Musings on the mage wars

[aldarron]

"by the boatload" - yeah its a bit exxagerated in tone but then again a boat load might only have been 20 or 30. The picture though, of a wilderness whose magical nature is an irresistable attraction to wizards, who come in like a goldrush, forming rapid settlement and conquest is a very intriguing one..

I think we have a similar view of this. I agree that wizards will have been drawn to the magic of Blackmoor at some point, but that the number of individuals drawn to the north will still be limited. Of course, "Arcanists by the boatload" could be taken to mean wizards and their retainers. If we are thinking in terms similar to the Ars Magica RPG, wizards will usually be accompanied with a number of assistants, apprentices, bodyguards etc, which can better justify the "boatloads" phrase.

That makes a lot of sense. I'm sure you've played with these kinds of numbers before but a very rough estimate of the number of possible territories can be got by looking at the sq miles of Blackmoor - 4346 in the FFC. If you figure a very rough average of 20-30 miles per territory (DMG gives 30 miles but looks more like 20 in AIF) that's 150-200 wizards total. Even double that figure isn't an outrageous number in a population of tens of thousands. Also, a good portion of those mages could actually be elves.

I think the question is what Blackmoor is like before Kargas Dolhaunt's discovery. I place this discovery to the year 600 because I connect Kargas and Pissaic. It is Kargas who discovers the unique magic of Blackmoor, drawing so many mages to the north. During the previous 600 years I see Blackmoor as a wild place with a remote colony. I don't find it strange at all that the discovery has not been made prior to this. It has just been to far removed for any competent mages to go there. There may be a few exceptions, and perhaps some of them even knew about this magic, but managed to keep it to themselves?

Yeah the idea of frontier outpost or even abandoned and returned to wild is definetly workable for game play purposes, but I'm still seeing it as a hard sell for a more detailed worldbuild. It's seems at least somewhat unlikely that even the way you outline it, the special magical draw of Blackmoor (something we need to work on defining) would go unnoticed for so long. But if you consider that Blackmoor Castle wasn't the only early settlement in the region - Booh, Vestfold, Maus - I'm a lot more comfortable with redating the Mage Wars to the earlier time.

Actually, I don't like the idea of Sildonis being the "High Spellwise" of the Cabal. I think the Wizards of the Woods should have been separate from this organization since the days of Pete, and Wizardly function even the Cabal respected as independent.

Now that I think about it, it could be interesting if the tradition of the Wizard of the Wood actually went back to Kargas. We are never told the true fate of Kargas, and it would be interesting if he went on to become the first Wizard of the Woods, a secret later learned by Pete and continued by Sildonis?


-Havard

I can see pro and con for a connection between Wood and Cabal, but either way I like the idea of a lineage from Kargas to Sildonis as Wizard of the Wood.