Why Is the Latex from One Colony Valuable Enough to Justify Going to War?

[Patrick-Leigh]

In my current project, my deuteragonist spends a portion of his life as an indentured slave in a colony of the Isvaeran Empire. (The details of how he got there are a bit lengthy, so I won't get into them.) Initially, I was thinking that the colony would produce cotton, tobacco, or some kind of spice that was highly prized, but those seemed a little too obvious. Then it occurred to me that the colony could be used to produce something of a more industrial nature, reflecting the magical industrial revolution that is taking place in my setting. After some consideration, I settled on latex being the product. In my setting, Leylines, the fissures through which Aethyr enters the Material Planes, can give the soil of different locations unique properties that in turn give the plants growing in the soil special properties of their own. Thus, if the colony extracted latex obtained from a plant like palaquium gutta that grew in special soil magically enriched by a Leyline running beneath it, the latex could in turn have unique properties that would make it highly prized.

And when I say "highly prized," I mean prized enough for empires to go to war to obtain. The geopolitics leading up to the events of the story involve a couple centuries of nearly constant war between nations to maintain their monopolies over certain goods coming out of the colonies in Arcadia. My deuteragonist sees this first hand when the Draconic Empire conquers the colony while he's stuck there as an indentured slave. They achieve this by using a new variety of Skyship to overwhelm the Isvaeran forces defending the colonial port that controls the colony. The Draconic Empire invented an entirely new kind of Skyship just to gain a monopoly on the goods coming out of the colonies. I want the latex coming out of the colony where my deuteragonist lives to be a priority target so the number of Skyships committed to taking the colony (3) is justified. This stuff needs to be super valuable.

The issue I'm having is figuring out what makes it so valuable. It can't just be a better version of latex because the properties of regular latex can be modified using Alchemy. It needs to have magical properties as well. I have a few ideas I'm mulling over, but I want to hear from other people. The latex extracted from the trees growing in this colony has to be very special. That means it needs to be versatile in its applications and be highly beneficial to both industry and the military. Whoever controls the supply of this latex gains a serious edge over rival nations, in other words. It also needs to justify some factions within the Isvaeran Empire abusing loopholes in the legal system to have people sent as indentured slaves to the colony to increase the production rates of this latex. They are twisting the law to arrest people and have them sentenced to transportation and indentured servitude just to get more of this stuff. My deuteragonist and most of his family are abused and exploited by these factions, who justify their actions on the basis that it's for the greater good.

Of course, the reality is that it's because control of this latex 1) enriches those who own the companies producing it and 2) gives the Isvaeran Empire a significant edge over its rivals both industrially and militarily. The other nations of the Midlands are having to pay through the nose for this stuff, which is why the Draconic Empire dedicates three of their newest Skyships to taking control of the colony from which it originates. So, what is this stuff? What makes it so very special? Do you have any suggestions? Let me know!

 

[pmmg]

It can be hardened in to lightweight latex armor Making for some very cool and sexy poses, and incredibly combat ready.

 

[Patrick-Leigh]

It can be hardened in to lightweight latex armor Making for some very cool and sexy poses, and incredibly combat ready.

You jest, but you actually hit upon something I had not considered: Energy absorption and conversion.

Suppose that this latex is able to absorb one kind of energy and convert it into another. It could be used to absorb kinetic energy and convert it into light energy in the form of radio waves. So, yes, you make clothes out of that and you do have a light, flexible armor. However, while that is certainly a great thing to have, it's far more valuable for industrial and military applications.

If you have rubber like that, you can use it to make shock absorbers under steam engines. If the rubber converts kinetic energy into heat energy, and you have a way to transfer that heat back to the boiler, you increase the efficiency of your steam engines while also reducing the stress it places on whatever structure supports it. If you use that to make shock absorbers in the carriages of your cannons, then recoil energy can be converted into ultra-low frequency radio waves. Even if it doesn't fully get rid of the recoil, it can still do a lot to mitigate the issues it causes. If you put a layer of this rubber in the hull of your ship, then your ship is more resistant to artillery rounds hitting it.

Now let's turn back to the concept of clothing. Workers in an industrial setting need protective garments so they are less likely to be hurt. For those working with molten metal, rubber that converts heat into ulf radio waves would be extremely useful while also helping to keep them cool in an otherwise scorching environment. Conversely, workers in cold environments could wear rubber soles that convert some of the kinetic energy of their steps into heat to help keep them warm.

Additionally, I can see the wood from the trees that produce this latex having similar properties. A layer of shock-absorbing wood in the hull of a navy ship would certainly be prized by any military and if it is used in artillery carriages, you reduce the issues caused by recoil. You don't have to build the whole ship from this stuff, obviously, but a layer of it in the right places is going to make a significant difference. That would, in turn, increase the value of the colony where my deuteragonist is sent to work as an indentured slave and further explain why the Draconic Empire commits such a significant military force to capturing it.

