John Gardner once sagely observed that writing exercises were good practice because they were like the writing life, much of which consists of inventing stuff not because you particularly want to but because it is vitally important for what you really want to write.
Once upon a time, there were immensely powerful wizards who cast mighty spells in their wars and made the land a desolate waste. They were overthrown by slightly lesser wizards banding together, who made a green and pleasant land of the waste.
Finding places to explain why the children of royalty and nobility do not play with the children of servants, even when they are very young: because you have to stop the friendships entirely at a relatively young age.
If you were thrown into a D&D universe, and wanted to play the Connecticut Yankee and improve things, what spells would be the best ones to substitute for industrial processes? Hmmm. . . .
A kingdom has a spell on the king. He can offer his subject a chance to act against him -- but if they do not act them, they can not try it again at a later date.
Hmm. . . .
Does this mean that they also can't act against any other monarch? Say the person who DID act against the king?
I didn't think this spell through. It doesn't help that I started the story with the idea of it and so it was taken for granted all the while I plotted.
So we have a magocracy where the upper classes have the powerful mages. Usually. They work hard at co-opting lower class mages of power, and those born to high rank without great power often marry them to give them the status. ( Collapse )
In a world where magic power in innately inborn, wizards rise to the top of society. Perhaps the upper class is all wizards. If it's hereditary, it will forms an aristocracy.
