scrape_r_rational/data/cache/2d4dsp.md

[WIP] [MK] [BST] The politics of limiting access to magic

Post:

I'm in the process of writing a Fantasy book, which will be the first in a series. It's going well. However, I have one aspect of the world building where I think it would be very advantageous to get the input of a few of you nice and useful people.

Anyone can learn magic in my world, and magic can get really powerful compared to most settings, and in particular it can all too easily be turned to very destructive ends. Important to the world history is a great war which almost ended in man made omnicide. In the wake of that war the nations of the world have grown extremely paranoid of anyone trying to learn too much magic (or science, which can lead to magical research, god forbid). It is now 300 years since the end of the magical world war, and every single country in the world very heavily regulates who is allowed to learn magic. There is some variation in how countries handle who is allowed to learn magic within the country, but there very much also needs to be at least a continent wide treaty regulating how many new magicians each country is allowed to train each year, what they are allowed to learn, etcetera. This is where I would like your input. I suspect that I may leave my world politics open to munchkinry, and I want to make the little the reader is explicitly told about it is as realistic as possible. I have gotten largely as far as this, wrapped up in long words of course:

1. If anyone is found to train too many magicians, all the other countries will band together and eradicate the guilty party.

2. How many magicians a country is allowed to train in a year is not dependent on how many people live in that country, because that would allow large kingdoms to grow larger. Instead, every year the countries negotiate and determine a 'minimum' number of magicians which each country is allowed to train. Any country wishing to train more may do so, but for every extra magician they wish to train they have to pay compensation to all the other countries, and the cost goes up alarmingly quickly for every extra magician they wish to train.

3. Whether a magician dies old or young matters not; one trained magician is one trained magician. This means that if you go to war you are going to lose some of your very expensive to replace magicians.

4. Magicians captured must either be killed or paid for as though you had trained them yourself. Same for any magicians that you allow to migrate to your country.

5. Anyone who learns magic without permission must be killed or, if that is their only crime and you are feeling merciful, sent to live out the rest of their life in a monastery/prison colony, preferably in one of the other countries. Or you can pay for them. Which might be feasible if their family is incredibly rich.

6. Negotiations take place in a magical location where anyone who utters a lie immediately and unavoidably dies. Though the rulers of every nation do not have to personally attend the negotiations every year, the heads of noble families, sovereigns and other rich and powerful individuals are expected to attend at least every decade or so, and to explicitly state that they have not broken the treaty or suspected anyone else in their kingdom of doing so.

7. While the magical location can be tricked, it will kill you the second you believe that what you utter is not as certain to be true as you state it to be. You could break the treaty the day after swearing on it, but you couldn't swear on it if you expected that you would then go on to break it. In addition, the laws of nature are layered in my world, and it is not currently possible to use magic to fiddle with people's minds/implant/remove memories. This will change in later books, but by then everything is going to hell for other reasons.

8. While it's theoretically possible that new countries might form and join the treaty, the magical location is very useful for finding out if those seeking to lead the new country are too close to any of the old countries (Puppet regimes get shot).

9. Everyone knows that if the treaty breaks down and every country starts pumping out a hundred times as many magicians as before, everything is going to go to hell and whatever remains of their kingdoms at the end of the inevitable war, it is unlikely they themselves or anyone in their family survives, because walls and fortresses are about as useful against a legion of magicians as they would be against as many cannons and catapults.

So. Dear /r/rational, how would you go about shifting the balances of political power/training too many magicians/learning too much magic in this world? Other than assassinating as many foreign magicians as you can get away with on pure principle and auctioning off 'your' rights to learn magic to the wealthy within your own country, I mean. Not every country is explicitly a signatory to the treaty, though every country on the main continent is, and other countries know that if they train too many themselves the main continent kingdoms (where the vast majority of my world's inhabitants live) will band together and wipe them out. Population density for the most part is lower than dark age Europe, and outlaws do sometimes form small societies in the wilderness. However, limited as the legal magicians are in number, there are enough of them to send armies to eradicate any group in the wilderness suspected of training themselves in magic, should they be perceived as a growing threat. Oh, and magicians can identify other magicians on sight, because they get a little magical glow around them that only magicians can see.

Thank you for your time. The plot is quite planned out; I'm simply trying to make sure that, before the events that get the plot balls rolling, the politics of my world look stable and without glaring exploitable holes.

Comments:

• u/eaglejarl:

  Hm.  Interesting setting, I'll look forward to reading it.
  
  Here are my thoughts:
  
  * Magicians can identify each other *on sight*.  How do they detect, at long range, when another country is training extra mages?
  * How long does it take to train a mage?
  * How do you capture a mage if they are as powerful as you say?
  * Is there any reason that you can't hire/acquire enemy mages wholesale -- pay them, blackmail them, enchant them, whatever?  Ideally, before the war officially starts -- bring their loyalty to your side, but leave them in place so that no one knows they are now yours.  Also, this means they make great intelligence agents, assassins, and sleeper agents.
  * What happens if a ruler can't show up at the moot?  If he's sick, or too far away, or currently kidnapped, what happens?
  
  Depending on the answers to the above, I suspect that there is a tipping point where, when a particular country gets enough mages, they can quickly conquer their largest neighbor, gobble up THEIR mages, and go on to conquer the next, etc.  If the other nations are fast enough they could stop this march, but in practice it could happen within days -- attack every other nation at once, destabilize all of them so they cannot coordinate counterattacks, then go back and gobble them down at your leisure.
  
  Personally, I would not use battlefield tactics for this.  There would be no giant army marching up where you could shoot at my mages.  I would use blitzkrieg decapitation strikes:  [teleport into their capital](http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?222007-The-Definitive-Guide-to-the-Tippyverse-By-Emperor-Tippy), kill the rulers, poison the wells, use magic to spread disease, kill all the competent military leaders and leave the incompetent ones alive.  While you're at it, be sure to kill off any very loyal special shock troops that might be a problem for you.  (If this sounds exactly like what I had Albrecht in [The Two Year Emperor](https://www.fanfiction.net/s/9669819/39/The-Two-Year-Emperor) threaten to do, it's because it is.)
  
  As to how you train enough mages to get past the tipping point:  a loyal and ambitious subminister sets up a training college way off in the woods somewhere without talking to the king about it.  The place is probably in the Arctic or on another continent to make it harder for other nations to find; mages can teleport, so distance doesn't matter, only concealment.  (If there is no range restriction on teleportation, then a moon colony or orbital platform is also an option.)  The ruler never knows anything about it until his loyal consigliere comes to him and says "hey, boss, guess what? We have 100,000 mages over our limit and no one else knows about them."  Once that happens, the ruler pretty much HAS to start conquering everything in sight -- he can't pay the fines for that many mages, he can't hide the fact that he has them once the next moot occurs, and the mages are apt to take offence if he starts trying to kill or banish all of them.
  
