Wizardry in Sword of Don
This post is made for RPG Blog Carnival hosted here: https://forsakengarden.blogspot.com/2024/10/november-rpg-blog.html
Working on this Bronze/Iron Age setting with Sword and Sorcery vibes made me think a lot about social classes and statuses. I decided on particularly specific type of magics in this setting I can tell what function they fill.
A little bit of background. There are five cultural spheres/civilizations of the world at the time. Two out of five come with history and tradition of nobility and hierarchy, other three are more akin to either semi-anarchies or early despotic states. Which means there is some social mobility but it's not the best.
Magic changes that. First tradition of magic is High Magic or Wizardry. It is a type of magic practiced in the elder days by specific caste of society. They lived in Bronze Towers built specifically to handle a lot of powerful wizards and their experiments. It used to uphold social class - students taken only from noble houses due to political reasons. Since with enough hard work anyone should be able to wield it was almost guaranteed they'd become wizards in time. But this made the process focused on politics and not research and meant with each generation there was less experimentation and research and more rediscovering what talented wizards accomplished before.
When the Old Era collapsed wizards went down just as the nobles they came from. Knowledge was lost, forgotten and destroyed. But having a wizard is handy, so survivors started teaching and some even came back to the towers for the wisdom lost. But this time they didn't have all the time and money to teach. This time they want to fish out the talented, the gifted and sometimes those just a little more than average inclined to be a wizard. Maybe around ten spells survived to this day so there is a virtue in seeking old wizard tomes and but even more to experiment and rediscover spells of the past. Today a wizard can choose whoever they want to teach and that can lift anyone to the class of still respectable sorcerers.
In Old Era wizardry was a political tool and a way for nobility to keep the power away from the people. With the birth of New Era wizardry became an opportunity for some to breach the mundane and get beyond social hierarchy.
From the magic that reinforced the social hierarchy to the one that is a chance for all.