Mary

Or perhaps the wielding of fire magic can in some way mark outsiders as members. If you accidentally (or intentionally) mark someone as if that person were your child -- related to the way they produce children -- that person must be brought in

@Dmyt Combinations are very high tech

Possibly this is a known issue with magic and they use things like rocks or bottles of air for falling and talk about how this is more abstract.

What sort of stuff does it have to be? Is it something like grow being represented by a leaf, or by a green fluid of some kind?

@Toph The problem with this is, as ER doctors put it, what the ER teaches is that it's amazing both what won't kill a person, and what will kill a person. Fortunately, "mortally wounded without immediate surgery" is somewhat more limited. Unfortunately that's still rather broad.

@controlgroup And then when the police corner him they feel in danger of their lives and kill him. Remember fight reactions are possible.

What does it understand of us and how we communicate? Anything?

Remembered another. Scientists have done DNA analysis on medieval parchments. For instance, they found that one period, correlated to an epidemic among sheep, there was an inordinately large number of ewe-derived parchments.

That had not changed the DNA. Why would embalming?

The conclusion was that the corpse had been smoked.

@Dmyt There was a case where a DNA test was conducted on a corpse found in a chimney that had rotten there. The pathologist studying the body thought it had been five to seven years. The DNA test proved it had been twenty. (Since he wasn't grown up, the date could very certain.)

The problem with gold is that it's easy to melt down once it's stolen, so it would be really hard to keep in one place.

Alcohol, in humans, has a very narrow range between taking effect and being lethal. There was a time when it was used as aesthetic in desperate straits, but it's not popular for just that reason.

Another point is that not hitting precisely limits your ability to make threats. Accidentally hitting the wrong target means those who do what you say don't escape, as well as those who don't, do.

@VLAZ So what do you get when you remove both the light and the darkness from a location?

@VLAZ Yes, of course, because darkness does not exist

@VLAZ Acid rain and cold do do a number on things.

@Toph Look at scientific nomenclature. A lot of old theories live on in their names. Hydrogen is called "water maker" but it's oxygen that's called "acid maker"

If it works on the same principles, extended, it will definitely have the same name as sleep magic.

@VLAZ Depends on how the magic works. Remember that general anesthesia came first. Once the name is set, it may stick even when it grows less accurate.

One notes that magic to get to sleep would be continuous with anestheics

Numb magic

He had no doubt that it worked because while you were doing that you weren't poking at the wound like an idiot, and that gave the wound time to heal.

Indeed, i have heard an atheist describe the most effective treatment for a wound at the end of the Middle Ages: find the weapon that inflicted it, pray over it, and destroy it.

Going to the temple to pray was an effective way to buy time. Most diseases will go away if given time.

Time was that a tea of willow bark to cure your headache was magic. Now it's science. As long as it's the "unknown causality" part of magic, magic is just science not yet put through the wringer of the scientific method

Another possibility is that people think they see a pattern and either they believe themselves immune or they think they can evade it.

Possibly statistics. Serial killers are so rare than a person might sagely point out that even with the killers, most people are dying by other means

Something to consider is that whatever promises they make in the course of draining magic are going to be fulfilled, or not, and it's likely this will become known to at least some of the targets.

@Dmyt Almost certainly think it was all a fake.

@Dmyt Since it's biopunk, start with some kind of ironwood, and make it tougher. Or possibly grow the trains, and they have to be watered and sunned to stay alive, so most trains run by night. And, of course, they don't have wheels. They run along the tracks, though they do need the tracks for some handwavium.

@MontyWild Breeding in captivity can be rendered impossible by the creature needing space to breed. Cheetahs court by the male cheetah chasing the female down, for instance.

What sort of titles? Your Serene Highness? The Most Supreme Intelligence? The Brother of the Sun? Titles have varied enormously. I suspect that a hivemind's titles would derive from its cultures. What were the royal family of Latvia addressed as?

@KeilahH What you do is pick the one you want, and then position the wings on the creature. That will ensure that the flight is the one you want. It's not like winged beings can change.

@Dmyt A gradual die-off swiftly weakens the society. If the people in places of power to prevent the take-over lasted the longest, they would have panicked, and it would have gotten very ugly

@Dmyt South Korea would have invaded in the transition to take over. The children would be wards of the state. Paraded about to show how the evil North Koreans killed themselves and left their children like that.

Comments are not a forum for discussing the prudence or justice of the matter.

@littleadv Plessy v. Ferguson was settled. Also, Wong Kim Ark did not even discuss illegal immigrants.

@EvilSnack that's for the courts to judge

Plants are smarter than computers, because they can "recognize" obstacles and route around them.

@QuestionablePresence Do you know no one who has excellent judgment and is not a judge?

@QuestionablePresence What about him, indeed? You are simply assuming he's needed. If people bear no ill will to each other, the third party chosen will know whether the case is complex beyond his powers and refer them to a person known to be excellent at judgment.

@MiniRagnarok You are imagining hobgoblins. The third party can be literally anyone. And why would this system be unfair when it's run by and for people with no ill will?

@QuestionablePresence Since they have no ill will toward each other, they can agree to have a third party settle it.

@MiniRagnarok Exactly how would these be a problem when no one has ill will? The person who committed the accident will want to make amends. As for contradictions, you don't need to force people to come to a resolution. At the very least, they could agree to arbitration in order to save time.

"Creationism" is not necessary to believe in God the Creator. Also most of this answer does not even address the question