The one major problem this would create, however, is that harvesting the latex and the wood from these trees would be more difficult. Plants that produce latex use it to defend themselves from insects and other animals that would damage them, after all, and if a tree has the ability to change kinetic energy into a different form of energy that is harmless to the tree, then cutting the wood, even if it's just to extract the latex, is not going to be an easy process because it's going to take more effort. Any kinetic energy you direct at the plant is going to be reduced if not entirely negated unless you apply it above a certain threshold.

If that's the case, then the indentured slaves are going to be worked a lot harder on these plantations. It's going to take at least twice as many workers to cut down a tree, possibly triple or quadruple the number, because the kinetic energy of the saws is being absorbed and converted. It would take very strong workers to make the cuts in the bark required to extract the latex. Of course, investing in special equipment that works around the energy absorption/conversion issue would be more efficient and even economic, but the people running the operation are not so inventive. They're the type to solve problems by throwing more bodies at it, hence the need for more indentured slaves.

Ok, that's one possibility, but are there others? Could the latex from these trees have other applications? Or could there be more than one variety of latex to be found in this colony? If so, what might it do? Again, the idea is to make this colony highly valuable and the center of a monopoly, so I'd like to explore as many possibilities as we can.

 

[Rexenm]

It could also be used as magic vellum. That would lend to the sky ship and enslavement.

You could also mask it with gem, maybe wielded by the Draconic Empire.

 

[Karlin]

This is fairly mundane, but in the real world, rubber is a strategic resource. Needed for tires. Synthetic rubber was invented to help deal with this issue.

 

[Emrick Norr]

May be the latex offers an amazing protective power against many types of weapons.
May be it dilates time for the wearer, so they can be faster than anyone else, and so dodge attacks.

Or, may be it allows for small scale teleportation, a few yards.
Or, may be, the skin of the wearer heals more rapidly.
(just brainstorming here)

 

[Patrick-Leigh]

May be the latex offers an amazing protective power against many types of weapons.
May be it dilates time for the wearer, so they can be faster than anyone else, and so dodge attacks.

Or, may be it allows for small scale teleportation, a few yards.
Or, may be, the skin of the wearer heals more rapidly.
(just brainstorming here)

Medical applications are certainly something that would give the latex a lot of strategic value, especially during a period of armed conflict. As for Teleportation, I do have creatures that use Planar Magic to Phase-Shift between Planes in order to ambush their prey or to avoid ambush predators (and predators in general.) Latex from a tree that uses Phase-Shifting to avoid damage or to get rid of insects trying to feed on it would be a logical explanation for why the stuff exists. Using it to make a suit that enables short-range Teleportation and partial Phase-Shifting would be a logical application for it. Likewise, a rubber that causes bullets to Phase to another Plane (or the Void between Planes) on impact would be ideal for protective gear. Anything that strikes the rubber with sufficient kinetic energy will trigger it, so you don't need to have a Detection Field in place to activate the Warp Spell. A suit made of such material would render a person effectively immune to bullets, so it'd be ideal for a special operative or assassin.

However, such a material has to be handled carefully to avoid opening a bunch of plot holes. It can't be available in large quantities otherwise it won't just be used to make armor for armies, it will be used to make armor for entire vessels. And giving a Skyship the capacity to Phase-Shift with ease would be very problematic, storywise, because the readers will be left wondering why the vessel didn't just Phase-Shift the moment it had reason to do so. Thus, the supply of this kind of latex has to be very limited.

That can be solved by having it limited to a very specific type of rubber tree that grows in a very specific part of the colony and requiring a special process to harvest and process. If this latex naturally exists as a defense mechanism, then it will Phase-Shift any cutting tools (and possibly the people using them) onto another Plane or into the Void the moment the tree begins to sustain damage. You would need tools that can prevent that just to begin harvesting the stuff.

Another obstacle that limits the supply is that the latex itself will Phase-Shift if it isn't handled properly. You do all the work of collecting it only for it to just vanish when it's triggered by the right variable. So, keeping the stuff in place while you process it would be a major pain without the right setup. In other words, the supply of the... let's call it "Planar Latex"... is small because there isn't much to obtain in the first place and at least half of it will just vanish during the harvesting and processing stages. If you can make a suit from it, that suit is going to be incredible, but the cost and frustration it takes to get one is going to be immense.

