Other Lands

[Alkari]

In that regard I disagree with KK in her assessment of Portal Use in Deryni Magic.  She wrote that the networks were declining.

I haven't got my copy of Deryni Magic to hand, but think you may be misinterpreting KK's comment. 

On my reading of DM, she was not commenting on the possible future use of portals or a portal network, but making a statement of fact - that at the time of her books (the latest at that stage being QFSC), the networks were in decline.   Which is perfectly true.

At the start of the first Camber trilogy, there was an ecclesiastical network of portals between cathedrals and the various sees; there were also portals in various key monasteries and training establishments, as well as private portals.  But as we see, the persecutions of the Deryni resulted in some portals being destroyed (e.g. St Neot's), some were secured in various ways (Evaine securing their family one), and the location of others was forgotten as the numbers of Deryni declined and those who may have had the knowledge of portal locations either died or left Gwynedd.   For obvious reasons, the remaining Deryni would have had to be extremely careful about their portal use and would not readily disclose private portal locations unless very sure of the person to whom they were giving the details. 

Don't forget that Loris and his predecessors had many anti-Deryni supporters and spies.  Even the very slightest hint that someone had apparently been seen in place X when he was known to be in place Y would have caused suspicions and could have brought down the wrath and full investigative force of the Church.   Even in KKB, Kelson was a little wary of openly using portal transfer.

After the time of KKB, the situation will probably change very gradually, as Deryni become more accepted (we assume!) and there is a re-birth and expansion of Deryni knowledge.  But that will be a gradual process and it will be a while before portal use becomes more common and more accepted. 

[MerchantDeryni]

hmm, I reread pg 96 of Deryni Magic and she wrote that even in Camber's time the ecclesiastical network was declining.  Personally I take this to mean that secular networks were growing as people used them for personal uses, not as a means by which the Chruch and its member organizations could stay in contact.

Of course I am biased towards Transfer Portal use, I think that their construction is the most Deryni thing the Deryni can do.  Even Arilan points that out in High Deryni it is Happily one of the talents not totally lost.  Reading WAY too much into that let us look at why portal knowledge is not lost.

It provides a fast escape route in times of trouble.  This is something every Deryni would want.  It worked for Camber and folks in the first series, and Arilan used one built in a  tent to bring in the Camberian Council.

It is easy to do, relatively speaking.  Arilan used a few untrained Deryni and walked them through it telepathically, and used the humans as batteries.  While it takes a huge amount of energy it can be taught in moments, and a portal only takes moments to make.  The description of the process is described in High Deryni.  They ward the area, link minds, then lights, wind, energy drain and a portal is there.  Prep time and ceremony takes less than an hour from the description.  Sure everyone sleeps till midnight, but the portal is instantly accessible.  Arilan could teleport to the Council chambers and pass on the coordinates.

So in a secular system a team could install portals and one person could jump back to the last base (where more people are waiting), teach coordinates, or jump a person back to the new portal.  Then the maker goes to bed, (drop the wards first). 

The new person learns the portal, jumps back and brings in a new person. Wash rinse repeat. 

The more I read about them the more I like the Camberland scenario, or private trade networks.

Everyone is tired, and would need a day's rest, but even if a single team if people made a single portal a week that would be 52 portals a year. 

[Alkari]

A different interpretation of DM then     But the impression I got from the chapter on TPs and the appendix where known or suspected ones are listed, is that their existence and use was not nearly as widespread as you apparently want it to be.

We know that some Deryni had and still have private portals, or at least ready access to a portal e.g. members of the Camberian Council, but of course, not all CC members were from Gwynedd.   As we saw in KKB, the Hort of Orsal has one, but he keeps that pretty much a family secret for safetly reasons, as he explains.   But I'd have to say that portal use even in Camber's time cannot have been that widespread, because otherwise all the Deryni could have simply escaped via portal - and we know from the number of killiings that they didn't.   Known Deryni were attacked at their homes and their friends' places and likely destinations were watched: if it was as simple to escape via TP as you suggest, Evaine for example would not have had that terrible flight from Caerrorie. 