  
  Your point #9 (people know that if they break the treaty everything goes to hell) is either sufficient or irrelevant.  If everyone believes that, then there will never be a problem.  If anyone fails to believe it, then they will seek the advantage.  It's a Prisoner's Dilemna situation -- if everyone always cooperates, all is good.  If anyone defects, things get nuts.
  

  • u/Geminii27:

    > "hey, boss, guess what? We have 100,000 mages over our limit and no one else knows about them."
    
    Ruler to other rulers: "I have been handed a serious problem; how should we proceed so it doesn't all end in blood and fire?"
    

    • u/eaglejarl:

      Other rulers: what the hell are you trying to pull?!
      :)
      
      Alternatively, the under minister (Al) wants to be king, so he sets the current ruler (Bob) up as a patsy -- Al trains the mages and then starts using them against other countries. At first Bob looks like the guilty party and war breaks out. Someone might be rational enough to get Bob to the moot site and lie detector him, but someone won't be. Once fighting breaks out, you are likely to have a feud situation -- everyone would be better off if the fighting stopped, but there's too much bad blood.
      

  • u/Rhamni:

    I shall have to read The Two Year Emperor. I should have mentioned however that in my world teleportation does not exist, because if it did the last world war would have ended in a sea of nuclear fire.
    
    Replies to bullet points:
    
    1: Indirectly, by making leaders swear in the magical location that so far as they know, there are no extra magicians being trained. As long as all major leaders know they can't get away with cheating, any upstarts trying to build an army in secret can be dealt with as soon as found. And there are of course spies for all the usual reasons, and some of these are magicians.
    
    2: A few years. You could train a very dangerous few trick pony in one year, but they wouldn't be very dangerous to someone who's been a magician for a few years more. Ten years will see them about as good with magic as they'll get, but that's in large part because all the really cool stuff is buried under three hundred years of paranoid blanket bans and religious prohibitions.
    
    3: You mostly don't. You kill them. In a fight between anything near equals, it's much more likely that both die than that one manages to capture the other alive.
    
    4: You could certainly subvert/bribe/blackmail enemy magicians. The problem would come if they became officially yours and you had to pay for them or if you conquered the enemy state and suddenly had to pay for all the magicians they had at once. Other countries would not let you get away with doubling your number of magicians, nor with installing a puppet regime.
    
    5: Other countries would get really suspicious and start to investigate very thoroughly. Leaders do not have to come every year, but if you were supposed to come and you don't, all your neighbours are going to start trading intelligence with each other.
    
    Blitzkrieg decapitation would indeed be the way to go. Unfortunately, in my world offense is so *very* much stronger than defense that even if you have the military might to decapitate every country around you simultaneously there are going to be enough individuals and small groups left who are after your head that your seat of power is going to turn into slag. It's not *impossible* to take over the world, but it's going to take more than a really sneaky, well educated ruler to do it. In the case of my final villains, what it takes is a few bat shit sociopath scientists willing to turn their soldiers into scientists and a *really* good PR machine.
    
    During the course of the plot some the layers of my laws of nature are peeld back, and we get magical plagues, mind control, resurrections, magical genetic engineering, cults, bending and breaking space, time manipulation (though no travelling backwards in time, good gods that would just break everything into little pieces), prophecies, weather manipulation, the destructon of souls, *actual* magically binding oaths, etc etc.
    
    Point 9 was mostly just to say that most leaders are sufficiently certain that they would lose in the long run if they chose to betray, though from time time someone tries to cheat and so far they have all been stopped long before they could take on the rest of the continent.
    
    Phew, long reply. Thank you for making me formulate this.
    

    • u/eaglejarl:

      > Indirectly, by making leaders swear in the magical location that so far as they know, there are no extra magicians being trained.
      
      Hang on though, this doesn't speak to my point.  My suggestion was that an official one or two ranks below the king would start training mages *without telling the king*.  That way the king can honestly swear at the moot that he is not training any extra mages, that his totals are within expected bounds.  Once the nation has built up a decisive advantage, off you go.
      
      > Unfortunately, in my world offense is so very much stronger than defense that even if you have the military might to decapitate every country around you simultaneously there are going to be enough individuals and small groups left who are after your head that your seat of power is going to turn into slag.
      
      Hm, ok, then you need to be a combination of Otto von Bismarck and Cardinal Richelieu -- you form alliances with other nations to keep people off *your* back, and you trick other nations into going to war with each other.  Arrange for the mages of other nations to be assassinated, preferably in ways that look like accidents.  Failing the "accidents" route, cast the blame on one of your enemies.  Once you've eliminated enough enemy mages, you decapitate *the mages*, not the political rulers.
      
      > You could train a very dangerous few trick pony in one year, but they wouldn't be very dangerous to someone who's been a magician for a few years more.
      
      Would they be good enough that an assassin trained with a couple of tricks could take out a more powerful mage?  Transmute his wine into poison (or liquid gold, or whatever), conjure grease under his feet as he's going down a long, steep staircase, arrange for something heavy to fall on him...?
      
      You've said that magical defense is not terribly strong, at least proportionately.  Is that just against magical attacks?  Vlad Taltos once remarked “No matter how subtle the wizard, a knife between the shoulder blades will seriously cramp his style.”   Is that true?  If so, poison or an arrow should do just fine and could be done by a mundane, so there's no 'mageglow' to give him away.
      
      >In a fight between anything near equals, it's much more likely that both die than that one manages to capture the other alive.
      
      Huh.  I would expect that one of them would win and kill the other, not that it would be MAD.  If two roughly equal mages is a probable double suicide, then why would mages ever be willing to fight?
      

      • u/AugSphere:

        > Huh. I would expect that one of them would win and kill the other, not that it would be MAD. If two roughly equal mages is a probable double suicide, then why would mages ever be willing to fight?
        
        Both of the combatants estimate their position to be superior prior to battle and engage. 
        
        The same logic can be applied to medieval land battles. Why would you engage in a battle if you'd estimated you'll lose? You wouldn't (unless your goal is something other than victory of course). Battles happen when both sides feel confident in victory. Castles, on the other hand, can't run away when you bring a superior force against them, which might explain the ratio of sieges to land battles.
        

