INTEREST CHECK A group of magic students in a world that is threatened by magic

C

Cathedral_Dweller

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Original poster
So Mooglegirl and I have been talking about developing a complex, intricate plot involving multiple characters and magic. What we've come up with so far involves a medieval world that is averse and even hostile to magic - it is viewed as dark and threatening. So we thought it would be interesting if there were a tucked away school devoted to the magical arts, and if all of our characters were students at the school and therefore ostracized by society at large. The nobility/ruling classes/monarchy are totally opposed to magic, frequently make laws curtailing it, perpetuate myths about its inherent evilness, and constantly attempt to bring down the school. So the king/lord/whatever ruling power we decide upon has done something horribly bad and a group of students embark on a quest to put him in his place, and in the process convince the outside world that magic isn't so bad. The king also has some spies planted in the group of students, so there's also some fun betrayal in there.

Anyway, we haven't fleshed it all out yet, but we'd love to get other people involved. We haven't decided how magic works in the world (whether there are special disciplines/forms of magic, how the students are trained, what exactly the king is doing, etc.) but we just wanted to put feelers out to see if anyone was interested in developing characters and helping us develop the world a little bit. You could be one of the students, maybe the instructors at the school, members of the nobility/aristocracy/court, spies within the group, etc.

Just let us know and we'd be happy to start working on this in more detail!
 
I'd like to play as a student, if you'd allow me.
 
It's an interesting premise, but ... why the anti-magic? What motivation could there be for disliking something that gives you so much power, and isn't it dangerous making people with that kind of power one's enemies?
 
Hi, Quill! Thanks for your interest. Actually, I thought it made a lot of sense. I obviously haven't developed the world too much, but perhaps in a world that has recently been torn apart by a war, where most of the people are extremely poor and uneducated, and where not everyone can learn magic. Perhaps they are brainwashed by the nobility's propaganda, and resent the fact that only a small percentage of the population has the skills and resources to study "the dark arts" of magic. If there's only one school tucked away far away from most people, it would be easy to demonize them as dangerous.

I don't have a lot of specifics, but I hope if anyone's interested we can flesh out more of the details!
 
Quill said:
It's an interesting premise, but ... why the anti-magic? What motivation could there be for disliking something that gives you so much power, and isn't it dangerous making people with that kind of power one's enemies?
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People who are different, even especially if they have some sort of advantage, are often ostracized. Seeing it from an outside view it doesn't make sense, but to a people who are afraid of what these powerful beings could do, it would be a natural (if not logical) course of action.
 
This definitely speaks to some of my interests. I even have a kind of vaguely... specific... idea for a character already, if that makes any sense.

In terms of anti-magic logic, I think GeekOut is onto something here. I've done RPs in a world sort of similar to this, and in that situation, the government took advantage of the fact that most of the population was afraid of magic [in our case, however, it was hybrid characters], so they produced propaganda against the minority, and even criminalized/oppressed them. I could see a similar thing happening here. (I'm thinking my character might have already been a victim of that process, too.)
 
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