Re: Re: (TFT) Creations as laborers

[srydzews@ix.netcom.com]

thorn wrote:
> Magic Changes Things.
> Stone for castles now comes by Gate, not cart.  Laborers from
> cities/prisons, ditto.  Experts move from job to job, and little
> expertise gets shared with, or left behind in, the countryside...
>
> It's possible to have all raw materials sent 'home' for processing,
> making your client states more dependant on your capitol (All Gates > Lead To Rome) than ever was possible on Earth.  

Well, maybe.  Gates are the key (how lovecraftian).  Whoever 
controls the gates controls the world.  In the 'canon' TFT 
world, where gate creation is apparently relatively available
to any wizard with the requisite IQ, I think you'd end up with
a super-mercantile world economy, with what we think of as
'governments' struggling to maintain the least semblance of 
control.  Gates are like the internet, except you can walk 
through them.  If city A is ripping you off to smelt your 
stuff, then cities B - Q will be happy to offer you a better
rate, and cities R - ZZ will hire you the mercs to protect 
yourself from city A.

OTOH, if nations control the gates I still don't think 
you'd end up with a colonial situation in a normal sense.
The king and the nobles aren't weeks away, they're minutes
away.  The silver mines of Pitosi are in your back yard.  
Why delegate power to some colonial governor and then fix 
things to keep him in check?  Rule it directly, like your 
home province.  It *is* your home province for all practical
purpsoes.  Distance is irrelevant.  The existing power 
structures would control everything, directly, with no 
communications lag or the normal costs of projecting power.

Either way, magic is power.  Immense, incredible power.  
So why don't the wizards run things?  Much fantasy 
literature takes the tack that they don't because they're
all reclusive lunatics, but TFT doesn't go that way.  
Magic is supposedly just another honorable craft.  However,
a cobbler can't destroy a city with a couple days work or
let you travel ten thousand miles with a single step.  
The idea that the government wouldn't either: 
  a) regulate magic closer than we regulate atomic weaponry 
  b) itself be composed of wizards
  c) both a and b
is really not too likely, IMO.  "C" seems to be the most likely 
outcome.  

The gates are the key.  Take them out of the equation and the 
wizards aren't really all that powerful.  Years of work to 
make a magic sword.  Ho hum, yeah whatever.  Magic swords 
don't make nations great.  The gates are the key.

------------------------------------
Stan
"Yog-Sothoth is the key and the gate"












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