What Is Stopping Negav's Development

So I was going to make something about alchemy, transmutation and potion miscibility, partly influenced by the monster hunter thread, but then another question came to mind.  Is Negav in a pre-industrial state because it relies so much on magic?  Let's break it down for a moment.

Negav is currently ruled by a council of wizards, so it makes sense they would focus so heavily on magic.  They built a Hogwarts-esque university for aspiring young wizards.  Let's say for the sake of argument that magic isn't too hard to learn and attendance is decent and there are a fair number of graduates for the normal courses.  So you got a lot of transmuters, hydromancers, alchemists and all that stuff.  That's nice, but the problem is, you can't really automatize magic, now can you?  For example, crafting magic items, it's most likely a very time consuming task and I don't think you can really come up with a process that can make it automatic, since magic by its nature need an experienced human element to handle well.  Negav relies on quite a fair bit of magic gems and ores, like scintilla and boralite, to make some of its mundane appliances, and I doubt you can synthesize those.  Even making mundane items using magic would probably time consuming.  Maybe not nearly as time consuming as doing it by hand, but still a far cry from what could be achieved from an automated process.

Speaking of synthesizing stuff, I'm curious how Negav handles transmutation.  With transmutation, you can practically turn anything into anything, though I imagine it's pretty limited, like you can only transmute something into something similar, like you could transmute a rock into an iron ore, but you can't transmute vegetable matter like hemp rope into steel chains,  but I think it would be enough to help Negav develop.  However, there's no real way to make that process automatic, nor affect a huge amount of matter with just one person, and I imagine transmutations of that level take very long to finish, and that's just to make the raw materials.

What do you guys think?  I know it's a weird subject for me to ramble on, and it's not even well organized, but I just felt like sharing those thoughts.

Magi-tech. Pure magic and pure technology are both inefficient options when you can combine both of them for greater effect.

It's already been shown that magi-tech has allowed a 'pre-industrial' society to do everything from create battery-analogues that can power offworld technology, to creating magi-tech aircraft capable of vertical take-offs and high-speed (albeit low-level) flight. Most Isolon Fist firearms and explosive devices are enchanted to some degree for greater effect, not to mention the enchantments and wards built into their very uniforms and combat gear itself.

It would be extremely simple to translate magi-tech into a variety of industrialized technologies. You could skip the age of coal and steam altogether using magic as a surrogate. Hell, you could probably build a steam-engine and enchant it to automatically heat its water without the need for coal in the first place. The idea that Negav would still be medieval with the tools available to it is just not realistic. They should at least be getting into a weird mix of 1800's to early 1900's era tech by now. They would have history books from other worlds, they would be able to see their technological progression and from that be able to augment their own. Knowledge is power.

I really think Negav needs to go through a quantum leap in technology. Get away from the medieval swords and spears sort of image we have of them, to a more late-18th century sort of society where magic has thoroughly intermingled with both local and offworld technology. Right now, Negav is stagnant, unchanging, stuck in their ways. It makes them seem like they're just... sitting there waiting for things to happen to them instead of acting on their own to improve their living situation. Copy The Eye. Extend the walls. Take back part of the wilderness and better secure Negav's place in the world.

The thing I see with 18th century tech is gunpowder being a main element. Mines that have common ores are never even talked about, yet they should be, because they cant import every little thing. THey're still going to need iron, copper, and if they want guns - gunpowder. However, guns are nice, but I believe with a world that has intense magical energies in abundance it would be more convenient to use that in place of gunpowder to come up with technologies. Saying "18th century tech" can only get you so far in a world thats so dramatically different than earth.

ITs like my argument with the Fable series. Peter Molyneux decided to use guns in a world that focuses primarily on will, and that made no developmental sense. Vishmitals in our case have guns, some offworlders have guns, and other people who slowly get to understand and like them figure out ways to replicate and resupply for guns, but as we know they're rare. So spears and swords are better, especially if you find a way to imbue them with magical properties.

The more ideal way though takes a lot more creative ingenuity though: creating weapons specific to complimenting the existence of magic in every day society and conflict.

I noticed an interesting...I don't know what you'd call it, in your post, Shady. You stated that you don't imagine there is a way to automatize magic. But isn't that what magical items and artifacts do? Then again, thinking about it further, those kinds of items still need living people to use them, so I'm wrong, they aren't automated.

