Enter the Dragon (Harry Potter/Shadowrun)

[Dunkelzahn]

One potential problem with the setting, though, is that if you can use mental domination spells to keep muggleborns enslaved and under control without the DMLE being able to prove it, you can do so with anyone and everyone. No one is safe from getting enslaved - not even the pureblood heiress or heir, unless they've got bodyguards around the clock. Certainly, any poorer purebloods and half-bloods are at risk. "But, but, Dumbledore" won't help Ginny if Malfoy has her enslaved before Dumbledore can step in because if Dumbledore can't intimidate a brothel-owning slaver to keep from kidnapping muggleborns, he certainly can't do that to anyone with much more power and influence. So, how are the Weasleys kept from being enslaved, and why can't muggleborns use the same method?



Then they are also at the stage where "kill them all off, the world is better off without such scum and we can build a better society easily by simply imitating muggles in Britain" is still a moral and rational choice. That's not a good place to be. I think there needs to be more positive stuff. Stuff that shows slow reform is a viable option, both practically and morally.

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There are a few pieces of the setting missing from the current discussion.

One relevant bit here is the House system, which, looking back, I now see has only been hinted at in the vaguest of terms, but it's an important part of the setting. I think most of the explanation got accidentally cut during my editing of Snape's expository rant in 2.7.7. I'll make sure to work it in soon, probably at the end of chapter 3, it'll fit the story well.

As an aside, also note that the near-undetectable mind-control methods require you to have physical control of the person for a time, you can't cast them in passing on the street. The ones you can use so casually are neither subtle nor comprehensive.

Social structure (Houses):

People can get away with this sort of crap against individuals, muggleborns and the like, who are vulnerable because they are on their own. A House, however, in the person of its Head (as Harry is the Head of House Potter), has automatic authority over its members.

Neither Frank nor Betty are members of prominent Houses. If someone were to try the same legal trick with Ginny Weasley, as you brought up, then her Head of House, Arthur in this case, could bring the suit as Frank did. Then, if the defendant tried the same trick, producing the legal paper trail, Arthur would no-sell that because as the victim's Head of House, he is the only one with the authority to sign off on such agreements, so all those documents are dismissed as fraudulent, the case goes forward, Arthur orders the medical exams to prove wrongdoing, and justice is served.

For students at Hogwarts, they are covered by the rules of hospitality as dependents of the Houses at the school. If Arthur didn't step in for Ginny in the above case, Minerva would be able to in her position as the Head of House for Gryffindor. If she didn't, then Dumbledore could intervene in his role as the Head of the school.

The Hogwarts senior faculty are a very, very scary bunch when they get their dander up, which makes Hogwarts mostly off-limits for such activities. Going after a current Hogwarts student would be a bold move, likely requiring covert political backing, because if it were found out, there would be hell to pay.

As for mind-controlling the Head of House, they are expected to provide their own protection, whether through their own strength, bodyguards, political influence, --- whatever they can manage, really. Personal magical strength is valued for a reason.

For more powerful Houses than the Weasleys, the path to justice might be much more direct and bloody, all the way up to open warfare over such an incident. Ancient and Noble Houses, for instance, retain the right to train and field their own private military forces and use them in such situations. All they need to do to make it legal is formally announce their intentions, and it's open warfare.

The people running these operations are very careful about who they target. If they bite off more than they can chew, they will very quickly become very dead. Even those operations backed by prominent Houses themselves follow this rule, because the people running them know that they are ultimately expendable to their employers. Better in most cases to prune the organization of those stupid enough to cause trouble rather than get caught up in a shooting war with a rival House.

Reform efforts

I must say, I'm a bit surprised at all the questions about why people aren't working at reforming the system. There are people working at reform, even ones whose efforts have already been mentioned in the story.They may not be doing it like you think they should, but they're doing something.

Albus has been working hard at his long-running sociopolitical campaign for reform for decades, and he has shown some impressive results --- among other things, slavery is illegal now, almost entirely due to his efforts, difficulty of enforcement aside (1.9.6). He's also taken over the primary education system in wizarding Britain, and is using it as a bully-pulpit to promote his own ideals among the youth. Snape has been running his modified version of the kill-'em-and-let-God-sort-them-out plan for the better part of two decades (partially explained in 2.4.1 and elaborated on in his character section in the Extras threadmark). The goblins were already running an underground railroad equivalent to run escaped slaves to a sanctuary they have set up elsewhere; they are expanding it presently with the help of Harry's recent acquisition of Hogs Haulage (2.13.6). And those are just the ones mentioned so far.

Spoiler: Minor information about not-yet-revealed examples

For ones to come, Amelia Bones has a picture of Clint Eastwood as Harry Callahan up on her office wall, and she tends to run certain investigations accordingly. She's aided in that by the fruits of Snape's potions-class-sabotage efforts, which has made for some very reliable recruits to her Auror corps. Some of the more righteously-minded Houses are running their own efforts in various directions as well. For instance, Arthur Weasley's salary as a department head in the ministry is more than enough to keep his family in luxury; the majority of it is going to another project.

Remember, slavery was the law of the land as recently as 30 years previous in this setting. Given the lifespans involved, most of the wizarding public grew up with slavery as a normal, if unpleasant, fact of life, not some unthinkably evil thing that had been outlawed generations before their birth. Don't get me wrong, slavery is evil, but it has also been the norm for the vast majority of human history, and wizards are nothing if not slow to change. You're not going to see the same sense of urgency in the face of this that you would among a modern western nation.

Wizarding Population and World Setting

On the topic of wizarding population, I can't speak for canon, but this setting has about 300k-400k wizards in Britain, which makes up about 2/3 of the ICW wizarding population. The ICW covers most of Europe, except for the Balkans. Most of the Balkans are part of the Romanian Empire, with only the Adriatic coast as part of the ICW. Total world magical population at this time is about 50-60 million.

