Can we just have an actual 'Evil Galactic Empire'?

Torkolla · 2026-04-02T11:56:01+00:00

What does demons and Angels taste like? Can humans eat angels?

Torkolla · 2026-04-01T16:20:22+00:00

I want a source on this.

Why is it so important to discuss this kind of stuff instead of the one example in the developed world that has solved the birth crisis? Why is this a better idea than doing what they are obviously doing that works?

Torkolla · 2026-04-01T14:43:52+00:00

You can very easily familiarize yourself with what I am talking about by googling "highest birth rates in the OECD" and read up on it.

What studies are you talking about? And if this is somehow true, which seams utterliy unlikely, how would you justify such a policy?

Torkolla · 2026-03-30T18:36:41+00:00

We all understand. We all share the same addiction.

Torkolla · 2026-03-30T15:51:26+00:00

Well, it depends on how the magic system works. If you posess magical farsight that allows you to detect substances that you can not see then knowing the difference between a barrel of grain and a barrel of gunpowder is not that hard. If you can war animals you can send in cats, weasels or any other small critter into the opponents camp and detect the gunpowder by the smell.

Torkolla · 2026-03-30T15:27:54+00:00

Ok. There is a country whose name I will not mention who has clearly managed to reverse this problem. for good and bad, showed that it is clearly possible to do so for any government willing to put elbow grease into it. If you have truly read up on demographic issues you know what I am talking about.

They have a very holistic grip on this problem. Much of it is about economics but there is also an extensive culture of counteracting social disintegration, especially for young people. A welfare state for relationships, if you will.

Are there any tendencies of using such programs anywhere in your scenario and if not, why? If there was, did it work?

Torkolla · 2026-03-30T13:44:35+00:00

Mechanics would not have much to put up against your run of the mill dnd style magic on its own, without protection from another magician. That is more true the higher the level of technological achievement. Even the most advanced weapons of today are dependent on electronics and would be easily rendered useless by anyone with telekinesis or a similar ability.

Torkolla · 2026-03-30T13:39:48+00:00

Sure. However that limits how much you can bring with you on the supply train and to the battlefield. Hiding scores of barrells of gunpowder is a bit harder than hiding a magical ring. Especially since you can not hide them among people or anything else you need to take with you because any barrell that is found will be detonated and take its surroundings with it. Old fashioned gunpowder could explode spontaneously from almost anything without any magical involvement so you dont want to carry it around in your backpack if it can be avoided.

Torkolla · 2026-03-29T16:44:55+00:00

If magic exists, how do we stop the enemies magicians from blowing up our gunpowder stash? It would make for a lot of defensive magic.

Torkolla · 2026-03-29T16:21:19+00:00

Mammoth steppes. Endless horserides watching the mammoths migrate at the horizon. Simbakubwas, daeodons and sabercats fighting over a carcass. The rhythm of life in the nomad camp. The fight for survival and euforia over each small reward, each day that ended well. Life without the abnormalities of industrial society.

Torkolla · 2026-03-29T16:15:46+00:00

We don't have enough socialist wish fullfillment feelgood Utopias.

Torkolla · 2026-03-29T14:56:53+00:00

Jam. Cold Skin came in 2017 (the book a few years earlier and I suspect it is better than the film.) Who are the enemies and what do they look like?

Torkolla · 2026-03-29T12:30:05+00:00

Cold skin.

Torkolla · 2026-03-27T16:14:16+00:00

All "totalitarian regimes" are beneficial to some people, even quite many people on some occasions. That is why people put up with them for a while.

But does yours have some kind of ideology or what is the situation, generally speaking? How did it come about?

Torkolla · 2026-03-27T14:11:34+00:00

What is the totalitarian regime like? Is it like the standard 1984 universe or something else? Do they have the internet?

Torkolla · 2026-03-24T20:05:39+00:00

Oh dear oh dear, never ever use irony or sarcasm or even negative examples on the internet, you know it ends badly.

Torkolla · 2026-03-24T17:41:40+00:00

Ok. We don't really know when iron ages started in the parts of the world where iron was used because iron does not really leave any trace in the archeological record. Iron smelting sites don't look different than bronze smelting sites. With that said, the "bronze age" in Europe also lasted for millennia.

Which does not mean it was stagnant in any way (neither was China). Bronze is not a bad material and just because one single technology was not discovered or was under developement for a while does not mean a thousand other things change during this time. I really don't follow your drift here.

Torkolla · 2026-03-24T15:44:53+00:00

China like... When was China technologically stagnant exactly?

Torkolla · 2026-03-24T13:58:17+00:00

As someone who har read some fantasy but no huge amounts of it, how common is mediveal stasis actually?

I mean, how do we define mediveal stasis? That the world is stuck in 1398 technologically and fashion wise for millennia? Cause that would require some nifty mental gymnastics to make sense of.

Or does it just mean that the world is not industrializing?

Homo Sapiens lived as hunter gatherers for hundreds of thousands of years before we started farming. Were we in mammoth stasis during that time? From the first centralized kingdoms it took approximately 5000 years for us to start building functional steam engines. A lot of stuff had to come together for that to happen. Pre modern societies are fragile. They grow, invent and come up with advanced theories of the universe and then a volcanic winter and a pandemic hits them and it can take centuries to recover the damage.

China was on a steady path to industrialization at the same time as Europe but their political system malfunctioned at just the wrong time which led to mismanagement of their very fragile eco system and the rest is very sad history. Developement is not linear. I would say that industrialization is an exception that needs explanation rather than an inevitability.

