Quote from: Gormenghast;875573Borderlands of Faery

That would work.

Say the setting is a county in the Anglo-Scots Border country and it lies very close to the realms of Faery-Land.
Witchery, strange creatures that crawl out of Faery, buried treasure with curses laid on it, and all that kind of stuff is unusually common in the county.
Saints may be more likely to grant intercession to people living there, who need all the help they can get in dealing with magical powers and weird monsters.
And don't the elfin lords pay a tiend to Hell?
So the Evil One may also take an interest...

Sounds a bit like the very Fantasy Europe setting of the County, in the Spook's Apprentice novels ... Another example of how magic can be combined with near real world history to pretty good effect.

Quote from: markfitz;875582Sounds a bit like the very Fantasy Europe setting of the County, in the Spook's Apprentice novels ... Another example of how magic can be combined with near real world history to pretty good effect.

Oh?
Maybe I should check these novels out.

Thanks for letting me know of this series.

Quote from: Gormenghast;875632Oh?
Maybe I should check these novels out.

Thanks for letting me know of this series.

It's a Young Adult series, but still worth a look. Takes place in a fantasy version of Lancashire, I think it is, drawing on lots of Northern English folktales about boggarts and witches. The plot concerns a young boy who is apprenticed top the local "Spook", a hunter of witches and demons. It's quite well done, but I found myself wishing for a more adult treatment of similar material. Anyone know of any adult novels that deal with occult detectives or witch-hunters? (I don't mean a mash up of fantasy and noir, like those Jim Butcher novels, something more historical perhaps?).

Quote from: markfitz;875667It's a Young Adult series, but still worth a look. Takes place in a fantasy version of Lancashire, I think it is, drawing on lots of Northern English folktales about boggarts and witches. The plot concerns a young boy who is apprenticed top the local "Spook", a hunter of witches and demons. It's quite well done, but I found myself wishing for a more adult treatment of similar material. Anyone know of any adult novels that deal with occult detectives or witch-hunters? (I don't mean a mash up of fantasy and noir, like those Jim Butcher novels, something more historical perhaps?).

Is that the source for the movie Seventh Son?

Quote from: Bren;875686Is that the source for the movie Seventh Son?

Yeah that's the one. Apparently the film sucks balls.

Quote from: markfitz;875704Yeah that's the one. Apparently the film sucks balls.

The Spook's accent sure is weird. It didn't get good reviews, but I  haven't gotten all the way through the movie yet to judge for myself.

Quote from: Bren;875707The Spook's accent sure is weird. It didn't get good reviews, but I  haven't gotten all the way through the movie yet to judge for myself.

Yeah it's strange. Good cast, and pretty good source material. Hard to know why it seems to have gone so wrong. I'd be interested to hear what you think of it if you make it to the end.

The books are interesting. A little simplistic, but really quite dark and flavourful. Very D&D-able, or other RPG of your choice. The Spook's role as a monster hunter for hire, with his semi outcast status, are very appropriate for adventurers. I wonder what class would work for him though. You could certainly, based on the books, include a Witch (Warlock) who was conflicted about evil with the party though, as the apprentice is allied with a young trainee witch, Alice, throughout. What class would a witch hunter be though?

I'm tempted to say Arcane Trickster with access to mainly abjuration spells for dismissing spirits and such.

Speaking of fantasy elements in a real world, or close enough, setting. There is also the Borribles series of novels. Weird ageless kids with pointy ears battling in the fringes of London with eachother and a race of rat people. Theres allmost no magic in it. But its a nice example of fantasy elements hidden away in the corners and co-existing.

Quote from: markfitz;875712Yeah it's strange. Good cast, and pretty good source material. Hard to know why it seems to have gone so wrong. I'd be interested to hear what you think of it if you make it to the end.

Not that bad. Having low expectations for the film certainly helped. I'm sure I'd have liked the newest Mad Max film better if it hadn't been touted as the greatest action film evaaah!

Although I found Jeff Bridges' rocks in the mouth speech affectation annoying, his character was OK as the cantankerous old master. I particularly liked the way he struck his swords on metal so he could listen to the vibration the steel made when choosing which blade to use.

Seventh Son's plot is a bit of a muddle with things like the boggart just sort of showing up solely to serve as a step on the hero's journey, but the magic effects were interesting. I liked the league of evil witches AKA Mother Malkin's gang. A bit of a shame that the movie wasn't longer or a couple of films so the various villains could have had some expanded screen time. The 102 minute running time was too short for what they tried to pack in. Overall I'd say the pacing was a bit off. At times the movie seemed slow but at other times it raced along hardly giving us enough time to dislike a villain before they ended up as toast.