As for the magical world, the major powers are:

Spoiler: The composition of the magical world by nation, rough and potentially subject to change

• ICW (effectively Britain, plus some outlying areas on the continent that were formerly ravaged by British slave raids for centuries before Dumbledore's reforms) - one of the only magical polities that even pays lip-service to the idea of integration with the non-magical governments. Slavery is illegal, as of recently. Human rights are a thing, even if that is difficult to enforce. Cultural roots stem from Rome and early Christendom. Political roots stem from Camelot, and that lip-service to integration is a remnant of Merlin's forceful insistence that the magicals swear loyalty to the Arthurian crown.
• Ottoman Empire (distinct from the non-magical polity, it originally split from the non-magical portion of the Akkadian Empire c. 2200BC, and became the magical Ottoman Empire after a coup in the 1300's) which used to extend from the Black Sea to Cape Horn and from Morocco to Bangladesh, until they did something stupid in the 1400's and the world called them on it. Now they have been driven back to a stronghold in the upper Nile, controlling central Ethiopia. Largest slaving culture in the world, even in its reduced state. Absolutely hellish place to live if you are not part of the ruling caste.
• Romanian Empire - absolute monarchy ruled by Vladimir Tepes for the last 500 years. As a result of that stupid thing the Empire did in the 1400's Vlad became essentially an expy of Alucard from Hellsing and is currently the most powerful magical entity known to the wizarding world (Harry is catching up, but not there yet) Has been engaged in a personal war with the Empire for five hundred years, has absorbed all the territory they lost, has killed and consumed tens of millions of magical beings over the course of that war. If you're okay with his rules and can deal with the Sword of Damocles constantly hanging over your head, it's actually one of the best places to live in the magical world, he mostly leaves people to their own devices so long as they keep themselves in line. If you step out of line, you get eaten, no trial, no delay as he is effectively omnipresent within his territory. The Ottomans are so reviled that Vlad is widely considered a folk hero and humanitarian icon (if an extremely scary one that you wouldn't want to meet in person) through most of the wizarding world, despite having eaten tens of millions of people.
  • Magical India - technically part of the Romanian Empire, any original culture in magical India was destroyed during the centuries of Ottoman occupation. Now settled mostly by British refugees from before the time of Dumbledore's reforms. They follow Vlad's rules, but they added more of their own so they could feel properly British. Not a very powerful polity, but virulently anti-slavery. They tend to send out missionaries to encourage others to reform. The Patil twins are preparing for such a course.
• Han Empire (China and southeast Asia) - Slaving culture. The great families have been running a ruthless eugenics program for several thousand years now. After Vlad conquered the Indian subcontinent, they instituted some reforms about the treatment of slaves to try to avoid drawing the ire of their obscenely scary new neighbor. Has been locked in a constant state of war with magical Japan for centuries over Japanese slave raids. Much of that war was fought (on the Chinese side) using long-distance magic fueled by human sacrifice, as the reforms killed that avenue of attack, the war is currently a defensive conflict only on the Han side.
• Magical Japan (Japanese archipelago, including another couple of islands in the Sea of Japan which are magically hidden and constitute about a third of the total land area in the island chain) - nominally supposed to be loyal to the imperial crown due to ancient sovereignty magics tied to the land, managed to pull away through a plot that assassinated all the magical members of the Imperial family and made it impossible for orders to be issued to the magical population. Han Empire was framed for the assassination. Entire nation has been engaged in constantly shifting warfare ever since with every family head operating as a local warlord/yakuza oyabun. Essentially the Sengoku Jidai that never ends. Slavery rampant.
• Wurrugu (Australia/Oceania/Indonesia/southern South America) - mysterious culture, keeps to themselves with almost no immigration and absolutely no emigration. Foreign policy of extreme retaliation to aggression (someone launches a slave raid, they retaliate by conquering the slaver's home nation). No one knows why the culture is so uniform, why there is so little dissension, and people are afraid to speculate after what happened to the former magical nation occupying southern South America (which ceased to exist as an independent entity in a conflict known as the Thirty-Seconds War). Whatever magic they used to accomplish that seems to have some severely restrictive conditions on its use, but no one outside the Wurrugu knows what they are.
• Incan Empire (western South America) - much like the non-magical empire from the same culture. Heavy on slavery and oppression. Long-term rivalry with the Aztecs to the north. Bio-engineered the coca plant and its derivatives which serve as a distributed system for gathering blood magic from the suffering of addicted users to fuel the empire's magical efforts. Technology later stolen by the Aztecs. Runs the South American drug cartels.
• Amazonia - collection of independent small tribes. Ecological richness means potions and experimental breeding are all the rage here. Fairly friendly to visitors unless you bring an army. If you do, all that potions and experimental breeding expertise means every little tribe of twenty people has their own unique collection of army-killers in their back pocket. Magical side of things is a very, very scary place to live, for much the same reason.
• Aztec Empire (Mexico/Central America)- culture based on slavery and human sacrifice. Rivalry with the Incas to the south, from whom they stole the piece of nasty magitech known as cocaine. Runs the Mexican drug cartels, including those which will go on to form Aztechnology. Warlike in the extreme, and a terrible neighbor to have.
• Confederacy (US/Canada) - a direct successor to the Haudenosaunee Nation (Iroquois), its membership expanded to include the magical portions of most of the less-violent native American tribes across the continent through a hand extended in friendship. The more violent groups tended not to behave themselves and got killed off over the years by their neighbors who didn't want to put up with them. A very loose federation, each tribe has near-complete autonomy over internal matters. Everyone sees a common enemy in the Aztecs to the south. Slavery is a thing in this culture, but its not a particularly prominent one.
• Empire of Madagascar (Madagascar/south and eastern Africa) - Maa-speaking people, very good at defensive conflicts after their long-running conflict with slave raiders from the Ottoman Empire to the north, violently anti-slavery, but also not welcoming to visitors
• There are other, less-prominent groups, but those are the big ones

 

[bryceh59]

Just finished reading the last chapter.
You know what I like most about this story? The world you have made is pretty bad (it's crossed over with Shadowrun, it's gonna be crappy), but you haven't ignored that there good people trying to make it better.
That's one issue I've seen with many "Crapsack World" stories is that they mostly try to make things out to be bad and nothing good can happen. But I find it far better when the characters try to make their Crapsack World at least a little bit brighter.

