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?
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.
Quote from: MerchantDeryni on September 06, 2018, 06:37:38 PM
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).
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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.)
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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?
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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.)
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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.
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.
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.
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.
It's true that we did lose a lot of our knowledge. There were some very impressive surgeries done before the dark ages.
Quote from: MerchantDeryni on September 06, 2018, 09:44:58 PM
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).
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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?
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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.... ;D ;D ;D
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.
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.)
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. 8)
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.
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.
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.
Quote from: revanne on September 07, 2018, 01:17:43 PM
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.
Quote from: Bynw on September 07, 2018, 02:05:02 PM
Quote from: revanne on September 07, 2018, 01:17:43 PM
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.
I think you're thinking of the story "Vocation," in which Gilrae d'Eirial, the heir to that estate, always wanted to be a priest but was not permitted because he was the oldest son, and then he sustains an injury (?) to his arm which causes a growth which causes neurological damage (weakness and pain in the affected arm), which is removed and the wound Healed by the Healer Simonn, whom we saw as a student Healer at St. Neot's either in
Deryni Magic or
Camber the Heretic or both.
ETA: And that story is indeed featured in the book
Deryni Archives. :D
Quote from: DesertRose on September 07, 2018, 02:28:32 PM
Quote from: Bynw on September 07, 2018, 02:05:02 PM
Quote from: revanne on September 07, 2018, 01:17:43 PM
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.
I think you're thinking of the story "Vocation," in which Gilrae d'Eirial, the heir to that estate, always wanted to be a priest but was not permitted because he was the oldest son, and then he sustains an injury (?) to his arm which causes a growth which causes neurological damage (weakness and pain in the affected arm), which is removed and the wound Healed by the Healer Simonn, whom we saw as a student Healer at St. Neot's either in Deryni Magic or Camber the Heretic or both.
ETA: And that story is indeed featured in the book Deryni Archives. :D
That would be the one. I thought it was in DA but don't have it at work to check. :)
IIRC in that story the growth was removed surgically by Simon (who appears elsewhere in a cameo as a trainee at St Neot's before its destruction, can't remember where) and the resultant wound was then healed normally. What I was wondering was how cancer cells or growths within the body could be isolated.
Quote from: Bynw on September 07, 2018, 02:05:02 PM
Quote from: revanne on September 07, 2018, 01:17:43 PM
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.
I remember that Bynw that was Gilrae Baron d'Eirial who had been injured. the injury grew into a cancer. The hermit Simon healed him. after Gilrae stepped down and interred the church becoming the Archbishop of Rhemuth in 995. I have him as a bishop in my fan fic "Pretender's Gambit" which is set in 983.
Revvane, my speculation on warding is thus. Wards act as a shield or a membrain that keep things from moving from one side to the other. Duel arcane wards appear to be the strongest. They allow nothing not magic, not physical things. Nothing from moving in either direction across the ward. I propose that they even keep air from moving across the ward being as that they are usually short duration wards. You blast the enemy until only one side is standing. There are magic wards that keep magic contained in the ward and to keep magic from entering the ward. But some wards are set so that the magic wielder inside the ward can still send out magical Rapport to another or to send magical scrying out to see things. The setter of the ward determines what can come and go through the ward.
When Alaric places the Wards Major around the sleeping Prince Kelson, he set the ward so that nothing magical or physical could pass within the ward to harm Keslon. The thing of it is, if oxygen could not pass through too, then all Clarissa had to do was simply detained Alaric long enough to allow Kelson to die by asphyxiation especially if Alaric was the only one who could release the ward. That doesn't happen, so air must be able to come and go. If large particles of air can be allowed through the ward then other substances can be identified when the ward is made to be allowed to penetrate maybe one direction but not the other. Germs can move into a micro ward, but they can not move out. A micro ward could be so small it travels through the blood stream pulling the one type of identified bad germ into it and maybe even destroying the germ when it gets in there. Then in time, the micro bubble is excreted from the body taking all the bad germs with it. Or perhaps substitute germs for all the mutated cancer cells to be pulled into the ward. It would have to take a Healer to heal the body as Mutated cancer cells are sucked up into the micro ward but that would be a far better Healing technique that what we have in our modern times.