Different tangent, am I the only person who's thought about firearms that rely on magic energy for ammunition instead of physical ammo? How likely do you guys think that'd be? How would the invention of such weaponry affect Negav's development?

What I said is that, you could use magic to create an automatic steam engine, sure, but how do you automatize the process of creating a magic items, cause how can a machine enchant something?

There already are magic guns, Nyaha. They're called wands. Really big ones are called staves, and the in-between are sometimes referred to as rods.

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The thing I see with 18th century tech is gunpowder being a main element.

The gun tech would be an entirely different thing. There is simply no reason to make 18th century firearms when you have working examples of modern or even futuristic ones. At least on the military side with The Fist. With the average Negavian, I could actually see oldschool breech-loading guns or early revolver-style pistols being quite common. Some areas of Negav are quite rough, and personal defense would be super handy.

But for the Isolon Fist, they'd be doing their best to emulate modern firearms in design, before they go and load them to the gills with magi-tech enhancements and enchantments.

In terms of 18th and 19th century technology, I'm talking more about steam power. Steam was a massive game changer, and it affected every single way of life from transportation, to agriculture, to metalworking, clothes-making and so on. Because now you could build these machines that were able to work for longer, and far more efficiently than human muscle-power. Or even early automation technologies like wind or water. And that's not even counting the various kinds of technologies where, like guns, magic and/or offworld imitation was used to jump way ahead. Basically, Negav would be a weird mix of stuff... but I think the base, ground-floor tech-level would be more interesting if it were around the 18th and 19th century.

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Mines that have common ores are never even talked about,

I would assume they just aren't mentioned because they're boring. People will talk about a ludicrously-expensive magical gemstone forever, but no one wants to write articles about cooper, nickel or iron.

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So spears and swords are better, especially if you find a way to imbue them with magical properties

They're just not, lol. Good as weapons of last resort, maybe. But as a primary defensive weapon, I'd put a revolver or shotgun up against any sword or spear, even a magical one. A magical sword doesn't mean anything when you take a bullet to the chest 15 feet before you're even close enough to use it. I know this is a fantasy setting and to a degree we do kind of have to romanticize melee weapons... but I really think most people underestimate how deadly even a very basic handgun is.

Taking a bullet to the leg is going to put you out of commission for a good week or so, even with Felarya's crazy healing factor. Gunshot wounds are nasty business.

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Different tangent, am I the only person who's thought about firearms that rely on magic energy for ammunition instead of physical ammo?

Ehh, possibly. I imagine it could be do-able. Although I imagine they have similar problems to laser weapons, in the form of less penetrating power and much cleaner wounds. The first issue isn't crippling so long as you're only dealing with soft targets, but the second one can be a problem. You just aren't going to get the same internal trauma from an energy bolt that you will from a metal slug as it bounces and breaks apart inside someone's body.

Shady Knight wrote:

There already are magic guns, Nyaha.  They're called wands.  Really big ones are called staves, and the in-between are sometimes referred to as rods.

Has this ever been confirmed? As far as I have been able to tell, Karbo has portrayed wands and staves as sort of magic amplifiers or conduits which only actual spellcasters use to make spellcasting easier/more powerful.

Your mercenaries also have modern weapons. Infact lets just rule this out right now, based on what the wiki saids. You have your magic,modern, and futuristc weapons in negav but the prior is more prevelent due to the popular opinion and culture. I just read a past thread on this...(not even a year ago). Why are we on the subject of weapons when shady you already ran into this. Can't you just gather data from the past, put it in the post now so to give us an understanding? I actually don't like the thought of it being in pre industry. It doesn't really make sense due to having vishmital and their populations (which they're space farring technology) living alongside other with some pretty good magic. I'd rather it be called it's own stage of civilization correctly than "Pre-industrial" it just doens't make sense to me with those two elements and the time factor that stabs mentioned :/

In order to find out why there is only a pre-industrial Negav, we have to determine whether that is truly the case or not. We are aware that there IS in fact, technology present in Felarya and Negav. You can just as much find anchient bows on NEgavs markets as you can find high quality Laser rifles, though the supply of the latter is rather thin.
Let's do it like they do in school, because for once, that crap we learned is suddenly useful, and analyze the hard and soft location factors.

