Xilizhra wrote...
#2 - Mages can't establish their own rules in a vacuum because you run into issues of priority. Hypothetically let's say the mages decide that Blood Magic is fine so long as you use your own blood, but the land the mages have set up a Circle in (let's say Kinloch Hold in Fereldan) has outlawed Blood Magic entirely. Which laws apply the laws the mages have set up themselves, or the laws of the land they inhabit?
As it's a law about magic that doesn't affect the nonmagical citizenry unless they become targets of self-defense, the Circle's law here would take priority.
It doesn't matter whether or not it effects the non-magical citizenry though, not to the people making or enforcing the laws. The rulers have made a law regarding blood magic in their lands, they are well within their rights to do so, and they will enforce it, unless the mages are willing to violently carve out and maintain a territory, they are going to have to work within the confines of the law of the lands they inhabit, they can't just decide which rules they feel like following.
Xilizhra wrote...
Not to mention letting people come up with what rules apply to them on their own is a remarkably bad idea. You can't have the rules applying to a group be at the whim of said group, that's when you get people like Vaughn.
Isn't that the point of democracy, really? The problem with Vaughan and his ilk is that they don't make rules for everyone, but rather one set of rules for one group and another set for another, and the fact that the elves, in this case, do not have any input.
And your point? Are you trying to suggest the Circles are democracies, or that the system they come up with will be? Cause I gotta say there's absolutely no evidence for that. We've no indication that the First Enchanter, Senior Enchanters, or Fraternity Heads are elected to their positions.
Xilizhra wrote...
This runs into the same problem as the Mages deciding their own rules. You'll either have an ineffective token force, or a Brute Squad acting on the whims of the First/Senior Enchanters.
Have their paychecks come not from the Circle that they serve in, but from some location of central mage authority. Create a sort of federal authority over the state one of the Circles themselves.
Which doesn't solve anything. Firstly having a centralized authourity doling out the cash for Templar wages and supplies doesn't work in a medieval world, hell even in the modern world it's not practiced. Second unless the Templars are travelling to this authourity in order to get their paychecks they'll still be paid by the First Enchanter. Even if you get over that hill and manage to keep the First Enchanters out of the pay structure I'm guessing you'd still have the Templars answering to their authourity. Finally even if you could keep the Templars from becoming the enforcers for their Circle's First Enchanter you still haven't addressed the other prospect, that the Mages will just create a token force.
In order to function effectively the Templars can't be beholden to the Mages at all, they must have a separate source of funding and an entirely independent command structure.
Xilizhra wrote...
Of course, once the elves get their civilization back, they'll definitely have a different system, which'll create interesting scenarios depending on how the races work themselves out in the new societies...
Heh, heh, Elven civilization. it truly is to laugh. As I've pointed out numerous times in previous threads, and no doubt will point out numerous times again, Elven civilization is doomed because the Elves have demonstrated that they've learned
nothing. If, and it's a big if, the Elves somehow managed to get a nation going again one of two things will happen. Either their open hostility towards outsiders and utter refusal of any kind of international relations will create tension between them and other nations which will build over time until such time as the situation boils over and we have the Fall of the Dales again. Or the nations of the world leave the Elves alone, the Elves contentedly ignore human society, an expansionist power rises (old or new doesn't matter) sees the Elves inattentiveness as an opening, and we have the Fall of Arlathan. Until the Elves accept that isolation is not a viable option for running a nation without leaving the continent they are just going to keep hitting the same walls over and over.
KainD wrote...
Narrow Margin wrote...
I suspect it's a little more fuzzy round the edges than that. They don't stop eating, sleeping, working at assigned tasks, responding to conversation, so there's some ability to manifest the motivation to do things. Trying to tie down a few words of description and examples of behaviour in the games and books to this level of rigorous definition is probably futile.
It's as I said. I have a bit of a problem understanding the setting.
Having no emotions - yet having motivations. Does not compute.
Reptiles. Reptiles do not feel emotions (not in the sense we think of) yet they have motivation (they eat, drink, screw, etc.). The Rite of Tranqulity likely effects the functions of the Mammalian brain leaving the motivation of base instinct (Reptilian) as well as the capacity for abstract reasoning and higher thought (Primate).
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