Just speculating.
Quote from: revanne on September 07, 2018, 02:45:48 PM
IIRC in that story the growth was removed surgically by Simon (who appears elsewhere in a cameo as a trainee at St Neot's before its destruction, can't remember where) and the resultant wound was then healed normally. What I was wondering was how cancer cells or growths within the body could be isolated.
I'm not sure, as to whether cancer cells/tumors can be isolated by a modern-day Healer who would thus know more about microscopic-level body processes than the canon Healers did. But I like Laurna's speculations; I think it is possible that 21st C. Healers could in fact isolate or even remove/destroy malignant growths in a way that wouldn't have been possible, due to the medical/scientific research not existing yet, for the medieval-era Healers.
Thank you for clarifying that for me Laurna. Fascinating speculations thinking how healing might have progressed.
I would go so far to that there could be darker developments in "Healing". We have already seen, in canon, Rhys causing the appearance and symptoms of illness in Cinhil, while he was in his monastery cell. Right before they kidnapped him.
We already know that Blockers, a subset of Healers, can take away the powers of a Deryni. Making them human again. And there is almost no defense against this form of an attack.
But lets look at the mechanics of healing. It is the manipulation of living tissue at the cellular level. A healer touches an open wound and it closes in his wake.
Could someone with this gift harm an other?
Ignore things like religious devotions, as their were secular healers as well as religious. Ignore things like ethics. We have plenty of canon examples of Deryni without ethics of any kind.
Do no harm can be tossed out the window. It takes a good deal of discipline to follow that path anyway. If one lets their emotions and desires to rule their heart and mind. Then what does it matter.
And it is always easier to destroy than to create. Could a "healer" use that power of cellular manipulation to cause harm? A black ops assassin that gets behind enemy lines via a Transfer Portal. A "healer", if he is injured in the course of his mission he can heal himself. But once he reaches his target, then all he needs to do is touch them. And open a new wound as cells unravel beneath his finger tips.
Quote from: Bynw on September 07, 2018, 03:44:08 PM
I would go so far to that there could be darker developments in "Healing". We have already seen, in canon, Rhys causing the appearance and symptoms of illness in Cinhil, while he was in his monastery cell. Right before they kidnapped him.
We already know that Blockers, a subset of Healers, can take away the powers of a Deryni. Making them human again. And there is almost no defense against this form of an attack.
But lets look at the mechanics of healing. It is the manipulation of living tissue at the cellular level. A healer touches an open wound and it closes in his wake.
Could someone with this gift harm an other?
Ignore things like religious devotions, as their were secular healers as well as religious. Ignore things like ethics. We have plenty of canon examples of Deryni without ethics of any kind.
Do no harm can be tossed out the window. It takes a good deal of discipline to follow that path anyway. If one lets their emotions and desires to rule their heart and mind. Then what does it matter.
And it is always easier to destroy than to create. Could a "healer" use that power of cellular manipulation to cause harm? A black ops assassin that gets behind enemy lines via a Transfer Portal. A "healer", if he is injured in the course of his mission he can heal himself. But once he reaches his target, then all he needs to do is touch them. And open a new wound as cells unravel beneath his finger tips.
I think that set of points is exactly why the Gabrilites and Varnarites (and to a lesser extent, the Michaelines) were so adamant about Healer's ethics,
precisely because such power could be used in harmful/malicious ways.
If you'll recall, Rhys had quite a crisis of conscience after discovering his Blocking ability; he said something about having used his hands to Heal more times than he could remember but being afraid of the Blocking power and how he felt he might be holding the survival of the Deryni as a group in his hands.
