Was talking about marrying odd things like spirits and such in another thread and had enough thoughts on the issue to give it its own thread.
The channelers are way up at the top of the totem poll in this universe, why are they marrying these mortal peasent women. Even spirits are not much better. A decent channeler can call up a dozen spirits before lunch to do his bidding. Why not marry in your own class? Why not try for something above his class. Enter avatars of ideas/concepts.
Example, if you tend to make lots of troops and go to war a lot, perhaps you could end up marrying war not just figurativley but litterally. The incarnation/avatar/embodiment of war could show up and propose to you. Although it would be more like she shows up and declares the two of you joined and brings with her a dozen super-elite berserker handmaidens or something.
Accepting the proposal gets you some bonuses to war-like actions,building troops and fighting and such, and you get the handmaidens and the avatar who can kick ass on thier own as heroes/powerful units. On the flip side, people tend to not to take peace treatys seriously with a guy who bumps uglies with war herself. And if you do make a lot of peace treatys, she might get pissed at you. Your mortal peasent wife getting mad at you is one thing, have War mad at you is something very different. Especially if your sharing a bed.
Or, you could refuse her, at which point she does what she does best, namely, breaks into your bases and starts killing your dudes like its '95 and we are all still noobs at computer games. Jittled women are dangerous, jittled avatars? Prepare for serious pain.
You could have a whole bunch of embodied beings you can shack up with. War, pride, farming, nature, trade. Trade/wealth/gold avatar would be hilarous. Have a big merchant empire and you can marry her. Your merchants do great and everyone wants to make trading deals with you since they always give massive returns. BUT, she claims she needs to swap out her old palace for a new palace every year or so for "Tax Purposes".
Refuse her though, and suddenly your merchants are getting hit by every single con-man in the world.
This would be a major choice though. Embodied concepts don't get old and die, they hang around forever, and divorcing them has some serious reprucusions. If you marry a human, you can trade up after a few years and she dies, or you can just get rid of her, after all, what can one human do to you? But pick up an avatar, and thats where your gonna be 1000 years from now too.
These superior beings could be great for quests, both giving and having quests dealing with them and actually getting one happy enough with you to marry you could be a major questing ordeal.
Anyway, thats my idea.
Perhaps all channelers could start off infertile and have to tech a spell they can use to temporarily make themselves fertile. Keeps a reign on kids, if you don't want them, you don't get them, and if you want lots, you are only limited by the resources you want to spend casting the spell.
Tweaking the spell costs would allow you to control how many kids and how early they show up. Perhaps the spell could have increasing costs as it becomes less and less effective on your channeler also?
I don't want to shock you, but I like my idea better. Bringing spell books into the matter would be a lot of extra clicking for what could be handled purely by formulas in the background that connected a sovereign's current essence, possibly past successful procreations, and the necessary stats from the breeding partner and the game calendar.
Point conceded. Spells would give you more control, but it would also add a lot of complexity for little gain. However, it should also check to make sure your wife is in the same location as the soverign. I don't want her getting pregenant when she is on a different continent.
On the silly front, if you haven't read Niven's "Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex," I believe you'd enjoy it.
Seriously, though, it seems like some magical 'ob/gyn' stuff should be in the game. Lots of folks are up in arms about how weird it is to combine and ageless sovereign and dynasty mechanics. I'd find it far weirder to have proto-semi-demi-god sovereigns who had lots of 'life magic credentials' and no ability whatsoever to magically manipulate at least their own reproduction if they're human, and maybe more if they're Fallen.
Whenever games touch on these subjects, hilariousness usually ensues. If Dwarf Fortress has proved anything to me.
Hell, I sort of want an "impregnate from afar" spell. That'd confuse 'em.
One of the reasons I liked The Book of Erotic Fantasy was not because it was about sex/erotica. But because if magic were to exist, it would include that aspect of our live too. And surely some people would create some of the spells mentioned... including spells to prevent pregnancy or increase fertility (in the least silly side of things). Not asking for that kind of magic in the game but I'd not mind some(fertility affecting spells could be helpful and/or weapons).
I'm asking for it, at least at the agricultural level. Stuf like blighting crops, sterilizing herds, and speeding harvests would put some real flavor into the Life spell books/chapters, even if we don't have magic for the dynasty system in the base game.
Or infertility curses, for your opponets. What could be more embarresing for a sov then being unable to get his wife pregnant?
Oh, 1 upped, nice. That would be pretty hilarous. "Why exactly does my child have red hair!?" says the dark haired sov.
Hopefully the marriage/dynasty/loyalty system will be complex enough to allow for all the discussed possibilities. Monogamic/polygamic marriages, harem, divorces, marriages for heroes, would be great to have or at least for it to be moddable. I think i am interested enough to try and make an according mod if necessary.
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