Defense From Magic

Why wizards don't rule the world

In a world where powerful wizards -- high-level, if you prefer -- can blast armies to smoking ashes with a single fireball spell, why don't wizards rule the world?

The simple and obvious answer is that the world holds many, many, many ways to counter magic, so wizards can't actually blast armies to smoking ashes. As long as magic has been developing, defenses against magic have been developing.

Some types have obvious routes. Intercept the supply of eye of newt. Deduce that the spell works only with a gibbous moon, and attack when the moon is a waning crescent. Move swiftly enough to arrive before the magic circle has been drawn. Avoid drinking anything that a potion could have been slipped into. But these types, while existing in fantasy fiction, are rare. The fireball-throwing wizard does not need a magic circle or a phase of the moon, and if you intercept the eye of newt, he turns to lightning bolts. Against him, you need actual defenses

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Often, of course, magical defenses. Were wizards in a position to rule the world, their greatest rivals and dangers would be other wizards. They want protection from other wizards. They don't want the other wizards protected against them, but that's not their choice. Also, they want to protect their servants sent about tasks not quite important enough for the wizard, but important enough to want done. And there would be a certain amount of status lost from having your servants blasted.

Plus, of course, you need the peasants adequately protected to raise food, make clothes, build your towers, and all the rest. If you use magic to do those things, you are in grave peril because any other wizard who devotes all his magic to attacking you is stronger, even if he's moderately weaker than you are.

Not to mention that not every wizard wants to rule the world. That requires administration. Especially when magic requires intensive study, some -- or most -- wizards may not have the temperament to rule the world.

The best thing to do then is to affiliate yourself with some other power. Perhaps other wizards, but perhaps a king. All the more in the early days of magic, before it is fully developed, and wizards are still generating the knowledge that will, in time, produce the knowledge of how to turn an army in ashes with an well-placed fireball.

This affiliation would require working for the king. On the more basic level, counter-magic and anti-magic would be among the most useful things a wizard could sell, especially if the protection stacked. And, having a known affiliation means that your location is known. The wizard wants magical protections for his tower.

Permanent objects would work better than spells, even for the master wizards. Who wants to have his tower laid open to every light-fingered rogue in the realm merely because you came down with the flu? Who wants his pocket picked as he walks through town to the only store that sells really proper eye of newt?

They also make the border of wizard and non-wizard a little vague. A maker of glass beads who makes ones like blue eyes, to protect against ill wishes -- is he a wizard, or not? A herbalist who knows that moly protects against shapeshifting magic -- is she a wizard, or not?

In due course, you must consider what limits you put on anti-magic as well as on magic. Even if you decide that anti-magic is powerful enough that magic can be used only for beneficial effects on those who accept it -- good harvest, anti-decay for storage, transporting food for your forces, strengthening the knights and sharpening their swords -- characters will want it for those purposes. Can you lay down a blanket anti-magic and then allow exceptions? Do those have to be one by one, so a new wonderful spell requires reworking? Must you ban spells, or perhaps types of magic, one by one, so there is an arms race of inventing new things that work around it? Is agricultural magic in war a fight between those who want a bountiful harvest and their enemies who want the trees to tear up castles with their roots, doing the work of centuries in mere hours?

Or, for a more refined example, a court of law. No teleporting in, or out. No attacks with fireballs or other magic -- except for the court's authorized bailiffs, otherwise it would be fighting with swords. Magic to force people to tell the truth, but not to counter the magic to force them to tell the truth.

One useful limit is to state that the antimagic can move only if it affects a person. Area effects are stationary. But, of course, it's a balancing act between limits too great and limits too little, both of which can derail conflict, and so the plot, entirely.