QuoteThe Spook's role as a monster hunter for hire, with his semi outcast status, are very appropriate for adventurers.

I definitely got that vibe.

Not being a fan of level and class I can't say what would make sense. In the film, the Spook seems to have a magic staff but almost exclusively confront's foes with normal combat plus a few tricks (the silver powder stuff, silver net, and iron chains) that might be the D&D equivalent of 1-use items like potions or scrolls or the equivalent of silver for killing werewolves, and wolvesbane and garlic for repelling werewolves and vampires. So possibly some sort of Lore skill rather than magic.

Quote from: TristramEvans;874377No, but it takes on an incredibly different character. If witches and the magical abilities attributed to them were real, that would have drastically altered the course of human history. Curses, hexes, divinations, the ability to summon forth demons. Regardless of what folk people may have believed or wanted to believe, if any one of these things were possible, then people would have used and exploited them.

People did. Queen Elizabeth had John Dee determine astrologically the best moment for her coronation.

QuoteWealth would change hands

It did. Kings paid fortunes and competed with each other to have the best alchemists and diviners (including the aforementioned John Dee).  Peasants paid money for curses, blessings, cures, and talisman, and the ongoing state of this market demonstrated that they really kept right on believing in it.

And of course, the selling of relics, and indulgences, were HUGE business for both the catholic church and clandestine opportunists within the church. These were not being bought for 'political' reason. They were being bought because people believed them to have real power, including the power to save them from eternal damnation.

Quote, authority figures would be assassinated,

They were. Several powerful figures died because of or in relation to curses or dark auguries placed on them.  The Roman general Germanicus may have literally died from witchcraft, or a combination of that and poison.

Quotefamines and plagues would be spread

They were, or in other cases were avoided. There are tons of medieval accounts of both.

Quote. People who in our world were involved in the Inquisition for political reasons either wouldn't be involved or would have made completely different choices.

WHY?
What logic do you have for this argument?

Let me put it this way: do you believe climate change is real?
Do you think there are people involved in the climate change debate that think it's real? Do you think there are people involved in the climate change debate who are in it for political reasons?
Do you think these are exclusive?  Do you not think there are people involved in the debate who think climate change is a real problem but also want to gain political power, influence, and profit off the 'crisis'? Do you not think there are people who think climate change is real but will publicly claim otherwise for political reasons?

If you can accept that people can have those kinds of ulterior motives and double-discourses around something today, like climate change, what on earth makes you think that it wasn't that way back then, around witchcraft?

You still seem to think that most people involved at high levels were hard atheists and had no belief that witchcraft existed at all. Which makes you a fucking moron.  I spent YEARS studying the sources, trust me: these people almost ALL believed absolutely in witchcraft just as much as we believe in magnetism. Magic was a force of nature to them, as utterly assumed to be true as atoms or molecules or black holes are to us. People might fake being magicians like people today fake being scientists sometimes, but no one would have ever taken that to mean that there was no such thing.

QuotePeople who weren't involved or objected to the Inquisition would have been, and vice versa.

No, it would have been EXACTLY THE SAME DEBATE because and get this through your thick fucking head: ALMOST EVERYONE INVOLVED IN THE DEBATE BELIEVED IN MAGIC.

The people objecting about false accusations or the violations of rule of law would still be objecting on that basis because THEY BELIEVED IN MAGIC ALREADY.
The people calling for more ardent persecution of witches and who believed in plots against Christian kings etc would have still called for more ardent pursuit on that basis because THEY BELIEVED IN MAGIC ALREADY.
The Church figures (Catholic or Protestants) who warned against excesses and wanted to stay in control of the process of trial cases, expropriation of funds, and all that this would bring to them in terms of power and money, would still be doing things that way because THEY BELIEVED IN MAGIC ALREADY.
The insane mobs that would sometimes burn entire villages to the ground for witchcraft because they believed the entire village were in league with the devil and cursing their neighbors crops, would still do this because THEY BELIEVED IN MAGIC ALREADY.
The unauthorized "Witch Finders" who opportunistically took advantage of the chaos to sell themselves off as 'experts' and bilk people for fame and fortune, and didn't really give a fuck if they burned people who clearly were not guilty of witchcraft so long as they kept in business would have continued to do exactly that same thing because THEY BELIEVED IN MAGIC ALREADY.

