Daniel Jess Gibson wrote:I wonder if there's been a fic that had that as the conflict between the NWC and she Scouts 'Because of you I've seen Hell!'. Trying to get the scouts to quit using their powers to prevent magical pollution.
Funny you should say that. It's pretty much the "other way of looking at" the situation I'm building up to in
Permutation, wherein the restoration of the ancient magic of the Silver Millennium is causing vast hordes of minor magical creatures to multiply and spread across the land. That's why the Hiccup Imp J. St. C. Patrick illustrated for us from chapter 6 is such a big deal in the story -- it's a symptom. The NWC does indeed tend to bear the brunt of the upswing in magical occurrences, though in my story most of them won't realize there's any particular group to blame. Lucky break for the Sailors.
Touching on another point raised in this thread, it has occurred to me that the apparent lack of SM artefacts in the archaeological record can be explained away by saying they were largely based on magic. If they were made and operated by magic and that magic was interrupted, who's to say the remains would even be recognizeable as an artifact? Some things might be made of cheap and readily available materials like rocks and air, or even reified imagination. In such a case it might well be easier to enchant a new one than to try and reenchant an old one, as has already happened in modern electronics (just try getting a water-damaged modern computer keyboard repaired! -- it can't be done!); that would mean they'd have even less reason to put any physical manufacturing effort in. Any flaws in the raw material (cracks, unevenness, blemishes, gratuitous existence failure, etc.) would easily be concealed by magic and thus not worth changing in the original manufacture, so after x thousand years in the ground it would just look like a plain rock or whatever. Perishable items like sticks might be preserved, but not look any different than some bored Neanderthal's discarded whittling project!