 

[Starfox5]

It's just that as things are set up, the whole system is tailor-made to generate muggleborn terrorists after muggleborn terrorists - or an exodus. If all you can look forward to is either swearing fealthy to a noble/clan head to get protection, at the cost of being beholden to them, or become prey for the powerful, why wouldn't people raised in more civilised systems decide to either book it, or start killing? Yeah, for the purebloods, this is normal, but for muggleborns? As stated, the system has no redeeming qualities.

Just imagine if you took, say, US kids at age 11, and introduced them into a system like that - and gave them guns and seven years training. How many of them would meekly accept their fate? How many would run? How many would decide to take a few assholes with them?

The system as proposed is so fucked up, and wizards so bloody powerful and easy to train (see: canon DA) I'd think every week, someone would Fiendfyre part of Diagon Alley. It's like taking the South ca. 1850, handing every slave kid a gun and some training, and then expecting them to meekly pick cotton at age 17 until they die - or work in a brothel.

Where's the safety valve? Where is the reason this doesn't happen? When I wrote Patron, with a similar "Family head has extensive powers over the clan members" structure, I took care to point out that social pressure significantly limited actually exerting such power, and that the vast majority of purebloods got emancipated after leaving Hogwarts, and that you'd not be able to tell who was a pureblood and who was a muggleborn without looking things up since they lived in the same houses and worked the same jobs.

So, what's keeping all the desperate people from killing a bunch of passers-by or blowing up a street? And what's keeping those safety measures from being used to enforce the ban on slavery? How long until the Private Eye breaks and kills people in the brothels?

(I'm not saying every muggleborn would do that. But more than enough would to make this a problem.)

 

[Doghead13]

(I'm not saying every muggleborn would do that. But more than enough would to make this a problem.)

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What, exactly, do you think some 75+% of 'dark lords' are?

 

[Starfox5]

What, exactly, do you think some 75+% of 'dark lords' are?

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But where are they? So far, we only heard about Voldemort, not the daily news about this or that Dark Lord wrecking stuff over there. With 400Kish people in Britain alone, there's bound to be a few "Dark Lords" active at any time. I'd really expect at least monthly news about another attack, given how easy it is to apparate somewhere, drop Fiendfyre or blow up a few things, and flee before someone can respond.

 

[Skjadir]

But where are they? So far, we only heard about Voldemort, not the daily news about this or that Dark Lord wrecking stuff over there. With 400Kish people in Britain alone, there's bound to be a few "Dark Lords" active at any time. I'd really expect at least monthly news about another attack, given how easy it is to apparate somewhere, drop Fiendfyre or blow up a few things, and flee before someone can respond.

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dead

some kid that has seven years of school, is likely only middly skilled and has no realy experience fighting a "war" with magic vs wizard with several decades experience and a war or two behind them

by the way i am going to bet on the wizard with exp here

You don´t live long when you piss of people that are more skilled/powerful then you when it comes to magic and don´t have alot of back up which these kids don´t have.

 

[Dunkelzahn]

It's just that as things are set up, the whole system is tailor-made to generate muggleborn terrorists after muggleborn terrorists - or an exodus. If all you can look forward to is either swearing fealthy to a noble/clan head to get protection, at the cost of being beholden to them, or become prey for the powerful, why wouldn't people raised in more civilised systems decide to either book it, or start killing? Yeah, for the purebloods, this is normal, but for muggleborns? As stated, the system has no redeeming qualities.

Just imagine if you took, say, US kids at age 11, and introduced them into a system like that - and gave them guns and seven years training. How many of them would meekly accept their fate? How many would run? How many would decide to take a few assholes with them?

The system as proposed is so fucked up, and wizards so bloody powerful and easy to train (see: canon DA) I'd think every week, someone would Fiendfyre part of Diagon Alley. It's like taking the South ca. 1850, handing every slave kid a gun and some training, and then expecting them to meekly pick cotton at age 17 until they die - or work in a brothel.

Where's the safety valve? Where is the reason this doesn't happen? When I wrote Patron, with a similar "Family head has extensive powers over the clan members" structure, I took care to point out that social pressure significantly limited actually exerting such power, and that the vast majority of purebloods got emancipated after leaving Hogwarts, and that you'd not be able to tell who was a pureblood and who was a muggleborn without looking things up since they lived in the same houses and worked the same jobs.

So, what's keeping all the desperate people from killing a bunch of passers-by or blowing up a street? And what's keeping those safety measures from being used to enforce the ban on slavery? How long until the Private Eye breaks and kills people in the brothels?

(I'm not saying every muggleborn would do that. But more than enough would to make this a problem.)

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Safety valve? Doesn't happen?

That IS the safety valve. Violence and revolutions happen all the time in this society. They're either put down, or they succeed. If they're put down, things calm down for a while before pressure builds again. If they succeed, the cesspit gets turned over, and the revolutionaries predictably take their revenge on their erstwhile oppressors until eventually, much the same system is in place with a different set of family names at the top.

It takes a rare kind of person to go through this sort of hell and come out a reformer rather than an avenger.

 

[Doghead13]

But where are they? So far, we only heard about Voldemort, not the daily news about this or that Dark Lord wrecking stuff over there. With 400Kish people in Britain alone, there's bound to be a few "Dark Lords" active at any time. I'd really expect at least monthly news about another attack, given how easy it is to apparate somewhere, drop Fiendfyre or blow up a few things, and flee before someone can respond.

