Midkemia - Technology and Magic

Technology and Magic

During the period in which Feist's current books are set, Midkemia is on a technological par with 14th to 15th century Europe, with a few anachronisms. For example, shipbuilding seems to be as advanced as 17th-century Europe, with three-masted square-riggers in evidence but no gunpowder or cannons, though naphtha and Quegan fire oil is known. Generally, the world seems to be in a mostly pre-industrial agrarian state.

Magic in Midkemia is practiced by very few people. To the eyes of any nonmagician, anything that a person can do that cannot be explained is labeled magical. In the more superstitious rural areas, magic-users are usually shunned, or worse, captured and killed. Duke Borric of Crydee, with his foresight, bequeathed an island to Pug to start an academy devoted to magical studies, where magicians can gather without fear of discrimination and prejudice.

With Pug's education on Kelewan, it is revealed that these Midkemian arts are considered the Lesser Path of Magic, and the Kelewan magic is the so-called Greater Path. The Lesser Arts were seen as rudimentary talents, more focused to the very nature of magic, while the Greater Arts were seen as having greater effectiveness and practicality such as teleportation, conjuring energy from nothing, and so on; it is later realised that this is a misconception brought about due to the fact that there are very few Lesser Path magicians on Kelewan, and those that are have little power and training, and as a result the Lesser Path has not developed to the same level as the Greater, as it has on Midkemia (though there are few Greater Path magicians on Midkemia and it is not widely known of). Pug's "parting shot" in Kelewan was to destroy the Tsurani Imperial Coliseum using a magically conjured windstorm and earthquake with Lesser Path magic. The Paths are normally mutually exclusive - a Greater Path magician would not be able to invoke Lesser Path powers and skills.

There are several great magicians on Midkemia whose powers do not fit this dual-path model; Macros the Black, Pug conDoin (in his later years), Nakor the Isalani, Miranda, and Magnus, son of Pug and Miranda (and Robert De Lyse a student of Pug). Macros possessed abilities transcending the traditional Greater and Lesser Paths of magic; it is inconclusive whether this ability is a part of his gift upon becoming the agent for Sarig the "Lost" God of Magic (in truth it is Ban-ath, the God of thieves and gambler), or if Macros was simply born with the ability like Pug. Similarly, Macros's protégé Pug, his daughter Miranda, and his grandson Magnus also possessed the ability to invoke Lesser or Greater path powers at will. Nakor also wielded magic not confined to the classical definition of Lesser and Greater paths, though he insists upon the idea that "there is no magic", but merely "tricks" in manipulating some elemental forces of the world. As the books progress, Pug comes to the realisation that Nakor is correct, and the limits of magic are merely a result of a lack of understanding among magicians.

Clerics are also known to have their own forms of magic, which vary depending on the order they belong to.