A high-elven Empire

[Agback]

G'day

Suppose that you are a lawful good (but rather high-handed) race of High Elves. And that you decide to establish a world empire under which everyone will be able to live in peace and frugal comfort, eliminating war, disease, and hunger from the face of the world. After 300 years of diplomacy and conquest you have subjected 85% of the known world, and things are going pretty well.

You divide your Empire up into manors, each with a population of about 2,000-5,000. Each manor is both an agricultural commune and a parish. In each manor you build a forge, a mill, a communal bread-oven, a bathhouse, a chapel, a village green or moothall, and if necessary a castle for communal refuge in times of trouble. You appoint a priest to each chapel, set up a system for choosing haywards, bailliffs, aletasters, jurors etc. from among the people of the manor, etc. etc..

Your organise the manors into deaneries, each with a market-town, a mother-church, a courthouse, a dean to supervise and back up the priests, a steward to oversee the bailliffs, a judge to administer jsutice, and a castellan to provide local defence and back up law enforcement.

You organise the deaneries into dioceses. In each you build a city, a cathedral, a monastery or two, a county court, maybe a university, and a fortified citadel, etc.. You appoint a bishop (with a corps of canons) to oversee and back up the priests and rural deans (and train up priests from among your short-lived subjects), a count to oversee the castellans, a sheriff to try capital cases and hear appeals,etc.

You organise the dioceses into provinces, each with an archbishop, a governor, a general, and a metropolis.

You set each manor to producing a mix of goods: bulky staples for local consumption, and whatever tradeable goods it is suited and situated to produce at advantage. You arrange for the manors to forward their surplus tradeable goods through their market towns to the place they are not produced, and to receive in return what it does not make itself. The whole thing is a bit Maoist for my taste, but what the hell--your Lawful and I'm Neutral.

Now, you want to equip the chapels, the mother churches, the cathedrals, the moothalls, the courts, and the castles with the plant and equipment that will help them to discharge their functions. Being very long-lived, you have a low discount rate, and favour ever-lasting use-per-day items to a certain extent. You take a very long view, and you are well-meaning towards your non-elvish subjects, even though you look down on them a bit. A lot of your people are wizards, your god is Neutral Good with the domains Rulership, Truth, Light, Healing, Good. You trade on reasonable terms with a bunch of wandering ne'er-do-well Wood Elves and Sea Elves who have a pantheist druidic religion.

With what public facilities would you plan to equip each manor? Each deanery? Each diocese?

Regards,


Agback

 

[ecliptic]

What?

 

[Agback]

What?

Suppose that a bunch of idealistic but over-managing elves had set up a benevolent but strictly hierarchical empire, with parallel pyramids of religious, economics, military, and judicial authority. Being long-lived and inclined to magic, they would have arranged the provision of essential magical facilities in each village, town, city, metropolis.

Four centuries after the Empire collapsed, which of its magical public facilities woud still be working? Stocks for potions, scrolls, and wands would have been used up. That leaves wondrous items, though. Many of them might be lost, looted, buried in rubble, etc. Many would have fallen into the hands of invading barbarians etc. But which ones might be found in treasure hordes etc.?

 

[Sigurd]

How multi-dimensionned were these elves? In some schemes the pinacle of Elven Magic is the demi-plane - a space of prestine sylvan forest as unchanging as the elves. They may have created gates beyond which their society is functioning very well even after collapse. Similar to the faery hills, or fey reverie, an eldritch reality mostly of their collective design.

The other thing is that even in tolkien the elves tend to take their magic and go home. Elven presense seems to be necessary for some elf magics. Non elves picking over an elven ruin might get no benefit from the portals, altars, glyphs, wards, runes, regional spells that could survive a societal collapse. Odd weather patterns might still exist. Rivers that were very nourishing. Pools of healing etc... These might slowly wind down their magic bonuses over the years.

If the empire was overrun by vandals its likely that much of the portable wealth would be carried back to vandal city centres. A silver rod that somehow defies melting might only be significant within the confines of a previous Diocese Shrine.

In the extreme you might find nigh immortal elves showing up at ruins to continue a conversation started a thousand years ago. If half elves exist and there was any sort of intermarrying with the non elf population you might find the wierd survivals. People who are still elf enough to activate the old magics.

Sigurd

 

[Agback]

How multi-dimensionned were these elves? In some schemes the pinacle of Elven Magic is the demi-plane - a space of prestine sylvan forest as unchanging as the elves. They may have created gates beyond which their society is functioning very well even after collapse. Similar to the faery hills, or fey reverie, an eldritch reality mostly of their collective design.

Indeed. But they didn't take away the public assets. Essentially the Empire was weakened as the elves slipped off into the demi-plane of Faerie. There was an increasing shortage of elvish staff, and local recruits had to be drawn ever higher up the hierarchy for want of high-elvish colonial officials. The Empire de-colonised its provinces, but having failed to give the provincials any sense of membership of anything larger, that meant that the Empire lost unity. The Empire was essentially rotten before the orc and barbarian invasions even started.

The other thing is that even in tolkien the elves tend to take their magic and go home. Elven presense seems to be necessary for some elf magics. Non elves picking over an elven ruin might get no benefit from the portals, altars, glyphs, wards, runes, regional spells that could survive a societal collapse. Odd weather patterns might still exist. Rivers that were very nourishing. Pools of healing etc... These might slowly wind down their magic bonuses over the years.

They might. But in D&D they don't have to, and it would not suit the theme or tone I am aiming at for this setting. The idea is that there should be a lot of quests to discover and recover old magical items of the Elvish Empire, that these should be fantastically valuable, but not really designed or suitable for adventurers.

If the empire was overrun by vandals its likely that much of the portable wealth would be carried back to vandal city centres. A silver rod that somehow defies melting might only be significant within the confines of a previous Diocese Shrine.

Indeed. Or a refectory table of Heroes Feast, x3 per day (intended for curing the sick and injured at an old Imperial city hospice), might be being wasted producing superfluous banquet for the retainers in the castle of some some successor-state king.

In the extreme you might find nigh immortal elves showing up at ruins to continue a conversation started a thousand years ago. If half elves exist and there was any sort of intermarrying with the non elf population you might find the wierd survivals. People who are still elf enough to activate the old magics.

True. I am, however, aiming for a campaign in which the Good types try to bring these treasure back into public service, rebuilding a state in which the crops are fertilised, the poor fed and clad, the sick and injured cured, the dead raised etc. In the aftermath of the Empire there will be little hope of organising new circles of wizards and cleric to make new items. It will in general be easier to recover items that were lost, stolen, and carried off by invaders.

The economics of magical items favour making use-per-day wondrous items for 'base load', and stockpiling wands and potions for dealing with emergencies. We ought to find that the wands and potions have mostly been used up (though sometimes a forgotten cache will be discovered). The things that survive will be the things of which the magic was needed every day--in the case of military equipment, this means that magical equipment for sentry-duty, street and highway patrol etc. will survive, but most of the stuff made for battle will have been used up. In the welfare department, the stuff to deal with military casualties and outbreaks of infectious disease will have been used up, but the stuff for dealing with base-line domestic, agricultural, and sporting accidents, with endemic diseases, etc. will still be working. Somewhere.