The victims who ardently insisted that they were good Christians and had not been in league with the devil, or the ones who confessed and admitted that they were guilty (like the young English girl who had wished her grumpy old neighbour dead and that same moment he keeled over and died, and therefore the girl knew she had been touched with the power of the devil) would have continued to insist on their innocence or admit to their guilt just like they did in history because THEY BELIEVED IN MAGIC ALREADY.

There is NO ONE, as a group at least, who would change at all.

 

QuoteWitches would have fought back.

Most of those persecuted weren't witches. They were magicians at all.
Those who were witches (in the sense of practicing magic) were mostly old village wise women or wise men, who knew how to make some curses and trinkets. A few might call on the devil, and of course some of those who were witnesses to witchcraft had fits and seizures because the accused witch was apparently cursing them. But there's only so much that the devil can do against the power of God.
Most of the really capable magicians, the high level magic users, were dudes that would never get swept up in the witch craze at all. They were respectable people, university graduates and Natural Philosophers.  Why should they give a fuck what happened to charlatans and pagan remnants?

 

QuotePeople seeing the potential for power would have taken up witchcraft.

They did. ALL THE FUCKING TIME.

QuoteBelief is not the same as reality. The more you think about it, it becomes impossible not to see the echo effect.

No, the more I think about it the more I see how utterly and totally your head is up your ass, and as far deep in there as it can get to avoid having to connect to the medieval paradigm.

QuoteJust like the witch craze, like the McCarthy witch hunts, like anything of that nature, you will have the gullible people, you will have the people involved because finding a scapegoat is easier than taking personal responsibility, and you will find the people inciting it for personal gain. This is true of everything from the Satanic Panic (there were MANY people profiteering off of it) backwards.

This isn't quite like any of that. The Witch Craze can't really be compared to the satanic panic except maybe in the very narrow context. But let's talk about the bigger question: the paradigm assumption that magic, non-human intelligences, god, the devil, angels and other spirits are all absolutely real.

To understand how fundamental that is, you would need to compare it to this statement of the 21st century paradigm: "If you eat right and exercise regularly you'll live longer".

Now, there's a lot of people who don't eat right and don't exercise, but who still take the above paradigm-assumption to be absolutely true. They make up excuses for why they can't do it, or they lament their personal moral failing at not restricting themselves, or whatever. And of course there are people who are absolute devotees at fitness and diet, and there are special magic diets that SCIENCE has proven will help you to be healthier and therefore not die. And there are so many stories of people who lived healthy and ate right and are now energetic 90 year olds who still play basketball every weekend; and of slobs who ate nothing but big macs and had heart failure at 35 years. Any inconsistencies are excused; if George Burns and Gerald Ford lived into their 90s and smoked heavily every single day then it was just a strange bout of luck or because of something else they did. If the "joy of running" guy died of a heart attack or the Atkins Diet guy dropped dead, then maybe running isn't as good an exercise as yoga, and maybe the atkins diet is not as 'balanced' and healthy as other low-carb diets.

But if someone were to point out that by far the greatest indicator of health is predetermined genetic conditions, well, that would be crazy talk! Only insane people would believe such a thing.  And if someone were to say that desiring longevity at the cost of deep personal sacrifices is stupid, that person would have something deeply wrong with them and would need therapy at the very least.

This is how fundamental the medieval relationship to magic was.  That magic really exists was as firm and sure to them as that diet and exercise make you live longer is to us.

QuoteAgain, you're not actually accounting for the cause and effect of something actually happening. The Xfiles is not realistic, it just takes itself seriously. There is a huge difference. Yeah you can have a fantasy version of our reality where "urban legends are true", but its not our reality, it doesn't account for the manner in which our reality would be altered.

If it turned out that tomorrow absolute, incontrovertible, total and definite proof appeared that aliens existed and were visiting our planet, what would happen? I would agree, it would certainly and massively change everything. The world would never be the same.
But why is that? Because most people in our society do not really believe this. Probably even most people who 'want to believe' don't actually believe in it. It would change because this is not the paradigm of our culture.

If our entire culture was already ABSOLUTELY CONVINCED that aliens were around and visiting us, it wouldn't really be any fucking deal if they were because we'd already have an alien-oriented culture. It already wouldn't look like ours currently does.