And of course, during the persecutions, many private portals may have been destroyed or blocked in some way, as Evaine did, meaning that their future use was limited. In other cases the location of the portal(s) would have been lost, as those with the knowledge of their location die, escape elsewhere, or other circumstances cause a loss of knowledge.   See the situation in Coroth, for example - it's hhighly likely that Duke Stiofan did have a portal there, but if so, no one now knows where it is.  Same with the MacRorie family portal which Evaine closes to all but members of the family: the portal probably still exists, but no one now knows where it is, plus it can only be used by family members or their descendants. 

I agree with you that portal use has potential, but from what we have seen so far in KK's world, the persecutions, anti-Deryni hatreds, and overall loss of knowledge has not allowed that potential to be realised at this stage. 

[MerchantDeryni]

Oh my bias in favour of increasing portal use is completely personal.  I like the idea and if I could make them I would make as many as I could.   it also makes for nasty edged stories (which I thend to write).  It provides teh Deryni a few key advantages over human rivals,  movement of people, goods and information.

In my Istanbul to Paris example that I gave in another thread.  there are 200 miels between istanubl and Paris.  Let's assume you have 11 portals, 200 miles apart.  Each portal house has 1 Deryni operative.

At 8 am the Deryni in House 1 (Istanbul) gets up, collects the notes of the days happenings from the day before, puts in in a mailbag and puts that in a bag with 50 pounds of spices headeing west.  He jumps to house 10 and puts the spice bag down, picks up a satchel containing mail heading eastward as well as 50 pounds of trade goods heading east and he jumps back east to Istanubul.  he spends the rest of the day collecting information on events in the area nad making notes to send west.

House 10 picks up the spices and mail, pulls out any notes addressed for him and jumps to house 9 where he does the same routine and returns to house 10.

If every house does this in sequence a satchel of 50 pounds of spices (worth between 1 and 3 years pay depending on which time period you are modeling things on) takes about an hour to get from Istanbul to Paris.  Return trade goods and messages take 10 days to get to istanbul.

Like in the trade portal thread, the incentives to having and maintaining a portal are fantastic.  I know I am reading way too much into it, it is the deus in the machina as KK said, but I like to take ideas like that and play around with stories.

I would think that once the persecutions began anyone knowing how to make a portal would tell other Deryni how to do it, and even if it was a portal from the basement to an open area in the hills nearby, there would be an interest in having an escape hatch.  Linking homes for economic benefit is just my Illuminati conspiracy group concepts coming out.

Personally I would love to work for an hour a day and split a years salary 11 ways, make a months pay every day.  Woot! .

[Evie]

Oh my bias in favour of increasing portal use is completely personal.  I like the idea and if I could make them I would make as many as I could.  it also makes for nasty edged stories (which I thend to write).  It provides teh Deryni a few key advantages over human rivals,  movement of people, goods and information.

True.  Though if you're going to write stories with realistic consequences, keep in mind that if you give Deryni so much of an advantage over their human rivals that it can't help but be noticed, remarked upon, and become a cause for envy and increased hatred, that will only exacerbate the existing rivalry and conflict between the two races.  I suspect one reason KK downplays the Portal technology in her novels and only has her Deryni use them in extreme need (and with lots of caveats like "they take lots of energy and advanced training to make, they're exhausting to use for more than a few hops in a day, they have to be kept hidden from humans, they can put Deryni at risk just as easily as delivering them from harm, etc.")  is that so many humans already hate and fear the Deryni and wish them dead; she doesn't want to throw more gasoline on that fire and have the entire human race cheerfully wanting to annihilate the entire Deryni race down to the last half-trained man, woman, and child.  

It's sort of like in gaming, if you give a character a lot of strengths, that can make for some interesting story capabilities, but if you don't balance those with some weaknesses as well, you risk "god-modding," which ultimately makes the campaign's storyline less interesting, if your players (or in the case of a story, your readers) start to get the idea that "Oh well, no problem, we've got ____ power going for us, so everything's an easy fix...."

