Paksworld

While we wait another couple of weeks for the US release of Kings, here’s some more background to consider.   Back when I first discovered the complexity of Paksworld (as much as was needed for that first set of books)  I knew that having so much magic, of one kind and another, would almost certainly displace technological innovation, wherever magic worked well enough and was economically viable.

In other words, if you can buy a cheap potion from a wizard to cure a fever…you’re not going to put the effort into figuring out what the fever is, what causes it, and what non-magical means might cure it.    Since wizards prefer to make a good living, there’s still work for surgeons and some for hedge-witches and those with herbal lore…but not much interest in medical science.

Magic looks like the easiest way to do things (just as we think flicking a light switch is the easiest way to get light in a room) and the reality of it–what’s really happening to produce the magical effect–is not usually known to the person using the spell or magical power.   And it’s complicated by having the different kinds of magic.

Where magic is used most (in the north, and specifically in Lyonya, Prealíth, and Dzordanya),  “progress” is slowest.   Hence some of Kieri Phelan’s problems in Lyonya.  Here’s a man who’s spent his entire life in pragmatic, intensely active ways, in parts of that world where magic–though certainly known and used (but mostly via wizards, for a fee) is less depended than “practical” means of getting things done.    If you want a road built, a bridge across a stream, you start dragging rocks around, cutting down trees, building and then using the road-building tools.   Now he’s in a place where elven magery rules, and the direct approach (cut the tree, split the rock, etc.) is almost unknown.   It takes a long time to get anything done, because it has to be done a particular way (that takes a long time.)   Except for the elves, who can do things very fast if they choose to, but usually don’t because haste creates problems.

The mindset of someone who’s going to live for thousands of years in the same area differs from that of someone who’s going to complete his/her life in less than a hundred, and who may or may not stay in one place.    The longer the life, the less reason for haste, the more reason to consider carefully before cutting down that tree…before moving that stream.    It’s possible to wait fifty years–two hundred years–for a tree to reach maturity, and in the meantime plant its replacements.  It’s possible to care for a patch of forest not for the benefit of one’s children, but because you yourself will be around to enjoy it, if you care for it, for those long ages.

Where none of the long-lived races live–where they only visit–the concerns of human life  spans govern attitudes, as in Aarenis.    Though people do build for the future, they’re also concerned to accomplish something in their own lives, which are no longer than ours.    Young Captain Burek, being young and human, wants to make his mark quickly, while he’s young.  He has a vague notion of someday (far in the future) having a family, but right now what matters is gaining a reputation in his field.   Those with families think in terms of their children and maybe their grandchildren, but few (Andressat is an exception) think in really distant terms.

Then there are the structural differences in cultures.  In the north, Tsaia has the most complicated social structure of the humans:  a 3-level peerage plus more strata in the lower classes,  all rather untidily lumped into fewer levels by the requirements of the  Code of Gird.   Fintha is divided by occupation alone, with the basic division of country/farmer and city/merchant, but also with clergy/lay (to the extent that Girdish Marshals are “clergy”…it’s not exactly the same thing.)   Lyonya has the elven side (with its own structure) and the human side is landowners (siers) and everyone else (unnamed.)   Pargun has its king, and its sagons (war-leaders, mostly the king’s relatives), and king’s band (warriors) and servants.

Many, many opportunities for misunderstanding.