Modern Day impact of Deryni

[MerchantDeryni]

I've been thinking about the impact Deryni powers might have the modern world. The existence of Deryni powers would alter so many facets of modern life the impact would be far reaching. I am wondering if anyone else has dealt with this. (I know Evie has, I am reading her Balance of Power novel)

The caveat of course is how many Deryni there are and how widespread the powers are.

Healing: If there were Deryni healers at hospitals it could massively change how trauma events are handled. The Golden Hour becomes a matter of stabilizing the patient until a Healer can get to them to repair a lot of the trauma.
Even in surgery a healer could repair damage after surgery to get the patient back on their feet in days.

Policing: Mind reading makes crime solving a routine matter. If a person can be probed to discover if they did a crime then a lot of police work becomes clerical in nature. The biggest challenge would be to limit the questions to the matters at hand.

In Saint Camber the scene of Guaire's dream was recreated from his memories for people to see. This would make court trials interesting.

Transfer Portals: Jets may move people farther faster, but the clandestine nature of Portals would allow smuggling of drugs, people, spies, stolen goods etc across a hidden network. For the military the ability to create a Portal to a FARP (Forward Arming and refueling point), or even a cave where special forces could quietly insert themselves behind enemy lines could have a massive impact on a war effort.

Anyone else messed around with modern day issues? If so, what were your thoughts?

[Bynw]

That is really well thought out.

But yes the question on how many Deryni are there would be a big question. Deryni have never been numerous even in Deryni ruled lands like Torenth. But there are always alternate realities where the Deryni population did expand enough and at least equaled the human population or even exceeded it. Or maybe Deryni and humans have intermarried for so long that almost anyone could be Deryni even if their parents arent if the genetics ended up right.

[Evie]

I've been thinking about the impact Deryni powers might have the modern world. The existence of Deryni powers would alter so many facets of modern life the impact would be far reaching. I am wondering if anyone else has dealt with this. (I know Evie has, I am reading her Balance of Power novel)

Funny you should mention that; I was working on the sequel just this morning (for the first time in months, sad to say).

The caveat of course is how many Deryni there are and how widespread the powers are.

At some point, in response to a question on this forum about a decade ago (I think it was in relation to how many privately owned Transfer Portals might there reasonably have been throughout Gwynedd at the period when the Deryni population had reached its height, which of course meant having to surmise what the overall population would have been and which percentage was Deryni), I think I proposed the statistic of .001 of a kingdom population of 1 million might be Deryni during that time period, just for ease of calculation. That still resulted in around 1K Deryni, and if you consider that number would be further divided up between families, then going with an arbitrary 10 Deryni per family on average, that would be 100 families. But if you further consider that of those 100 families, not all of them would have received higher-level training, and also not all would need a personal Portal (and some might not have own property to put a permanent Portal on), There might have been 75 or fewer residential Portals in Gwynedd even at the height of the Deryni population in early medieval Gwynedd.

Now, granted, those are purely arbitrary numbers, but if you multiply up for a more likely modern population on a Westernized country with that much land mass, and stick to a .001 percentage of those people being Deryni, you have enough magic-users to make a significant impact on the culture, yet not so many that the entire population is in danger of being overly controlled by the Deryni minority, given appropriate checks and balances. (And possibly technological countermeasures to magic.)

Healing: If there were Deryni healers at hospitals it could massively change how trauma events are handled. The Golden Hour becomes a matter of stabilizing the patient until a Healer can get to them to repair a lot of the trauma.
Even in surgery a healer could repair damage after surgery to get the patient back on their feet in days.

One thing I wonder about is that medieval Healing seems to have been limited to what they could visualize, though not necessarily what they could physically see, which is why Healers could not fight illnesses except with the regular tools of the physician's trade. But in a generation with microscopes, an understanding of bacteria and viruses, etc., I wonder if Healers are better able to treat illnesses, or if they are still limited to Healing what could potentially be viewed by the naked eye, even if it's deep within the body out of sight? Or if there are still some illnesses that baffle Deryni Healers because despite modern scientific progress, the root causes of those particular illnesses are still only incompletely understood?

Policing: Mind reading makes crime solving a routine matter. If a person can be probed to discover if they did a crime then a lot of police work becomes clerical in nature. The biggest challenge would be to limit the questions to the matters at hand.

In Saint Camber the scene of Guaire's dream was recreated from his memories for people to see. This would make court trials interesting.