        • u/eaglejarl:

          When two martial artists start fighting, they probably each believe they will win.  In general, one of them wins and one loses.  Fights where both people end up dead are rare enough in real life that they are used as a dramatic device in movies.
          
          Is there a reason why mages are different -- that a fight between two relatively-equal mages will be a mutual kill, instead of the marginally superior / luckier / cleverer one winning and the other losing?
          

          • u/AugSphere:

            Something to do with attack being more potent than defence I imagine. 
            
            Damage over time maybe? Marginally superior / luckier / cleverer one wins, but the loser still deals enough damage that the winner soon succumbs. Like two people in a knife fight with deadly but slow acting poisons on the blades. Unless one is skilled enough to avoid the smallest scratch or has a counter to the poison, the victory is going to be short-lived.
            

• u/alexanderwales:

  You've actually got an interesting balance going on between small and large countries there. The reason that the United States has a bicameral system is to balance the large states (favored by the House of Representatives because representation is proportional) against the small states (favored by the Senate because representation is based on statehood).
  
  With an agreed-upon number of mages being static per country you're favoring the small countries, but assuming that the "pay-for-more-mages" rate is the same for every country you're favoring the large countries since the *n*th mage past the limit is going to require far less of a percentage of their GDP. A consequence of this is that large counties are going to have more mages unless they're broke, while small countries will probably still have more mages per capita, which seems like it would work out rather fairly. And obviously when it comes time to renegotiate the treaty, the two biggest numbers at the table are going to be the number of mages that each country gets *and* the exponent used for determining the cost of the *n*th mage.
  
  So with that said, here are some thoughts and questions:
  
  * It's not clear from your rules whether we're allowed to go to war or not. So long as we're not violating the treaty in some way, war is still fair game, right? You would want to avoid it in the hopes that you didn't lose any mages, naturally, but I just want to be clear on that. (In theory, both sides could sign a war treaty that stated that they wouldn't use mages in the war, thereby setting up some game theory.)
  
  * Since the limit is on "number of mages trained per year" and not "total number of mages", you would want to train mages from a very young age, ensure their happiness so they don't defect, and keep them in good health.
  
  * There's also probably some trickery with the language to "trained" so that I could in theory train up a whole bunch of not-quite mages who have a very good grasp on the theory without actually knowing anything practical. That would allow pushing hundreds of people to become mages in a short period of time if someone else broke the treaty.
  
  * How long does it take to train a mage to be battle-ready? That seems hugely important. Months? Years? Decades?
  
  * Death by lies seems very harsh, and like something that you'd be able to abuse if you were clever. To kill someone, you only need to instill enough doubt in them that they don't want to say what they have to, or that the place kills them. It also seems to favor the sort of person who can doublethink or at least change their convictions on a dime.
  
  * Amnesty programs aren't worth running if you need to pay for the mages that defect into your country or have been training illegally. That's probably the point, since otherwise you would have an incentive to encourage illegal training for later amnesty. Really, the limit isn't so much on "trained mages" it's on "newly acquired mages".
  

  • u/Rhamni:

    Interesting about the US. I'm from Sweden, so not entirely up on how that worked, but the comparison seems to work. There is indeed that interesting balance going on between the countries.
    
    1: War is allowed. It's just that, if you do capture any significant amount of land all the other countries are going to start forcing you to declare just how many magicians you captured, and how you'll pay for them. In reality most magicians are wealthy nobility, and would much rather help you pay to keep them alive than have you be forced to execute them. Magician-less warfare does indeed happen, because common soldiers are much cheaper to replace.
    
    2: You would indeed. My nobility has it pretty good. It's common to start training around age ten, though it can vary.
    
    3: It's common to select the most intelligent and skilled soldiers to be trained in magical theory to gauge who might be more suited, but the amount of time you could save is not a lot, since growing in magical strength is as much about training your 'magic muscle' (Which is your whole body) as it is about specific knowledge. Still, they'll take 'a little' over 'nothing'.
    
    4: Years. Ten years will get them as far as they'll go, one year is enough to make them clearly superior to any non-magician.
    
    5: :)
    
    6: Yup.
    

    • u/eaglejarl:

      Chiun: He is not ready.
      
      'Emperor' Smith:  How long will it take?
      
      Chiun:  Fifteen years.
      
      'Emperor' Smith:  Fifteen years?!  We're going to need him sooner than that, Chiun.
      
      Chiun:  Hmm.  If I cut a few corners, maybe fourteen and a half.
      
      :)
      
      ----
      
      What exactly are the limits on magic?  Can you spell them out, or at least offer some examples?  We know that teleportation, mind magic, conjuring food, and illusions are off the table and that increasing crop yield is on the table.  What else is in which category?
      

• u/eaglejarl:

  Hm.  It occurs to me that I think we're working on the wrong question.  Forget about international regulation, what about intranational?
  
  If one mage goes psychotic (or if one psychotic manages to hide his crazy long enough to become a mage), you have a WMD wandering around.  If there are no remote sensing magics, then catching that WMD is going to be very difficult.
  
  Or, suppose you have noble families, most of whom are magicians.  What happens when one of their spoiled kids (who started training at 8 or 10 and, after 3 or 5 years, has become quite powerful albeit not fully trained) has a tantrum?  
  
  Or if two noble families start "going to the mattresses" with each other?
  

  • u/Rhamni:

    Asshole magicians are a big problem, and spoiled teenagers drunk with power can get extremely shitty. If they go *too* far they will be dealt with, although it's perfectly conceivable that they'll keep their crimes low profile enough that a few bribes would let them keep terrorizing their region for many years. Magic cannot be kept up all day, though, and raping a few peasants and passing out in a tavern is a really good way to get yourself murdered. Should you be accused of sufficiently outrageous abuse of power, the magical location is very rarely used for trials as well, although you'd have to be accused of pretty horrible crimes for this to happen.
    
    Sociopath magicians are enormously dangerous in my world, and some of my villains qualify.
    
    Teenage magicians throwing tantrums are a menace, but their parents are probably vastly superior to them in magic, enough so that they could capture them alive if needed.
    
    Noble families do squabble amongst themselves, and while assassinations are illegal they do happen.
    

    • u/eaglejarl:

      > Teenage magicians throwing tantrums are a menace, but their parents are probably vastly superior to them in magic, enough so that they could capture them alive if needed.
      
      I thought offense was so much stronger than defense that a mage fight was always a mutual kill? Even if the parents are fighting non lethal, a kid throwing a tantrum is by definition out of control and would not fight no lethal.
      