Quote from: TristramEvans;874377No, we have tons of evidence to this effect. The Inquisition was incredibly well documented, and the motivations of a lot of the witch trials in Europe were very clearly political.

The Inquisition didn't run most of the witch trials. In fact, it ran a tiny minority, and witch-trials were a tiny tiny minority of what the Inquisition did. It wasn't their job. Their job was heretics and hidden jews.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;874459OF COURSE they did.  He's not denying that.  What you're obviously missing is that if 'magic' had been real, and had been as powerfully insidious as the Church was trying to pawn off as, there would have been witches in power, in fact, there's a good chance that the Inquisition would not have worked as well.

The Church (as in the Catholic church) was actually not particularly scared of witches. Because it had much greater magical power in the form of Christ and the Saints.

Incidentally, saying 'magic is real' does not just mean 'witches are real'.  The most impressive medieval and renaissance magicians were not witches. They were highly-educated Natural Philosophers.  A great many of them were monks; monasteries, being where all the books are, and where people had time to study, were the best place to develop magicians for a long time.  Like Roger Bacon, for example.  The church in general was a great source for magicians. One of them even became pope.

Later, as the University system developed, most magicians moved from the monasteries to the colleges. People like Agrippa, Paracelsus, Regiomontanus, John Dee, Flamel, and others.

 

QuoteSimply because the other side would have had the means to stop them from going as far as it did.  The 'Witches' of history had no ability to defend themselves from the inevitable outcome of their accusations.  If you failed the 'test', they killed you.  You passed the test, you often died as a 'reward' for not being a witch.

Add Magic to the equation, and now you have something likely akin to an all out war.

Not if magic is largely impractical to use without a lot of training, and for most cases requires the use of implements. And if the people being persecuted are mostly not actual magic-users, and none of the really powerful magic-users are being persecuted, and the power of God is greater than the power of Satan and most really powerful magic-users are devout Christians who would absolutely hate witches anyways.

QuoteThe 'echo effect' changes everything the moment you introduce certain fantasy elements.  And do you have any idea how much work that is to keep it plausible?  You can't have 'Medieval Europe with Magic and Dragons' without having one small incident actually changing the entire world paradigm, because in D&D magic is that powerful a force.

D&D doesn't work in anything than a pure Fantasy setting because there's no way to make it seem even remotely ineffective or corrupting, without changing the base game.  Other systems is easier, often because they're set up that way.

I don't think so. Create a setting (oh, say, like DARK ALBION), where you get rid of the truly major damage spells (like fireball), where the vast majority of wizards are level 1, and where magic items are extremely rare, AND create social conditions that also mirror the medieval viewpoints on magic (including social status stuff about who should be and who shouldn't be allowed to study it, just like they had in medieval europe), and you'll end up with a world where magic will pretty much do exactly as much as it did in terms of its influence in our medieval world.

Quote from: Bren;874496And in actual history there were actual people who were accused of being witches or using witchcraft who were not prosecuted, who had positions of great wealth and power, and who maintained those positions for years, even decades despite rumors that they were witches or consorted with the devil. Examples include Queen Catherine de Medici of France, at least one of Louis XIV's mistresses and a number of his courtiers, numbers of Catholic Church officials including, I think, at least one Pope, and many or most heretics including Luther and Calvin. So there were people, thought by many to be witches and consorters with the devil who actually were powerful. Some were even insidious. Which is exactly what you are suggesting would happen if magic were real.

Both Queen Margaret and Queen Elizabeth Woodville were thought to be witches (by their political opponents, mainly). Woodville's family (on their mother's side) claimed descent from a water-spirit. The Tudors claimed descent from King Arthur.  The Pope you're thinking about was probably Sylverster II.  Countless medieval kings employed respectable magicians for a variety of services.
John Dee was a noted mathematician, an astrologer who determined the date of the Queen's coronation, was the "Queen's Conjurer" to Elizabeth I but was later also employed by rulers in various countries throughout Europe, cartographer, invented the term "British Empire", had the largest library in Britain (maybe the largest private library in all of Europe), was one of the first agents Her Majesty's Secret Service (with his code designation being "007"), was a practiced alchemist, and routinely had conversations with and received guidance from angels he summoned using a complex system of magic.

Quote from: RPGPundit;875810PThe Roman general Germanicus may have literally died from witchcraft, or a combination of that and poison.

Not to mention the Archduke Franz Ferdinand literally died from black magic or a combination of that and a bullet.