I imagine there might be some questions raise as to the ethics of Mind-Seeing, especially given modern scientific research (in our world) about the mutability of memory, especially after a length of time, and showing that memories tend to alter slightly with each recall, which could explain why two eyewitnesses to an event can remember completely different things. Lots of factors play into memory--physical viewpoint, personal bias, amount of attention paid to the event at the time, personal significance of the event, whether the memory is traumatic or routine, and time elapsed since the event, just to name a few.  So unless memories in Gwynedd are a lot less mutable, I can imagine there would be some strong restrictions on which magically-retrieved memories might be considered admissible in a court of law.  (And then there is also the point that only a small percentage of police would be Deryni anyway, though with luck you might have a one or two per station.)

Transfer Portals: Jets may move people farther faster, but the clandestine nature of Portals would allow smuggling of drugs, people, spies, stolen goods etc across a hidden network. For the military the ability to create a Portal to a FARP (Forward Arming and refueling point), or even a cave where special forces could quietly insert themselves behind enemy lines could have a massive impact on a war effort.

Anyone else messed around with modern day issues? If so, what were your thoughts?

Oh yeah, lots of potential modern applications for Transfer Portals! I wonder if a sophisticated Portal network would exist parallel to and/or hinder the development of modern railways? Modern highways? Probably not significantly hinder, given the minority of population who could use them, but possibly have some impact nonetheless? If nothing else, Portal travel opens up more commuter options. If your office in Rhemuth has a Portal, you needn't live in Rhemuth or even in a reasonable driving distance to get to work on time. You could live in Dhassa and still make it in time to grab your morning coffee before the 8:00 am meeting.

[LionRampant]

I've always noted that medicine in the Deryni universe was much more advanced than our equivalent medieval period. They obviously understood the need for cleanliness and had some type of antiseptics for wounds. There are many references to cleaning wounds and using powders or liquids.

We had to wait for the late 1800s for the recognition of the importance of  cleanliness!

I recall that in Camber's day, the Healers had started learning more about the underlying causes of disease.  I assume this was why even in Kelson's time, medicine was still more advanced than our universe. 

So by the modern day, they would undoubtedly would be ahead of us if they discovered many of these principles hundreds of years earlier.

[MerchantDeryni]

Well if the Deryni are so few I think that raises issues of having the Michaelines as a Deryni Order with several strongholds. Other Deryni orders include the Gabrilites, and the Varnarites.

Granted these institutions all suffered after 918 and the population of Deryni dispersed, but there must have been hundreds of trained Deryni. So your population of Deryni must be in the thousands. A 1% of a million people means a 10 000 strong population base.

If modern medicine was coupled with the ability to knit flesh back together and repair wounds then medicine would possibly advance faster. The Healer ability to monitor a patient, coupled with modern diagnostics could really advance the knowledge in the field.

If the Deryni area  very small population and Healers rare, then they would be very sought after. A Hospital may only have a few, and operate as a training center as well.

If the population is small and most people do not know of, or believe in the powers then you could go down the route of a Deryni Illuminati running things from behind the scenes. Mind Control of key people to ensure the best for the Deryni.

Another option is a small slave race kept locked up to provide the ruling elite the fruits of Deryni powers. Private Healers to keep the powerful healthy. Secret cadres of Deryni setting up Portal networks to provide fast hidden movement.

As for modern day and Portals. A plane can move 300 people. A Portal can move a handful, and needs Deryni operators. Once brute mechanics enters the field Portals shift to small important cargo. They can be used to supply bases in a pinch (as KK had them do in Camber of Culdi for example), but trucks can move a lot more material.

[Evie]

Medicine, technology, even clothing styles, often tend to run a century or two ahead of our own world's history in Gwynedd. Although interestingly in our own world's history, the link between lack of cleanliness and disease was understood well enough in the earlier medieval period (even though they did not understand why), but then went into a decline by the late medieval/Renaissance period, only to be relearned in the 1800s.  Why that happened, I can only guess. Maybe the various plagues that decimated large segments of the population (including educated physicians--perhaps especially physicians, given their front lines exposure to the disease--combined with the tendency to pass knowledge down through oral tradition and guild secrets--led to some loss of crucial knowledge? But there are archaeological studies of a 12th Century (I think?) hospital on the Scots/English border that show a knowledge of hygiene, opiates, and crude but probably effective herbal remedies that indicate a level of medical knowledge that was later lost and took a few centuries to regain.