      • u/Rhamni:

        My apologies - duels between anything near equals are often mutually lethal because you are not allowed to prepare beforehand, but outside of those a magician with a clear advantage can usually kill an inferior with only moderate danger to themselves. A (young) teenager going up against their parent (Likely with 15+ years more experience) is going to get one of three results:
        
        1) They chicken out, because their parent is so strong that they can't beat them without making it very obvious that they are trying to murder their liege and parent.
        
        2) Their parent destroys their defenses with non-lethal attacks and injures them. When you lose concentration while holding magic in my world, you lose control of the magic, which immediately tears itself free and exits your body with zero regards for your health. Which hurts a *lot* and can severely injure you if you were holding much magic. A teenager that experiences this is going to have days or a week of lying in bed thinking about how much they want to avoid it happening again. In real combat, an attack that takes your hand off when you are holding as much magic as you can is going to result in your own magic killing you from within, leaving a charred and blistered corpse that died screaming. Those with only a year or three of training have the advantage of not being able to hold enough magic within themselves that they would die if they lost control of it.
        
        3) The teenager draws in much more magic than they can safely hold, which does mean they could probably kill their parent, but which also means that they are doing so much damage to their untrained body that they may die regardless of the outcome of the fight.
        
        If you deliberately suicide bomb, you can take out someone much stronger than you. If you wish to survive, you are either going to settle for attacking someone much weaker than you or attack either when they are not prepared or when you yourself have some other significant advantage. If both parties are somewhere near equal and similarly prepared, yes, they will likely both die, and either would be unlikely to have time to retreat. Magicians avoid fair fights like the plague, therefore.
        

• u/Izeinwinter:

  Doesn't work. High destructive magic in the hands of few magicians is even *more* mis-usable than in the hands of all internally in each country, and obeying the treaties isn't a nash equilibrium, because anyone in violation can take on very large coalitions of compliant countries *and win*. 
  
  A more reasonable limit if you are going with oath magics, is to only teach magic to people who agree to not use it to kill people... except for mages in violation of that rule.  That limiter is in the self-interest of the political forces that be (it prevents rule by magicians on the basis of fear and awe), and the balance of force is tilted against violators, not in favor of them.
  

  • u/alexanderwales:

    > Doesn't work. High destructive magic in the hands of few magicians is even more mis-usable than in the hands of all internally in each country, and obeying the treaties isn't a nash equilibrium, because anyone in violation can take on very large coalitions of compliant countries and win.
    
    That depends entirely on how long it takes to train up a mage. If you can just read directly from a spellbook and do great things, then sure. But if training up a mage takes five years or so, you wouldn't be able to fly under the radar for long enough to build your counter-measures for when someone is coming for your head.
    

    • u/Rhamni:

      Quite so - if you start off leading one of the kingdoms, you wouldn't get away with it. A magician takes a few years to train 'properly', though one year could be enough to make a very dangerous few trick pony. A magician with twenty years' experience could easily take on a dozen magicians with only one year's training, though, and if every kingdom around you wants you dead there is nothing you can do other than decide whether you want to take others with you into the grave or not.
      
      I appreciate his trying to poke holes, though, because in explaining why it wouldn't work I have to play it out in my head.
      

      • u/Izeinwinter:

        Politics: Feudal rule worked because trained fighters in armor on horseback could fight quite a lot of regular farmers and win - This allowed them to rule by might. Magic throws that out the window. You would be replacing the aristocracy of arms with the aristocracy of magic pretty darn fast, and this is going to be blatantly obvious to any noble because they think in terms of force, plot and coup constantly. This means that no limit to numbers that does not allow the entire nobility of a given country to become mages themselves will be acceptable to said aristocracy. Any ruler that signs such a limit gets dead. That in turn means numbers scale with size and fraction of population that are nobles - which can be ridiculously high. One fifth of the population of medieval Poland were technically of noble rank!
        

        • u/Rhamni:

          All noble families with only one or two children would be able to teach everyone magic. They very much do have the power to dominate non-magicians with vastly superior force.
          

          • u/Izeinwinter:

            The oath circle is completely borked, also - Reliable truth detection alters.. the entirety of the socio-political fabric. Because running people through it for a rite of debriefing once a year gets you incorruptible agents. - A nation just only needs so many sheriffs, tax collectors, ect so running them all through the circle is completely doable, stagger it so you aren't emptying watchstations at once, noone could get a conspiracy of the ground to have a coup before the year is up because someone they need is always going to be near the annual rite of "These are the ways I have excelled and failed in my duties this year". 
            
            Does this seem minor to you? Further, knowing that the agents of the state *must* preform their duties honestly would gain them immense trust from the people.
            

  • u/Rhamni:

    Thank you for your input! Here's the thing, though. No matter how good you are with magic, destruction is *way* easier than defense, so if a few thousand magicians are prepared to die to get you and your family, your army of illegal magicians won't be able to stop them. Your destructuve capabilities are much greater than theirs, sure, but their destructive power is still greater than your defensive power. There are incentives to cut corners and to abuse your powers within your own country, sure, but even if you are the first to betray and you manage to build a larger army than the rest of the world combined before the next world war starts, that just means that you can destroy more land and people than your enemies can. They will still glass your seat of power, regardless of whether your enormous army is employed razing *their* seats of power or defending your own. If you wanted destructon you could get it this way, but if your motivation is personal ambition breaking the treaty would not be a good idea, because you would end up having to kill a sizeable chunk of the remaining populations, and you would most certainly end up with all cities in absolute ruin.
    
    As for oaths - the oaths aren't binding per se, you just die if you don't think you'll follow them *when you speak them*. There are a few oaths people swear in the location, but it's mostly restricted to the kings and the most powerful/mistrusted noblemen, as well as a very few trials being held there. The reason they don't all have to declare their good intentions there every year is because the nobility like their power, and fear and awe (Though not too much, they aren't "Evil") is very useful for ~~keeping the powerless powerless~~ maintaining law and order and our blessed religion and tradtions.
    

• u/pedanterrific:

  >2) How many magicians a country is allowed to train in a year is not dependent on how many people live in that country, because that would allow large kingdoms to grow larger. Instead, every year the countries negotiate and determine a 'minimum' number of magicians which each country is allowed to train. Any country wishing to train more may do so, but for every extra magician they wish to train they have to pay compensation to all the other countries, and the cost goes up alarmingly quickly for every extra magician they wish to train.
  
  >8) While it's theoretically possible that new countries might form and join the treaty, the magical location is very useful for finding out if those seeking to lead the new country are too close to any of the old countries (Puppet regimes get shot).
  