So if Camberland is going to have a superabundance of Transfer Portals compared to the Eleven Kingdoms, that's all well and good, but you might want to give some thought to what the downside of that development is going to end up being.  Because realistically, there would be some sort of downside, and probably even a few major ones.  (And besides, stories are more fun to read when things aren't always going swimmingly for the characters, and when some of the "advantages" they think they have end up somehow making them want to snatch out their hair!   )

[Alkari]

Though if you're going to write stories with realistic consequences, keep in mind that if you give Deryni so much of an advantage over their human rivals that it can't help but being noticed, remarked upon, and become a cause for envy and increased hatred, that will only exacerbate the existing rivalry and conflict between the two races.

What Evie says. 

I assume Camberland has some existing native inhabitants?  If so, how are they going to react to this 'supernatural' race?  Sure, they may eventually want to trade - but are they going to be happy at the long-term invasion of their lands?   A shipload of Deryni isn't that many people, and they really can't afford too much loss of life.  Don't forget that your Camber refugees don't have the advantage of gunpowder for their weapons, and that makes any battles far more balanced.   Magical powers can only deflect arrows if there is time to wield them, and aren't much use in an ambush.  They dont protect you against poison or knives to the throat either. 

You may be lucky to have enough Deryni left to build any TPs at all, let alone develop a network   

[MerchantDeryni]

Well I have thought about having the diseases of the medieval world wipe out the natives, simliar to the devastation caused by the Spanish explorers in central america.

As for medieval technology trying to conquer the U.S. (yes I am using google maps again   )  Tough to do, it would be tough going, although.... oddly enough, when iron tech is all you have, it is easy to replicate.  A sword is easier to make than a firearm, so local manufacture could create a fairly decent 10th century tech level fairly easily, as opposed to local manufacture trying to create a 15th or 16th century level of existence.

The disease issue reduces native threat to the newcomers (convenient for my story purposes).  If I had Native diseases wipe out all the Deryni it would make for a short story. lol

I have some good books on local manufacturing and the medieval economy. So if I conveniently place iron ore and coal nearby a smithy and forge could be fairly easily built.

Horses are a problem.  I was figuring a 4 month journey, and not sure how many they could have packed onboard.  Same issue for cows/cattle or oxen.  Chickens I can see making the voyage.

Going back to (and harping on) the use of portals.  The story I posted just showed a grim side of 'evil' Deryni magic, and to be honest there is nothing in any of KK's books that I can recall that says using a portal can cause death to a human.  I threw in the energy drain power system for portal usage to show just how nasty a Deryni could be, and that given a trade advantage, it would indeed be a cost of doing business to scan a slave pen, take the one with the spark and kill him in order to get 3 years worth of money.  It is the Magical equivalent of the Drug Lords throwing away a Cessna every night that cost  $200,000 to smuggle in a million or two dollars worth of cocaine. (Although I have heard that this is an urban legend, but it would still make economic sense.)

Exploring a continent: Assume 20 men, 8 in advance party, a dozen men in a warehouse in town.  the advance party has horses and a couple of pack mules.  They travel very light, only a coupld of weeks of food.  They ride/explore and when they run low on food they pick a spot, make a portal (needs 7 as in the High Deryni example), and they link to the warehouse portal.  1 explorer goes back, passes on the new coordinates and the support team comes through, bringing gear and supplies through with them.  You would not have the Donner party scenario. 

Portals remove logistical constraints, I've set a 50 pound limit because that is a number I figured could be stuffed into a backpack.  KK had the Refuge for the Michaelines house all the Michaelines for  a year and be supplied by portal.  That would be tonnes of food brought in.

My ideas on portal use and prevalence are not canon, not supported by anything she has written, but I like the idea, I think it's fun.  I think it makes sense given the ease with which portals could be made, and the rewards to those who actually do make the network with trade, or exploration in mind. 

I just find it interesting to think about a Deryni culture or a human/Deryni culture that does not forget its magical abilities or roots, and preserves the knowledge.  It knows it is magic and accepts it, and uses it.  For those that don't like the idea of a portal centric Deryni culture, well, don't read the story. 

