Why are there no wizard armies?

[ysabetwordsmith]

a_r_williams raised this question over on LiveJournal.  Then we got into a discussion about why that is, why it doesn't have to stay that way, and how cool it would be to write about an army of wizards using magical warfare.

Im in ur genre subvertin ur tropes.  :D

Comments

[cmcmck]

There is a species of wizard army in Terry Pratchett's 'Sourcery'

[siliconshaman]

I can think of one reason why people don't write about wizard armies... they'd be freaking unstoppable!

I mean, narrative requires some degree of conflict, and it would be nowhere near as much fun to read if there's spell-slinging juggernaut of an army that rolls over everything in it's path!

Unless the point of the story is to stop said army, in which case, coming up with a credible way of doing that wouldn't be easy.

It ties into the problem that unless your magic has some stringent laws about how it works.. you can do darn near anything.

Thoughts

[ysabetwordsmith]

>> I can think of one reason why people don't write about wizard armies... they'd be freaking unstoppable! <<

Not if there are two of them. Whenever you have lots of magic, it tends to balance itself. If Group A has a wizard army, probably its neighbors B and C also have wizard armies, and then it's plain old geopolitics.

As an alternative, groups may develop different resources. Perhaps Group A has lots of magic, so they build a wizard army. Group B has little magic, but lots of volcanoes and mulberry trees, so instead they build an air force. Group C believes that magic is filthy, so instead they develop technology.

Hoodwin? :D It depends somewhat on the respective levels of development each has achieved. Assuming they are similar, and field armies of comparable size, the win most likely goes to the group with better strategists, who can best use their army's strengths, exploit enemy weaknesses, and anticipate creative uses of everyone's resources.

>> I mean, narrative requires some degree of conflict, and it would be nowhere near as much fun to read if there's spell-slinging juggernaut of an army that rolls over everything in it's path! <<

As I said, a key reason for the rarity of wizard armies is a failure of authorial imagination. It's all just arsenal on the sand table. You put in X ammo and get Y kills. It doesn't much matter if the ammo is bullets or mana.

>> Unless the point of the story is to stop said army, in which case, coming up with a credible way of doing that wouldn't be easy. <<

You just have to know how magic works and how people work. Is there one smart person driving this army? Seduce or assassinate him and it all comes unraveled. All armies run on fuel. You can cripple any army by cutting its supply lines. This could be food/water as traditional, but magic often requires exotic materials. Cut off the spell components or mana, and the wizard army is now mostly useless. Magic works differently than physical combat in that it usually requires concentration and/or energy beyond the merely physical. Run them off their legs and then harass them all night, and soon they won't be able to cast a damn thing. A tactic that's moderately effective against ordinary troops becomes devastating against wizards. Also, some magic comes with inherent weaknesses to exploit; carpet-bomb them with kryptonite.

>> It ties into the problem that unless your magic has some stringent laws about how it works.. you can do darn near anything. <<

In which case they need both imagination and focus. Slip some acid into the stew and then advance to the rear as fast as you can.

[acelightning]

Think of Mercedes Lackey's Valdemar story about Lavan Firestorm - a mage with a very powerful form of battle magic, and how hard it is for him to control it, especially when he is under a lot of emotional stress. It would seem to me that most mages are "ethical" enough to feel bad if they have a seriously destructive power, and to feel even worse when they become aware of what they have done. As in Lavan's case, a mage in such a situation may just allow their power to kill them. This is why there aren't armies of mages (and supes) marching around incinerating enemy cities or causing enemies to curl up and die in convulsive agony. I know what happens when a person's magic or power causes harm accidentally. Only a few psychopaths would want to use baneful and destructive abilities voluntarily.

Thoughts

[ysabetwordsmith]

>> Think of Mercedes Lackey's Valdemar story about Lavan Firestorm - a mage with a very powerful form of battle magic, and how hard it is for him to control it, especially when he is under a lot of emotional stress. <<

Control is much more an issue for wizards than for ordinary soldiers. That's why I cited it as a potential way to stop a wizard army.

However, it's not unique to them, as has been discovered by every commander whose troops got loose and sacked flat a city they were supposed to preserve.