  This strongly incentivises splintering into states the minimum size necessary to be independent signatories to the treaty. Even if the leadership has to be completely unrelated to each other, a group of countries which used to be one nation a handful of years ago will be natural allies. Either the first adopter wins the arms race, or the largest original signatory does, depending on the length of the political OODA loop relative to how long magicians take to train.
  
  >6) Negotiations take place in a magical location where anyone who utters a lie immediately and unavoidably dies. Though the rulers of every nation do not have to personally attend the negotiations every year, the heads of noble families, sovereigns and other rich and powerful individuals are expected to attend at least every decade or so, and to explicitly state that they have not broken the treaty or suspected anyone else in their kingdom of doing so.
  
  >7) While the magical location can be tricked, it will kill you the second you believe that what you utter is not as certain to be true as you state it to be. You could break the treaty the day after swearing on it, but you couldn't swear on it if you expected that you would then go on to break it. In addition, the laws of nature are layered in my world, and it is not currently possible to use magic to fiddle with people's minds/implant/remove memories. This will change in later books, but by then everything is going to hell for other reasons.
  
  Except disregard all of the above, because you have a perfect coordination engine. Everyone can be trusted by everyone else. This pretty much immediately warps their society into something unrecognizable as human.
  

• u/duffmancd:

  I don't know if you've read this, but if not the [Washington Naval Treaty](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_Naval_Treaty) in an interesting real-world example of a similar thing. Major nations agreeing to limit the construction of weapons.
  
  It is a bit more relevent than, say nuclear treaties as it did have a real effect on the fielded weapons. (40,000 vs 5000 nukes is still enough to flatten everything)
  

• u/Calsem:

  None of the rules you mention rule out scientific research.  Furthermore, you say that magicians can identify other magicians, so it would be possible to have a laboratory observed by foreign magicians to prove that there is no magical research going on.
  

  • u/Rhamni:

    True. The ban on science is not as strongly subject to international regulation as magic is, but in my world magic is scienceable and mundane technology is far less advanced than what you can do with magic. The idea of a steam powered engine would never occur to anyone in my world when exploring new uses for magic would lead to so much more visually impressive results. Also because in the horrible past when crazy people researched magic science became associated with *magical* research, there just isn't a strong notion of technology as seperate from magic. There is nothing stopping it, it's just that my world isn't ging to hit a non-magical industrial revolution anytime soon unless real world people were suddenly teleported in.
    

• u/ulyssessword:

  What can this magic do?
  
  We know that it has powerful large scale attack abilities, and not mind control.
  
  Can magic be used to defend locations effectively?  This would remove one of the major downsides of building up a mage army, as those new mages could protect you from attacks.
  
  Can a group of 5-1000 mages live independently in the wilderness in relative comfort while still increasing in power?  This would make it very hard to track them down, as a support structure is not needed.
  
  Is magic good for making money?  This would lead to semi-exponential growth in the number of mages that a country buys, as they can pay for themselves.
  
  What is the extent of magic's intelligence and counterintelligence capabilities (divination and illusion)?  If divination isn't powerful enough, then finding out about the other countries' actions would be very difficult.
  

• u/Integrated_Delusions:

  Depending on how magic is learned, a useful strategy could be to train mock-mages who understand the mechanics but haven't actually wielded the power, and thus do not give off the glow. To make an example from HP, people who've been given wands without power cores, and then taught to cast spells. Technically, they haven't used magic, but as soon as they've got a power core, they're off to the races. 
  
  Past that, this magical location thing, how hard is it to set up, and is the lie detector's death function separate from its killing function? Because barring extreme difficulty to create, I fail to see how every ruler wouldn't have a ceremonial room for accepting oaths of loyalty, nobles protests be damned (since you'd only need one iteration of the full-loyalty test, and then hey, nobody cares anymore because they're all loyal). Or a courthouse that can determine the truth of every statement. Killing might be going a bit far, but if everyone can tell when you're lying, either you need to doublespeak like a boss, or you wouldn't commit crime (or be disloyal) in the first place. 
  
  As far as wild mages go, the limits on divination and training time are the two most pressing concerns. Could I set sail for the middle of the ocean, get out of range, then train mages fast enough to supply food and water to the ship? How accurate are the divinations at finding wild mages? If I dig a mineshaft half a kilometer down, can I still be found?
  

  • u/Rhamni:

    Only one location, and it can't realistically be replicated. The gods died to make it and a few other special locations (that work differently).
    
    The ocean would not work for a training ground because there are sea monsters that are drawn to magic like moths to a flash light, but you could set up camp out in the middle of the wilderness somewhere. Magic wouldn't let you conjure up free food, but it would certainly increase food production significantly. By the time your community was large enough to hold a whole army, though, you'd probably have been found. But hey, maybe not - there *have* been world wars before where millions of magicians have existed at the same time. They just didn't end so well for anone who helped start them. There's no remote sensing magic other than very unpredictable prophecy, and even that is currently shut down because of man made extra laws of nature that stop some of the more powerful magic.
    
    Training mock mages works to some small extent, but most of the training is really just slowly learning to handle more power without dying in terrible agony.
    

• u/Zephyr1011:

  You seem to have taken care of any obvious flaws I can see, so it's hard to think of any more without knowing more about the magic. Can you give examples of the more destructive things it can do? Does it have much of a money making ability? Is it solely destructive, or does it have other useful aspects which can be exploited? 
  
  Also, you mention science being dangerous too. Is that included in the treaty, or could a country have loads of non magic using scientists researching better spells to make the magicians more dangerous?
  

• u/Prezombie:

  Have you read Anathem? It's heavily implied that the distant past of that world had a magical war, and their response was far more elegant and preserving than this highly political MAD thing you seem to be trying to set up.
  

• u/AugSphere:

  What kind of government are we talking here? For me the term "Kingdom" implies hereditary monarchy. The question becomes not how to breed mages, but how to exploit feudal system to your advantage in this case.
  
  Some other pertinent questions in no particular order:
  
  How frequent are military conflicts? How loyal are mages in a given kingdom? How easy is communication between mages (intra- and inter-kingdom), is there a common language? How about magical encryption of communication? How significant is trade between countries? How long do people live? Is culture in the old kingdoms stagnant or is there any kind of social and cultural development? What happens when there is a rebellion in one given kingdom? What about a feudal power struggle? A pretender to the throne?
  
  Basically, I think your kind of system should really be exploited not based on acquiring numerous mages in secret, but either by cultural and social means (establish some kind of virulent international ideology to unite kingdoms) or by political means. 
  
