Magic books are not particularly cheap compared to other weapons.
Weapons in the Middle Ages were handmade one by one by craftsmen, and even an iron sword seems to have taken a considerable amount of time and effort.
One would expect that the time and effort required for a craftsman to make a sword would have been comparable to the time and effort required to make a codex of a magic book.
Iron Sword 460G
Steel Sword 600G
Fire 560G
Lightning 630G
Flux 900G
If printing technology were available, the price might be reduced to 1/10 or less, since it could be mass-produced.
Not neccesarilly. Keep in mind that realistically magic would be way more effective against non magic soldiers, being non magic soldiers a vast majority of any army in most cases. There’s very few armies in fire emblem specialized in magic. That usefulness would make it more expensive. And you can buy magic tomes almost everywhere, so they must be mass-produced with all certainty.
Well we do have access to healing staves. My theory is that their actual effect is tissue accelerated regeneration, so they can easily heal most injuries… Unless those injuries damage too many organs or any important organ, as well as some black magic produced injuries: remember that we cannot save Ninian in Fire emblem 7, even though Eliwood’s army has healers and any of the characters you bring in that chapter may very well be adept with staves, or queen Lumera in Engage, even though we have a healer in the group.This is why I believe it impossible to heal eyesight with magic staves, as this could be a hard surgery with their current technology.
Disclaimer: (we will not consider the Aum or Valkyrie staves in this conversation, as their powers are divine and not human technology).
The clergy were the ones that used to write parchments and books on the medieval eras - the books that were highly stylized, no less, for the most similar type of “man-based writing machine”. So you can easily assume that books, at whichever pace they are being scribbled, and with which magic they are being infused, have their own cost and can be considered a piece of artwork, just as smith-working can be considered as such, with mages, shamans, monks, and so on potentially being the ones to be able to extract strength from those tomes.
One could label them as ‘catalysts’, even.
So, yeah. They can easily be hand-made. Do not underestimate the writing ability of medieval eras - nor the concept of Secret Books being spread across the continent.
Nyx didn’t have a choice - she was cursed to have a very slowed down aging factor due to a magic mishap after she killed multiple people. She never “reversed her aging” because she never grew older.
You’d think that, were they that mass-produced, armies would have developed counters to such. And considering too that magic users are limited to, well, the people that can use magic.
I reckon that 7743’s take on tome production is easily the most plausible one - tomeworkers and smiths providing their craft and trade, with smiths being generally more common and with a larger ease of market (and as such, guilds, competence and the many factors of medieval economy), and tomeworkers being bound to where they would find a larger profit - magic schools and its like.
How do such tomes reach markets and places? Why are they priced relatively highly? By one side, you have war and its demand of supply. Sometimes its contacts with known dealers that make room for such products for a select public - sometimes it can be a means of storage to later transport somewhere else with more demand, but since the cargo is here, might as well see if someone buys it - rich nobles, even, if they can hardly understand any of it.
Books and the means of distribution are there already, and literacy seems to be on a better spot compared to the average Medieval Era country, so it is not wrong to assume that so has the ability to transcribe books.
I think the reason is just that society on the whole doesn’t generally think of glasses as things that were present centuries ago, even though objectively they were. Monocles get a bit of a pass for being generally associated with older times, but glasses, culturally, are largely perceived as being a more recent invention than they are.
Basic tomes are only marginally more expensive than basic weapons. 560 for Fire is not much of an increase from 460 for an Iron Sword. It’s still affordable.
I think that tome writers are less abundant imply because the demand isn’t as high. That alone justifies their higher price. That’s usually how economics work. Also, it’s stated in multiple games that magic is not something you can’t just “learn”. You need to have an innate talent for it. Even in games with limitless reclassing, a physical character reclassed to a magic class isn’t gonna do very well. A Sage Alfred in Engage has barely 35% Magic Growth.
Hell! Who’s to say that mages ALSO partake in making physical weapons. Someone who’s very good with Fire magic could be of great use in a forge. And also who’s to say you NEED magical prowess to make tomes? Even IF they have to be imbued with magic, EVEN IF they need to be hand-written, why can’t a non-magic person just write them beforehand?
Afterall, it seems like most of the time, the power is more in the person raather than in the weapon. Nino in FE7 was illeterate, and was still able to cast magic by just repeating the incantations by memory.
It is affordable because its the cheaper tome - but make comparison with all the other items. Swords are the expensive variant of melee weapons, and the Fire tome is the cheapest standard tome. Light? 630. Flux? 900. Nine-damned-hundred coins. That’s almost two swords for the ‘basic dark tome’.
Of course the numbers will look close together, but that is because you are comparing two items with a completely different demand and type of market.
Yet swords are in high demand during wars and that is what (arguably) causes them to spike in price in war-time. Axes? Lumberjacks. Spears? Fishers, hunters, guards, on a similar level as bows. But swords? Hardly many people use swords outside of war, with them lacking a defining use in times of peace.
Also, you are skipping through details through your usage of the law of supply and demand - mainly the fact that you are ignoring both its production costs and saying that “Yeah, tome writers (the supply) are less, so the demand isn’t as high due to that.” which is not how the law of Supply and Demand works.
But isn’t the fact that you can wield magic as a whole the main point of learning how to use it. Later games have handwaived needing ‘talent’ as everyone can pick up a tome and fry people up, no matter your station or talents. Magic used to be locked up to different ‘schools’, with Monks/Clerics usually only being able to handle Light Magic and rarely reaching far into Anima/Dark.
And not just that but considering weapon ranks, which is the part of actual learning, yeah, magic can actually be just ‘learnt’.
And besides, if everyone could truly use magic, then its demand would be higher.
