Lecture 8: Geas
"Greetings, students!" Alaconius said, once he stepped to the lectern.
"My question set forth for debate today is that of 'what constitutes a legal Geas?'"
"By definition as given by the holy writ on magic as evidenced in GURPS Magic, a Geas allows the casting mage to give one command, which the recipient must obey." He paused, looking out at the sea of student faces, most of them actually listening.
"In the case of the Lesser Geas," he went on, "the conditions must be such that it can be met, and that it is one task which can be done. On the other hand, a Greater Geas is one that is a continuing task, which doesn't necessarily have to be possible to finish."
"In the short story (if it can laughingly be called that) that spoke of the use of Geas as a means of keeping it's citizens under tight control of the priests, the Geas spell that was used had to have been the greater version, for the lesser version would have allowed the priest "one" command before the geas was fulfilled, and thus finished. The greater version, would allow the "child" to be required to continue obeying priests, for as long as the child should live."
"If the student body desires to discuss this...what other geas forms are there that a governing body would desire to place upon a populace as a means for control? It could be used on criminals, or used to safeguard it's public servants. For example, in order to wear the Blue robes of justice, mages and priests must swear (i.e., accept) the geas to never lie while wearing the robes at public functions. Since it would be known that they could not lie, it would never enter the public's mind to doubt their veracity. A magic item could be created that fails to glow if the blue robed public servant ever rids himself of the Geas...."
"In any case, as a spinoff discussion—sort of based upon Atlantis, what effects would there be on a society that is geased from birth to obey the religious laws of a specific lawgiver? Assuming that a man grew up under the society that used such artificial means to govern its people, what would his thought processes be if he could somehow have freed himself from the "yoke of thought"?"
"I just thought I would bring up topics of debate that otherwise might not exist...."
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