  You could always go for a quick and dirty "assassinate top three (or two, if short on manpower) layers of feudal hierarchy in every country" plan. I doubt the political system would return to equilibrium in a hurry after that kind of shake-up. No threat of everyone uniting to curb stomp you if every count is fighting to be the next king.
  

  • u/Rhamni:

    This is exactly the sort of comment I was hoping to get.
    
    Hereditary monarchy is the norm. Military conflicts are common, although one kingdom entirely conquering another is very rare, because there comes a point where the enemy leadership just says "Fuck it, I'm going to take my best magicians and just break through your lines and turn your capitol into into slag."
    
    Magicians are mostly the nobility and the very wealthy "Hey, I'll pay enough for you to pay the extra cost to the other countries *and* enough to bribe you to let me have that extra spot". A few magicians are trained because they are the most gifted and loyal soldiers. Everyone who knows magic has a lot to lose then, and have a vested interest in keeping society relatively stable.
    
    Communication is mostly fairly slow. There are telegraphs, but they run on magic and are require constant upkeep, so they are more rare and shorter range than they were in the real world. Spies do exist in every country, and a lot of trade vessels have a magician onboard to help create artificial winds when necessary.
    
    There is a common language on the main continent. The worst you'll encounter is the difference between the US and Scotland as far as accent goes. Even when talking is difficult you can always communicate in writing, with only minor differences in spelling. Lands further away do have completely different languages, but diplomats are always on hand for the leaders, and magic regulation is thoroughly discussed, with extreme prejudice against any leaders whose accounts differ from spy reports.
    
    No magical encryption of communication, I think. I have no idea how that would work. Mundane codes and encryptions exist and are used.
    
    Trade is very significant, and spies and wind making magicians are common on such vessels.
    
    People live as long as in the real world. High infant mortality rates amongst the poor, a solid 70+ life expectancy amongst the wealthy. Magical healing is not great, but it's around where medicine was 150 years ago.
    
    Culture is relatively stable. There is some regional stagnation and some regional cultural development. Most notably the religions are very static and strongly opposed to magical and technological innovation.
    
    When there is a rebellion surrounding countries make very certain that no extra magicians are trained, or they step in and take the side of whoever did not break the rules. This gives an enormous advantage to the king, who is the one who decides who is allowed to learn magic. Coups and assassinations are much more common than open rebellion.
    
    Powerful noble families do squabble for power, and while assassinations are illegal they do happen. Rulers don't like losing magicians, but then rulers don't always get everything they want.
    
    Pretenders to the throne, and cases where it's not clear who has the 'right' to the throne get interesting. It might be necessary for other countries to intervene and to force a discussion to take place in the magical location. At other times it becomes a 'mandate of heaven' deal where kingship is 'earned' by securing it. Other countries of course love to help someone win these struggles, since then they can secure favours from their new ally. Straight up puppet regimes do get found out in the magical location though, and then you get war.
    
    Cultural and social manipulation does happen, and in fact the 'static, innovation hating' churches are the prime example of one of my ancient, long dead villains poisoning the waters after she realised she was going to lose.
    
    Anarchy is frowned upon, and a kingdom that collapses will either be gobbled up by neighbours or forced to resolve themselves without training new magicians (With rule breaking factions being wiped out be other kingdoms). It's rare and gets pretty ugly, and the plot will include the main character's country turning into a very ugly mess indeed.
    

    • u/AugSphere:

      You've got an interesting world there. Here are some more questions and musings to help you iron it out:
      
      Low population density. Are we talking here something like middle ages here in terms of population distribution? Most of population in agriculture? How about cities? Judging by how important you say trade is, I'd say there should be significant portion of population in cities engaged in producing those trade goods. Is there a printing press equivalent (as in relatively cheap, available, scalable copying of printed information)? 
      
      Answers to these questions should probably be enough to get a feel for the structure of society and formulate some more effective strategies, but going from what you've revealed thus far I have this one:
      
      It's usually a safe bet that lower and middle class are going to secretly (or openly) hate nobility in that kind of society. Not only you have all the reasons from real world feudal societies, but on top of that they see nobility having magical powers which are pretty much forever out of their grasp. Your religion probably has significant influence as well and no doubt some anti-magic memes seeped into it over time. So my proposal is this: capitalise on hate and mistrust peasantry has for nobility using church as leverage.
      
      Depending on the goals one could probably just convince and manipulate the current rulers into going along, but that's hardly munchkinry.
      

      • u/Rhamni:

        Thank you. Yes, mostly middle ages type distributions, although with more larger cities, and large areas of land that are not used by anyone at all (Because environmental hazards).
        
        There are printing presses, although you need magicians to run them, so while the rich can print anything they like it's not quite as affordable to those living in the country.
        
        There is some hate for the nobility (of course) and a lot of fear, but the church is pretty much deliberately set up to convince the population that magic is incredibly dangerous, and the lesser evil is to have the nobility around so they can hunt down any 'witches' (anyone who learns magic without permission, on purpose or otherwise).
        

        • u/AugSphere:

          It's a pretty small step from "the lesser evil" to "these bastards are inhuman monsters just like the rest of 'witches', let's get them". 
          
          I wouldn't probably use this as a main line of attack, but as a distraction? Find some ongoing conflict in which a middling country is losing, infiltrate a couple of skilled orators in the camps. Start preaching. Make sure the war drags on. Instigate a rebellion with a newly converted zealots at the head. Promise to end the war and let people go back to their homes and families if only they support you. Fund this rebellion (for added dastardliness use some neighbouring countries to finance it, they will be glad to weaken a rival) and assassinate key nobles of the country. There will be some casualties when rebels try to hunt down remaining nobles, but they can be used to fuel the revolution further. If all goes well you have a country with a new anti-magic regime in place and a virulent new ideology which will fall on a fertile religious soil. Use the lessons of WW1 and the rise of USSR basically. Only optimised for a different culture.
          
          If the ideology was awesome enough one could probably even launch an enlightenment era with this. Economically this world is pretty much ready for it as far as I can see. The problem is strong ideological resistance to progress. If one could somehow decouple technological progress from religious stigma there would be nothing to stop it from starting and what better to do this than a country without magicians at all. After all it was magic that fouled up everything last time. Normal religious people making inventions for the sake of making life better for everyone surely is praiseworthy. While all this is going down you could probably make the mages fleeing the country some interesting offers which they would not refuse. It's just one example, but my brain is kind of stuck on it for now.
          

