The world I'm creating has elemental magic - Earth, Air, Fire, Water, along with eight "lesser elements" (offshoots of the normal ones). Most of those who can use magic (Wielders) are trained at a school or academy and go on to use their magic to perform jobs - everything from sailing ships to smithing to various crafts; many use their talents for darker purposes as well - spying, thievery, assassination, mercenary work, etc. Now, I've pretty well figured out what wielders of all the elements can do, except for one: Lightning. Given that this is a fantasy world, sci-fi uses like powering generators is out of the question. I briefly considered something like mecha, but I didn't want to go steampunk. The tech level of the world is roughly 1000 AD - they have primitive clocks, moveable type, and a few other advanced things that don't rely on magic, so it wouldn't be unreasonable for someone to invent something that relied on an electrical charge. Any ideas? Are there uses for electricity that I'm missing? Edit: More information on the magic system: Spoiler Originally, magic was just four elements - Air, Earth, Fire, Water. Magic was later split into 12 elements (long story, and not really relevant); the original four became know as the "greater" elements, and the new eight (Storm, Ice, Blood, Wood, Metal, Shadow, Lightning, Light) are known as "lesser" elements. I view it as splitting light by passing it through a prism - instead of simple white light, you get a whole spectrum of colors: the primary colors (red, blue, yellow), and the secondary (orange, green, purple). It's the same with the elements; each of the lesser elements is a combination of the two elements to either side of it. For example, Metal is a combination of Fire and Earth; it sits closer to Earth because Earth has more influence on it. Likewise, Lightning is Fire and Air. Magical ability is inborn, and largely genetic (I say "largely" because there are rare cases of people with no history of ability being born with it). Which ability you have is determined by your race and where you're born: each node gives off emanations, which affect unborn children and affect their chances of coming up Talented - the closer you are, the greater the chance. The areas where two nodes' emanations overlap is where you get the lesser element wielders (yes, I mapped this all out... I had to be precise). Now, as for how magic works. As I mentioned, Wielders most commonly physically manipulate their element - an Earth Wielder can move and shape earth or stone, a Fire Wielder is like Pyro from the X-Men comics, etc. Unlike Avatar, they don't need fancy gestures and such - they're more like Aes Sedai, except that other Wielders can't see the power being used. More powerful Wielders can also draw upon related sources of energy. For example, a Fire Wielder can draw the heat from the air around him (or from living beings, if he's powerful enough) to create fire; a Water Wielder can do the same. Lightning Wielders are like electric eels - they can generate their own electricity (the amount varies according to their power), though doing this too much will kill them - and at higher levels, they can draw power from the planet's magnetic field and convert it to electricity (note: the amount of electrical energy in a normal living being is far too small to be useful). All Wielders (except in extremely rare cases known as hybrids) can only use one greater element, but some also have a lesser amount of ability with one related lesser element - an Air Wielder, for example, might be able to use Light or Storm magic - but only about half the power level of the greater element. Likewise, Wielders who are most powerful in lesser elements will always have some small ability with the closest greater element - Lightning Wielders will have some power in Fire. I also created "complementary materials" - metals, minerals, and woods that amplify a Wielder's magic depending on the amount, type, and purity (for example, copper will amplify a Lightning Wielder's power). These are often made into foci, items specially crafted to channel power. A shock baton, for example, is a wooden cudgel inlaid with copper wire; touching someone with it will channel the Wielder's charge, multiplying it by 2-3x. Skyships are made with atharite hulls and use a helm made of sapphire, both materials that amplify Air. Because the elements are split, it's impossible to make a "charged item" - that is, something that stores energy, like a battery (before they were split, you could do it, though they were still difficult to make and thus rare and valuable). As for power levels, I set up a ranking system from 1-8 (it was 10 before magic was broken, but the prism effect weakened them all); lesser elements can only go up to 6. This, of course, doesn't appear in the story - it's just meta-information for my purposes. The power distribution, as I said, is pyramid-shaped - the largest number at the bottom, decreasing as you go up, until there are only a handful (maybe 20-25) at the top. Note: All Lightning Wielders can channel electricity through a conductive medium (metal, water, etc.); the range of this increases by power level. Level 1: The Wielder can deliver a nasty shock, akin to static electricity; enough to cause pain, but not seriously debilitating without additional training. The assassin monks I mentioned before are mostly L1 and