Worldbuilding Wednesdays: Magical Additions

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 remind folks that our setting is a blend of both technology and magic.  Mostly, we'll do that by talking about the blend of technology and magic.

What We Have So Far

Way back at the beginning of this series, we talked about our inspiration for the world we were building.  We made it clear that our world would be one of both magic and technology.  However, we've mostly left the magical part of the worldbuilding to "The Magic of Magicbuilding," our companion series.  Every once in a while, we like to remember that magic will have an effect on our worldbuilding- and this is one of those occasions.  So that you don't have to jump to the other series and play catch-up, we'll summarize how magic works.

"Magic" is the term for a semi-conscious form of energy that can be tapped into by any creature that is sapient enough to possess consciousness.  Although some magic is native to Istenaiti, that particular energy seems to only exist to allow natives of our world to manipulate the magic of other dimensions... and to create natively grown defenses against said dimensions' leaking energy.  The most prominent of these defenses are dungeons, mysterious mazes that look both organic and constructed, and which draw magical creatures to them.  The dungeons then trap and kill off the magical creatures, like giant vermin traps.

Magic from other dimensions is both more powerful and more dangerous than native magic, because using it tends to alter the caster in a fashion that makes them both more physically amenable to the energy and mentally aligned with it.  Someone who uses fire magic, for example, tends to become more fiery in temperament and more flamelike physically.  After a certain point, the caster becomes more magic than creature, and at that point they are referred to as "monsters."  In addition to monsters, several dimensions have their own sapient creatures, which have managed to travel to our world.  These creatures are referred to collectively as "extradimensional beings," though we suppose we can call them something a little snappier.

How about "daemons?"  It plays off the dimensional tag, it's a word similar to what the Siculi would use, and the original meaning referred to intermediaries between the land of the gods and Earth.  Yeah, that'll work.  "Daemons" it is.

Last but not least for our summary of magic: alongside the advent of writing, spellcasters discovered that magic could be made much safer and more controllable by using sigils- effectively a highly specialized written language that can "program" magical energy.  The sigils take the brunt of the harm from the magic, leaving casters much less likely to turn into monsters, with the only tradeoff being that it is difficult to change a sigil on the fly, making them less flexible in use than normal casting.  Given the advantages, the vast majority of casters use sigils instead.

Magical Mechanical Advantages

We've mentioned a couple of changes that would occur due to magic since we started to blend magic and technology in our worldbuilding series.  The glazed city walls, for example, are a result of the ease with which glazing can be done when magic is involved.  Our people's homes have air conditioning, heating, running water, and lights, all thanks to magic.  This week is more of the same, but there's also an important twist that hasn't been developed yet.

At this point in our people's history, they would likely have been broadly separated into classes.  Most people would be laborers, relatively uneducated and contributing to society by working.  A smaller group would be educated and would serve as administrators in various roles, with a sizeable offshoot working as support for the laborers.  Traditionally, these jobs were held by low-level nobility, their direct servants, and the clergy, but our people work through a series of councils, so the division would likely be less clear-cut than that.  At the top of the system would be a few executors, people who made decisions for a living; the ruling class, in other words.

Around the time the Iron Age begins, however, farming technology has advanced enough that a sizeable number of people can work on things outside of that work pyramid.  In Western history, these people were the tradesmen and merchants, and they formed guilds that eventually led to the invention of "professions."  Our people have a different history, but something similar will happen: a growing class of people will exist whose main job does not revolve around making sure that everybody eats.

It is from those people that mages will spring up.

Don't get us wrong: magic will definitely be a thing before professional spellcasters exist.  Priests will offer prayers up to the gods and etch "divine" sigils into the fields to make the soil soften.  Servants will activate markings in rooms so that the councilors don't have to expend energy cooling themselves.  People with some education will know how to at least copy common sigils and use them properly.  It won't be until this point in history, however, that someone can spend all day figuring out how to make a new sigil that produces slightly cooler air than a normal fan does, iterating until they can work with a craftsman to make a "blizzard box" (refrigerator).

Mages become a thing at this point for multiple reasons.  Yes, this is the first point that someone could make a living as a mage, but this is also the point at which someone has the time to research languages, and it is the combination of these two points in history that allows mages to not just study sigils for a living, but also to begin the laborious process of learning the language sigils are written in, allowing them to more easily modify said sigils.  Just as the advent of the iron plow led to the guilds, the discovery that languages have rules leads to magic-as-science.  This in turn leads directly to magic-as-technology, and from here on out, we can safely assume that both magic and technology will begin to take their cues from each other.  It may have taken much longer to get to the Iron Age from the Bronze Age, but the speed with which our civilization plows through the Industrial Age to reach the Information Age will be astounding.

Case in point:  let's say that one of the first inventions after the revelation that sigils are a language is that "blizzard box" we made up as an example.  Such an invention will inevitably lead to a similar concept of building a "heating box," which will lead to advancements in both ceramics and metallurgy.  In the real world, it took about seven centuries to go from iron working to intentionally producing steel; on Istenaiti, it may be as little as a few generations.  The deciding factor won't be the heat of the forges used to make iron ingots, as it is on Earth- here, using charcoal led to the accidental discovery that carbon made iron into a much stronger alloy (steel).  It will be smiths trying intentionally to change how iron works by adding substances to it, just as they learned to make bronze.  Without magic, this would need to wait until crucibles could be developed, but with magic, three sigils would be enough to make a crucible in a single day.  From there comes a set of smiths looking for ways to make iron competitive with bronze by mixing random bits in, and from there, steel.

Last week, we said that our civilization wouldn't have steel until it had figured out how to cast iron.  Were it reliant on technology alone, that process would take several times longer.  With magic, the time shortens dramatically... but only once magic moves beyond the basics, and that only happens with the advent of linguistics.  We can extend this line of thinking to any technology that relies on manipulating heat, water, air, or molding earth.  Because of that, we can reach one important, but inevitable, conclusion:  once mages learn how to modify sigils, they will promptly become the most important profession in the world.

Conclusion

Believe it or not, the sudden dominance of a single profession that only popped up starting around the Iron Age has a real-world analog.  The Freemasons, often referred to in conspiracy theories as a mysterious organization akin to the Illuminati, originated as The Freemasons, a subset of the various mason guilds that worked "free" stone, like limestone.  From carvers to behind-the-scenes global players took a remarkably short amount of time, as limestone masonry became the de facto construction of choice for lords and churches.  Mages will be somewhat similar to Freemasons, actually; while vital to the development of many technologies and professions, the mages themselves won't be the craftsmen doing all of the important work.  Instead, they will be the people who make that important work possible.

Next week, we'll take a look at the first iteration of changes to technological development that will be caused by magic.  To try and make it as straightforward as possible, we'll split it up by variety of magic.