The exploring

[Evie]

Exploring a continent: Assume 20 men, 8 in advance party, a dozen men in a warehouse in town.  the advance party has horses and a couple of pack mules.  They travel very light, only a coupld of weeks of food.  They ride/explore and when they run low on food they pick a spot, make a portal (needs 7 as in the High Deryni example), and they link to the warehouse portal.  1 explorer goes back, passes on the new coordinates and the support team comes through, bringing gear and supplies through with them.  You would not have the Donner party scenario. 

What, no starving Deryni stuck on a mountain pass in winter, turning cannibalistic and challenging each other to Duels Arcane to determine which one(s) get the right to eat the other's flesh?  Dang, I'm almost disappointed!  I'm scared to think what that says about me....   

[Evie]

Horses are a problem.  I was figuring a 4 month journey, and not sure how many they could have packed onboard.  Same issue for cows/cattle or oxen.  Chickens I can see making the voyage.

I'm fairly sure the Jamestown settlers, not to mention others, must have figured out the logistics of this.  Maybe you could dig up some research that tells how many they were able to transport at a time, and then modify if needed for smaller, more medieval than Renaissance sized ships?

Exploring a continent: Assume 20 men, 8 in advance party, a dozen men in a warehouse in town.  the advance party has horses and a couple of pack mules.  They travel very light, only a coupld of weeks of food.  They ride/explore and when they run low on food they pick a spot, make a portal (needs 7 as in the High Deryni example), and they link to the warehouse portal.  1 explorer goes back, passes on the new coordinates and the support team comes through, bringing gear and supplies through with them.  You would not have the Donner party scenario. 

My original thought on this, before your reference to the Donner Party brought out my inner ghoul, was a Lost Colony ("Croatan") scenario that popped into my head the moment I read the bit about one explorer going back and passing on the coordinates.  It would be an interesting snag if that one guy went back for the support team, only to find them all gone, mysteriously vanished, with only one cryptic clue left behind to hint at what happened to them....   

But yeah, I'm all about the throwing interesting obstacles in my characters' way until they want to ambush me in a dark alley.   I realize your mileage may vary.   

[Evie]

This page references the transport of cattle to the New World, and also some of Columbus' travel times:

http://purecorriente.com/_wsn/page3.html

Given skilled enough weather working, Deryni might be able to make slightly better time, though you'd also have to consider other factors, such as ocean currents, that they might have even less control over.

[Alkari]

So - you happily wipe out the nasty natives by disease, meaning there is little or no sustained opposition, and you 'conveniently' locate coal and iron nearby so your settlers can make weapons and other equipment.  

Are you also going to provide suitably benign weather, make sure their crops never fail and they never nearly starve to death?   Do none of them ever die unti old age, or the community as a whole get inbred?   After all, if you've killed off the natives, there's no opportunity for intermarriage, and there are no other ships following with new settler blood.

Your proposed exodus is interesting, but if you make things too easy and convenient, perhaps you should call it Camelot, not Camberland!   

[MerchantDeryni]

Thanks for the cattle transport link!

I thought of the disease on contact from the influence in the last month of watching the Andromeda Strain twice, having a conversation about the book "The Hot Zone", and reading Pillars of the earth again in which mention is made of how often people got sick (and how after the fire there was less sickness, and fewer rats about, not that the character put the two things together).  So I was in the mondset that people in the era would be covered in disease.

Ive also been reading a book on biochar by Albert Bates, and there is a chapter in the book about how massive the disease effect may have been on teh central American population.  So I am really primed for putting an epidemic or three into anything I write right now.  , also zombies (I read World war Z again),

hmmm, zombies and Deryni...   (Stop that! it's silly)

Iron and coal, There is an Iron bog next to Jamestown virginia, concentrated extraction was started less than 2 years after the settlers landed.  They used charcoal originally, there being a huge forest that had to be cleared anyway.  I tossed in the coal because I thought coal was everywhere in virginia, but I was wrong.  The closest  is a coal seam 343 miles or so west of Jamestown, in I kid you not, Pocohantas virginia, site of the first exploited coal seam in Virginia.  So I will have to stick with charcoal.  oops, my bad.
http://www.dmme.virginia.gov/dmm/orphaned%20land.shtml
http://www.miningartifacts.org/Virginia-Mines.html

My bad for not checking into mining before I posted thoughts on how the colony could develop.


