[quote]Youth4Ever wrote...
I suggest the peasantry should donate - out of a sense of philanthropy if nothing else - there will be children in their communities sent to circles, and they will be impacted by what the circle does - but they don't have to - and I don't really care if they don't at present. [/quote]
Peasants aren't swimming in free money. And more importantly, most aren't being affected. Those with children who happen to be mages are, but most will never have mage children.
[quote]That thedosian nobility participates is what's most important - and I believe they will as dealing with circles is a double-edged sword - there is ample benefit and economic opportunity to be had from a freer circle - but it must be weighed against possible magi takeover of domestic infrastructures. [/quote]
Okay, so the nobles (like Arl Eamon) now fund a Circle where their children and heirs are being sent to - they hold the purpose strings. What makes you think that giving such nobles economic power wouldn't give them tremendous leverage. Think about what Arl Howe would do if he could buy off mages. You think that will somehow achieve neutrality? Or will you have nobles pay for foreign Circles?
Think about it from the perspective of Isolde: do you think she's against mages taking over domestic infrastructure? She'd have made her son Arl if she could have.
[quote]Advocating a humanitarian responsibility that certainly can be felt regardless of government is a more accurate description IMO - but again - they don't have to fund the Seekers if they'd rather not.[/quote]What I am saying is that the very idea of a humanitarian endeavour doesn't exist in Thedas. And even if did, just like IRL, there's no safeguard in place for exploitation. You're giving a lot of powerful nobles a direct conduit to mages and there's no counterbalance in place. What you're suggesting just amounts to making Circles swear fealty to the nobles in whatever land they're under.
[quote]Why is that? Mages are supposed to be neutral in international wars at present, and we've no evidence they haven't been. And in my reform, they're still connected to the Chantry, and the Chantry has required their neutrality in the past. [/quote]
The Mages weren't neutral. Mages were their societies: look at the Dalish and look at Rivain, before the Chantry. Or the Chasind and their Shamans. Mages were part-and-parcel of society before the Chantry locked them up. The mages were 'neutral' during the Circles because it was neutrality enforced at sword-point. You're suggesting that the military might of the Chantry is taken away, as I understand it, and then the Seekers have a say. If all you're really suggesting is that the Chantry controls the templars and some international third party is supposed to oversee the Chantry's templars, then you've complete failed to change the system because your organization has no power.
[quote]They will answer to an international nobility, and to the crowns of thedas on a continental plane.[/quote]There's no such thing! These are basically despotic rulers. They don't have an international council of nations. The free marchers don't really like each other, Orlais wants to absorb Ferelden instead of sit on a UN council with it, and the Anderfels don't even have a functioning government beside the GWs.
[quote]No. They need only conduct their surveys and investigations - publish them for public consumption - and submit them to joint chantry-circle magic use committees for use in oversight.[/quote]Haha. I'm sorry, but you actually think this is going to be effective? Who exactly do you think is going to give these reports? And what "committees"? How do these committies work? How are they funded? Who are they made up of? Why should the Chantry - which apparently has its own military like before - even listen to them? There are "joint commitees" of First Enchanters and Knight Commanders in every Circle, and they mean exactly jack because mages don't have power.
How does this change anything?
[quote]Why would Seekers take part in a war if they are no longer a military force? [/quote]The seekers won't. But once you remove the Chantry, the national lords will. But since it seems I misunderstood you and you're not removing the Chantry at all, then you're not actually changing the system. Ser Karras is going to go around raping mages with Ser Alrik, and then someone is going to write a report about it to Orisono and Meredth so he can get laughed out of the room. It's going to be funded out of the Viscounts purpose, and the nobles are going to do exactly nothing against the templars unless they want to see their heads on pikes, which is pretty much what happened the last time someone tried to take the templars on in Kirkwall.
[quote]First - cutting their lyrium supply from the Chantry completely. Cutting off their physical supply lines to Orzammar if necessary. [/quote]
With what army? Your Seekers are a bunch of accountants. And the lyrium is irrelevant for the mages - it just matters for the templars. And if the templars in your world are the same as they've always been, then they'll keep the Circle under control, and they'll do it through the same kind of fear and brutality that they've used for centuries: rebell and you all die, because we hold the power of life and death over you.
[quote]I don't care about them much at present. Nobility participation is what matters most. [/quote]
The "nobility" aren't a bunch of philospher kings. They're more like a sophisticated and refined version of tribal barbarians.
[quote]What "guys"? The Seekers? The hill people? [/quote]It might as well be hill people for all the good they'll do.
[quote]The nobility, merchants, and crowns that fund the Seekers will be interested in accurate reports - I don't think they want to learn one day that most of Thedas is owned by the circles of magi - that templars have no magic annulling powers when a need for it arises - learn that they paid for bull****. [/quote]
Again, no, they won't. If these groups are threatened my mage power, they're going to want bloody relaliation and subjugation. That's how it works back then. That's how it always worked. The reason it doesn't IRL right now is because of the very sophisticated system of governance we've built - the very sophisticated system of checks and balances - that exists in most very developed countries in the world. A lot of countries are plagued by graft and corruption, and these limits on governance don't exist.
If you want some utopian system where all of Thedas reads reports that are months out of date, and then somehow... what? Every single person in Thedas meets up in a central location to talk policy? Who makes these decisions? You keep saying there's no goverment oversight, so what powers exactly does the random Merchant in Kirkwall have if she's unhappy with page 297 of the 7 month old report about the acquisition of four trinket shops in Redcliffe by the Fereldan Circle? Write a letter?
[quote]The UN is one of the most fake institutions in the world. Their multiple offices are used just as much if not more as bases to support global interests of important member nations as they are to fight world catastrophes, so the UN having multiple offices is not something I really want to copy - and it doesn't seem as though the Seekers exist in every city with a circle.[/quote]Wait - you think the UN is broken, and you think that an even less functional model will somehow do its job? You've already recongized the problem: the powerful backers turned a toothless organization into another arm of their governemnt. What makes you think that powerful backers won't do exactly that with your hypothetical Seekers? I mean, hypothetically, because in practice it sounds like they have 0 powers to do anything other than the opportunity to have their money embezzled while the Templars are under 0 regulation because they're apparently entitled to freely run the Circles according to the directoves of the Chantry.
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Of all of the avatars yours seems to get my attention 