Anyone who finds themselves unwilling to read all my reasoning, skip to the conclusion below!
(though that would be kinda rude, it took me 2 hours to think about and type this post <.< )


HARD LOCATION FACTORS:

Space:
Negav is, for felaryan standards, an extremely cramped place. It contains the largest KNOWN human population, and if we count out small insects like ant- or beehives, maybe even to the size of Tonorion hives, it is very likely, that Negav currently holds the densest population of (sentient) beings currently known to exist. Negav is a huge hive itself, limited by the terrain surrounding it, namely the myriad river. Especially the poor district is heavily populated, leaving no room for expansive buildings. There is also the negavian underground, which is just as infested with humans and other species that it may as well be called a human(-like) hive.  

Seeing how industry usually takes up a LOT of space, as you not only need the production halls for the things you want to make, but also to fabricate all precursors AND the energy supply needed, you would need a hefty amount of Infrastructure that takes up a lot of space. The only locations I could come up with would either be flying production halls (using magic or magitech, though insecure in case it ever drops down due to some misfunction), deep underground (requires lots of digging, air ventilation would need to be adressed, as well as smoke exhaustion, and the way it affects the stability of the ground Negav is resting on. However, due to the very close river, something would need to be done about the soil water as well.) There are examples of Species who have gone with this solution, the most prominent being Delurans and Miratans.

The last option would be to place them either outside negav (Very insecure, even within the eyes range) or through expanding negav around the industrial complex.

Expanding Negav:
Negav is located on a land tongue and is surrounded by a huge river on three sides, forming a natural "barrier" against the jungle around. The thing is, that while one COULD try to fill up those rivers and realign the water flow, the river acts as part of Negavs defense, and the Isolon Eye does not spread TOO far across the area / gets much weaker beyond it. One would have to go through a huge amount of effort to expand Negav into any direction other than south, where there is no such barrier, so the most likely directions of expansion are UP, DOWN and SOUTH-EAST as little benefit is gained from expanding north, east or west due to the high cost and reduction of security involved.
Seeing how the rich district of Negav is not entirely located in the center of the city, but rather the southern hemisphere. Seeing how the Isolon Eye is located within the high district of Negav, TECHNICALLY it should expand to the south more than to the north, as the center of its radius is not equivalent with the center of the actual city, though I just saw on the wiki page that the circle is aligned around the center of the city, so we cannot assume that for certain. Nonetheless, an expansion of Negav would most likely result in a pattern where it would stay around the river, where it is naturally better protected, not only against monsters but invaders as well.

Ressources:
Felarya has ressources in abundance, though the mayority of them are of organic nature. Wood, Water, (Magic-) Fruits, Meat and animal parts such as fur come to mind. In order for Industry to work though, you need geological materials: Minerals, Ores. There are ores such as  Pyralite (replacing our Iron) which are heavily mined in places like ascarlin mines, however, due to that region no longer being under Isolon eyes protection, it is more hazardous. On the other hand, Ascarlin Mines are only so rich, and eventually will run out.


Infrastructure:
There is also the issue of transportation and refining. If one was to look at it from a logistical standpoint, one would have to get some "Nekomura-type" Isolon Eye and place it around the mines, then add the industrial complex right next to it. Why is this not being done? It probably is, but its not mentioned (more likely), or the nature is too much of a competition, effectively hindering anyone from building anything too permanent there due to animal hazards or the plant life.
Then there is transportation. Naturally, a mining company would have much better secured caravans to transport their goods than the common adventurer, but there ARE costs to maintaining the good quality AND safety of the road. also, such a road serves as a bottleneck, as only so many vehicles can travel along at the same time, effectively limiting the supply for Negav as well. Sure, you can build super large roads, or multiple roads, but its STILL a very hazardous region and with all the vanishing land dimensional stuff going on, its likely that the region will get devastated from time to time. Also, those streets would have to withstand the weight of a giant predators foot or get destroyed once some giant pred decides that its easier to walk on this little road rather than having treebranches getting stuck between her toes all the time. Not to mention, what happens if a Slug girl decides to make the road her new superspeed highway?