Very true. But as Healers and Deryni grow in numbers in a modern age. There will be unethical ones. They will be far more common than in the time of Kelson and Camber. And some may do unethical things for King and Country, so doing harm to an enemy wouldn't be viewed as wrong. Especially during a war or conflict.
And of course given the Deryni ability to extract information. Power assumer's like the Haldane's and others might become more plentiful as well. Shields give you a fighting chance against Deryni mind reading.
Give Derry his power assumption ritual before sending him into Torenth. Changes the very nature of the game that way.
Also as noted before Transfer Portals would become more abundant in a Modern setting. Private Portals may still be rare as it takes more than 1 Deryni usually to make one. (See Camber) but public Portals could be more numerous in town squares or market places. Competition against more mundane form of travel. But long distance travel is still better by ships or planes than by Portal just due to the energy cost. Teleporting half way around the world is a bit tiring. Usable in a pinch but still not something one would do every day. And then cargo still would need to be shipped.
Fortunately 99.9999% of the population aren't sadistic psychos. Although, I admit that one in a hundred thousand can really do damage when they mean too. This is where parenting, training and learning morality is very important.
Quote from: Laurna on September 07, 2018, 04:49:15 PM
Fortunately 99.9999% of the population aren't sadistic psychos. Although, I admit that one in a hundred thousand can really do damage when they mean too. This is where parenting, training and learning morality is very important.
I totally agree. But the darkside of human nature is there none the less. And given all the powers of Deryni in one of them is a frighting possibility.
Hmmmm maybe there is a Dark Healer in Feyd's Order ... that would be ... fun.
Quote from: Laurna on September 07, 2018, 01:10:23 PM
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.
In Camber's day, this problem with female Healers certainly existed. Modern medicine and existing Healers might have dedicated themselves to find ways for more female healers to be born. (I would like this to be true, it doesn't necessarily mean it IS. Just a possibility I'm mentioning.) I would hope that Modern Healers are respected professionals, doing their best to find and train new young Healers as they are discovered. I really HOPE Deryni, and especially Healers are not enslaved by a ruling elite, at least not in most parts of Gwynedd and Torenth etc. Pretty bleak world view, there! And entirely too much of a parallel to the era of Alroy's regents and the Deryni sniffers. But it could well be an unfortunate situation in remote areas, and people wouldn't willingly go there, just as we wouldn't casually go to North Korea right now.
I think the advent of medical imagery, even ex-rays would be extremely helpful to modern Healers when it comes to what lies inside the body. As would their ability to dissect bodies more readily. Healers certainly got the benefit of the medical knowledge available during Camber's and Kelson's periods. As medical research advanced, so would theirs, and make the Healing arts work more efficiently and effectively all the time. Modern Healers would probably have to get the equivalent of an MD like human doctors, to help them in their work. One of my greatest peeves with the medieval church is all the knowledge from the ancient world that was lost due to the factors of fear, ignorance and possibly fanaticism. But it's best I don't dwell on that topic. Just remember that in our own world, medicine and science were far more advanced in Muslim countries and in Asia than they were in Europe during the medieval period.
Melissa
Shiral, I agree with you. In a modern setting, I can not imagine a culture where Healers are enslaved by the ruling class. First off, their would be too many of them. Second off, if a Healer could Block and he thought he was being mistreated by a Deryni over him. "Tweak" that person is not Deryni any more.not that Healers would ever let on that this ability exhausts but... it is a last chance protection for the Healer.
I think that just like modern day Doctors, Healers would be revered and would be making a very good pay check. Of course, just like modern day, the school loans to learn to be a Healing Doctor might be exorbitant. Making Healing Teachers rich and Healing students in debt for years. But that is another aspect of modern culture. It might be that lesser Healers who don't have quite the energy reserves of the high quality Healers turn to things like research and veterinarian work.
Laurna, for clarity I was responding to another point by another poster farther up the thread about that particularly dark vision of Gwyneddan society in the modern age, and not trying to imply that was what YOU said. I hope Gwynedd is more advanced and civilized!
