A Fantasy Writing Community's Journal

Sudden questions about magic

It's good to have this fantasy community here, hopefully you can help me with your opinions.

So, I have a world where magic is quite clearly elemental, most mages can command only one of the six elements (I'll have to work out the genetics to some more detail before I can actually say how rare mages with two or possibly more talents would be). Provisionally about one in a thousand people has some talent in any one element, might be more if this number turns out too small.

I have two questions that came up in connection with this system.

First, with magic so clearly divided (though quite rare), is it likely that most or even all religious and/or scientific worldviews in that world would be based around six elements? [On a side-note to that: since the extra two elements, light and shadow, are concerned with the mind and emotions, how likely would they be to receive a different treatment from the other four, more material elements?]

Second, how plausible it is that some cultures persecute certain types of magic? A specific example: an empire's official religion has two gods, one of Light and one of Shadow - the latter by no means evil, in case people suspected otherwise -, and of course masters of those two elements have high status, considered blessed by the gods, blah-blah. Now, my idea is that these guys consider any other type of magic as blasphemy, demon-worship, abominable barbarian custom, you name it. Is this realistic when it's clearly really useful to have fire mages in your army, and other, not quite friendly cultures have no objection against doing just that?

I would very much appreciate your opinions and ideas on this stuff. Would be really helpful in sorting out my cultures.

Current Mood: pensive