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You seem to be operating under the impression that magic is on/off, that you either have it or do not, that everyone is playing at the same power level and capable of throwing around the same level of destructive magic.

Short version: it's not. They're not. This has been discussed in-story, and is even canon-compliant.

To use your guns example, some people have a .22 break-action air rifle, others have a 20mm autocannon. How you upgrade from one to the other if you're not one of the lucky few born that way involves large amounts of human sacrifice. Reread the scene where Snape is laying out what's going on to Tony - it's all there.

 

[Starfox5]

You seem to be operating under the impression that magic is on/off, that you either have it or do not, that everyone is playing at the same power level and capable of throwing around the same level of destructive magic.

Short version: it's not. They're not. This has been discussed in-story, and is even canon-compliant.

To use your guns example, some people have a .22 break-action air rifle, others have a 20mm autocannon. How you upgrade from one to the other if you're not one of the lucky few born that way involves large amounts of human sacrifice. Reread the scene where Snape is laying out what's going on to Tony - it's all there.

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So, it's not canon, where a bunch of kids learn enough Defence to survive an ambush by Voldemort's inner circle while outnumbered 2 to 1? Where people like Crabbe and Goyle can learn Apparition and Fiendfyre? It's really only Harry the Dragon who can do anything, and everyone else other than - maybe - Dumbledore is useless?

Safety valve? Doesn't happen?

That IS the safety valve. Violence and revolutions happen all the time in this society. They're either put down, or they succeed. If they're put down, things calm down for a while before pressure builds again. If they succeed, the cesspit gets turned over, and the revolutionaries predictably take their revenge on their erstwhile oppressors until eventually, much the same system is in place with a different set of family names at the top.

It takes a rare kind of person to go through this sort of hell and come out a reformer rather than an avenger.

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So, when was the last time the muggleborns took over and wrecked the clan system?

 

[Hunting time]

So, it's not canon, where a bunch of kids learn enough Defence to survive an ambush by Voldemort's inner circle while outnumbered 2 to 1? Where people like Crabbe and Goyle can learn Apparition and Fiendfyre? It's really only Harry the Dragon who can do anything, and everyone else other than - maybe - Dumbledore is useless?
So, when was the last time the muggleborns took over and wrecked the clan system?

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So the kids personally trained by a prodigy in DADA who at 13 could do a corporeal patronus charm, that some aurors can't do? it also took him less than a year to learn it and also less to teach it. i don't believe Riddle's 12 were anything to go by besides Bella and Lucious unless i'm not remembering the books correctly. Crabbe and Goyle [the kids?] were able to learn Apparition...i don't remember that. Crabbe learned [for a definition of it] Fiendfyre and killed himself with it.

Seriously though, you think people of magical power/ability approaching Dumbledore, Grindelwarld and Riddle's was common?

Last time muggleborns took over? my guess would be when the Stuarts took the Throne, the Black Death, Hundred Years War somewhere around then. Also i doubt they wiped all the purebloods out when they did it so some probably took steps to fix things back.
Why do you assume all magic is in a bookstore or the Hogwarts Library for anyone to read? I fully Expect secrets to be kept by anyone that can and purebloods have been around longer to collect/create more.

Finally many of the muggleborns probably just up and left if they could, got a sponsor, hides out in the muggle world, a short few end up like Frank is shown, and some few go out in a blaze of glory. They are attacking who they think is after them not the Ministry, Hogwarts or Diagonally.
Not sure where you are from but there are some Americans that joined the Kurds to fight ISIS. Some were soldiers, some were not. That is what you are expecting of the muggleborns, to not be a soldier and go fight terrorists.

 

[DakkaMania]

If the Wizards are just that much a bunch of bastards, how come they even hide from muggles?

Given the numbers and power they have, why bother hiding in the first place? Ethics certainly don't appear to be the reason.

Especially as they started in pre-industrial times where modern weapons weren't a thing yet.

The Goblins were stated to have won using firearms and that they cooperated with the non-magical government. And yet, that same government hasn't taken wizarding Britain to task yet for preying on it's citizens despite having an ungodly number of guns available. What is stopping the non-magical government from simply declaring that the Muggleborn are now defacto a House under the British Government and if there are complaints, arm and fund those Muggleborn.

 

[Starfox5]

So the kids personally trained by a prodigy in DADA who at 13 could do a corporeal patronus charm, that some aurors can't do? it also took him less than a year to learn it and also less to teach it. i don't believe Riddle's 12 were anything to go by besides Bella and Lucious unless i'm not remembering the books correctly. Crabbe and Goyle [the kids?] were able to learn Apparition...i don't remember that. Crabbe learned [for a definition of it] Fiendfyre and killed himself with it.

Seriously though, you think people of magical power/ability approaching Dumbledore, Grindelwarld and Riddle's was common?

Last time muggleborns took over? my guess would be when the Stuarts took the Throne, the Black Death, Hundred Years War somewhere around then. Also i doubt they wiped all the purebloods out when they did it so some probably took steps to fix things back.
Why do you assume all magic is in a bookstore or the Hogwarts Library for anyone to read? I fully Expect secrets to be kept by anyone that can and purebloods have been around longer to collect/create more.

Finally many of the muggleborns probably just up and left if they could, got a sponsor, hides out in the muggle world, a short few end up like Frank is shown, and some few go out in a blaze of glory. They are attacking who they think is after them not the Ministry, Hogwarts or Diagonally.
Not sure where you are from but there are some Americans that joined the Kurds to fight ISIS. Some were soldiers, some were not. That is what you are expecting of the muggleborns, to not be a soldier and go fight terrorists.

