Wizards Cabal and the Empire

[Havard]

The BTPbD manuscript assumes that all wizards are members of one guild or another. You could extend that idea to Thonia/great empire in assuming that there are a number of ancient and rival wizard guilds, none of which is strong enough to dominate all the others. that also makes some sense for Blackmoor in that wizards moving in just prior to the mage wars, may have often been motivated in part to escape the oversite/authority of the old guilds.

Its interesting how the Wizards Guilds thing goes back to BTPBD. I wonder if this was part of the motivation for the re-writing of the Wizards Cabal in the d20-line? OTOH, the 3E Wizard/Sorcerer divide sure was an influence as well.

Having rivaling wizardly organizations drive mages away from the Thonian heartlands fits fairly well with the pattern of many different groups emigrating to the North to get away from Thonian dominance. The Wizard groups may easily have squabbled over the good-will of the Emperor. DA3 suggests a very tightly controlled Empire, at least by 1025.

OTOH, the mages were also drawn to the north because of the strong magical energies in the region, most likely caused by the magic infused minerals of the region.

-Havard