Seeing how taxes, currency value and similar things dont REALLY play a role, thats about it for the hard location factors.

SOFT LOCATION FACTORS:

Customers:
The first question is: Is it really worth it to build a large amount of facilities, just to supply one city? Sure, through offworld trade you can make more profit, but why not just gather and sell felarya exclusive ressources for them to be faciliated in safer worlds, rather than going through the hassle of building, maintaining and protecting the facilities in one of the most dangerous worlds known? Even if you fend off the predators, the lively felaryan soil would threaten to overgrow the facilities and infrastructure all the time.
Felarya is HUGE, but humanoids arent that much more plentiful than lets say in earthern middle ages. Transport routes are long and dangerous. Anyone who is trying to make a quick buck might come to the conclusion that Felarya is not really an ideal market to sell your stuff.

Riches / Money avaiable:
Let's face it, most Negavian population is either relatively, or extremely poor. The poor district is about as large as the middle and high tier combined, and thats not even counting the slums of underground Negav, which is just as large if not even deeper and bigger, depending on how many underground levels there are. Having already covered the expenses a producer would have to make just to create a technological good, that stuff would be very, VERY expensive, and thus, only few people could afford them.

Offworld Trade and the "intergalactic market prices":
Having said all this, its just a LOT cheaper to buy stuff from other worlds, where there are far better conditions to mass production. If we take the hypothetical assumption that there was a stable connection from earth to negav, anyone would agree that it would be much easier to go and sell flashlights and batteries produced on earth rather than building up a production line in Felarya. Flashlights and batteries are comparatively super cheap in most regions of earth, where I could assume them to cost a fortune on Felarya. In Felarya i could easily see an entire cow (or similarly sized animals) hide being traded for a pair of fresh batteries and calling that a steal, while over here in my country you would have to pay about 800 batteries to get a complete cow hide, thats a 40.000% price increase and only if you're lucky.
The thing is, Felarya can compete with magical artifacts, arcane arts and natural goods. But not with modern age technology that REQUIRES the foundation made by huge amounts of industry and infrastructure.
IF Interdimensional trade is relatively common, Felarya just wouldnt be able to compete with the market pricing, outside of the things it has in vast amounts, which are tending to organic and magic goods.



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Magitech

Now if we add magic into the mix, we get magitech. The advantage of Magitech is that its easier to produce, maintain and transport those goods. However, Magitech still requires you to maintain the techology part of the production line, so the problems I mentioned earlier are still present, though not as hefty as before. It is very likely that things that rely more on magic and require little physical refining, such as the production of professional (and later enchanted) bows is more rewarding than the production of Rifles and ammunition, since that requires many more materials and production cycles. The Delurans and Miratans do that, but only because at least the Delurans do have their own dimensional gate through which they recieved their supplies to get the facilities up and running underground, and they are either self sustaining, or there are permanently new goods being sent through the gate inside their base to resupply them. as said before, Negav simply does lack the space to do the same, OR there are other factors hindering it from doing that, such as the water level, underground dangers or simply because it isnt worth the effort, after all, the Delurans would solely need to connect to Delurah, while the negavian portal is probably already surpassing its capacity seeing how it can connect to many more worlds. I can see a likelyhood of there simply not being time to send huge amounts of ressources for faciliation through the gate to Felarya, rather than completed goods that are usually smaller and fewer.

What remains are magic workshops, where completed items get enhanced through magical means. I can see that being very likely, but heavily dependant on the item in question and the amount of work it requires. Again , it would probably be smarter, more rewarding and safer to locate the production of those things to other worlds.





Conclusion:
I have reason to assume that, while industrial and post industrial technology COULD be present in Felarya, it is unlikely for anything but the easy to produce things. Felarya would do much better to trade those things with other worlds, as the cost, and even the opportunity cost would be much more efficient.

