: Gene <gene@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
: Someone should try a world where these are the main type of special
powers.
: "With this guys help, one of your faucets produces hot water". With this
: guys, help, your chamberpot will flush and self-clean". When someone
shows up
: with fighting special skills, people don't know what to think of it.
Except that "with this guy's help you can lift heavy loads", and
"with this guy's help you can build a stone wall" and "with this guy's
help you can pump water through an aqueduct" or "sense things remotely
if they are in contact with the earth", etc, etc, etc, which are all
needed for reasonably mundane chores, can all be turned to military
pursuits.
War is just application of energy, moving mass around; if you can do that,
you can do it in such way that somebody gets hurt.
True, if the effects are all small, or very constrained in scope or
context, that might work. But if somebody can, oh, do magically good
woodworking/carving/whatnot, or same with stonework, I rather imagine
it'll quickly be put to making arrows. So I'd be a bit skeptical
military magic would be all that stunning, if large parts of a society's
infrastructure is magic-based. I'd look for something else sneaky
going on.
Consider the Sharing Knife setting; most of the Lakewalkers can't do
anything major, and huge magical effects aren't used in war... but they
sure wish they could. And magically-woven cloth, magically braided
rope, and so on and so on, are all in demand by quasimilitary personell.
Well, they've also got malices, but still.
Oh... another Xref occurs to me (reminded by "sense things in contact
with the ground"), "Avatar: the last Airbender". The society there
is based on industrial use of "bending", which is in many ways similar
to furycrafting. Of course, the despicable firebenders also use more
familiar forms of technology, but they're the bad guys. One of the
characters is Toph, a blind earthbender, who can nevertheless get
around quite well by being aware of anything and everything around her
in contact with the ground. Of course, suspend her in air, float her
in water, of have lots of stuff in the environment not in contact with
the ground, and she's in trouble. But I digress.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CICxH1cXvDM
Wayne Throop throopw@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://sheol.org/throopw
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