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See, if Voldemort's inner circle, his elite, wasn't much to write him about, then you don't need to be Dumbledore to terrorise a country. What am I expecting of the muggleborns? I expect some minimal skill and dedication. With magic and muggle supplies, you can wreck havoc with minimal risk and effort. You don't need secret spells or such stuff - just the canon spells are enough. You don't need to be a duellist, nor a dark wizard. Nor do you need to be able to control fiendfyre. Just cast it on a building from a little distance, then apparate or fly away.

 

[Skjadir]

If the Wizards are just that much a bunch of bastards, how come they even hide from muggles?

Given the numbers and power they have, why bother hiding in the first place? Ethics certainly don't appear to be the reason.

Especially as they started in pre-industrial times where modern weapons weren't a thing yet.

The Goblins were stated to have won using firearms and that they cooperated with the non-magical government. And yet, that same government hasn't taken wizarding Britain to task yet for preying on it's citizens despite having an ungodly number of guns available. What is stopping the non-magical government from simply declaring that the Muggleborn are now defacto a House under the British Government and if there are complaints, arm and fund those Muggleborn.

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things like anti muggle charms that makes it so that muggles can´t see/notice something and the wizards being able to fuck with space/time.
This would also be a case of a "outside" force trying to mess with them which would result in the wizards closeing ranks and going nuts with their abilitys which aren´t just limited to magic as we have seen (hello potions).

why they hide ?
because it is alot of work to put down these annoying peasants/muggle all the time better to just control their leader and stay in the shadow so they can be lazy.

 

[Starfox5]

things like anti muggle charms that makes it so that muggles can´t see/notice something and the wizards being able to fuck with space/time.
This would also be a case of a "outside" force trying to mess with them which would result in the wizards closeing ranks and going nuts with their abilitys which aren´t just limited to magic as we have seen (hello potions).

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Why would muggleborns close ranks with their oppressors? That's like claiming that the Blacks in the CSA would have closed ranks with the whites against the Union troops. And the muggles don't need to invade - they can just supply the muggleborns with guns and training. If the goblins can hold their own with guns, muggleborns, who have wands in addition to guns, should be able to do at least as well.

Why didn't any muggleborn, who would have had lots of relatives fighting in several wars in the 20th century, follow the goblins' example? At the very least, they should have formed a shelter/fortress, similar to Gringotts.Good luck trying to oppress them. And if they joined with the goblins, all bets are off.

Hell, the goblins are basically copying muggle soldiers. If that is working, muggleborns would do it as well.

 

[Skjadir]

Why would muggleborns close ranks with their oppressors? That's like claiming that the Blacks in the CSA would have closed ranks with the whites against the Union troops. And the muggles don't need to invade - they can just supply the muggleborns with guns and training. If the goblins can hold their own with guns, muggleborns, who have wands in addition to guns, should be able to do at least as well.

Why didn't any muggleborn, who would have had lots of relatives fighting in several wars in the 20th century, follow the goblins' example? At the very least, they should have formed a shelter/fortress, similar to Gringotts.Good luck trying to oppress them. And if they joined with the goblins, all bets are off.

Hell, the goblins are basically copying muggle soldiers. If that is working, muggleborns would do it as well.

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For the goblins yes we have seen what happens if a wizard gets creative and wants to get something even if they have a very well defended location aka they die.

For why because the wizard would close ranks because their goverment is fully independet from the muggle goverment and a outside goverment invading more often then not means people close ranks.
Their is also the fact that the muggleborn for the most part likely won´t even get the chance to say no.

You are also make some big assumptions in that the wizards are stupid (from what i have seen from your other posts that "evil" means automaticly stupid which is not the case).

You also assume that people will always rise against oppressors which is not the case.

 

[Dunkelzahn]

If the Wizards are just that much a bunch of bastards, how come they even hide from muggles?

Given the numbers and power they have, why bother hiding in the first place? Ethics certainly don't appear to be the reason.

Especially as they started in pre-industrial times where modern weapons weren't a thing yet.

The Goblins were stated to have won using firearms and that they cooperated with the non-magical government. And yet, that same government hasn't taken wizarding Britain to task yet for preying on it's citizens despite having an ungodly number of guns available. What is stopping the non-magical government from simply declaring that the Muggleborn are now defacto a House under the British Government and if there are complaints, arm and fund those Muggleborn.

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Oddly enough, mostly habit. Secrecy and separation have been enshrined in the various cultures for a couple thousand years now.

The thing is, in the history of the setting, the moral cesspit that is the modern wizarding world developed because of the secrecy, not the other way around. Before the fifth age, wizards were just another part of the community, living, working, and so on like everyone else. You had the town baker, the town blacksmith, and the town enchanter next door. They shared the mores and ethics of the culture as usual. Wizard was just another profession (well, a collection of similar professions) that certain people were genetically suited to and others weren't.

During the low magic Fifth Age the idea of secrecy crept in to the public consciousness from somewhere, no one is sure where, and the Wizarding world decided --- piecemeal over the course of a couple thousand years --- to go into hiding, which was formalized by the Statute of Secrecy centuries after it became de facto policy. This is the first time in recorded history (draconic history, that is) that the magical world went underground. The First and Third Ages saw Wizards just as publicly active as the high Magic Ages, just in smaller numbers. Hiding had several interesting effects which are new to the present time, which is a large part of why the transition from the Fifth Age to the Sixth is going differently than the earlier low-to-high transitions.

As the policy became entrenched, it enshrined deception as a moral imperative in the wizarding public consciousness. When you enshrine evil as good, bad things happen. Magics used for secrecy became commonplace and extremely advanced. Similarly, they became so varied that no one really knows them all — in truth, no one can. Even after being used so famously by the Potters, for instance, the Fidelius Charm is still almost unknown by the Wizarding World at large. Similarly, they developed absurd levels of expertise in mental magics to maintain the masquerade.