Will you do good with it? Maybe you will not? Who cares. Let’s not forget the older games where Merric, Linde, and prepromote Wendell and other mages would walk in with 0 Res and be acclaimed as a great mage.
So you either stick to the later games where everyone can be a good mage and thus everyone can use magic, and thus anyone can make use of any tome - people unable to read as well, or you stick to the early game era where it truly was about talent and skill - where there is such a study of magic, and where tomes are catalysts of such magic.
They perfectly could. Or they could simply make use of the original means of producing fire - or use their magic to provide the needed heat, as long as they can keep focus on both the craft and the magic.
Potentially, that’s where weapons such as the Light Brand, the Runeblade and other hybrids might have come from.
But the smithing work is not one for anyone, and its not just “well, make fire”. What would be the wage for such a mage if they are working alongside a guild? How strong should their magic be? Is Fire enough to heat it up or do they need Elfire? Is the cost in tomes worth the wage?
And if such a mage is working by themselves, can they even lift?
1: The potential dangers of letting people outside of the arcane have knowledge of magic.
2: The potential of people falsifying books.
3: Concept of holy/secret research (for light/dark).
4: Concept of being a Catalyst
Yet they need stronger tomes to incantate stronger magic. Isn’t that a weird concept to throw at ye, huh.
Also, with the “Nino being illiterate”, that mainly banks in both the concept of Tomes being catalysts, with higher quality ones allowing stronger magic (and thus being a specifically magic-only craft), and the concept of Nino being able to wield all the Anima tomes in Fe7, including Excalibur, is pretty funny.
Remember that dark magic is usually called “arcane magic” by the scholars both in Elibe and Archanea. It makes a lot of sense that it’s more expensive because this one, unlike the other tomes, is specific for versed scholars. Light magic is usually wielded by members of the clerigal class, which would have no real problems buying at a slightly higher price (church has money)
Not really. Again, remember that Archanea, Elibe, Magvel and every continent are different. It makes a lot of sense that in different places with different cultures, they would have different conceptions of magic and how to use it. And as far as we know, every continent exists in a different world than the others (except for Archanea and Valentia/Valm) so the laws of magic may very well be different from world to world.
Can’t argue in this one. I will still defend my stance about the mass production with every magic school except for the arcane/dark arts, as you cannot buy them in every shop like the other two.
You may have gotten a little too beligerant/intense on this last quote friend, calm down .
Anyway, I think the user @Permafrost in his game Deity Device makes a very meticulous analysis of how magic could actually work in the Fire Emblem universes, being the magic contained in books a catalyst, as you said. In this game, magic (rather, mana) is essentially a particle like any other and anyone with the talent can manipulate this particles with a Formula. That is, a spell. We could align this somehow to Valentia’s original way of using magic without books, which is also the Thabes way of using magic (as we know, a lot of refugees from Thabes escaped to Valentia when Duma attacked and this is cannon). When you finally get a magic book from another land (Jugdrall, in this case) our scholar tells us how this is a very sophisticated way of using magic. He tells us that in that book, the formula is already written and prepared so anyone with enough knowledge, training and talent/power can replicate the power within those pages just by saying “Elfire”.
Since this explanation makes so much sense and coincides with the perception of magic the games let us see, I believe we could speak about magic in the terms I explained above and think of them as cannon. This would mean that Nino, being unable to write and read, has enough raw power and training to use strong magic even though she doesn’t have the knowledge. After all, she was always practicing to impress her “mother” so she could help her “brothers” by participating in missions and she definetely has a lot of raw power.
You misunderstood what I said. I meant that, fewer people study magic. THUS, the demand is lower.
You’re taking the gameplay too literally. I’m speaking in terms of lore. And I used the example of games with reclassing as something that expands that, because again, units that do not start as mages tend to have bad magic anyway.
While I overall agree with your post, this particular part really irks me. Swords absolutely have their uses outside of war moreso than any other weapon. In many premodern societies (such as in medieval europe) it was common to own swords as self defence weapons during civilian life and for potentail wars, and there was always demand for them as a result.
Also you can’t just take a lumber axe or hunting spear or whatever other tool and use it as a effective weapon for war, the requirements are totally different. So by this logic where demand for weapons increases during wartime, spears and war axes should be in similar demand as swords.
Well, mass printing was invented as early as 1436, so I don’t think it would be unrealistic to think some of the Fire Emblem continents would have that simple technology. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Printing_press
Also, I thought this cutscene dialogue would be funny.
That is a good point in considering the demand of swords - although the concept of militias with home-owned equipment, albeit not as effective, shows that unconventional weaponry can be made to work (and arguably, Fe8 Hatchets) - swords can see use as much as other weapons outside of war time.
But on this consideration, I do consider that the potential spike in production with swords can arguably be higher, with lances being distributed to many cavaliers, pegasus knights, knights and soldiers, whilst swords are handed to more “free” types of people, while being somewhat high on number (with axes being relatively a less common army weapon).
With this in mind, I can understand the potential for other weapons to increase in price during war-time, but not as much as swords themselves due to the difference in demand shifts.
There might be some sort of “swordsmith” culture going on in order to increase its prices (fine bladework and so on), with the lance market being both more affordable (stick with a dagger) and more standardized on the common weapons.
Maybe the ink is magical, or maybe the magic is imbued to them after printing. Or maybe they have no magic at all, and are just a tool for mages to channel their magic through. No one knows for certain. I’m just saying that being able to mass print them is a reasonable assumption. Not the ONLY possibility, but still a reasonable one.
EDIT: Also, Valentia and Fodlan don’t have proper tomes. People there learn spells via level up. So maybe they DO write the incantations on their arm. Then again… Valentia and Archanea are in the same universe… Again, I don’t know. No one knows. The lore doesn’t give us the info, so one can onlly make assumptions and theorize.