Crops never failing: well I mentioned Deryni weather magic to get to the new world, so I guess beneficial weather magic may be possible for agriculture, thanks for the suggestion! Actually, that may be the biggest edge a magical culture has, stability of production of food.  Thanks Alkari, you've given me more to think about.

The marriage of newcomers and Natives: I did mention the healers helping with the disease. This would improve relations (as long as the native do not equate newcomers with plague), and offer the chance for survivors on both sides to marry and mingle.

The intellectual exercise in Camberland is having a population of Deryni and humans that USES all the magic at their disposal.  Everything mentioned in the entire series in one spot, used daily because without the magic the enterpirse is doomed.  Communication medallions to keep towns in touch, portals to move needed goods from one outpost to another, to help keep all explorers alive because they need the information and cannot risk folks.  Mixed marriages to spread the Deryni blood around since each Deryni gifted person is another person who can take up the mantle of doing the extraordinary in Service to Everyone else. KK uses magic as plot points to drive her story and provide a means of creating or solving a situation.  I'm going the opposite way and looking at what might be made if it was used in a much more industrial/pedestrian way.


The other reason for the die off is to prevent the cry of 'there is no way the natives would not have overrun the newcomers, as they did to the vikings back in the day, and almost did to several new colony sites in the new world.  Without firearms the Camberlanders are on a much closer level of technology, and I used disease as the levelling force. Personally I thought it answered the biggest threat to the suspension of disbelief, they could easily get besieged and wiped out.  I shifted the date of landing to allow some crops to be grown, had one of the ships to have fishing gear so the offshore resources could be exploited (which the natives could not do on that scale).

I'm Canadian,and thought of puting the colony close to the cod.  But I decided to go to warmer climes.  Cod was why Canada was founded, there was fish to feed the world forever. Sadly that lasted until the late 80's and the cod is now on the endangered list and the massive cod stocks will likely never come back.  WAtch "End of the Line". a scary documentary on fishing.


Of course I am doing all these mental gymnastics to allow Deryni to land on the U.S.  While it makes it easy to use google maps to describe terrain and find out what resources there are to exploit, I could easily say that Camberland is a different country and put iron and coal where I want it.  I'm just doing the entire story and threads to look at how different things would be if there was magic in the world. 

[Evie]

There's not an absolute need to tie the geography of your new world directly to the real life New World unless you are choosing to do so just for convenience, such as to ensure your distribution of resources remains plausible (such as not having two minerals mined together that are unlikely to be found in the same area in nature).  After all, the shapes and geographic layout of the Eleven Kingdoms in no way parallels our real life Europe.

[Alkari]

I thought of the disease on contact from the influence in the last month of watching the Andromeda Strain twice, having a conversation about the book "The Hot Zone", and reading Pillars of the earth again in which mention is made of how often people got sick (and how after the fire there was less sickness, and fewer rats about, not that the character put the two things together).  So I was in the mondset that people in the era would be covered in disease.

Don't forget that Deryni Healers cannot cure disease as such - unless of course you are going to vastly expand all the powers we have seen so far in the books.   So even your migrants are likely to be dying off from 'normal' ailments, not to mention childbirth and all the many ills of childhood.  And in such a small colony, the death of any person would be a tragedy in more ways than normal, because it could represent the loss of key skills and knowledge, or else the next generation.

Weather working - that takes time and resources, if you are going to manage the weather all the time.  Do sufficient number of your Deryni have that skill?  Can they hold off big winter storms?  Or torrential rains?   Or the occasional hurricane?   What would happen if their experienced weather workers died?