So, this particular kind of latex would not be the main product coming out of the colony, but it would still be something that would incentivize the Draconic Empire to deploy three of its new Skyships to seize the territory. They want it for their elite operatives to use for seizing other strategic targets which could allow them to gain control of even more of the Midlands. They might even come in with some special task force with the sole purpose of harvesting and processing as much of this latex as quickly as possible, only for them to end up just as foiled by the material as everyone else who tried to obtain it. Even for the advanced Draconic Empire, these trees and the Planar Latex they produce are a royal pain in the butt. Heck, the special techniques they thought would solve the issue of the latex Phase-Shifting away could only serve to reveal other annoying problems the stuff causes. "Hurray, we solved Problem A! Oh, no, we've unlocked Problem B! Curse you, Law of Unintended Consequences!"

 

[Finchbearer]

Would an allergy to latex be a thing in your world? Because that’s a problem for a lot of people.

 

[Patrick-Leigh]

Would an allergy to latex be a thing in your world? Because that’s a problem for a lot of people.

It would be a thing, but I expect that latex with magical properties would not cause such reactions. Latex allergies are in response to proteins found in latex, but the allergy usually requires repeated exposure to latex. However, magical latex would have different proteins, so unless you were repeatedly exposed to it, even if you have an allergy to normal latex, you won't get a reaction from natural latex unless you've developed an allergy to it from previous exposures. In other words, those with allergies to conventional latex are not guaranteed to have an allergy to the magical variety.

 

[Rexenm]

Maybe it has a smell or a pheromone, like catnip, or cannot be dog eared.

I had a story where some animals crossed terrain to get to a holy place. Of course, the plot twist, was they slowly figure out the monk they were detailed to was capable of self protection at a much higher rate.

i told myself that these mutants would be symbiont. They would be kept away from the cities, and kempt in a rustic and humble sort of way. The fact that they were cat or dog would have nothing to it, they could however talk and had abnormalities.

it was true that in their culture there was a wise warrior, who cared about how things should be done, but they were not concerned about the strays in the cities, in this post apocalyptic nuclear fall-out world.

they were saved if possible, but they were not pedigree. They were prone to wonder around the countryside, but could not wield the voices of the animals per se; or predict the flow of battle. There was one harmony to this however, they were all violent.

the latex is like this terrain I think. It was a misnomer, that became entirely viable, in some odd way it was also magical, so it ceased to be a scifi and became a fantasy.

 

[skip.knox]

It doesn't have to be worth war in itself. It can be part of larger issues, or one of several issues.

In any case, it isn't important until you make it important in story terms. And in those terms it's only important when it's important to your major character. To make a modern parallel, controlling industrial capacity might be important enough for *nations* to go to war, and that surely justifies a history book. But if you're writing a novel, the stakes have to be much more personal. The strategic economic factors are merely background pretext.

 

[Finchbearer]

It would be a thing, but I expect that latex with magical properties would not cause such reactions. Latex allergies are in response to proteins found in latex, but the allergy usually requires repeated exposure to latex. However, magical latex would have different proteins, so unless you were repeatedly exposed to it, even if you have an allergy to normal latex, you won't get a reaction from natural latex unless you've developed an allergy to it from previous exposures. In other words, those with allergies to conventional latex are not guaranteed to have an allergy to the magical variety.

You could convince yourself that magical latex is different to ordinary latex, but then I would think you’re really just changing the substance completely. Latex is found in a lot of plants. Would you explain away any reactionary properties of a substance by calling it magical? Because as soon as we start giving the story plot armour ‘because magic’ it then loses some of its strength. Those would be my thoughts when I use real world materials in fantasy writing anyway.

 

[pmmg]

If you have Ley Lines that run under the latex plants, perhaps the Latex gains some quality of resisting the 'magic' of the ley lines. Thus, if a layer of latex was integrated, or worn underneath, a suit of armor, it might aid in disrupting the magic of those who would use magic against them. Or...as you suggested, have some way of recoiling energy back to its source, thus making it somewhat dangerous to use magic against someone wearing such armor.

Scarcity would be one key to why some might fight a war over it.

 

[Patrick-Leigh]

You could convince yourself that magical latex is different to ordinary latex, but then I would think you’re really just changing the substance completely. Latex is found in a lot of plants. Would you explain away any reactionary properties of a substance by calling it magical? Because as soon as we start giving the story plot armour ‘because magic’ it then loses some of its strength. Those would be my thoughts when I use real world materials in fantasy writing anyway.

Normally, I would agree, but part of my magic system is built around magical materials being made of atoms with different kinds of subatomic particles. These are what are responsible for their magical properties. Thus, even if the latex proteins are identical in how the molecules are arranged, those magical particles within the atoms can cause the proteins to register differently enough that the immune system isn’t triggered, just like it fails to recognize different strains of influenza as a variant of the same virus. That doesn’t mean people won’t develop allergies to magic latex, just that an allergy to mundane latex won’t guarantee an allergy to a specific type of magical latex. Latex allergies are usually a result of repeated or prolonged exposure to latex, after all, especially prolonged skin contact. So, by that logic, one needs exposure to develop an allergy to a magical form of latex. It might take less exposure if you already have a latex allergy, of course, as it’s still the same basic proteins, but, like different strains of influenza, there would be enough variation to avoid triggering the immune system right away.