          • u/Rhamni:

            I like this. I don't think there is room for it in the plot, but it's probably one way my world could have eventually gone if the final villains hadn't been planning on escalating magical research.
            

• u/Nepene:

  It should be fairly easy to destroy any country you don't like. Get a large army of indoctrinated mages. Have them emigrate into another country and refuse to leave, likely through heavy bribes to some legal authority. The other country now has to pay an insanely high tax. Since offence is higher than defence it shouldn't be that hard to subvert one official.
  
  You could either do this on a large and fast scale or a small and slow scale. Get other countries to support your loyal mages. The brood parasite form of growth. You could even make them agree- some countries may value your extremely strong super mages rather than their own more loyal young mages.
  
  Alternate plan.
  
  When a king is on their death bed convince them to allow a subordinate to build up a large army. Then kill the king, don't tell their heir what is happening. Smuggle a large number of people underground. Build up a loyal brainwashed army of tens of thousands of mages. Go to the surface, take over everything.
  

• u/JackStargazer:

  Why aren't the magicians the ones ruling the world?
  
  According to everything I've read here, you can't actually stop a powerful mage without several other powerful mages, and even then it is still likely to end in fire. You have no mind control, so they can't do some kind of Aes Sedai forced loyalty oath, and you recruit primarily from nobility, who are rich, generally arrogant, and likely in most cases power hungry, and then you give them incredible power. At least one of them might wonder why some 'king' is giving them orders.
  
  How is it that all the rulers are not mages?
  
  On the defensive/offensive front, does your world not have ward or shield spells that are always up or on contingency? How does spell 'AI' work? Can I make a spell that does X exactly 5 minutes from now? what about 'if Y happens do X'?
  

• u/Hirly1975:

  Drop on-sight recognition; magicians living in caves (out of a direct line-of-sight) could avoid it. Consider gravity-like ripples upon the fabric of reality: the USE of magic sends out instant notice to any magician in the universe that magic has just been used. Signal strength goes down with distance and the magician's level of power, and averages out across gravitational/magnetic fields. You can't study by listening to other magicians practice, because the details are omitted; you know what TYPE of magic they are using, but not exactly what they did. You can determine the distance and direction (with another mage you can triangulate for location) of other mages, if any try to approach you (even without casting spells) after they have had enough training to pose a serious threat, you can sense the increasing proximity of a potential hostile just from an unfamiliar signature getting stronger. Effective range (for magicians of any caliber) is "within your solar system".
  
  Being aware of magicians all around you may seem overwhelming, especially if there are a lot of them. Think of any group with many overlapping conversations: you can pluck out a few voices close to you (or that are especially distinctive, or especially loud, or you are very familiar with), but the rest blend into a meaningless babble. Same with similar types of magic: you know that the country over that ocean is practicing a lot of healing magic (or how many types of unfamiliar/new magic, and you can recognize that type of magic again when you visit to audit their lab), but not whether there are a handful of very powerful magicians or an army of lesser magicians. (Location grows imprecise over great distances, too - if you move around in one area, you can't use your shifts in location to communicate in real-time with agents in another country.) It's still loud, though. Think of Yoda in the Star Wars books: the Jedi Masters, as their empathic sensitivity grew, had to find isolated PLANETS to live on so they wouldn't be distracted by the feelings of others.
  
  Spies cannot be the "sneaking through your countryside" kind, just the "pretending to work for you" kind, because if you sensed an unauthorized magician in your area, you would start preparing your shields, and then go hunting. (The ruler would probably back you on this. Polite mages always announce their intended visits well in advance.) If you sense the sudden disappearance of a magical signature, it means one of two things: either that magician has died (and a few of these in short order means someone is assassinating them), or they figured out how to conceal their aura (which is a forbidden magic which makes everyone panic and execute the rogue). You mentioned that divination magic has "No scrying", but I think that location-sensing (with no way to remotely view what is actually happening) isn't contradicted.
  
  @alexanderwales:
  Developing magical skill is like developing muscle: first you suffer a bit, then rest to restore, which builds up your tolerance. (Using magical coercion to force students to train faster basically means that an instructor uses their experience to judge when a student's breaking point is, and halt just before the student would be irrevocably committed to death, rather than the student's cautious method of halting the moment they feel the strain.) No matter how much theory you learn, the amount of energy you can channel is limited. (This is a separate idea from the previous suggestions. It's meant to address the possibility alexanderwales raised that book learning could be used to prepare peasant armies for wizardry.) Actually, reviewing your scattered notes on magic, it looks like I only managed to restate what you said, not add anything new. Tagging this paragraph accordingly.
  
  On further review, you already thought of the magic-detection, with your sea monsters. I could definitely see the invisible-to-mage-senses creatures being designed before all techniques for creating more of them were taken away; resistant (or even invulnerable) to leftover types of magic, as well, when confined to particular geographic areas such as the ocean. Slumbering in the countryside (or hiding deep within the earth), creatures that only hunger for the BANNED types of magic, and were left in place as a contingency measure against prohibited research. Resistant or invulnerable to that magic, of course. The secret to destroying them could be kept in the same place as information on how to destroy the seals.
  
  Hamza Dahlberg
  

• u/None:

  First question: how much magical knowledge or ability does someone have to have in order to glow?  Or in other words, can I use Muggles to carry information that will later be given to magicians?
  
  For the no-lying location, all you need is some truly stupid puppet official whose beliefs you can shape via ordinary lies or indoctrination.
  
  For long-term goals: how can I make reality and civilization more robust so that the restrictions on magic can be safely reduced or eliminated?
  

• u/Salaris:

  Sounds like an interesting setting. I love intricate magic systems - I'll look forward to seeing how this turns out.
  
  Many of my ideas seem to have already been covered, but I have a few things for you to consider that I don't think I've seen (but it's a pretty big thread).
  
  First off, I'd try to think of ways to game the definition of "train" to find other ways of creating spell casters. alexanderwales has already discussed this to some extent, but I think it can potentially be gamed further. 
  
  Examples:
  
  * Can you use magic to cause a target's magical "muscles" to automatically begin to develop without any training involved? If so, casting that spell + providing the target with books may not constitute "training".
  
  * Are there spells to transfer magical ability from one target to another? If so, you could potentially transfer some or all magical ability from mages to non-mages without it constituting "training".
  
  * Once the ban on mind-magic is over, can you transfer knowledge of how to cast spells to a non-mage without it constituting training?
  
  * Alternatively, if stealing magical power constitute training, can you transfer a bunch of magic to a few mages to make them more powerful?
  