The marriage of newcomers and Natives: I did mention the healers helping with the disease. This would improve relations (as long as the native do not equate newcomers with plague), and offer the chance for survivors on both sides to marry and mingle.

I think that is a very big "IF":  see my comment above re the Deryni abilities (or their lack) to heal disease.   Would merely being able to render medical assistance for injuries issomehow make up for invasion of the natives' lands and the loss of their livelihoods and living?   You also assume that the natives don't have a 'shoot first and ask questions later' attitude, and are willing to have any contact with your settlers.  

You also need to think about the limitations imposed by having a single refugee ship.  Are all the people onboard going to be Deryni?  What about the crew?  Are they going to be humans, or have your refugees in a very short time been able to scrounge up an all Deryni group of sailors?   EVen with weather working, you'll need a crew!  And check the limitations of ship size - how many people and livestock can you fit on one ship?  They'll need to take feed for both people and animals, not to mention all the equipment and stores needed to found a colony.   That very much limits the number of people you can carry, and you seem to be proposing that even with this small number, they have all the necessary skills in that small group.  Do they have miners to get your coal and iron ore, for example?

The following is an extract from the link Evie provided:-

Columbus had been made Admiral of the Ocean Sea and Governor of the Indies. His task was to colonize the land he had claimed for the Spanish crown. The seventeen ships with him carried everything needed to become self-sufficient, including cattle. Because of the small size of the ships, the number of animals must have been limited. Not only would the ship have carried cattle, it would also have had to carry all the feed and water necessary for the journey. From Spain to the Canary Islands was a voyage of 900 miles, taking 4 to 8 days. From the Canaries to the East Indies was 2,500 miles, taking an average of 60 days. Columbus's second voyage took a record 22 days from the Canary Islands to Hispaniola. Other crossings would not have been so fortunate and the death loss must have been high.

Note that Columbus had seventeen ships, not just one!  The First Fleet to Botany Bay in Australia had eleven ships - and the early colony there very nearly starved to death because the land was so different and difficult, with crops failing, cattle escaping into the bush or being speared by natives, etc.

Even with the settlement at Jamestown, the Virginia Company sent ships to follow those first settlers within a year, bringing additional resources in terms of people and equipment.  Your lone Deryni refugee ship scenario doesn't have that luxury - from what you have said, they put the expedition together in relative secrecy (a story in itself, surely!) and no one knew where they were going.  They just sailed off into the sunset, never to be seen or heard from again by the people in Gwynedd, so there was no prospect of rescue or supplementation.   As far as basing things on Jamestown, I seem to recall the previous colony at Roanoke failing and vanishing, and again, the colony at Roanoke was established with multiple ships.   I can't see your expedition having more than two ships at the most, because otherwise the preparations would come to the notice of Church authorities, who might be just as happy to kill the would-be colonists anyway and not waste a valuable ship on a few hated Deryni

The intellectual exercise in Camberland is having a population of Deryni and humans that USES all the magic at their disposal.  Everything mentioned in the entire series in one spot, used daily because without the magic the enterpirse is doomed.  Communication medallions to keep towns in touch, portals to move needed goods from one outpost to another, to help keep all explorers alive because they need the information and cannot risk folks.  Mixed marriages to spread the Deryni blood around since each Deryni gifted person is another person who can take up the mantle of doing the extraordinary in Service to Everyone else. KK uses magic as plot points to drive her story and provide a means of creating or solving a situation.  I'm going the opposite way and looking at what might be made if it was used in a much more industrial/pedestrian way.