[LionRampant]

It's true that we did lose a lot of our knowledge. There were some very impressive surgeries done before the dark ages.

[Evie]

Well if the Deryni are so few I think that raises issues of having the Michaelines as a Deryni Order with several strongholds. Other Deryni orders include the Gabrilites, and the Varnarites.

Granted these institutions all suffered after 918 and the population of Deryni dispersed, but there must have been hundreds of trained Deryni. So your population of Deryni must be in the thousands. A 1% of a million people means a 10 000 strong population base.

True. I had forgotten to factor those in, so 1% is probably a closer to likely number, but still a very small segment of the population, so still consistent with what KK indicates (I think in Deryni Magic).

If modern medicine was coupled with the ability to knit flesh back together and repair wounds then medicine would possibly advance faster. The Healer ability to monitor a patient, coupled with modern diagnostics could really advance the knowledge in the field.

If the Deryni area  very small population and Healers rare, then they would be very sought after. A Hospital may only have a few, and operate as a training center as well.

Another thing to consider: in a modern society, life expectancy for humans is higher. Since Deryni are longer lived (barring accidents, Deryni burnings, and catastrophic illness) in general, and also have some greater resistance to illnesses (per Deryni Magic), that means their life expectancy is correspondingly higher as well.

So given a more modern "average life expectancy" of, say, 75 years, this means that a significant portion of the human population can expect to live well into their 80s and even 90s. A few might live into their early 100s, but hardly anyone lives past the age of 110.  A 100th birthday is a significant enough milestone that in our own world, one might receive a letter from the President (in the US) or the Queen (in the UK) to commemorate the occasion. 

So in a modern-day Deryni world, if the average human life expectancy is 75, what might the average Deryni life expectancy be? Maybe 90? Which means some very elderly Deryni who live well past the average lifespan might be around to see their 130th birthday, perhaps, before shuffling off this mortal coil.  Or at least their 125th. How does that impact healthcare? Pensions? Social security systems?

If the population is small and most people do not know of, or believe in the powers then you could go down the route of a Deryni Illuminati running things from behind the scenes. Mind Control of key people to ensure the best for the Deryni.

Another option is a small slave race kept locked up to provide the ruling elite the fruits of Deryni powers. Private Healers to keep the powerful healthy. Secret cadres of Deryni setting up Portal networks to provide fast hidden movement.

As for modern day and Portals. A plane can move 300 people. A Portal can move a handful, and needs Deryni operators. Once brute mechanics enters the field Portals shift to small important cargo. They can be used to supply bases in a pinch (as KK had them do in Camber of Culdi for example), but trucks can move a lot more material.

Yeah, I see more MerchantDeryni stories in the near future.... 

[MerchantDeryni]

Lol More Stories:  I am working on Adhan and using the Deryni as myth.Illuminati concept. It makes it easier than to try and figure out the rules for Mind Reading to solve crime.

And each concept requires an alternate universe. I scribbled down a story where Camberland searched all the way up the east coast of the U.S., Canada, Greenland, and back to the UK. I know the maps are different, but Google maps is all I have, and I wanted to see if it could be done.

I think it can if I recall.

My Camberland story universe would have Deryni as a powerful force in the world, and one possibly not well inclined towards the Old World.

And then you can extend KK's work into the present age and try and figure out how it might work.

[Evie]

LionRampant, somewhere on this forum I posted a link to an article about that 12th Century hospital archeological dig, but I can't find it at the moment.  Happy searching. LOL!  But I did happen across this interesting link while I was looking for that other post:

http://www.medievalists.net/2015/03/anglo-saxon-medicine-is-able-to-kill-modern-day-superbug-researchers-find/

MerchantDeryni, I once found a map of what Britain might have looked like in very early times, before the Channel filled in and the areas now covered with water were still populated by people moving from the Continent to the area that would later become Britain, and interestingly enough, that map bore a much closer resemblance to a map of Gwynedd than the modern day map of that region does.  If I can find that map again, I'll post it here. (I'm pretty sure I saved it somewhere. I might even have posted a link to it here on the forum, but I can't remember for sure now.)

[MerchantDeryni]

I just replotted the route to get from British Virgin Islands to London using Transfer Portals.