Negav and Felarya as a whole is so magic focused because that is what felarya as the world offers in such abundance. People always talk about the magic artifacts and forbidden knowledge that can be found in Felarya, nobody talks about rich ores or unique materials deep below the surface. With Felaryas vanishing land properties it is SO much more likely to have new species and plants imported to Felarya as those are able to spread and thus STAY in the world, even when the vanishing lands disappeared again. With ores and similar things that is usually not the case. It is also easier to retrieve artifacts and loot places from vanishing lands rather than setting up a mine and start digging, seeing how the lands could disappear at any given moment.
Also, while you can pass down technological knowledge to the next generation really easily, it is much harder to do with magic. There is a reason why the most powerful magicians usually are displayed as old men with long white beards. Now given Felaryas trait of giving people longevity, and the vanishing lands given opportunity to find and loot new magical knowledge or powers, Felarya is bount to have more powerful, knowledgable and wise mages than the average world Felarya might connect to. Some species such as the Reynke specifically go to Felarya due to that reason, rather than staying in their homeworld.  

It is natural for a land to specialize in what it is good at, rather than trying to force something that the nature of the land itself is struggling against. The Felaryan hypergrowth, dangerous Fauna and vanishing lands properties just heavily shape and determine the face of the world, and the way its inhabitants live.

Nyaha wrote:

Shady Knight wrote:

There already are magic guns, Nyaha.  They're called wands.  Really big ones are called staves, and the in-between are sometimes referred to as rods.

Has this ever been confirmed? As far as I have been able to tell, Karbo has portrayed wands and staves as sort of magic amplifiers or conduits which only actual spellcasters use to make spellcasting easier/more powerful.

It really just depends on the staff and wand. Some act as amplifiers, others follow the rules of Artifact Magic, where they can be used to cast magic, even if the user itself can't.


You know what should happen to Negav? A complete overhaul, or at the very least complete revision. I may do that some time in the pipeline if I feel bored enough, cause to me the biggest problem right now is that it's a patchwork. The main article and sub-articles listed to it are just a mess of old and new ideas loosely and clumsily strung together without any cohesion. Plus, it lists absolutely no justification why the city is like this or like that, and that, more than anything, is the dominant reason why Negav feels so schizophrenic. It really wouldn't too hard to excuse why things are one way over another. For example, being in a "pre-industrial" state despite magitech being around could have been excused with the city only having just started integrating magic with technology, and there is currently heated debates whether or not the place should industrialize because of reasons Amaroq cited (by the way, Pyralite are most commonly found in Pyrale Mountains, so getting this would be quite a trip). Or why there hasn't been more Isolon Eyes? Maybe making more is extremely difficult and time consuming (and possibly insanely resource-extensive), and making smaller, portable ones come with the same drawbacks as Nekomura's, you'd need to recharge them every so often. But does the wiki list justifications like those? Of course it doesn't.

Me personally, I like the idea of Negav catering more to sword and sorcery in the Lower Tier, since most of their businesses deal with people from high-magic, low-tech worlds, but beyond that, I also can't see a reason why the Middle and Higher Tier can't be slightly more modern since it so rarely deals with outsiders.

You cant just go and find guns anywhere though. Military grade weapons are kept by militaries and mercenaries that are off world, good guns are exorbitantly expensive, and cheap guns are somewhat easy to find but not too easy - because as we all know Negavians are nervous about guns.

As for steam, it was a good invention, but as technology in the 18th and 19th century advanced, they required more pressure than steam engines could give out. Steam is less expensive, but risks more explosions. I would say that steam technology isn't specific to 18th century alone as it had been first invented as far back as the first century AD, along with other things, but that's unimportant.

Steam technology is cool, but it stopped being practical quickly because it couldn't keep up with high pressure demands. Advanced ones were invented, but it was largely phased out for other technologies in the later periods of the 19th century. There's also the issue of fuel, and why I say we need to talk about mines for common resources like coal, iron, etc. In a world that is overflowing with rich and exotic minerals, the normal ones are ironically more unique. Still, for fuel I created Mazhir to also function as a battery. (described as "slow and consistent energy" but also a powerful energy as well.)

Its also cleaner than coal, and one reason why I'm hesitant for that kind of power, is because of the pollution issues it would bring to felarya, and what would result from heavily pollution felarya.

Archmage Bael wrote:

You cant just go and find guns anywhere though. Military grade weapons are kept by militaries and mercenaries that are off world, good guns are exorbitantly expensive, and cheap guns are somewhat easy to find but not too easy - because as we all know Negavians are nervous about guns.