L2. Level 2: The shock is greater, akin to a taser (50-100K volts at 25 watts), and can be delivered at range. Level 3: They can create a small lightning bolt, or hit someone with a stun gun charge (1-4 million volts, enough to drop you). Wielders of this level can also sense the electrical auras of living beings (about 10 feet; range increases with power). They can store up energy, like from a natural lightning bolt, for a short period of time before having to discharge it. They can also ground a lightning strike, but only once (further strikes in a short period would overwhelm and kill them). Level 4: They can draw energy from magnetic fields, store energy longer, and ground multiple strikes. Level 5: The level of power is akin to a small power plant (KW of power on a steady flow), though most Wielders can't maintain that level for more than an hour or so. Level 6: If you're familiar with anime, a Level 6 would be around the level of Misaka Mikoto from To Aru Majutsu no Index - she's the most powerful electromaster in the world, nicknamed Railgun. She, however, can use her power almost endlessly, whereas Wielders will eventually wear out (or burn out, or die) from using their power too much. Some info on the continent of Uhabat, where most Lightning Wielders live (because it's relevant): Spoiler About five thousand years ago, there was a world-spanning war, during which a group of mages got together to cast a ritual to halt magic, but it was disrupted and caused a magical cataclysm instead. On the bright side, it stopped the war; on the dark side, it killed about 70% of the world's population. About twenty years after that, a man named Tanush (a native of one of the nations of Uhabat) stumbled across records that revealed details of the mages' involvement. He'd lost his entire family during the cataclysm; when he learned that mages and magic had been behind it all, he started to travel around the countryside, warning others of the evils of "witchcraft" and decrying the mages as evil. People were already wary of mages because, in the ten years or so after the cataclysm, magic was unstable and anyone using it was likely to lose control. He quickly became a cult leader of sorts, gathering a following of like-minded people, and roamed the countryside hunting down and killing mages. He established a new religion whereby magic was declared "unholy" and those using it were "demons". Mages either fled (if they were able) or were driven into hiding; thankfully, there was no way to test someone for magical ability, but this didn't stop many people from accusing neighbors or enemies of being witches simply to be rid of them. After Tanush's death thirty years later, the witch-hunting craze died down, though mages and magic remained prohibited - anyone caught using magic was put to death, often accompanied by their families to prevent the spread of the "disease" (magic in this world is genetic). Fast-forward to about five hundred years ago. A woman named Aruna Kothari, a Wielder, had been working with underground groups to save Wielders - hiding them from authorities and getting them off the continent, if possible, or at least to a safer place. She got tired of all the skulking in the shadows and gathered up a force to overthrow the government of one of the smaller nations. They then established a new government, one run by Wielders, and declared the country a haven to all who wished to live there. Naturally, this didn't go over well with the populace, but the rebels had prepared well - they had more than enough power and sympathizers to take control and keep it. Wielders and their families flocked to the new nation, which they renamed Shauria. Not long after, Aruna established a new magic Academy in the capital. This Academy became home to the Guild (working title), who are one of the antagonist groups in the story. Initially, the leaders of Shauria were interested only in defense - they guarded their borders and left everyone else alone - but as time passed and the country became more powerful, they started looking outward and making advances into neighboring territories. Thus, in the modern day, Shauria is now actively expansionist and seeks to conquer the whole continent and wipe out the old religion. And miscellaneous things I've come up with: Spoiler Every living thing gives off a a bioelectric aura (BEA), what the mages call an "energy veil". Then I thought: What if they can manipulate those fields? This led me to chi/ki/prana - basically, energy flowing through the body. Lightning wielders can alter the flow of energy to relieve (or cause) pain, disable parts of the body without knocking the person out, and a whole host of other things (think acupuncture, but it actually works). This led me to a group of assassin monks. As with many other things, I'd already established an assassins' guild somewhere on that continent, but I hadn't gotten much further than that. This guild/group/order/whatever is a bunch of folks who are highly skilled in armed and unarmed combat; they've been around for a thousand years, a bunch of Lightning wielders hiding in plain sight because their magic is only part of who they are (and not the most obvious part). No one's willing to go poking their nose into the affairs of an assassins' guild for obvious reasons, and everyone needs assassins, so they've operated unmolested for the better part of a millennium.
