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In a culture where magic is common, how does the cost of magic affect common practices?

Worldbuilding Asked by Ribhu Hooja on March 5, 2021

In this world, magic is very common. For around a thousand years, most people can do magic while those who can’t are considered disabled (instead of most people being normal and those who can perform magic being special). However, doing anything extreme with it requires not only training, but expensive ‘devices’, so the common man is limited in how he uses magic, ie in a rare situation to grant himself a boost of strength.

The cost of magic is: Heat. The more you use it, the more you hit up, and also build up a ‘latent heat’ ie energy that will slowly be turned to heat in your body over time, even after you’ve stopped. People who are trained and use it often have a variety of techniques and devices to stop themselves overheating/dying. However, most of these are very specialised, expensive, and inaccessible.

So what ‘mundane’ and accessible method would every family, say, a rural family have in cases of emergency, say when someone has fought off a predator using enhanced strength, but is now going to overheat, so you need to cool them down quickly? It has to be so common that every house has it, and it should be based on something that we have in our world (I mean, I could as easily introduce a magic heat sponge made from dirt that everyone has, but there’s no point in introducing new elements always now, is there? It’s always better to let established elements interact with each other in interesting ways to get a solution, instead of handwaving one in)

An example of an emergency provision common in use in real life would be- Basements stocked with supplies in places where tornadoes are common, or fire extinguishers in literally every public building, etc.

SO what would these people use, that’s plausible enough? Store lots of ice in an insulated place? Always have a courtyard area with a pool of water built-in?

Note: The world is pre-gunpowder, pre industrial age. So you can’t just have a fridge.

3 Answers

Same way you'd treat hyperthermia:

Advice from: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK459311/

  • Cold bath
  • Saline IV (You don't need gunpowder to make hypodermic needl es and a 0.9% salt water mix)
  • Ice packs
  • Wet Sheets/towels.
  • Fan
  • Water spray bottle

You said this was for emergency use only, so it probably doesn't need purpose built device. But if this is common, you could make a crude gravity fed misting spray.

Pour water in a funnel upstairs, water flows down a tube, hits a nozzle, and sprays fine water. Water hits the hot person, and evaporates. Combine with someone waving a hand-held fan at them (or placing them in a breeze caused by passive ventilation design), one could easily cool down.

Correct answer by Ash on March 5, 2021

Slightly different approach : use more magic.

To dissipate heat from one person get a larger group to cast some spell that moves part of the heat to them. That way it is distributed over more people to more easily managed (and less dangerous) levels.

Put simply : creating a room full of very warm people who sweat a lot is much better than one person who could die from heatstroke.

I know you asked for "mundane" everyday methods, but in the world you describe this would be the equivalent of basic first aid or just something you learn when you are young and see done frequently, so in that context it could be described as mundane and everyday. A normal method for dealing with a common problem in that world.

Not mundane and everyday in our world, but normal in that one.

Answered by StephenG on March 5, 2021

someone has fought off a predator using enhanced strength, but is now going to overheat, so you need to cool them down quickly?

  • Undress and get them ventilated with fans. Even better, undress before starting using the power. More effective in winter than in summer, obviously.
  • Water: jump in a river, sea, lake, well, cistern, snow deposit, whatever has water to cool them down.
  • (lacking water) any other liquid: vinegar, oil, beer, wine.

Answered by L.Dutch - Reinstate Monica on March 5, 2021

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