>> It would seem to me that most mages are "ethical" enough to feel bad if they have a seriously destructive power, and to feel even worse when they become aware of what they have done. As in Lavan's case, a mage in such a situation may just allow their power to kill them. This is why there aren't armies of mages (and supes) marching around incinerating enemy cities or causing enemies to curl up and die in convulsive agony. I know what happens when a person's magic or power causes harm accidentally. Only a few psychopaths would want to use baneful and destructive abilities voluntarily. <<

I don't think magic is any different from other abilities in this regard. Most people with great physical strength learn to be careful with it ... but if you put them in a boot camp where all their personal ethics get erased and overwritten with army ethics, you get soldiers. Wizards of mental magics would be somewhat more resistant to this process, but those of more mechanical schools probably would not. Most intelligent people don't wish to create superweapons, but in dire enough straits they will do it; WWII is a long chain of batshit weapons ending with nuclear bombs. Yes, most of the people who made those things later regretted it bitterly and wished they had not, but at the time, they were more interested in not being overrun by Nazis and Japanese imperialists. I would expect that wizards' ethics would be similarly flexible in the face of existential threats.

Then of course there's the fact that power doesn't corrupt, it reveals. What it reveals is that most people are secretly assholes. I think if many people in a culture had magic, there would be no difficulty raising an army of wizards to wreak havoc.

Cleaning up the mess it would make is another issue. Most of Europe is a mess of battle scars, some more dangerous than others -- people are still finding mines and unexploded bombs along with arequebus bullets and sword hilts. With magic, the damage can be worse. It would be interesting to explore a setting torn by magical wars for generations. That would certainly explain why some cultures might consider magic filthy and avoid it, if the remnants of magical warfare behaved like nuclear fallout.

Re: Thoughts

[acelightning]

Most people are only small-scale assholes. They'll cut ahead of you in the grocery line, but they won't deliberately run into your car.

And in my experience, magick and psi and other powers are very personal - they are rooted in some very primal part of the mind, and they are deeply connected with one's sense of self. You don't want to think of yourself as an asshole, so you refrain from doing too many asshole things.

Re: Thoughts

[technoshaman]

There are a FEW people who really don't give a shit about karma, and just want to Take Over The World... what happens when people like that get loose with some kinda woo-woo is ... it will give entire generations nightmares. Them as don't get eaten for lunch.

There is one other reason that wizard armies don't form. People who have their woo-woo shit together don't respond well to authority figures who demand respek for their authoritah based on some badge of rank, virtual or otherwise. Although, when the fit REALLY hits the fan, for one brief, shining moment all the wands go up at once, and then LOOK OUT... but that's rare.

Re: Thoughts

[ysabetwordsmith]

Some types of magic definitely discourage some types of misbehavior.

Most people, however, will fight to defend themselves and their homes. Since humans tend to want what they don't have, this starts a lot of fights.

[suncani]

This is just a gut feeling so probably not to be trusted but I thiink its because magic as it's usually described in fantasy requires a very strong personal identity and sense of self. I am this and I stop here. Armies very much don't, they need the collective.

It would be interesting to see a world that could create wizard armies as I feel like it would need some pretty major tinkering to work rather than just a few changes here and there.

Well ...

[ysabetwordsmith]

>>This is just a gut feeling so probably not to be trusted but I thiink its because magic as it's usually described in fantasy requires a very strong personal identity and sense of self. I am this and I stop here. Armies very much don't, they need the collective.<<

That's one way to look at magic, but it's a very modern and western way. Used to be everyone did it, and the big stuff was always collective. But it's a different type of magic when you're combining things from many people than when you're working alone.

>> It would be interesting to see a world that could create wizard armies as I feel like it would need some pretty major tinkering to work rather than just a few changes here and there. <<

It helps if one knows many different schools of magic. *chuckle* See Authentic Thaumaturgy for instructions. Isaac fell over laughing when I handed him that to sign at the Pagan Leaders Summit.

Now if you want to take the easy route, and make a wizard army story just a little different from a regular fantasy or military story, there's a straightforward way to do that. Decide your approximate era. Lay out the weaponry of the time. Replace each one with magic that does something similar. Write a standard story from there, using the magic as local color.