With those magics at their disposal, soon people realized they could get away with most anything they wanted to, so some unscrupulous people did, and by and large, they got away with it. Other people realized that doing that sort of thing let them get ahead, and there were no apparent consequences, so they did it too. Society got worse and worse as morality was left by the wayside, and eventually it turned into what's there now.

 

[Starfox5]

For the goblins yes we have seen what happens if a wizard gets creative and wants to get something even if they have a very well defended location aka they die.

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For why because the wizard would close ranks because their goverment is fully independet from the muggle goverment and a outside goverment invading more often then not means people close ranks.

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Only if they actually consider the government theirs. Are you really claiming the blacks in the south closed ranks against the Union? Same situation here,

Their is also the fact that the muggleborn for the most part likely won´t even get the chance to say no.

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Why not? Are all of them enslaved right away?

You are also make some big assumptions in that the wizards are stupid (from what i have seen from your other posts that "evil" means automaticly stupid which is not the case).

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No, I'm actually arging that wizards aren't useless idiots barely able to cast spells with the mind of a sheep, but that they can manage to use fairly obvious tactics effectively.

You also assume that people will always rise against oppressors which is not the case.

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Some people will rise against their oppressors. Especially if they weren't raised to be slaves and have all the means to fight back.

 

[Lordamnesia]

I get where you coming from, but I don't think your getting the population density correct. For a Muggleborn to be born, they have to be born on a leyline of some sort, or they just have a recessive gene that never gets activated. There are very few muggleborn in actuality, nowhere near the black slave population in the South right before the American Civil War. Add that to the probability that not everyone knows whats going on in the real world, even less of the muggleborn would be 'rising up'. And even if they did, slavery is only now illegal, so if they didn't hide their appearance, name, police every hair and blood splash chances are they got hunted down and put to some dark families use.


As for why there isn't a fortress somewhere that the Muggleborn protect and man? It sure sounds like that's the end goal of the underground railroad the goblins run.

 

[Starfox5]

I get where you coming from, but I don't think your getting the population density correct. For a Muggleborn to be born, they have to be born on a leyline of some sort, or they just have a recessive gene that never gets activated. There are very few muggleborn in actuality, nowhere near the black slave population in the South right before the American Civil War. Add that to the probability that not everyone knows whats going on in the real world, even less of the muggleborn would be 'rising up'. And even if they did, slavery is only now illegal, so if they didn't hide their appearance, name, police every hair and blood splash chances are they got hunted down and put to some dark families use.

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If there are so few muggleborns, then protecting them shouldn't be too hard for Dumbledore, and they couldn't be too important for the economy either.

As for why there isn't a fortress somewhere that the Muggleborn protect and man? It sure sounds like that's the end goal of the underground railroad the goblins run.

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Geographic or time-wise?

 

[Lordamnesia]

Geographic or time-wise?

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Geographically, I meant at the end of the railroad literally .

If there are so few muggleborns, then protecting them shouldn't be too hard for Dumbledore, and they couldn't be too important for the economy either.

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And he can protect the ones that are in Hogwarts, but if they don't choose to go / have graduated he has no legal way to protect them, and he is one man. He can point out a better path for the muggleborn to go, but if they don't follow it or heed the advice he can give then he might find out they disappeared after the fact. Maybe. And I didn't get that it was just muggleborn getting enslaved, but anyone they could get their hands on. The example of the Weasleys was perhaps misleading, as the Weasleys have a ministerial Dept Head, several well of kids with a myriad of magical skills, and that's just Arthur's sons, not counting the rest of the family. Say instead it was the kids of Mac McDonald that are taken, well he's not well placed in the ministry, has a few friends but honestly is quite forgettable, so I doubt that he would be very successful in the court, and that's only if he made it to court and wasn't killed when the kids were taken, when it first went to court, on the way to court, or any other time.

 

[Starfox5]

And he can protect the ones that are in Hogwarts, but if they don't choose to go / have graduated he has no legal way to protect them, and he is one man. He can point out a better path for the muggleborn to go, but if they don't follow it or heed the advice he can give then he might find out they disappeared after the fact. Maybe. And I didn't get that it was just muggleborn getting enslaved, but anyone they could get their hands on. The example of the Weasleys was perhaps misleading, as the Weasleys have a ministerial Dept Head, several well of kids with a myriad of magical skills, and that's just Arthur's sons, not counting the rest of the family. Say instead it was the kids of Mac McDonald that are taken, well he's not well placed in the ministry, has a few friends but honestly is quite forgettable, so I doubt that he would be very successful in the court, and that's only if he made it to court and wasn't killed when the kids were taken, when it first went to court, on the way to court, or any other time.

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But if anyone poor and unconnected can be taken, then the pool of "people willing to kill the scumbags preying on their families, proof or no proof" just grew a lot. And if the court can't help you, people are likely to take the law into their own hands. "But the other side has magic" goes both ways - if people have nothing to lose, Malfoy getting a Killing Curse to the back becomes increasingly likely. And the "but those people are weak and useless, they can't do anything" also doesn't work - that goes for both sides. Unless, somehow, everyone powerful enough to matter is evil, the good guys shouldn't be at a disadvantage there.

In the real world, in societies with clans and all, and with everyone having a rifle at home, taking someone's wife or kid usually leads to blood feuds. Here, everyone's got a wand. And with the courts apparently useless, what do you think people will do if their kid is enslaved? How long do you think the private eye, a man so damn talented, he could make up a new tracking solution, and learn several new charms, will refrain from simply killing the scum? He's got the skills, he's got the experience, and he has the motive to spare. What the fuck is holding him back?

 

[Gaming Geek]

Honestly?

I think that this IS the point. That the world's gotten to that point where the common wizard's about to snap and start randomly killing those in power, because they blame them for not protecting them.

Vauldmort tapped this anger 15 years earlier by getting those who were 'in' the system but at the bottom to help him.