If they've figured out that humans run on electricity, lightning wielders could acts as primitive defibrillators - they might not even really understand how it works, just have discovered it by accident and rolled with it. On the other side of things, electrocuting people would be one way they could act as assassins.
Do they generate the lightning, or can they only manipulate lightning that happens to be present? I suppose you have creating fire covered by the Fire people? Lightning would be one hell of a weapon. Would long-distance communication be too silly: lightning flashes a la morse code, drawing pictures in the sky with lightning bolts? Ooh, maybe they can learning to control the shape and movement of the lightning to the extent that they can make what in sci-fi would be thought of as holograms - people made entirely of light (in this case tiny lightning bolts) who appear ghostly or solid? If in doubt: wikipedia. "Intense currents of a lightning discharge create a fleeting but very strong magnetic field. Where the lightning current path passes through rock, soil, or metal these materials can become permanently magnetized. One theory suggests that lodestones, natural magnets encountered in ancient times, were created in this manner." Creating magnets must be useful, somehow? A way of defeating people carrying metal weapons?
While you said you want to avoid steampunk, the electricity would create people with more advanced tech than others. You put a strong enough current through a piece of metal, you have a light and heat source. Otherwise, lightening wins as a weapon. It travels quickly, passes through metal, and burns wood and cloth. The only person defense I can think of against it would armour coated in tree resin, and even then, that'd still likely fail. Otherwise, the best way is to get behind a stone wall.
They haven't figured that out, but you reminded me of something else I'd thought up when I was pondering this a few months ago - shock batons. Magic items don't exist as such, but if you create an item of material complements the energy type, you can make a focus that channels/enhances the energy - basically, a cattle prod. All Wielders can only manipulate what's actually present. I hadn't really considered that this would seriously hamper lightning users, but see below. * Yup. * Yes, yes it would. * Odd, but not silly. Interesting idea. * Oddly enough, there's also a Light element, which happens to be right next to Lightning on the elemental wheel. * Magnetism. Yeah.... I think that one flitted through my mind, too. Thanks for jarring my memory - they could tap into the planet's magnetic field, a la Magneto, and manipulate metallic objects. Nasty, and it would enable them to use their power more freely. True, that. Wielders on the whole are fairly rare (about 5% of the population), so there aren't a whole lot of lightning wielders (which, given their Magneto potential, is probably a good thing). I'm not averse to some advanced tech if there's a good reason behind it - I have skyships, for instance, piloted by Air wielders. This could be very interesting - the nations where Lightning wielders are most often found practice slavery and piracy, freely export drugs and other illicit goods, and host the Guild (which is also the bad guys in this story), rival to the Order, the organization that runs the legitimate mage academies. Thanks!
Given that this is fantasy, most of you're towns and cities would be low tech made. So, in a storm there is always the chance that lightning will damage buildings, generate large fires. Could you not use lightning wielders as a kind of civic defence, making sure cities / important buildings / ships at sea and other things remain undamaged by that force.
Just generally besides the whole magic system, that's a really cool idea. Human lightning rods, that's really fun. I think in a setting where lightning is wielded, it'd be weird for technology not to exist. People would have a more expansive knowledge of electricity, much more advanced than our own, because they'd have been able to study it a lot earlier. Maybe the electricity your people wield is inherently incapable of making machines work, or it's very brute force, making it so that it can't be used for any delicate electrical engineering. The magnetism route would definitely be a cool one to go on, and the lightning rod one I find really awesome too.
This might be an odd suggestion but.... Could you have them make glass? Lightning strikes on sand sometimes, producing fulgurites. It's rare, but if you have a group of wielders dedicated to the task, it wouldn't seem so far fetched. They could then sell the glass to others, who could shape it and turn it into anything. Just a thought.