The next step of variation is to start at that point, but then imagine how magic would change military tactics and strategy. How did the invention of stirrups, or longbows, or cannons change things? Sometimes the implications are not obvious: you can sneak infantry through a swamp, but not if they are hauling heavy cannons. Things have drawbacks and limitations in addition to advantages. Magic is no different than anything else in this regard.

If you really want to write something new, however, then you need to worldbuild from the core out. Here I refer you to the work of Bard Bloom, who is so far out he rarely even writes on planets. He tells totally different stories because he starts with totally different settings and characters who have different challenges and drives than we see in this world.

When you work from the core out, you make major decisions at the beginning and then figure out what happens because of them. If everyone has magic, what does that change about the rest of the world? Then the wizard army will work just fine, because it's an outgrowth of that foundation and will shape itself to its home context.

Suppose for example that magic requires ingredients; the more powerful ingredients will be valuable, and every country that has little will want more. It won't take very long for them to start attacking places that have more. As people observe that small bands get obliterated, they will ally to form a bigger army. How many low-magic soldiers does it take to overrun a smaller group of high-magic soldiers? We can use historic referents like the average 10:1 defensive capacity of a castle and say the low-magic attackers can beat the high-magic defenders at approximately 11:1 odds.

Re: Well ...

[suncani]

A lot to think about. Kind of reminds me of that poem "For want of a nail"

For want of a nail the shoe was lost.
For want of a shoe the horse was lost.
For want of a horse the rider was lost.
For want of a rider the battle was lost.
For want of a battle the kingdom was lost.
And all for the want of a horseshoe nail.

Another example

[ng_moonmoth]

Charles Stross' The Nightmare Stacks features an invasion force with heavy magical support. Main issue for starting there is that it's half a dozen books into his Laundry Files series, and understanding how things work and who a lot of the characters are will suffer if you haven't been reading it from the start.

Re: Another example

[ysabetwordsmith]

That one I don't recognize, though I've seen a few other examples.

[erulisse]

Avatar: The Last Airbender is one of the few things I can think of that kind of comes close. Both the Earth Kingdom and the Fire Nation have enough benders to field large units. And as you said, when magic-use is ubiquitous, it becomes more geopolitics.

One question I feel like is relevant is, how do you define wizard? Tolkien's wizards are a particular type of otherworldly being and understandably rare. In Harry Potter and AtlA it's something you're born with and that seems to run in families. In other worlds, it's something you can learn, usually by long and difficult study. For a wizard army to be a thing, you would need a world where magic is accessible to most people with maybe only a little bit of training.

Thoughts

[ysabetwordsmith]

>> Avatar: The Last Airbender is one of the few things I can think of that kind of comes close. Both the Earth Kingdom and the Fire Nation have enough benders to field large units. And as you said, when magic-use is ubiquitous, it becomes more geopolitics. <<

Oh yeah, that's a great example! Furthermore, it shows how different types of magic can be used for constructive or destructive ends, and how they can strengthen or counteract each other.

>> One question I feel like is relevant is, how do you define wizard? Tolkien's wizards are a particular type of otherworldly being and understandably rare. In Harry Potter and AtlA it's something you're born with and that seems to run in families. In other worlds, it's something you can learn, usually by long and difficult study. <<

Consider that World Tree has magic everywhere, all the Prime Species have it, and everyone uses it every day. But only a few people earn the title of "wizard" by doing spectacular things, such as inventing city walls. Most of them who become warriors use magic as well as weapons, although some do prefer more physical methods. That absolutely does influence the nature of even small scuffles, let alone large battles. And some of the biggest are out-and-out magewars, as a nendrai (a fearsome monster) is equal to a city full of Primes. 0_o

>> For a wizard army to be a thing, you would need a world where magic is accessible to most people with maybe only a little bit of training. <<

Well, there's another example of a story that could be told. What if magic had been something practiced only by isolated nerds, and then someone figured out how to teach some of it to anyone? It would be like the invention of gunpowder. Instead of studying for years, recruits are now issued premixed spell pouches. Add a pinch of activating powder, say the magic word, throw it, and -- FIREBALL! A nation with this ability would mow down their opposition.

There are so many stories that could be told along these lines! I don't know why more writers haven't done it before.