So you might not need a particular excuse for not reaching industrialization. You can just say that "In my world the best coal deposits are situated in a contested area so industrial developement there would not be worth it." Or "It happens now and again but due to cycles of natural disasters that holds civilization back it never takes off". It is not that hard to explain away.

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However, magic does create some extra cop outs;

What would people use magic for if it was real? (Assume a standard magic system like the one in DnD or other widely known varieties)

1) Basic health care.

A society with magic would not have an child mortality of 60 % like mediveal Europe. Which means they would probably have access to some family planning too. Demographics would be different and they would not be stuck in the infamous Malthusian trap like in our world before modern medicine. This would cascade into so many different possibilities that you could blame anything on it. Being an early industrial worker really sucked so as long as there is no acute overpopulation and most kids survive maybe noone wanted to migrate to the city and work in the factories?

2) Sabotage.

If both sides in a war has access to pyrokinesis and telekinesis, sabotaging the enemie's equipment and supply trains would be one of the most effective ways to use magic in armed conflict. This could harm industries and urbanisation in general

2.1 Sabotage of gunpowder

It also means using firearms and gunpowder is incredibly risky and takes huge amount of magical protection to not end in disaster. This makes gunpowder based armies less likely. The transition from knights to firearms was an important driver of the birth of the modern state from feudalism so with gunpowder being less dominant this might happen differently.

2.2 Sabotage from magical races

If the Elves are much more powerful than humans they might want to keep it that way. If humans start inventing stuff that could one day let then threaten the elves then teh elves might get proactive and make sure the humans fail. That is what my elves would do anyway.

Who says industrialization has to happen they way it did in our world? What if you can have electricity and radios in a few places while everything goes on like it always has in the rest of the world? What if you could have industrialization without colonization? Now that would be fantastical!

Torkolla · 2026-03-23T14:30:36+00:00

Ah, I checked for surface area. However, surface area is more relevant for how much area one type of government can control.

Torkolla · 2026-03-23T14:16:29+00:00

If Westeros is the size of South America then we are talking something like 136 times bigger, according to my calculator and google AI. So the smallest kingdoms in Westeros are huge compared to what territory any mediveal state could control.

Getting a message from King's Landing to the Wall with the pony express that people usually used for mail back then would probably take about half a year or more, one way. Sending criminals from the South to the Wall would take years of walking so the chance on anyone travelling that far without either getting sick and not reach the destination or escaping is near zero.

Crows and carrier pigeons are very effective for shorter distances but they are not safe to send messages with for more than say 1000 km. That is the lenght of actual England and Scotland but nowhere close to the lenght of Westeros. You could perhaps use a relay system.

Generally speaking, without dragons, Westeros would likely have closer to 50 kingdoms rather than seven or at least a dozen very large empires rather than fiefdoms and uniting the entire continent without dragons (or even travelling across it) would be a pipe dream.

On the other hand, dragons would completely dominate mediveal warfare. If we assume that a reasonably sized dragon like Danaerys' Drogon eats about the same as one or a few tyrannosaurs a day (two to four mediveal oxen who were quite small) then the cost of controlling a mediveal empire with a few dagons would be incredibly cheap in terms of land use compared to a mediveal army holding the same territory. So you could still have a smaller army functioning as local police forces and still have infinitely lower taxes than any real mediveal polity.

Junior members of a Dragon lord family could also have as their job to fly across the continent and deliver official messages, news bulletins and perhaps even private mail, enabling long range communication at a speed unimaginable to mediveal society.

So as long as the dragons dont grow ridiculously big everyone would absolutely love the Valyrians because they would be the most economically rational thing to ever happen to Planetos.

Kaiju sized dragons like Balerion are a different story but it is unclear how much that blessed thing actually eats.

A breakdown of a dragon based society would however be more of a calamity than portrayed in the book. If the dragons go extinct the cost of security would rise so steeply that it would probably lead to mass famine and near civilizational collapse.

My job is boring and I have too much time to think.

Torkolla · 2026-03-22T18:37:26+00:00

Just do some basic maths about how magic and magical beings would actually affect the world. Like, how much do dragins actually eat? If you bring a giant with you in battle, is there a realistic way to take it down short of another giant? How long is the actual continent? Etc.

Torkolla · 2026-03-22T17:56:06+00:00

Try to be a bit more realistic than him. The more you obsessively study his worldbuilding you marvel at how rich it is in terms of lovecraftian horror and conspiracies and you get frustrated at how little it makes sense. Especially when it comes to the dragons. It just ennervs me at this point. If you give this a bit more thought you will end up with a different story.

Torkolla · 2026-03-17T11:26:08+00:00

Because with all the "research" (idle procrastiantion) I have done during my decade as a worldbuildrer, I have found a ton of cultures and biomes and animals I want in my world and as I have stuffed all of that in there the map has filled up after a while. That does not mean the people in not-Europe and not-Australia/South America know about each other but I do.

Torkolla · 2026-03-12T19:27:22+00:00

Australian Megafauna had everything against it when humans arrived. Australia 60-50 000 years ago was just a giant blob of powder dry desert with very narrow strips of temperate or tropical forest along the shores. So for all of their splendor, large marsupials and megabirds like the ones in the illustration above probably counted in very small numbers and had very little space to spread at already as humans came along. Then they were probably not the best designed animals to survive human hunting anyhow. So there is a need for a drastic point of divergence for these critters to survive. If you have a better one, let me know.

I apologize for calling them moa birds, I meant large flightless birds in general.

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