Melissa
Scenario:
Professional sports team has a Healer on staff. Career ending injuries can be unmade. Training tempo is higher as the Healer keeps everyone healthy on a daily basis. Healer can demand a crazy salary as he/she keeps the million dollar players playing. This could extend careers, alter playoffs as injury and fatigue may be overcome.
Rehab clinic with a Healer has excellent results, even after human surgery.
Understanding of cellular processes with mdern medicine could well help a Healer understand the processes of cancer. this could allow for the removal/healing of cancerous growths as in the story.
I always come back to my favorite Alaric Morgan moment on topics such as this one. Any kind of power, any kind at all, can be used for good or ill. Fire, as in Morgan's example to Dhugal, can warm a cold room or cook food, or it can burn down a building. Hot irons can blind someone like Barrett or cauterize a wound (as Dhugal himself pointed out when Morgan mentioned Barrett's blinding). Psychic powers can help heal a penitent of their guilt (to which KK alluded in her discussion of Deryni priests in Deryni Magic) or can warp a person's mind into something very unlike the person they were or would like to be (as has recently been visited upon Washburn by Feyd in Ghosts of the Past). The ability to Heal can be used to ease pain and cure illness, or it can be used to cause pain.
It comes down to how one uses the power one has, and even people acting in good faith toward (what they see as) the greater good can screw up pretty freaking badly (e.g., a lot of Camber's behavior).
It's fascinating to contemplate and discuss. :D
What I will say, is that if one certain PC survives his ordeal, he will become an activist for person's rights against psychic abuse. And he may even become both justice keeper and Healer for said abuse cases. In modern Healing books he will be known as Sir Washburn Morgan, the Father of Psychic Healing. Heather from Balance of Power will have heard of him.
Sometimes that abuse of power and corruption happens over time. And not just over a single person's life time. But over decades and centuries too. As Deryni become more common place. Transfer Portals become more abundant, and one things of nothing about a Healer and the power they possess. And Deryni can bend minds as well as forks. Power corrupts it has been said. And it will corrupt Deryni too. It's always a battle to take the harder road of ethics and doing the right thing. The other path is far easier to walk.
So many things to comment on!
Medically - Europe went back hard at the end of the Middle Ages; as other posters have mentioned, contrary to propaganda the Medievals valued cleanliness highly. The various plagues such as the Black Death (which was wasn't even called that until centuries later) seems to have wiped out the cream of healers. Interestingly, this seems to have ended 'the age of miracles' - presumably most miracle workers died fighting the plague, with the result that the abilities could not be passed on, or where they were they weren't taught properly.
Police work - Katherine uses the importance of seal of confession in some of the books; other privacy issues would bubble up later. The ability to change memories might result in the Russian rule of a confession no longer counting as proof - that you believe that you committed a crime may make you the victim not the criminal
Transport - a fascinating use here is to put transfer portals into mines, so that in the event of a collapse deryni can port in and rescue all of the miners. Similarly they would be great for moving patients in hospitals.
We keep coming back to these 3 aspects. Medicine, Crime and Police, and Transport.
Yes these things would be revolutionized in a modern setting with Deryni populations. Healing would expand to be able to heal the things that Deryni in Kelson's time cannot. And surgeries, recovery, everything about a hospital stay would be drastically changed. The need for some drugs just wouldn't exist because the conditions could actually be cured.
Yes with the Deryni detectives. They could Truth-Read or even Truth-Say an individual. But would something like the US 5th Ammendment exist to prevent self criminalization? The right to remain silent can easily be broken with Truth-Saying. Privacy rights would need to be addresses as well with scrying abilities able to peer into your life. And of course pulling out a memory and displaying it to an open court, like what happend with Camber's canonization. Very scary indeed. There would have to be very strong laws and means of course would come into existance to detect the use of Deryni powers in an area.