Ideas: 1. Studies in magic bring a new era closer (technology). Your world will not include generators and such but what if there are those devoted to figuring out how such a machine could be built (e.g. Leonardo da Vinci). Only few view lightning as a tool and weapon; most people view lightning as a weapon. 2. Are lightning wielders less vulnerable against the affects of lightning? If so, a wielder could function as a lightning rod to take the bolt. Moreover, a wielder is a lightning rod when he wishes to defend something or someone against another wielder. 3. TORTURE - electrotherapy 4. Can a wielder conjure lightning or must he use naturally occurring lightning? This would make those who can wield it more important and powerful. It would make them more important because it is a powerful magic that is not readily available. Building off the previous sentence, lightning available by circumstance means that wielders only can hone their skills at certain times. Maybe only few are dedicated to standing in the midst of a storm and honing their skills while others see training their ability with lightning as a waste of time due to its limited availability. 5. Fact: a lightning bolt could start a fire. However, this suggestion overlaps the use of fire magic. 6. You could play off the age old question of "does lightning strike the same place twice?" as a twist on the magic. Of course, these are just my ideas. You understand what would make sense in your story world. If these ideas aren't helpful, I hope they can at least help you discover new or useful ways for lightning magic to be used.
More ideas! Thanks guys! Good idea, that. Hadn't thought about it, but I like it. I'm still wavering on the technology thing, honestly. I have seen settings where most of the world is straight fantasy, but other parts are higher-tech (the Lone Wolf books, and Coe's series). Lightning Wielders' ability to use/harness lightning is largely based on their strength - weak ones can only use existing lightning, but the more powerful ones can draw on the planet's magnetic field. Wielders in general aren't all that common (they comprise about 15% of the population), so any tech that relies on them would be necessarily limited. It would be kind of cool to have a few electricity-powered devices, though... the part of the world where these Wielders can be found has seen a lot of wars, they practice slavery, and one of the nations is a magocracy. I'll have to give this some thought. Not a bad idea, but I have Earth and Fire Wielders, too - they could do it much more easily. 1 and 4 were covered above. 2: Yes, they are. 3: Ooh, I like that. I already plan to use shock batons (like cattle prods), but I hadn't even thought of bare-hands shock treatment. 5: Yeah, this is more a byproduct that a deliberate result, I'd think.
If you dont want to go down the machine or lighting route then the only options i see are either 1. destructive - torture, military etc 2. medicinal - Egyptians and Romans used electricity to help with things like arthritis, gout etc 3. construction - electroplating comes to mind (Baghdad battery etc)
It's not that I don't want to, it's that I'd rather limit it. I've been pondering it the last few days, and I did come up with some ideas, like skyships with metal hulls that are basically mag-lev (the pilot uses the magnetic field to make it fly). I'm just considering how much tech I want to include. The Dominion of Kas (the aforementioned magocracy, which is located on this continent) houses the Guild, one of the groups who form "the bad guys" in my WIP, and their nation is militaristic. There are two main organizations to which the world's mages belong; one of them is the Order (the "good guys"), and the other is the Guild (who don't agree with the Order's strictures and want to overthrow the Order and take control of the mages - there's more to it, but that's the basic gist). Many inventions in (recent) history saw military applications before being adapted for general use, so I'm thinking the same would apply here - Lightning mages are employed to make weapons of war first and foremost, and lesser applications second. My main problem is that I have yet to really develop that area - I'm still working on the details. This question was just something that was nagging at me, but it's turned out to be a little more complex that I thought. 1: Got that covered. 2: Never heard of that one. Have to check it out. 3: I thought of electroplating too. (BTW, the Baghdad Battery is not considered a battery - most historians think it's a scroll jar of some kind: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baghdad_Battery)
Hmm is it only lightning, or could it include thunder? I'm thinking some sort of sonic application perhaps?