Re: Thoughts

[ng_moonmoth]

>> What if magic had been something practiced only by isolated nerds, and then someone figured out how to teach some of it to anyone? <<

Which is more or less the point of divergence for the Laundry Files series mentioned above. Specifically, Alan Turing's resolving a fundamental question in the theory of computing has the side effect of making what we call magic computationally feasible: that is, it is possible to write computer programs that will run in a manageable amount of time and perform a specific magical effect. Which means that once such a program is written, or an appropriate device created, anyone can use the program or the device to "do magic".

Things have been kept more or less under control since then because it was also discovered, generally speaking, that codifying magical effects decrease entropy -- which necessarily involves increasing entropy somewhere else. Intelligence also being a low-entropy state, the most common effect of discovering a magical process is attracting transdimensional entities that balance the entropy equation by chewing on the magician's brain, driving them crazy and eventually killing them. That's if you're lucky and have programmed things well; if not, large-scale devastation up to and including the possible dissolution of our consensus reality is possible. If someone doesn't want that to happen, other intelligent entities can be used as entropy feedstock -- thus, the prevalence of sacrifice in magical rituals discovered in pre-scientific times.

Lots of fun, and full of fannish and hackerish easter eggs.

Re: Thoughts

[zeeth_kyrah]

This reminds me of a fantasy item based on certain folk tales: The bag of devils. It contains a number of spirits, and each time the bag is opened, it releases a random spirit that casts a particular spell and then leaves. You know there are a limited number inside, and you know that each effect is aligned along a particular theme... but you don't always know how many are left, or which effects have already been used (or if they repeat). It's rather like the AD&D Wand of Wonder.

But simply having one of these items is enough to change a battle's course. Luck, hopefully is with you...

Re: Thoughts

[ysabetwordsmith]

>> This reminds me of a fantasy item based on certain folk tales: The bag of devils. It contains a number of spirits, and each time the bag is opened, it releases a random spirit that casts a particular spell and then leaves. You know there are a limited number inside, and you know that each effect is aligned along a particular theme... but you don't always know how many are left, or which effects have already been used (or if they repeat).<<

Fascinating.

>> It's rather like the AD&D Wand of Wonder. <<

Or the Deck of Many Things. :D

>> But simply having one of these items is enough to change a battle's course. Luck, hopefully is with you... <<

In this regard, magic artifacts are much like firearms. They're powerful and (usually) anyone can use them.

[kengr]

One of Harry Turtledove's *many* series was essentially WWII fought with magic. The countries and geography were different, but the politics were recognizable and he even filed the serial numbers off a few weapons ideas (like the midocean airfield made of ice)

Because there are so many of his books, I don't recall the overall title nor the names of any of the books....

[arlie]

L. E. Modesitt Jr. practically specializes in combined arms stories, where one branch of the military uses the local magic system. His magic systems are fairly well defined, with definite limitations, though he sometimes changes those limitations somewhat in later books in the same world.

Sometimes there are literal arms-mages in the local forces; sometimes there are individual officers with extra abilities.But he does this meme all the time. He's also done variants like having the local magic users producing the most deadly weapons, which are then used by non-talented soldiers.

An earlier example of this would be the beginning of Operation Chaos by Poul Anderson. Once again, there are relatively few strong magic users, but enough to be militarily important, and magic-based technology is everywhere.

[dreamwriteremmy]

This is kinda what i'm doing in intergalactic Urban search and Rescue's science fantasy thread (my fork of your blueshift troopers idea)? XD Magic is NOT uncommon, however, it has both classist issues AND SIDE EFFECTS for both versions. XD

A) inborn magic -- can rival either a miracle drug OR a nuclear weapon, depending on skill-focus, but it's hard to control, and often causes sensory impairments related to either species or the magic they specialize in [most folx with inborn magic are halfling or fullblood supernatural folx]. It's somewhat looked down upon socially and they're the "lower class" despite often being more powerful than magic-trained humans/humanoids.

b) trained magic -- much more socially acceptable, but (a) training is long, (b) training has both physical and mental side effects that often turn away potential trainees, and (c) one of the physical side effects means most mages have a very short career-life (it's rare for a trained mage who is a soloist to work in magic past 50, usually MOST end up having to stop using magic around 40-ish, unless they're from a familial line that does some form of energy-maintenance to mitigate that side effect).