There just needs to be a new Dark Lord to tap the resentment of those who are the ones being shitted on for another war to pop.



I thought that was the whole idea of the Shadowrun/Harry Potter cross? The whole "Shit's fucked, what can you (the nobody on the outside) do about it?"


Hell, Canon Shadowrun happened because some people started a revolution in the US that accidentally restarted Magic.

 

[Starfox5]

Indeed. But in canon Shadowrun, the Native Americans didn't need a Dragon to do their revolution for them, nor were they useless weak victims. They mattered. They fought back. They had agency. Here it seems not even Hermione, a borderline genius according to JKR, will ever matter because she's not Dumbledore, Voldemort or Grindelwald. Or Harry.

 

[Gaming Geek]

Hermione is a 12 year old kid at this point.

What do you want her to do here?

Later on yes, but RIGHT NOW she's a kid. Harry is a dragon, and the others mentioned are adults.


Really you're asking 'Why doesn't the detective do something', which I can't answer.

 

[Starfox5]

I said "will ever matter" since that was the vibe I got. I would have expected witches of her talent and skill to become important people as they grow up.

 

[Mashadarof402]

I said "will ever matter" since that was the vibe I got. I would have expected witches of her talent and skill to become important people as they grow up.

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The nature of magic and the ease of which the haves can abuse the have nots means that what you have is an oppression cycle.

Sure, Hermione may eventually form the nexus of a popular revolt that ends with the old regime toppled and families swinging from trees to the last drop of blood.

But then what? A new government, a new hope? Maybe, for the first few years. But the nature of magic rears its ugly head and people start liking the taste of power. They start doing things to preserve the new status quo.

And honestly, talent and skill are meaningless without power. There are many nations today where you can legitimately say "shit's fucked". The locals won't disagree, they know it's fucked. But what can they do? Not a whole lot. Most popular revolts tend to die to the guys with machineguns and tanks unless they can get substantial foreign aid.

In fact, often power isn't related to skill and talent.

It's not enough to be skilled and talented if you want to change things. You need power. Military, economic or political power. Power to defend yourself and to enact your changes.

And right now, Hermione doesn't have any of that.

 

[Starfox5]

It's not enough to be skilled and talented if you want to change things. You need power. Military, economic or political power. Power to defend yourself and to enact your changes.

And right now, Hermione doesn't have any of that.

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This wasn't even about the power to change things - just the power to be safe.

On the other hand, if even her future skill and power isn't enough to matter, I don't think there's anything or anyone that can stop Harry the Dragon. I mean - what's stopping him from killing his enemies once he has a good excuse?

Also, I disagree about your view that every violent change ends in the same oppressive system. Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany were stomped and didn't end up the same as before just with different labels. The communist regimes were overthrown without everything becoming as bad as before. Same for the revolutions in my own country in the 19th century. Things can and often do change for the better.

 

[Dunkelzahn]

What is with this insistence that people who can't personally steamroll half of wizarding Britain are somehow utterly irrelevant?

Yes, Harry is a Shadowrun great dragon. If he gets into a straight-up fight where no one can run away against literally anything wizarding Britain can throw at him, he's going to win, hands down.

That said, what about this situation in any way implies that it will be solved by a straight-up fight where no one can run away?

If Harry goes on a violent rampage with the intent of fixing wizarding Britain by main force, here's what will happen.

A whole lot of people will die.

The amoral industrialists who successfully run away will hole up behind their near-unbeatable secrecy wards and use their accumulated resources to stay comfortable while they wait. Ultimately they will adapt to the new paradigm of working around the angry dragon and survive. Whatever slaves and such they have will be stuck behind those wards, beyond anyone's ability to help.

Meanwhile, the economy supporting the rest of the wizarding world will collapse, causing turmoil and violence among the innocent survivors. In the best case scenario, there is starvation, crime, and death as people adjust and work out a new economy to support the people whose livelihoods were just destroyed by Harry's incautious actions.

Harry will be left standing in a graveyard, ankle-deep in blood with nothing to show for it but horrified accusation in the eyes of everyone he's ever known.

If Dumbledore goes on a similar tear, he'll end up getting a higher kill percentage before much the same thing happens (he is significantly more subtle than Harry).

In neither case does anything good come of it, aside from the visceral thrill of killing some horrible people. Society either stays just as bad or gets worse.

The situation in the story is a complicated one, and the solutions to fix it are going to be similarly complicated. There are a lot of steps to take to get from where they are now to a functioning and moral society, and the vast majority of them are not amenable to solution by brute force.

Going back to Doghead13's firearm analogy. The average wizard has a .22 break-action, Dumbledore has a 20mm autocannon, and Harry has a fully armed AC-130.

Obviously, the average wizard is completely insignificant, right? Look at the biggatons!

Except, you're not trying to cause as much damage as you can; you're trying to renovate an old rat-infested apartment building full of sick people and nurse the inhabitants back to health.

The average wizard with his .22 might be able to shoot some rats, but using that autocannon with anything less than consummate skill is just going to kill a bunch of people you're trying to save. The AC-130 is right out. Harry is best served by landing the metaphorical plane and sending in the crew to help, all that firepower is going to sit there unused.

 

[Hunting time]

The better question is whether there is either or both of shadowrun and potterverse magic? Can everyone learn both? Can Harry?

 

[Dunkelzahn]

The better question is whether there is either or both of shadowrun and potterverse magic? Can everyone learn both? Can Harry?

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Wizard magic requires an internal magic source, which wizards have, but most magical creatures do not. This means it is restricted to beings with such a feature --- essentially wizards and dragons, from whom wizards are very distantly descended (the dragons don't like to admit that).

Shadowrun magic requires the presence of environmental magic in quantity, which, during the fifth age, is a hit-or-miss prospect. For reasons related to this, it fell out of practice among wizards several thousand years previous, but it is technically learnable to one degree or another by most anyone.