Okay, so I finally worked out some of the background of this area. This is still pretty rough, except for the first paragraph (that's part of the backstory I established a long while ago). About five thousand years ago, there was a world-spanning war, during which a group of mages got together to cast a ritual to halt magic, but it was disrupted and caused a magical cataclysm instead. On the bright side, it stopped the war; on the dark side, it killed about 70% of the world's population. About twenty years after that, a man named Tanush (a native of one of the nations of Uhabat) stumbled across records that revealed details of the mages' involvement. He'd lost his entire family during the cataclysm; when he learned that mages and magic had been behind it all, he started to travel around the countryside, warning others of the evils of "witchcraft" and decrying the mages as evil. People were already wary of mages because, in the ten years or so after the cataclysm, magic was unstable and anyone using it was likely to lose control. He quickly became a cult leader of sorts, gathering a following of like-minded people, and roamed the countryside hunting down and killing mages. He established a new religion whereby magic was declared "unholy" and those using it were "demons". Mages either fled (if they were able) or were driven into hiding; thankfully, there was no way to test someone for magical ability, but this didn't stop many people from accusing neighbors or enemies of being witches simply to be rid of them. After Tanush's death thirty years later, the witch-hunting craze died down, though mages and magic remained prohibited - anyone caught using magic was put to death, often accompanied by their families to prevent the spread of the "disease" (magic in this world is genetic). Fast-forward to about five hundred years ago. A woman named Aruna Kothari, a mage, had been working with underground groups to save mages - hiding them from authorities and getting them off the continent, if possible, or at least to a safer place. She got tired of all the skulking in the shadows and gathered up a force of mages to overthrow the government of one of the smaller nations. They then established a new government, one run by mages, and declared the country a haven to all who wished to live there. Naturally, this didn't go over well with the populace, but the mages had prepared well - they had more than enough power and sympathizers to take control and keep it. Mages and their families flocked to the new nation, which they renamed Shauria. Not long after, Aruna established a new magic Academy in the capital. This Academy became home to the Guild (working title), who are one of the antagonist groups in the story. I ditched the slavery angle - it just didn't work, and I wasn't that attached to it; the city guards will use shock batons instead. So now, the mages in Shauria are largely Lightning and Fire - good for the military and weapons, of which they have lots. I consider Shauria to be like Israel - they're not actively warlike, but they are more than capable of defending themselves if anyone attacks (and they have repelled more than one invasion in the centuries since being established). They've created lots of weapons that enhance their magical ability, naturally, but they've also started to develop other technologies related to quality of life. It'll be interesting to see where this goes. Edit: They're not like Israel; they're actually seeking to expand and form an empire over all the continent, eventually wiping out the old religion. I've been meaning to fix that for awhile now.
Benefits for Lightning on the human body: https://books.google.com/books?id=vxl_XETQMyAC&pg=PA95&lpg=PA95&dq=medical+uses+for+lightning&source=bl&ots=qJMIYypi3M&sig=CaxGQCmNI-e5rTww5yVMYFqDu2w&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiZ2Ojct5nPAhWE4IMKHaCZDAkQ6AEIODAE#v=onepage&q=medical%20uses%20for%20lightning&f=false https://books.google.com/books?id=-P48AAAAcAAJ&pg=PA45&lpg=PA45&dq=medical+uses+for+lightning&source=bl&ots=1vk1mxnt3Q&sig=VJLpnIoSF1Wn60KyGj14toD9Mt0&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiZ2Ojct5nPAhWE4IMKHaCZDAkQ6AEIWTAJ#v=onepage&q=medical%20uses%20for%20lightning&f=false Benefits of Lightning in Nature Go down to the question: "How does the Earth benefit from lightning?" http://www.nssl.noaa.gov/education/svrwx101/lightning/faq/ http://www.veggiegardener.com/how-lightning-benefits-your-garden/ For farmers this is a dream http://www.school-for-champions.com/science/static_lightning.htm#.V97SOVsrLq4 Hope this helps!
Could lightning be used to make glass? Fulgurites? Fishing. Lightning striking a lake or ocean where a school of fish are nearby. Easy to pick up when stunned or killed? Might alchemists employ them to make compounds. A powerful blast of lightning would't be necessary, but sparks and such might do the trick. Could it be employed in conjunction with earth magic to make better steel/swords/portcullis, etc/? The thing is, you want 1000 AD technology, but that was 'developed' in the absence of magic. What if it were available? Would that technology have changed? Could simple batteries be formed and recharged? Further, would the use of the other elemental magics (and subelemental magics) have altered the direction of technology development?
