Worldbuilding Wednesdays: Introducing Magic

Welcome to Worldbuilding Wednesdays!  Every Wednesday, we spend what is probably far too much time walking through our worldbuilding process.  This week, we're going to address a necessary break from one of our normal rules.

What We Have So Far

We've developed our world to the point that even summarizing everything would likely be longer than our average posts.  Instead, a summary of the summary:  we have a world built on a series of rules and a few bits of whimsy.  The world is ten times Earth's radius but hollow, and has three satellites, all roughly the same size: two moons and a sunlike Lantern.  The gravity on this world is effectively 1/10 of our own.  By keeping physics otherwise the same as on our world, we've concluded that the tides are wild, untamed, and significantly stronger than Earth's; that the weather is remarkably consistent and mostly wet; that temperature change is mostly linked to altitude; that plant life is truly massive; and that, while many creatures are larger than they would be on Earth, the limiting factor on size is no longer gravity but inertia and friction.

It's been a while, but to remind everyone:  the initial inspiration for the world we're building right now is a singular image.  That image involved a blend of modern technology and seeming magic- a truck driving down a road, towing a restrained dragon.  We've been building a magic system for the last couple of months through the Magic of Magicbuilding posts, and we've now reached the point in our worldbuilding where we can consider the impact of magic on our developing civilization on The Hill.

For those who don't feel like going through a dozen or so posts, let's summarize the magic system we have right now: Magic involves manipulating types of energy beyond what physics explains.  Some of this magical energy is present in our world, but it is mostly difficult to acquire and use.  What little can be readily used is mostly present in (and created by) the creature doing the manipulation- the caster, in other words.  As it happens, the natural magic of this world is capable of opening portals to other dimensions, each with a different form of magical energy.  One thing that all forms of magic have in common is that these energies are semi-conscious and respond to specific instructions given in the form of sigils.  Manipulation of magical energy can be done in other ways, but this is by far the most reliable and safe method.

While we've also briefly considered how magic might interact with technology, this was through the lens of Earth's technological developments.  The technology of our world is going to develop in a different direction, and that will be for two reasons:  magic and the world that we've built.  For example, firearms will definitely be a thing.  The resources are there, and the desire to kill things from great distances is there.  There is little need for mass murder, though, since most problems that would normally be solved with industrial-scale violence can instead be solved by moving away.  This was at one point true on a lesser scale on Earth, but the key feature that makes it more feasible on our world is the abundance of resources.  The only thing you lose by moving is time.  Which brings up another example- by necessity, logistics will be the greatest technological need.  Running a phone line from end to end of just the one continent we're looking at is going to take about as much effort as running a phone line to the moon.

Magic, however, can make both those innovations easier.  Sigils can take the place of gunpowder, and a properly arranged network won't need a cable to transmit information.  More broadly, if magic and technology are developed at the same time, we'll see the same processes that would lead to innovations in technology, similarly leading to innovations in magic.  Over time, the two will partially mesh.  Which, it turns out, is one of our goals: a world where sufficiently advanced magic and sufficiently advanced technology are indistinguishable.

The Realities of Magic

They won't entirely merge, however.  Magic has a constraint that technology does not: it requires a conscious effort, as in an act carried out by a being with consciousness.  You can build a fairly simple device to fire an ordinary gun, for example, but it would not be able to fire a gun loaded with magical bullets.  It will also be unable to activate any other magical device.

By the time we get to technology levels involving cars, that's going to lead to some interesting developments.  Automation will not be nearly as developed in our world as it is on Earth.  In a world where an average healthy human can pick up around 500 kg and magnitudes more effort can be expended with the right sigils, mechanical advantages will not be nearly as important.  The few things that do involve automation will be those that are both necessary to have and necessary to run without conscious intervention, such as emergency systems or those tasks that are too complicated for a person to manage.  Most jobs will require fewer people to complete, but virtually every job will need to be completed by at least one person.  If that sounds counterintuitive, let's put it another way: there would be no such thing as a self-serve gas station on our world, even if cars ran on gas.  Automated tellers and electric vending machines wouldn't be able to operate on magic.  Generally speaking, if the average technology level is around 2026, a lot of the electronic and mechanical devices will more closely resemble those from 1926.

This isn't meant to be a pessimistic view of our world, however.  This is simply the tradeoff for some very big benefits.  Chief among them is that this world will not have to worry about carbon emissions.  Magic makes steam-driven machinery incredibly economical, and most small electronic devices will be able to function more or less forever for free.  As mentioned in our latest Magicbuilding post, the world has methods of reabsorbing excess magical energies, and it would involve very little stretching to conclude that magical byproducts also get absorbed.  Power plants would be able to generate the energy to run larger devices, and they would get their power mostly from the power plant workers, rather than drawing from the environment.  Virtually every job would be either on par with skilled workers (people with physical and mental conditioning who have learned how to create sigils as needed) or providing goods and services to those skilled workers.  There would "always" be more jobs than there are people; we put "always" in quotation marks because the balancing point would occur once the planet's population hit about 1 trillion or so... which will take time, since the population is comprised of three species that can't interbreed, lowering the population growth rate.  Considering that population growth tends to slow with sufficiently educated, resource-rich populations, our world will probably never see that many people.

In that sense, congratulations!  Thanks to magic and a cartoonishly large, impossibly hollow planet, the modern-day people of our world will have the relaxed, fulfilled, and financially secure lives that most Earthlings dream of.

As long as they stay within city limits, of course.  Trips to the beach are a death wish, and even in the open fields, we aren't guaranteeing that a gun or magic will save you from a centipede the size and speed of a Buick.  Again, tradeoffs.

Conclusion

From here on out, we'll use the broad strokes of magic outlined here as we also begin developing the technology of our civilization.  Magic for Magicbuilding will continue to refine the specifics of magic, but we won't need those to decide, for example, how much magic is involved in the development of city walls.  As a general rule, we'll look at a necessary technological innovation and decide if magic is involved based on whether that innovation could be improved upon and/or replaced by a button that provides energy.  If so, magic enters the fray.  If not, we can assume the innovation develops similarly to how it works on Earth.

Since we've been providing examples quite a bit this week, how about one more for the road?  As you'll recall, we mentioned that the first real structures are likely to be built up in the trees, due to ready access to the most easily workable materials.  Could magic help with this?  Probably not: for basic construction, a hammer and nails is still the most popular technological option, and adding energy to that mix doesn't actually help.  Even levitating magic isn't really necessary when the entire population of workers could easily hold even a large building in place while they secured it to the side of a tree.  This means that the initial transition from three communities into a single settlement isn't going to happen with the activation of a sigil, even if the three species involved knew how to use them.

One does wonder, however, how quickly certain amenities would appear at the birth of civilization.  It's pretty easy to imagine one of our sapients watching a sky whale flying overhead, far more agile than it looks, gusts of air from telltale whorled markings on its wings allowing it to shift rapidly, and having an epiphany.  They rush to their home, some hundred meters up a tree, and quickly copy the whorl they saw on the sky whale.  Then, with a bit of intuition and their own internal magic, they successfully activate the sigil...

And invent the world's first indoor fan.