Some discussion that came up in the same vein a few months ago:

No shamanism until closer to the Awakening, no, and even then, wizards don't have much in the way of a shamanistic tradition. The closest they really get is the class of spells which includes the patronus, and those don't summon spirits so much as make a temporary facsimile of one out of the wizard's own magic and patterned after the wizard in some way.

There is some history of summoning independent spirits, but since the usual summoning targets are lesser Horrors, the practice carries an immediate and unconditional death sentence in wizard society. Thus, I wouldn't really call it a tradition.

Spoiler: A bit more explanation if you care for it

Basically, in this setting, I've split up the different magical traditions into those which principally use an internal magic source (of which wizardry is a prime example, hence its continued persistence during the low-magic ages) and those which use external environmental magic (which do not function during low-magic ages at all, but often persist as ritualistic traditions in various cultures). All the canon Shadowrun magical traditions use external magic in some critical capacity.

Shamanism essentially borrows power from a nature spirit (or more generally some manner of spirit, not necessarily nature --- insect spirits and Horrors can form similar arrangements, for example) to do magic. At first glance this seems like a third option, but the nature spirit itself is a creature of environmental magic, thus restricting shamanism to high-magic environments.

Now, admittedly, some high-magic areas do exist in this setting even during low-magic ages --- such as Hogwarts and the neighboring Black Woods --- but they are highly localized. Shamanism, for instance, would work even during the Fifth Age, but only if practiced at Hogwarts or a similar location. Restricted as it was geographically, it was not widely practiced. Then, over the course of the several millennia eventually culminating in the secrecy policies, certain military factors reduced its practicality even further --- specifically the wizards' campaign to subjugate most other magical species.

Wizards had internal magic, and could therefore operate anywhere; most other magical species did not and were thus location-restricted --- fielding a highly-mobile military force based from utterly unassailable strongholds meant the conflict went about as one might expect, but also ensured that magic which could not be practiced in low-magic environments could not be safely taught, and thus fell out of use over time.

For reference, consider wizardry to be a highly-refined Hermetic tradition which has been in continuous use and development for tens of thousands of years, and which primarily uses the caster's internal magic reserves --- which are in turn ultimately derived from his diet.

Environmental magic does influence wizards in various ways, including health and development --- acting as an environmental factor in the same vein as pressure or temperature --- and the borders can get a little fuzzy. For instance, in much the same way that other technology does, wizard magic is often designed to take advantage of the environment --- including environmental magic, if available --- to make itself more effective or accomplish otherwise-difficult tasks (fiendfyre and the entire discipline of divination being prime examples of such), but environmental magic is not absolutely required for wizardry.

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It's a couple of factors.

One, it's an environmental factor to which the wizard needs to adjust, sort of like pressure changes during diving or mountain climbing --- even though you might have your own air supply, the pressure differentials mean you have to do things differently depending on the environment. That is a temporary issue, though, which will go away as the wizard adjusts.

The other issue is a less transitory one. Many wizard spells, though not initiated using external magic, take advantage of its presence in their design to work better than they otherwise would, reducing the strain on the caster and the energy drain of casting. It's sort of like a hybrid air-breathing/rocket engine that can work like a jet engine to fly more efficiently when there is atmosphere available to serve as reaction mass, saving fuel, but can still operate in vacuum, though at much reduced fuel efficiency, if it needs to.

A sufficiently powerful wizard can of course power through, supplying all the power needed from his own internal reserves, but he'll burn much more energy than he would in a more magical environment. For the sorts of spells wizards commonly use at the present time in the story --- which are small and optimized for secrecy, and as such, only rarely use large amounts of energy anyway --- it is not often a consideration. It only really becomes an issue in most cases in exceedingly barren environments (like the Dead Zone which Dumbledore visited on account of a dare) or when casting very powerful workings in normal environments. So the environmental magic is not strictly needed, but it usually helps.

Since I mentioned them before, I will point out that divination is an exception in that it actually reads environmental magic to get the information you're looking for, so it strictly requires a magical environment to function even though it is on the low end of the power use scale, and fiendfyre works by consuming environmental magic to power itself, so while it can be cast in a magic-barren environment it'll just burn out immediately --- unless the caster loses control, in which case it will burn his magic instead.

Of course, there are also the real extremes which run into the limits of our assumptions.

On the very low end, such as Dumbledore speculates that the Dead Zone might have been before the nexus discharge in Turkey (before the 1460's) you run into similar issues with wizards that you do with vacuum exposure in normal humans. The wizard's own magic exerts a sort of internal pressure that pushes out against the outside field --- a feature which gives the wizard a natural resistance to external magical effects --- and if that field is not countered by some form of external magic field, the wizard's body will suffer damage of various types (I've not worked out precisely what, since it's not a physical pressure, nor is it something story-critical --- not unless some future situation arises in which it would fit well, anyway --- but rest assured it's unpleasant, whatever it is). It is designed to rely on external magic for the purpose, rather than internal structures. This is for much the same reason that the human body relies on external pressure to keep our blood vessels from bursting rather than simply making them strong enough to do so on their own, we weren't intended to operate in places with no air, so it wasn't necessary to make super-strong blood vessels.

On the other end, in very high magic densities, that natural resistance is insufficient, resulting in foreign magic pushing into the body and causing problems. As mentioned back in chapter 1, undirected magic enhances any purpose around it, so it tends to make the body do what it was already doing, only more so. This has unpleasant effects, ranging from the mundane, like cancer and auto-immune disorders, to the exotic, which, with magic involved is a broad category indeed. This is the main reason the twins ended up in the hospital for a time after they were caught up in the counter-artillery strike in 3.6.

So, yeah, wizards don't need environmental magic to perform wizardry, but they tend to take advantage of it when it's there, and they need at least a minimal amount to survive --- so caveats, I suppose.

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