Ok the last point you made was the most accurate on here. And actually WWII styled guns can be made in a small house and massed produced (actually so can modern weaponry as long as there is a pattern and a successor to keep the print and design of said pattern. Similar to swords). Let me help you out. It's not that guns are hard to find it's just hard to find the people making and selling them due to the stigma of classical melee vs range that's been around for awhile. However we know range is superior as long as it can successfully penetrate the target it's shooting at. So they'll figure this out soon or be traditional in just using enhanced swords and armor to combat your rangers. The real reason why as vix and shady pointed out in the past of negavians not using guns much is because of social standards of them implicating and accepting the idea and concept of the gun. Since magic is there it's moot to use a gun, plus they are loud naturally unless you can buy (or make) silencers for them. But making the gunpowder takes quite a talent of learning chemistry. So it's not as pratical for long travel duration and a survivalist attitude unless you can magic bag your ammo and make sure the gun itself is accessible and easy to utilize.

Archmage bael wrote:

Its also cleaner than coal, and one reason why I'm hesitant for that kind of power, is because of the pollution issues it would bring to felarya, and what would result from heavily pollution felarya.

HAHAHAHA really? Really now? I find that a little silly. The entire industrial revolution created more pollution on the earth then the 1970-80s economy of trade of useful materials such as plastic and burning down forest.

Let me tell you what. since felarya has no range of atmosphere (it doesn't even have a conventional or proper one as we know them) since it's a dimensional plane. There fore your pollution can't stay in one place for too long. The magic in the air also seems to cleans impurities fairly quickly (not modification or forced insertions though). So the environment should be the least of your concerns at least in the terms of pollution.

Negav, generally is just an RPG village, it's just there to funnel a supply of adventurers into felarya so they can get eaten.

Sure, there's bits tacked on to hide this fact. But as long as Negav's lower tier's ecomony is inexplicably centred around adventurers, then this is a fact we must face. (there shoulden't logically be that many stupid people running off into the wilds for Lower tier Negavians to make a decent profit from, unless there's some unmenctioned gold rush going on in present day felarya)



Negav hasn't been developed because there's no narrative reason for it to, and the setting generally doesn't take itself seriously enougth to properly justify why it's holding itself back.

DarkOne wrote:

unless there's some unmenctioned gold rush going on in present day felarya.

It's not exactly unmentioned. The wilderness, while dangerous, is also rife with treasures of all kinds, including things of monetary value, historical value, powerful items, and pretty much anything else you can create and circulate rumors for. This has been a defining feature of Felarya for as long as I can remember.

On the flipside, given that fancy shmancy warp gate just next to the city and the concept of multiple worlds, Negav can also be a place for people to just go and rest or resupply before they move on to another place, and the shops could cater to that crowd, too. But yeah, that really hasn't been brought up or mentioned anywhere before, so it may as well be a RPG town.

The more I think about it, the more I think Negav needs to be completely rewritten from scratch. I don't mind the idea of RPG town for the Lower Tier, but ignoring the elephant in the living room of what that usually entails doesn't do it any good.

Incidentally, I realized another reason why the city hasn't expanded much and it's the Eye itself. As we all know, it has limited range, and at its outer limits, it doesn't do that good a job to keep the monsters at bay. Making the city bigger would require creating a second Eye to expand the range the city can reliably live in, which even if it was easy, also means leaving a garrison of super elite soldiers stationed there just to guard it, soldiers that could also have been very useful in other tasks like getting more magic minerals back to the city.

Shady Knight wrote:

Speaking of synthesizing stuff, I'm curious how Negav handles transmutation.

Transmutation... the only transmutations the wiki actually has ATM are "Flesh to stone", "Flesh to ghost", and "Flesh to fire". I wouldn't be against more of it, though.

rcs619 wrote:

Magi-tech. Pure magic and pure technology are both inefficient options when you can combine both of them for greater effect.

It's already been shown that magi-tech has allowed a 'pre-industrial' society to do everything from create battery-analogues that can power offworld technology, to creating magi-tech aircraft capable of vertical take-offs and high-speed (albeit low-level) flight. Most Isolon Fist firearms and explosive devices are enchanted to some degree for greater effect, not to mention the enchantments and wards built into their very uniforms and combat gear itself.

Karbo's gone on record that Negav does not do industrial, but does do magitech- gonna have to agree on this one.