Crimes could be commited by mind controlled individuals. They could be acquitted of course but then the man hunt would be on for the Deryni who did it. Crimes could also be committed with Telekinesis. Including crimes in a casino. Roll those bones and get that lucky shot and bet at the craps table. There again, a little mind reading can tell you if a card player is bluffing or not. Which brings us back to the need to be able to detect such uses of power.
Transfer Portals are great things. But distance is always a factor. Long distance jumps are dangerous and energy costing. Although I would personally believe in a high Deryni society that public transfer portals would exist. At least one in every major city. You need to go from Detroit to Chicago? There is a public portal in both locations. Learning them is very easy. And POOF you are there. Longer distances are better for more mundane means of travel. And of course cargo is better that way too. We have never seen a Transfer Portal with more than 3 persons, including the operator of the jump. So it is limited. But could be useful as a mine escape of course. But then you might have to have several in the mine as it grows. And that leads to the potential that someone uses it for personal gain, and robs the mine. Could be trapped of course since its a private portal, but non lethal.
Quote from: whitelaughter on September 10, 2018, 04:11:26 AM
So many things to comment on!
Medically - Europe went back hard at the end of the Middle Ages; as other posters have mentioned, contrary to propaganda the Medievals valued cleanliness highly. The various plagues such as the Black Death (which was wasn't even called that until centuries later) seems to have wiped out the cream of healers. Interestingly, this seems to have ended 'the age of miracles' - presumably most miracle workers died fighting the plague, with the result that the abilities could not be passed on, or where they were they weren't taught properly.
I'm probably about to go on a tangent here that might ought to go into a separate thread altogether--maybe one called "What Medieval Deryni Healers might logically have known" or something like that--but as you can probably tell from my previous posts on the topic, the subject of how so much ignorance managed to creep into the field of medicine by the Reformation period, when there are extant documents showing our medieval ancestors knew more than their 17th and early 18th Century descendants did in some aspects of the profession, has been a source of intrigued speculation to me for years.
But here are some quotes I happened upon last night from a book I am currently reading about medieval daily life (
Everyday Life in Medieval Times, by Marjorie Rowling) that help to illustrate the knowledge gap.
One bit of knowledge that seems clearly to have been lost along the way was the importance of good hygiene in addition to good bedside manner. From
Instruction for the Physician Himself we see this portrayal of an eleventh-century doctor, written by Constantinus Africanus, a teacher at the University at Salerno who was born in Carthage in the early eleventh century: "Let the physician have clean hands and well shapen nails, cleansed from all blackness and filth." The passage goes on to advise using comforting proverbs and good tales to make his patient laugh and 'induce a light heart to the sick man.'" Some other bits of advice from this book seem just as applicable today as when they were written. "Use three physicians still--first Dr. Quiet, next Dr. Merryman, and third Dr. Diet." And also "If you would health and vigour keep, shun care and anger ere you sleep. All heavy fare and wine disdain / From noonday slumber too, refrain. Each day to walk awhile you should, for this will work you naught but good. These rules obey and you will find / Long life is yours and tranquil mind." Not a bad bit of holistic advice there, and that much at least probably managed to get passed down to later generations, but sadly the handwashing and nail cleaning did not make the list of things that got passed down to later centuries of medical practitioners.
From a 1271 statute by the medical faculty of Paris, at a time when there was still a divide between the practices of surgery and medicine, and jealously guarded secrets within each branch (which, IMO, unfortunately helped lead to the future loss of knowledge when those who know the trade secrets were lost during the later epidemics): "Since certain manual operators do not know how to administer medicines or the relation which medicines have to disease, since those matters are reserved exclusively to the industry of the skilled physician...we strictly prohibit that any male or female surgeon, apothecary, or herbalist presume to exceed the limits of their craft, so that the surgeon engage only in manual practice, the apothecary or herbalist only in mixing drugs which are to be administered only by masters in medicine or by their license." What fascinates me about this is the mention of female surgeons. We know that in the 1200s, the University at Salerno still permitted women to be physicians (and it would seem from this passage, there were also female surgeons), which makes sense because even in that more gender segregated time period, they recognized the need for female doctors for female patients. Yet in later centuries this would become a profession that women were barred from until the late 1800s, IIRC. Women were still permitted to be midwives by the early 1800s, but they weren't going to medical schools.