I understand and appreciate the intellectual exercise you are proposing, but I'm getting no sense of any difficulties or problems in the scenarios you outline, nor any sense that your little colony is anything other than perfectly internally harmonious.  Personality clashes can provide just as much danger to a small isolated community as any external dangers.   Do any of your colonists wish they had never come?  Do any want to return, perhaps to known lands where the Deryni are not persecuted?   Would any of them rather have sailed around to Byzantyum rather than across the sea?   Are there humans amongst them - see above?   Healers were relatively uncommon even in the very good times in Gwynedd, so I don't know that your colonists would be able to gather more than a couple to go with them.   What would happen if one of them suffered a tragic and 'senseless' accident as we saw with Rhys Thuryn?  Or something happened to the only person in your group with certain other essential skills and talents, whether those were basic human skills or Deryni?   As we see from the books, Deryni magic can't solve everything, so when you write the story, you need to make sure that you don't give the impression that all is sweetness and light, that they have landed in the proverbial  'land of milk and honey', and that all your settlers have to do is sit around and work on developing magical applications for day to day life.  

Like I said, you've got a good and interesting proposition, but make sure you provide a realistic Camberland and its community, and not a Camelot / Utopia.   

[Alkari]

By the way, there are also apparently some interesting studies about the effect of isolation on communities and their level of technology.  We are talking thousands of years ago, and thus 'stone age' technology and knowledge, but some studies of Australian indigenous populations isolated on large islands apparently indicate that the long term effect of isolation from other groups was to eventually reduce their level of of technology in comparison to the much larger populations on the mainland.  This was over a long period of course, but the island populations were much larger than your proposed refugee community.

I know you are proposing a community where the knowledge and use of magic increased while they were isolated from the Deryni communities back in the Eleven Kingdoms and adjacent lands, but have you considered whether in some respects the effect might be the opposite?  With no new Deryni arrivals for hundreds of years, wouyld your community actually be more likely to mark time or even go backwards in terms of magical knowledge?  Or will they develop some skills but lose others?  

Look at the isolated community at St Kyriells.   Certainly they wanted to remain hidden to escape persecution, but although it seems that they have preserved much of the magical knowledge from Camber's time, they may not in fact have expanded it in any way.  ETA:  look at the fall of the Roman empire and the tremendous loss of knowledge there.  That was a big empire, yet the lights went out remarkably quickly: look at England after the departure of the Roman legions and their communities.  In the West, it took more than a thousand years to replicate some technological aspects of Roman society, not to mention Western society's practices in fields such as medicine.

If you only have limited space for livestock on one (or even two) refugee vessels, especially larger ones such as horses and cattle, you have a dangerously small and vulnerable pool of breeding stock.  What would happen, for example, if the local natives speared the only two bulls you'd brought, before they could get any or all of the few cows in calf?     Or - as happened out here in Australia - some or even all of the cattle simply got loose and wandered off?   Same thing with the horses.    Of course your Deryni could scry for them, but what if the local natives get to them first and fancy a nice social BBQ?     What happens to basic farming practices if your community loses their everyday beasts of burden?   Of course you 'can' farm without plough animals, etc, but if your people thus need to spend a large proportion of their time in growing or hunting food simply to survive, it doesn't leave much time to think about developing magic.   Some Deryni will probably be able to 'charm the deer right up to the gates' so they could be hunted, but I haven't seen Deryni powers able to produce crops!  

Necessity of course may well force the remaining Deryni to develop magical means of pulling ploughs or carts and such, but we really don't know how long it would take to develop new spells like that.  It could however take technology in a new direction, where the community was forced into either abandoning certain things altogether, or developing magical solutions.    

In my previous post I mentioned the death of Rhys Thuryn, which most people see as tragic and "senseless", which of course is the whole point of it.  But his case is really very important for your whole scenario because it highlights the effects of sheer chance.  The best laid plans can go astray through a simple and completely unforeseeable accident, and the mere existence of magical powers does not negate the effects of accident or misfortune.   If your refugee community only had one Healer - remember Healers were not really numerous anyway - and he/she died or was killed, then there goes all that knowledge and skill.   Even if the person already had children, there is no guarantee that they would have inherited Healing abilities.   That could apply even if there were two Healers, as there is no guarantee that any of the next generation would have the powers.   The Healing powers may emerge generations later, as we see with Morgan, Duncan and Dhugal, but those people would be in exactly the same situation as M,D and D, having to learn about their powers through trial and error.  One or two Healer texts may have been brought along, but that is not truly a substitute for proper training.