Amaroq wrote:

Let's do it like they do in school, because for once, that crap we learned is suddenly useful, and analyze the hard and soft location factors.

Your school must've been pretty good, Amaroq. Anyway...
I agree space would be a concern, at least on the short term. As for resources, that depends on what resources you need- there's plenty of wood, we all agree, for instance. As for infrastructure, it was stated that the Isolon Eye did not like the Ascarlin mines. As for roads... they might not be necessary, depending on how much you allow magitech to cover. If because of magitech you need no fuel for cars, that's one thing; if because of magitech your cars don't even need wheels, that's something else. Kinda makes you wonder how many wizards you need to say "screw lightbulbs", and how long does it take to ready one. If you're going to make everything by magic, including your tech, then your production bottleneck becomes the number of wizards you can produce. But at some point you leave Negav territory and walk into Ur-Sagol territory- which is a wholly different flavor.

The affordability depends on supply and demand, Amaroq- I can't really say if they'd be too expensive to do with magitech. With tech alone, given it's all about upfront costs, no wonder it'd be awfully expensive. As for offworld trade, remember it has to compete with... well, offworld trade that already exists. You can get an extra boost from people who want their stuff made in Felarya because they're whimsical, but that's not gonna net you that big a slice of the pie. If well settled, tech doesn't need magitech. So I'd overall agree with your analysis.

There's only one exception- mass consumed goods. Negav cannot just import those, unless it imports them in stupidly mind-boggling quantities- some stuff has to be made locally, or dispensed with, because you just can't import that much of it. That's why some countries keep a paper recycling industry even if it's cheaper to import: as insurance from sudden shortage. Didja hear the one about Venezuela and toilet paper? It was funny... unless you were in Venezuela.

But does Negav have any mass-consumed goods? Not a damn clue on my side...

Archmage Bael wrote:

Its also cleaner than coal, and one reason why I'm hesitant for that kind of power, is because of the pollution issues it would bring to felarya, and what would result from heavily pollution felarya.

GOJIRA!!!

DarkOne wrote:

Negav hasn't been developed because there's no narrative reason for it to, and the setting generally doesn't take itself seriously enougth to properly justify why it's holding itself back.

Sure fun to think about it though. XD

As I read this discussion I suddenly remembered (or someone even mentioned it) that what Negav has in abundance as a resource is wood. Hell, it would even be a good reason why the Motamo Docks exists. Every large city had/has a river port - mostly so building material like stone and wood could be transported where they are needed. So Motamo docks are there mostly to receive wood from woodcutters camps hidden in the forests bordering the Isolon Eye influence zone. The wood is processed there in sawmills (easy to build industry that can utilise water or use sawdust as a fuel) to be used in the city or (in case of REALLY unique and/or precious woods) for export (with the Dimensional Gate handily next to them).

Motamo Docks and Negav also serve as a interdimensional reloading area. I always thought about Negav as a interdimensional equivalent of Singapore - analogically Negav is forced to import even food (see Wikipedia and Negav's relations with Mebron).

So Negav export is Ascarlin, enchanted goods, gold and jewellery, alchemic products, precious wood, unique foodstuff (fruits and spices), healing herbs and (probably) knowledge and magical/magitech know-how.

They export food, heavy industry products (weapons, vehicles, mining technology) and light industry goods they have poor conditions to produce (cloth, paper, leather, electronic).

Any more thoughts about it?

Arnost1973 wrote:

As I read this discussion I suddenly remembered (or someone even mentioned it) that what Negav has in abundance as a resource is wood. Hell, it would even be a good reason why the Motamo Docks exists. Every large city had/has a river port - mostly so building material like stone and wood could be transported where they are needed. So Motamo docks are there mostly to receive wood from woodcutters camps hidden in the forests bordering the Isolon Eye influence zone. The wood is processed there in sawmills

As far as I understand, Negav doesn't trust the people of Motamo docks given that the Motamoians are mostly small predators like Nagas and Dridders. If Negavians refuse Motamoians from entering their city, then I can't see why they would work with them.