Contrary to popular belief, the Church did not make dissection entirely illegal in the Middle Ages, although they did restrict the practice to a limited number of allowed dissections a year. Since the number of people allowed to view each dissection was also limited, and a student who had seen one dissection could not see another one carried out that same year, that also cut down on how many physicians and surgeons got a practical knowledge of anatomy in their university studies. Of course, this was inadequate, but that ruling was in part due to some backlash against the practice that developed during the Crusades of boiling the dead so that only their bones would have to be carried back home for burial. The Church, rightly or wrongly, thought that practice of desecrating a corpse (as it viewed it) for convenience's sake was abusive and therefore tried to restrict it, and the statutes passed as a result ended up spilling over into over-regulation of the disposal of corpses for dissection purposes. So while that over-regulation hampered efforts to learn more about anatomy and teach it to medical students, that seems to have been more of an unintended consequence than a primary goal.
We have extant Roman era surgical tools used for cataract surgery, for trepanning to relieve pressure inside the skull after a head injury, and they seemed to be fairly well versed in treating what we would call sports injuries, and some of that knowledge seems to have continued on into at least the earlier Middle Ages. Plastic surgery was known in at least some crude form; here is a description of a nose reconstruction done from a skin graft taken from the patient's upper arm in 1456: "And he inserted the remains of the mutilated nose into the skin of the upper arm, and bound them up so tightly the man could not even move his head. After 15-20 days, Branca [Antonio Branca, the younger of a father/son pair of plastic surgeons in that period] little by little cut open the bit of flesh that adhered to the nose and reformed it into nostrils with such skill that the eye could scarcely detect where it had been joined on, and all facial deformity was completely removed. Branca healed many wounds which it seemed that no resource of medical art could cure."
In the 14th Century, Guy de Chauliac describes the use of anesthesia. "Some surgeons prescribe medicaments such as opium, the juice of the morel, hyoscyamus, mandrake [aka mandragora], ivy, hemlock, lettuce, which send the patient to sleep so that the incision may not be felt. A new sponge is soaked in the juice of the above and dried in the sun; before use water is added to the sponge then held under the patient's nose until he goes to sleep." That all sounds far preferable to just getting drunk and biting down on something to help with the pain! Guy de Chauliac is also one source of our modern knowledge of the forms of plague that swept through Europe in the mid-1300s, having come down with it himself and been one of the lucky survivors.
So to attempt to drag this little tangent kicking and screaming back to the original discussion topic, in addition to Deryni Healers having some advantages regular physicians, no matter how well trained, would have lacked because of their inability to use magic, how might having Deryni in the population have helped to preserve medical knowledge over the passing centuries, despite various epidemics, periods of persecution, and natural disasters occasionally wiping out at least some of the best trained members of the various health-related professions? I would think even in a world that had dedicated Healing guilds, teaching orders, etc., perhaps by Kelson's day there would be enough of a lesson learned by the near-eradication of trained Healers that from that point on, there would be a concerted effort to preserve such knowledge as they managed to relearn from ever being lost again, no matter what. And that would have the eventual result in a modern-day Deryni society of having more advanced medical knowledge than we have, not just because of the natural advantages having a population of magical Healers would bring to the medical field, but also because they wouldn't have had to "reinvent the wheel" since the formation of the Kelsonian-era schola(s) of the early 1100s! Knowledge would just keep adding onto a foundation of earlier knowledge starting from that point forward, with little if any slippage back to a period of ignorance. (And what makes the Reformation even more maddening to me is that it was a period that prided itself on its superiority to the society that preceded it, even though in some ways it was so clearly
not superior, yet that misconception still colors a lot of modern people's ideas of what the "backwards Middle Ages" was like. Modern historians are just now beginning to gain a greater appreciation of the Middle Ages now that we have a greater ability to study its writings and other artifacts directly.