My rules were a single jump had to be less than 300 miles. I think it was actually you who gave me the 300 mile range on Portals years ago.
So assuming the same island locations (just for grins) the route would go
1 British Virgin Islands (Camberland),
2 East coast of Dominican republic,
3 West Coast of Haiti,
4 Grand Bahama
5 Daytona Beach
6 Charleston
7 Plymouth North Carolina
8 Philadelphia
9 Concord New Hampshire
10 Quebec City
11 Manic Cinq
12 Churchill Falls
13 Okak
14 Killiniq
15 NE of Iqaluit on the coast
16 Cape Dyer
17 Kangaamiut Greenland
18 Paamiut Greenland
19 East Coast Greenland
20 Breidavik Iceland
21 Hofn Iceland
22 Sandavagur Faroe islands
23 Crask Inn Scotalnd!
24 Kirkby Thore
25 London

So 25 Portals takes you halfway around the world. If you made 1 Jump per day it would take you 24 days. This isa ctually faster than boat back in the day. If each "Inn" had a Deryni living there whose job it was to transport people one Jump in the chain it would be possible to get from Camberland to Rhemuth in a few hours if each Inn Portal transported you in sequence. But that would need scheduling and planning.

This is the basis for a lot of my never seen Deryni Illuminati fanfic. Secret Deryni agents scuttling around the world making deals, shaping thoughts for the betterment of Camberland.   

[Evie]

Kelson evacuated Araxie and her family from the Ile d'Orsal to Rhemuth, and IIRC, they didn't make stops in between.  So the range is at least that distance, if not more. Eyeballing those points on my poster map, that does seem to be roughly 300-ish miles at best guess. So maybe I did say that and have long since forgotten that I did. LOL!

Also, Bishop Denis was also appointed to be an ambassador of sorts (can't remember what he was officially called) to Torenth when Liam-Lajos went back there for his coronation, yet presumably he didn't suddenly stop having official duties in Dhassa, so we can assume there was some amount of Portal travel back and forth between Dhassa and Beldour (and/or Torenthaly) as required for him to fulfill the various needs of his dual position.

[Laurna]

I have thought about Modern day Healers. First of all there, would be many more of them. The demand for their services in every hospital around the world would be see them as highly paid specialists. In the early centuries, seeing that most Healers are male, and there is a genetic fault to Healer's marrying other Healers, most men will likely marry into non-Healing Deryni families with the propensity to have many children. Over a thousand years this would cause nearly all Deryni families to have the Healing genes in there genetic makeup. So Healing can pop up in any family at any time. There will also be more female Healers. I proposed some time ago that the reason Female Healers had trouble getting pregnant was due to a hormone imbalance. This is something that modern medicine would know how to correct with supplemental hormones. So there are many more Healers in the Deryni Population in general. Not all Healers may choose to become a doctor, but with the high salary and the demand for their specialty, it would be hard to not become one.

In the hospital setting, Healers are used on the ER floor for trauma. and they are used in the Operating Room as surgeons and as closures. If all surgeries were Healed after the surgery was complete, than the months of rehab would no longer exist. The big pharmacy drug companies would not be big money makers either. The necessity for high-end pain medicine would be reduced. I can see non-healing Deryni working in the hospital setting too. They could be surgeons able to manipulate structures like broken bones with Telekinesis. Pulverize kidney stones or gallstones with just a psychic blast. Deryni could replace anesthesiologist to put patients to sleep and to monitor their vitals without drugs and costly machinery. A lot of Deryni might be in the research industry too, researching among many other things, genetics and gene splicing.

As it was said earlier, Modern Healers would know about bacteria, fungus, and Viruses. They might learn how to manipulate these germs into small Warded micro-bubbles that the body can expel through natural processes. Thus reducing an illness quickly.

We haven't talked about Wards yet in the modern setting. So many options with Warding. Warding in the hospital for quarantine purposes in general, but also to control germs in the body as I just mentioned. Warding to control cancer cells might be used until surgical options are available. Controlling the growth of a cancer from the moment it is found would be a huge benefit. Any trained Deryni could learn to do microscopic warding. A Ward could be set to allow red blood cells in and out, or oxygen in and out of the ward, but not the particulate that is being quarantined within the body Ward. So many options open up with micro wards.

I could go on and on with this.

[revanne]

Laurna, that is all utterly fascinating. I love the idea of warding being used to isolate cancers, but can you explain a bit more how that might work.

[Bynw]

Laurna, that is all utterly fascinating. I love the idea of warding being used to isolate cancers, but can you explain a bit more how that might work.

I know there is a story that KK wrote. It think it was basically a cancer that a character had and was healed by a Healer sometime after the destruction of St Neots. I think it is in Deryni Archives, the book.