Which is something I think is very stupid on the part of the Negavians (perhaps understandable, but very very stupid) Making bonds with Motamo could serve as a great first step on establishing peace between humans and predators. If Negavians arn't willing to befreind small preds when the opportunity is blatantly right in front of them, then they have no right to bitch about being preyed upon by the bigger ones.
If Negav simply tried to befreinded Motamo docks and made an effort in making it an pred ally, then theres a chance they might create a social platform to work from, a small scale prototype predator socitey made up of different races that work together. Once a social model is created and a method is perfected on converting wilds to socialized, they could start working their way up on bigger creatures. Not saying it would be a perfect plan (It will take decades, if not centuries to see anything resembling an end result, And it could still easily fail) but it's just mind boggling that the Negavians are willing to try everything else BUT that.

Not that I think this is a bad thing if the intention is that Negavians really are that stupid and it's used as a character flaw, But given the sheer lack of focous this aspect of Felarya gets, it just feels like another excuse to hold Negav back.

That would depend on how young the Motamo Docks are.  Once again, nothing alludes to how old many of those settlements truly are, so let's say that the place was established only about a decade ago, it's understandable that distrust would still run deep.  Plus, we're not exactly the best people to judge, just look how long it took the US to finally legalize gay marriage and how much people are still prejudiced about it.  The Motamo Docks, like everything else, need much, much more detail.

On the subject of befriending the small predators to eventually befriend the big ones some centuries later... yeah, considering the big predators also openly prey on the small ones, that plan is pretty much doomed from the start, methinks.

Shady knight wrote:

Plus, we're not exactly the best people to judge, just look how long it took the US to finally legalize gay marriage and how much people are still prejudiced about it.

Not the best example can you use another?

From what i understand. If we're supposed to go on that hypothetical chronology in the wiki. Then motamo docks should be only a few centuries old.

Unlikely. Nekomura, according to the chronology, has been founded only very slightly over 100 years ago to present time, and only some 50 years after the Magiocrats officially assumed power. Considering the Magiocrats' first idea when tensions between them and nekos started to arise was to "convince" them to make their own village, you would think they would have done the same for the Motamo Docks, especially since the people there are small predators and more or less free-loaders taking advantage of the true Isolon Eye having a really big range of effect.

That last bit always bugged me because it essentially makes the whole Nekomura exodus pointless, as they could have made their own settlement literally just on the other side of the river.

Shady Knight wrote:

Unlikely.  Nekomura, according to the chronology, has been founded only very slightly over 100 years ago to present time, and only some 50 years after the Magiocrats officially assumed power.  Considering the Magiocrats' first idea when tensions between them and nekos started to arise was to "convince" them to make their own village, you would think they would have done the same for the Motamo Docks, especially since the people there are small predators and more or less free-loaders taking advantage of the true Isolon Eye having a really big range of effect.

That last bit always bugged me because it essentially makes the whole Nekomura exodus pointless, as they could have made their own settlement literally just on the other side of the river.

The Exodus was understandable - both races were on verge of war with each other so they wanted wilderness between them to dissuade those who WANTED to fight. The humans feared the war so badly they gave to the Nekos prototype of the Eye, even if it had long way to perfection. Also distrust between Motamo and Negav proper isn't obstacle stopping the trade between them, especially if both has what the other needs. Also there is a rather large human population in Motamo Docks - and many small predators lives further in Chomikai Commons (according to Wikipedia).

The thing is, by all accounts, Motamo Docks should have had it worse. Nekomura was essentially kicked out and settled a fair distance away from the Isolon's Eye's range. They were then given a smaller Isolon Eye, at first making them think that they would still be allies with Negav, but soon turned out to be a fake that need periodical recharging, which they have to pay to get, effectively tricking them into vassalage, lest they become monster food within a week. The wiki doesn't even try to hide the fact that it was a low blow on both accounts.

Motamo Docks, meanwhile, has a sizable population made of small nagas and dridders, which humans fear and hate because they are a match to humans even at their size, and they still prey on them if given the chance. They're not legaly allowed to enter the city, but other than that, they pretty much just showed up one day, made a little village right next to the city's front door, and Negav pretty much pretended it never existed. With how lax they are with small predators living within the Isolon Eye's range and so close to the city's main gate, it's highly probably that Nekomura could have saved themselves a century and more years of servitude if they settled within the Isolon Eye's range.