge what they're willing to do to get it.

  The Deep Ones.  For creatures that defy contemporary definitions of life, the Deep Ones are the most straightforward of the three creatures we're looking at:  they're dangerous.  All the time.

Unlike the other extra-dimensional creatures, the Deep Ones are dangerous simply by existing.  Their presence is enough to warp other life in ways that they probably won't like.  Of course, the more intelligent varieties of Deep One can control this effect, but with how alien they are, it is difficult to even discern why they would want to. 

There are, no doubt, some people who would try to negotiate with the Deep Ones.  The temptation of a creature waving a pulsating tentacle and giving you six-pack abs (or whatever other physical change you wish for) is a strong one.  Whether they would be able to is less likely.  For the vast majority of thinking creatures, however, the primary impulse when encountering creatures like the Deep Ones is going to be to kill them with fire before they sneeze and everyone within a set radius spontaneously develops writhing tumors.

Conclusion

Overall, the extra-dimensional creatures will be a mixed bag.  Deep Ones will be (with certain rare and desperate exceptions) driven off or killed when encountered.  Lower-level undead, especially those without a true body- meaning those who possess normally inanimate objects, or who have only managed a few body parts- will be treated similarly.  Higher-level undead, especially the most intelligent varieties, might well be welcomed into a community, though their presence comes with a cost, and the "wrongness" will always be present in such situations.  Fae will be dealt with on a case-by-case basis.  Of the three, they will have the most variety, even above the impermanent Deep Ones, and of the three, they will be the most influenced by our world's cultures.  After all, the fae exist to provoke emotions, not invent them.  They will find what makes our world's creatures feel a certain way, and then lean into it.

Probably the most interesting result of the extra-dimensional creatures interacting with our "normal" creatures is that so many of those interactions will end in violence.  Because of our magic system, our setting now has a reason to engage in warfare: survival.

This leads to our next magicbuilding topic.  Obviously, magic is going to impact the way technology develops, and technology will, in turn, impact the way magic develops.  Technological development will be covered by our Worldbuilding Wednesdays series, but what we can consider over here in the land of magicbuilding is what will drive magical innovation.  For example, one driver:  the urge to Kill It With Fire.  Next week, we start talking about how our sigil magic could be used to deal with monsters and extra-dimensional creatures.