  * Is it possible for a mage to learn to suppress their magical ability (or any other mage's ability) from being detected?
  
  * Is it possible to create an area where the ability to detect magic is nullified, either through directly removing that ability or making it useless (e.g. by saturating the area with too much ambient energy for individuals to be discernible).
  
  * You mentioned that time travel doesn't exist, but what about time dilation? Could you build a [hyperbolic time chamber](http://dragonball.wikia.com/wiki/Hyperbolic_Time_Chamber), or would this constitute "disabling physics" or manipulation of space? If this is plausible, using something like that as a rapid hidden training facility sounds like a potentially useful approach.
  
  * Could you place people in stasis while under the effects of a spell that causes their magical "muscles" to be automatically stimulated into growth?
  
  * Could you dig up dead mages, resurrect them, and recruit them without increasing your "training" count?
  
  * Could you empower non-mage soldiers (or animals, etc.) with permanent magical buffs?
  
  * What's the base number of mages a country can get, and how much does the cost increase per additional mage? What's the expected income of a mage with 1 year of training? How about 10? It seems pretty plausible that people would try to game the economy side.
  
  Gaming the truth chamber could also be productive. I've already seen a lot of good ideas for this. A couple more:
  
  * If "utterances" are what are detected for lies, could you use some sort of sound magic to dub over what you're saying, allowing you to "utter" truth (or just lip sync) and have others hear a false message?
  
  * Puppet rulers have already been mentioned. What about sending a clone or a simulacrum with less knowledge than your own? Or, if those types of magic are impossible, how about a good old mundane twin?
  
  * Does dying in the truth chamber prevent resurrection? This certainly isn't the most gamable approach, but it's worth considering.
  
  * How well known is the exact wording (and intent) of the treaty? As long as you can convince your local nobles that your interpretation of the treaty is true, they can honestly say things in the meeting chamber that may circumvent the actual intentions behind it. 
  
  Aside from that, it sounds like there are some other fun things you could probably leverage:
  
  * Your setting sounds like there are some very powerful magical beasts. Learning to control these (through mundane or magical means) sounds like a potential game changer, especially the ones that are highly resistant to magic.
  
  * How does magic resistance work? Can it be trained? Could you train an army of soldiers with a high degree of magic resistance, even if they're not actually mages themselves?
  
  * What are the limitations on magical devices? Could you have a non-mage army that carries tons of enchanted gear?
  

  • u/Rhamni:

    And here I thought I had milked this thread for all it was worth. Thank you very much for your input. It is very useful to me. Let's get to it:
    
    1: No as far as politics is concerned. Indirect bulking would still be treated by other countries as training, and would detect the same as 'real' training. Treaty aside, you could speed up magic-holding training by hijacking your trainee's body and making it hold magic even when the trainee is too much in pain/unconscious to train normally.
    
    2: No, magic cannot be transferred. If the Seal was to be removed, you could sacrifice someone's soul for a heck of a one shot burst, but the only people who have discovered any way of permanently stealing magic potential are a few of the most important villains. Me the author knows how this will work, but it's not low hanging fruit.
    
    3: Once the Seal goes down the treaty is the least of anyone's worries. Yes, you could move knowledge very easily between minds. You could do it against either party's will, or against both parties' if you were a sadistic outsider. Magic-holding tolerance (I should find a name for that) is not transferrable, and needs to be pumped manually.
    
    4: While the Seal stands, no. Once the Seal falls, the villains with the knowledge will return, and they do do this.
    
    5: From the passive, always on sensing of other magicians, yes. This is forbidden, but all the countries have the knowledge, and once in a while a spy is caught doing it and it is very embaressing for the home country. But actively delving a magician will reveal them unless the skill difference between them is very big. A few years of training will make it very easy to actively delve someone with 50 years of experience, so in this case, active sensing just wins.
    
    6: Directly no, by raising noise yes. Would be seen as incredibly suspicious, though.
    
    7: When the Seal falls, time dilation becomes available to all. It's very energy intensive, and you couldn't really speed up local time by more than ~50% without some sort of massive power battery. My good guys do eventually get their hands on such a battery. Again, once the Seal falls the treaty is dust, and timey wimey shenanigans will happen.
    
    8: No.
    
    9: Once the Seal falls, the major players all have access to resurrection magic. And mind reading. And mind control. And soul destruction. The baddies control the timing of the fall of the Seal, and will make the most of this.
    
    10: Temporary buffs yes. Permanent buffs no. Permanent magical weapons and such do exist, but they are slow to make and rare, and usually a lot more useful in the hands of a magician.
    
    11: Not quantified. The cost of extra mages will increase exponentially, so while bigger richer countries can afford more and even smaller countries usually buy at least a few extra because the costs can be recouped, they can't afford *too* many extra. Magicians often become the very best in their trades (Life is not fair at all), and poor magicians are almost unheard of.
    
    Chamber:
    
    1: This can be done. This has been done. But it is not currently a well known trick. The biggest obstacle to doing it is that magic being *used* is extremely obvious to all magicians present, and cannot be easily hidden. So you would have to find a way to use magic while speaking without attracting suspicion.
    
    2: No such magic. Mundane twin could work, although identifying yourself is part of the procedure.
    
    3: It does. You turn to stone and your soul is broken.
    
    4: Wiggleroom exists, and interpretation plays a role. But I the author do not intend to write a full text of the treaty, and I'm making it fairly solid.
    
    Miscellaneous:
    
    1: It sure would be. Let's hope the scientist crazy lady who created most of the monsters is not the very first villain to return from the dead and go into hiding.
    
    2: Magic resistance is really not something you could train, any more than you could train your resistance to gamma rays in the real world. Some non-human creatures have resistance because they were made that way (as weapons of war that have since gone wild), and you can use powerful magic to *avoid* incoming attacks, but resisting it with your body is a no go.
    
    3: Slow to make, requires specialized knowledge to make. While the Seal stands the magical gear that can be made is not super hot by the standards of the pre-Seal weapons, although it'll still be strictly superior to anything mundane. A naked magician would still wipe the floor with a non-magician with high quality magical gear.
    

    • u/Salaris:

      Great answers! I'm glad to be of some help. I love digging into magic systems, and it sounds like you've put a lot of thought into yours. I'll look forward to seeing your work.
      
      I'd suggest the "train a pair of twins to play the role of the same person" idea, but I think it's been done enough in other fiction. 
      
      Glad to hear you've already thought of most of this stuff. I'm especially interested to see the crazy scientist with the magic beasts. =D
      

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