Hello everyone, I am currently trying to work out some world building details and don't have anyone to bounce my ideas off of. So I thought I would just bring it here. A little detail about my story: - It is urban fantasy with a little bit of horror. - The supernatural world is hidden. - The supernatural world is ruled over by a council. - The council did not exist until the horror of the witch trials. At this time people in the supernatural world came together in order to protect each other from persecution. After the trials ended the council was created to help prevent that ever happening again. My current quandary is sorting out what factions have seats on the council. Specifically the mages. Back when the council was first formed the world was a lot smaller. It was mostly made up of people from European and the Mediterranean. The mages sorted themselfes out into Houses. The leaders of each House were then part of a coven that governed all the mages in the world (well what they considered the world at that time). The coven would in turn select a leader who would sit on the council. As time passes the world got larger and new lands and people were discovered. And many of their cultures had mages of their own. So here is the part I am struggling with. I want the houses to be European and Mediterranean. Basically Caucasian at least in the beginning. But I also want to recognize other cultures and their mages. Do they have a seat on the ruling council (this is what I originally thought) but that would mean at least 5 of the 11 factions on the council are mages. Would the other 6 factions allow that to happen. The alternate idea to that would be that there is only one mage seat on the council and it is passed around every few years between the different mage factions. I can't make up my mind. I would love to hear what y'all think good or bad. And if you see a solution that I don't i would love to hear it! Thanks
Well, how many “seats” do you have? is it permanent or does it have to be? You could just add more seats... so originally it started of as, let say, 120 sears but then over the years grew to 300 or more. Also, you can have more than one faction per “thing”. So mages could’ve started as one but be split into different camps, Ideologies or otherwise so that they do not becme overtly powerful.
Oh man, have I got some anthropology related questions for you! How do your European-Mediterranean mages view these newly discovered societies and their wizards? Countries have their own parliaments and presidencies, etc; it's entirely possible that your Council busies itself exclusively with it's own matters--maybe they don't have time to deal with the problems of Belizian wizards. Do your Caucasian mages WANT to include these other casters? Did the witch trials even include these other cultures? Whether or not you as the AUTHOR want to include other cultures, why would your COUNCIL want to? What do they stand to gain? What do they WANT to gain? Humans are pretty clique-y creatures--if they don't have a reason to seek out another tribe, they're pretty content with their own. They CERTAINLY wouldn't be happy with that one Egyptian death-prophet coming up from the other side of the Mediterranean and telling them how to run their council. Are they reaching out to other cultures? Are other cultures reaching out to them? How separate IS this magical world? No matter HOW separate, they've probably got some bias from real world events if it's based in our world. Even if they're all "Europeans", I'd be willing to bet their not entirely pleased with each other. Hey English mages, how'd that Battle of Hastings turn out for you? Remember that hundred years war? Hey! German mages! Probably could have used a 'polymorph' on that one Hitler guy! Might have saved the world a bit of trouble! Irish mages! Can you believe the English get TWO members on the council and you only get one? After everything they put you through? It's entirely possible that they have enough to deal with is all I'm saying. Hope that helps in some way!
You could completely insane with this theme! For the sake of simplicity I’d imagine it’d be better to hint at other “councils” around the world (even have a few characters appear) yet keep the details and their role in the narrative to a minimum. Maybe think of it like a battle within the war. Maybe due to certain “magical cycles” this era has fallen to the responsibility of a certain region on Earth. Maybe you could show that during the “witch hunts” (which dominated the Americas) that the “magical cycle” has passed from that region and ended up in Europe? You can then mention previous eras and talk of the far east, (the middle east would be an obvious choice for the biblical era of human history), and even push far back to the dawn of humans and the African era of magic when humans exploded onto the scene? Maybe a certain “flux” in the cycle led to figures like Lao Tzu or more recently Ghengis? You could really tie a lot of different parts of history into this if you manage it carefully and have a passion for history - although I’d recommend not going overboard and making every important event in human history to be due to “magic”.
You have to come up with a good reason for this shift to occure in-universe. Multiculturism in the real world is caused by economic interests and wider access to information and travel. Your council exists to protect supernatural beings from the outside world. Did something occur that would necessitate further cooperation between different cultures? Is the growing inter-connectivity of the outside world making it necessary? Is is happening because of outside influences within the supernatural world?
First off, which Witch Trials? The most famous one is the Salem Witch Trials held in America in 1692-93. Thus they would already know about Native Americans and their magic. America was discovered in 1492 which is roughly 45 years after the Valais Witch Trials ended in 1447 which are, as far as I can find, one of the first, if not the first, prosecution of witches known titled a Witch Trial. https://witchcraftandwitches.com/trials.html This site can help you find relevant information regarding witch trials which I believe you need to read. Along with this, Alexander the Great conquered Egypt in 332BCE, so europeans would have known about Egyptians and everyone in-between for roughly 715 years and the Chinese were trading with Europeans before this time, during this time and after this time. There's no reason why your council would be so ignorant of the existence of people who weren't caucasian. I would caution you against falling into the common fantasy trope of having a continent of only white people as works like this are now highly criticised. As I've heard from many people on the subject of representation in fantasy 'if you can suspend your disbelief long enough to believe in magic, you can suspend your disbelief long enough to believe in black people' If you are using another world altogether and not basing it off of our history then you need to make that clear, otherwise, it looks like you have a lot of history to research and I feel for you. Research is the bane of my existence. On the subject of how your council will work. A house system like what you're suggesting would only work on a city scale. A country scale only if the country was very small, and there were very few families with magic. What you want is more like the Star Wars senate council. The problem with this is that it can be highly ineffective when you have people wanting to delay a vote on something to get their own way and just getting many people to agree on one course of action is not going to happen. So then you have those who don't want to be in the council because a decision was made that screwed them over, regardless of the reason the council was made. What you need to consider is that what you're trying to make is a government for the magical community only, but there are many communities within that community and they are spread out across such a distance that one council couldn't possibly be beneficial to all of them as it would be based in one place, have a majority of one kind of people and those people will most likely agree on similar things and thus they would be the controlling force. But you have to consider how relevant their outlook on something would be. Take a look at many government's outlook on refugees. They tell them they can't come to a safer country to get away from having their families shot or blown up or beheaded in front of them. They tell them to return to that country that is a certain early death sentence for many of them because they don't properly understand the horror that those people have lived with in their own country. On a smaller scale. Abuse victims, everyone says well you could just leave. You know where the door is. But they don't take into account that the person believes they can't get away because the abuser has brainwashed them into believing they can do nothing but rely on them or will hunt them down. Outsiders don't have the whole story and can't appreciate the gravity of an issue if they're not involved.