Nice Evie, that is good information.
Archbishop Duncan will go down in history as the founding Father of the Kelsonian Schola of Healing and Medicine.
In some ways the Reformation Era was more backward and intolerant than the eras that preceded it. So it was the 16th and 17th centuries, not the middle ages, which saw the burning of large numbers of women as witches.(There is a fascinating though not strictly relevant line of research which suggests that the suspicion of wise women grew as the -strictly male- professionalisation of knowledge developed) In England witchcraft itself was not a crime until 1536, prior to that one was prosecuted for the crime that was alleged to have been committed by means of witchcraft i.e. If someone was accused of killing someone else by witchcraft they were tried for murder not witchcraft.
I think the medieval church often gets blamed for atrocities the guilt for which rightly belongs to the early modern church - that would be true of the awful things you saw in South and Central America, Laurna. I'm not in any way seeking to justify them but to suggest that our view of the middle ages has been skewed by the view prevalent over the last few centuries that things must of necessity be getting better. The doctrine of progress whuch CS Lewis criticised as chronological snobbery.
Not sure if this rant belongs here -apologies if not. I think where it might be relevant is to suggest that modern Deryni would not necessarily be more ethical than their medieval predecessors.
Thanks for those quotes Evie! Very useful.
It's worth noting that the Reformation could never have taken off unless people remembered the church being far less corrupt. While the Reformers naturally focused on failings in doctrine, failures in practical matters would have been occurring at the same time. While it is easy - and encouraged - to look down on our ancestors' knowledge, it's worth noting any of them would have had an understanding of many fields only matched by a handful of experts now. People who slaughter animals for food will have a far better of anatomy than those of us who get meat from the butchers, who live without artificial light will know the heavens better than we do (snap quiz - do you even know what the phase of the moon is tonight?)
I've always felt a lot of sympathy for Camber's grief over not being a healer - I suspect that in the modern era many Deryni would be exploring just what medical possibilities were available with their 'ordinary' abilities. Imagine a cross between a Transfer Portal and a CAT scan that was used to teleport items out of a patient without surgery - anything from growths to hydatid cysts to bullets to items that should never have been taken internally. I've always thought that Deryni shields should be adjustable to surround the skeleton, allowing an emergency splinting of broken bones - very useful in an emergency.
Also, there is a tendency to think of the medieval world as consisting only of Europe, which wasn't true then and certainly isn't true now. There was more communication (trade, diplomacy, etc.) between medieval Europe and north Africa and southwest Asia (aka the Middle East) than a lot of folks think (because it's largely omitted from standard history books). The Muslim world of the early second millennium (by Western reckoning) was making some incredible advances in math and science (particularly but not exclusively, medical science).
Spain particularly (especially before the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella) had a lot of Arabic/Muslim influence (and there are still a lot of loanwords in Spanish from Arabic), but also many of the city-states that comprise modern Italy (Venice was a trade powerhouse for quite some years, and they weren't the only ones) had diplomatic and trade relations with the Ottoman Empire and various other rulers in north Africa.
We see this in canon to a degree, in regards to Azim, Richenda, Rothana, and Sofiana all being some degree of related to one another and all having some sort of Moorish ancestry, and also al-Rasoul, for the other side of the Gwynedd/Torenth border. Azim and the Knights of the Anvil are probably the best resource Kelson, Duncan, and Rothana have at their disposal for Deryni-related history and knowledge.
I like whitelaughter's idea of being able to excise growths and foreign bodies from a patient without surgery and the shield/splint idea is fascinating! It reminds me of the time during The Quest for Saint Camber when Dhugal lifts Kelson's skull fracture to reduce the pressure on the king's brain, which frankly may well have saved Kelson's life.