Now that's cool. I didn't know that lightning helps balance the magnetic field, or deposits nitrogen (!). 1: Already covered with Fire magic. 2: Easier with Water, but a good idea. 3: Hadn't thought of that. Could be useful. 4: I have Metal as well as Earth, so it's not really necessary. 5/6: I've been pondering that myself - i.e., how the presence of magic would affect the development of technology. Thinking on it, I'm sure someone would have discovered, at some point, that channeling electricity through a solution creates a charge, and thus would have developed something like a primitive battery.
Electroplating. There is evidence the ancient Babylonians made batteries, and the theory is they could electroplate base metals with gold. Google 'Baghdad Battery'
I was considering the railgun angle, but I wondered if it might be too advanced. It could be a recent development... Welding is an interesting idea, too. The more powerful ones can sense and manipulate magnetic fields (they call them "energy veils"). Lightning itself would be a useful signal flare.
So I was thinking last night, about energy veils. Every living thing gives off a a bioelectric aura (BEA), what the mages call an "energy veil". Then I thought: What if they can manipulate those fields? This led me to chi/ki/prana - basically, energy flowing through the body. Lightning wielders can alter the flow of energy to relieve (or cause) pain, disable parts of the body without knocking the person out, and a whole host of other things (think acupuncture, but it actually works). This led me to a group of assassin monks. As with many other things, I'd already established an assassins' guild somewhere on that continent, but I hadn't gotten much further than that. This guild/group/order/whatever is a bunch of folks who are highly skilled in armed and unarmed combat; they've been around for a thousand years, a bunch of Lightning wielders hiding in plain sight because their magic is only part of who they are (and not the most obvious part). No one's willing to go poking their nose into the affairs of an assassins' guild for obvious reasons, and everyone needs assassins, so they've operated unmolested for the better part of a millennium. I'm still going to use the "healing through electricity" thing, though - it's too good not to, and it's getting me more interested in developing this culture. Thanks for the ideas, guys. Keep them coming.
Wouldn't fishing be easier if you could just zap the lake and all the fish rise to the surface so you can just scoop them up? How are you imagining the actual logistics of fishing? On another note, if all lightning wielders were designated as fishermen, and then suddenly realized hey wow we're actually pretty darn powerful and don't want to be fishermen anymore that could be a good source of conflict. On an even notherer note, if you have a culture of people who can manipulate the elements their civilization is going to advance based around these abilities. You got people who can shoot lightning from the extremities they are going to experiment across centuries with what that lightning can do and they will have developed an incredibly advanced civilization, more so than our own is now, possibly more so than Star Trek. You basically have all these natural energy sources just walkin around. Living batteries. Living power generators. The fact that they can reproduce, you have a potentially perpetual energy source. If people have been freely wielding lightning for 500 years...I mean think about how much our civilization has advanced since the 1500s. And we didn't have magical lightning powers. The non-wielders would also be furiously developing counter-wielder technology. Nothing advances technology faster than war/conflict. The only way your premise works is if lightning was a power that is only just now emerging and people don't know what to make of it. Either that or remove lightning as an element mages can use. Seems the simplest solution. And probably the most elegant solution. Trying to squeeze an irregular shape into a predetermined mould is asking for endless, needless frustration.
Yeah... it's looking like I might have to. I'm not dead set on having it; it was just the best thing I could come up with. Here's the way they're laid out (excuse the sloppy formatting, but imagine it as a big circle): Air Light Storm Lightning Ice Fire Water Shadow Blood Metal Wood Earth Basically, you have the four main elements, and the lesser ones are those that combine the influence of their "parent" elements. If I ditch Lightning, I'd have to think up something else to replace it.
I was thinking about this the other night, and I realized that I'd left out something important, though I didn't think it relevant until now: Not all Wielders are created equal. They're not like Avatar Benders, where everyone is the same power level; they're more like Aes Sedai, with a wide range of levels - the majority near the bottom, with the numbers decreasing as you go up.
Can you tell us more about the 'conditions' for using magic in whatever medium there is in your world?