 

[Patrick-Leigh]

If you have Ley Lines that run under the latex plants, perhaps the Latex gains some quality of resisting the 'magic' of the ley lines. Thus, if a layer of latex was integrated, or worn underneath, a suit of armor, it might aid in disrupting the magic of those who would use magic against them. Or...as you suggested, have some way of recoiling energy back to its source, thus making it somewhat dangerous to use magic against someone wearing such armor.

Scarcity would be one key to why some might fight a war over it.

Now that’s an interesting idea. Anti-Magic materials are highly sought after, as are methods to synthesize them, and latex can be made into a wide variety of things, so it would have a broad range of applications. Even if it’s just masking magic signatures from detection or protecting things from ambient magic fields that might damage or alter them, that’s still going to be valuable, particularly for sensitive magical devices. Food for thought.

 

[Patrick-Leigh]

It doesn't have to be worth war in itself. It can be part of larger issues, or one of several issues.

In any case, it isn't important until you make it important in story terms. And in those terms it's only important when it's important to your major character. To make a modern parallel, controlling industrial capacity might be important enough for *nations* to go to war, and that surely justifies a history book. But if you're writing a novel, the stakes have to be much more personal. The strategic economic factors are merely background pretext.

And it mostly background information, but knowing what the stuff does determines how it’s processed, which in turn determines what sort of work my character was doing on a day to day basis. That, in turn, will have some kind of impact on his experience and perception of the world. (Look into how sugar was produced if you want an idea of how horrible life was for slaves and workers.)

 

[Emrick Norr]

I'm impressed by your analytic skills and capacity to look at the big picture Patrick. Remarkable.

 

[Patrick-Leigh]

I'm impressed by your analytic skills and capacity to look at the big picture Patrick. Remarkable.

Thank you! Part of the purpose of my project is to show two adolescents caught up in a rapidly changing geopolitical paradigm shift meeting each other and gradually falling in love, so I’m having to make sure I put them in situations that allow me to highlight the effects of the various conflicts between the different factions and how former enemies becoming allies and vice versa impacts the lives of everyday people. The boy is in the latex producing colony in part because of a real estate scheme intended to consolidate the Isvaeran Empire’s debt (somewhat like what happened with the South Sea Bubble.) That same scheme contributed to the forced relocation of the Merfolk from which my Mermaid protagonist originated. As she remarks in one of their conversations, “It seems like we lost loved ones and had our lives ruined because the grownups in charge made some very bad decisions without thinking things through, first.”

 

[Rexenm]

I know what would make it more a fantasy and less sci-fi, empires and pirates aside. The latex could be found to have connection to the material of existence. It could have all the magical properties, but more complexity, because of the spiritual nature. It could act as a guide and a balm.

The idea of one layman could affect another so, but only so much to do with the latex. Mystery could arise, empires could be affected. Until of course, the negative. There are so many forms of speculation of course. One can find their universe in a bubble.

I also agree with skip. War is sometimes just war.

 

[Patrick-Leigh]

I know what would make it more a fantasy and less sci-fi, empires and pirates aside. The latex could be found to have connection to the material of existence. It could have all the magical properties, but more complexity, because of the spiritual nature. It could act as a guide and a balm.

The idea of one layman could affect another so, but only so much to do with the latex. Mystery could arise, empires could be affected. Until of course, the negative. There are so many forms of speculation of course. One can find their universe in a bubble.

I also agree with skip. War is sometimes just war.

I don’t think I want to go quite that esoteric with this stuff. I just need it to be valuable enough for unscrupulous people to justify what amounts to human trafficking and slavery as well as committing a significant military force to control. The Draconic Empire in particular needs a strong incentive, otherwise it would commit those Skyships to other places, which I need it not to do so it loses on those fronts. The idea is greed and haste led them to distribute their forces unwisely, causing their seizure of the colonies in Arcadia to be temporary. Had they not spread themselves so thin in an ill conceived blitz, they would have been able to retain their gains and secured more later, but they arrogantly assumed their shiny new Skyships would deter any resistance. They failed to consider their new Skyships had some unknown design flaws and that they would face resistance that was more cunning and improvisational. By sending three Skyships to secure the latex producing colony without much in the way of backup, they set those Skyships up for defeat. So, the latex needs to be something that is valuable enough for the Draconic Empire to develop tunnel vision as they seek to gain a monopoly over it.