What you've typed just means that Magehaven is anarchic. Since the enchantment on it prevents forceful compulsion, there is no way a supposed government can coerce anyone or punish the deviant. A government is supposed to have monopoly on violence, which no one can have in Magehaven.
It is not a punishment. The slide outright says that Meandor made a suggestion. One that no one was forced to abide by. Punishments are non-negotiable. Meandor couldn't kick anyone out.
Just because you press the button a few days before doesn't have to mean in-story that the decision was made then and there. Again, this is only a game, one that does not concern itself with the matter of logistics outside of HP attrition. Time compression is a necessary weasel for the game to be playable.
In a single mine infested with caustic worms that have killed everyone else?
This is also not the only event that doesn't make sense on large timescales. There is also an event where a free city invites your ruler to a traditional hunt. Hunts don't last for years.
1. There isn't much difference between surviving for a day or surviving for two years, provided you have the supplies available to do so. The creatures will either eat you in a few days, or they will fail to eat you for months or years; the problem is not the creatures but rather the supplies and that includes the supply of oxygen. Once we know they are down there, we can send supply shipments to keep them alive, provided that we can evade the hostile creatures to do so (Teleportation? Invisibility? Distraction?).
As already mentioned, I consider it to be the case that they don't have a concept of weeks or months and instead use specific marked days to keep track of time. So rather than saying Five Weeks, they are instead saying the equivalent of Five Mondays. A turn in which no battles are fought is resolved within a day, but I guess some turns have to be longer if there are a lot of battles going on. The 'boring logistics' happen between turns, so between this Monday and the next one.
In my headcanon, they actually number days and the turns of Age of Wonders I are shorter than the other games. The reason for that is that they adopted a different number system between Age of Wonders I and II; originally they used a Base-12 number system or a Base-10 number system. In our RL language we use a Base-12 number system, but in our maths we use a Base-10 number system, resulting in a contradictional situation where we count up to twelve but then we call the number afterwards Thirteen (Three-Ten) rather than Twelve-One (which would be more logical).
The Wizards of Evermore, by contradiction used a Base-60 number system, so they have proper words for all the numbers up to 60 and then it is 60 and 1 afterwards. So an Age of Wonders I turn is a period of either 10 or 12 days, but an Age of Wonders II+III+IV turn is a period of 60 days, since Athla adopted their Base-60 number system after the Wizards conquered the Blessed Continent prior to Age of Wonders II.
2. You are quite correct, in that the existence of the 'protection spell' that prevents those in Magehaven from harming each-other does complicate the functioning of government in the same way that Human Rights complicates the functioning of a government in real-life. If you have an inherent *right* to something, then I cannot then make it conditional upon obedience to my government, which undermines my government's power and ultimately its ability to gain the resources to protect those very rights. What a government has to do in this situation is to find something that its citizens *don't* have a right to, but still want to have and then make having that thing conditional upon obedience.
In Magehaven the
Right to Life is an absolute law of nature, but there is no evidence for the existence of a
Right to Remain in Magehaven operating in any similar fashion. So when people disobey the government of Magehaven, the government can simply expel people from it to somewhere else, as we see very much at work in the Oasis mission.
As we can tell from the angry people in the background futilely attempting to harm each-other, people in Magehaven can make physical contact and if that is the case then there is no reason they cannot be physically restrained and then thrown through a World-Gate, provided I guess that the destination of that World-Gate is habitable for the individual being thrown through it.
You are correct in that it does say that Meandor made a suggestion, but it does not say to *whom* the suggestion was made. The way it is written in the third person, however, suggests that he did not approach individual Godir separately, but rather that certain Godir considered 'quarrelling' were formed into groups and then required to travel to other realms to settle their differences. Somebody here is deciding here who actually counts as Quarrelling Godir and grouping them together.
They aren't leaving because they individually chose to do so, they are leaving because they were commanded to do so and they all know that Magehaven has the means to compel their expulsion were they to refuse to obey. Otherwise we have the ridiculous situation where the troublemakers all decided independantly they were in fact the troublemakers and then successfully organised into groups with those they despise.
Sorry, i don't think i can take anything about lore from you serious from this point on, if you even misread your own sources. He isn't punishing anyone. He isn't kicking anyone out.
In oasis he finds 4 volunteers who want to settle a dispute and to maybe use them as a good example later about how one could settle further disputes. Meandors power here is along someone starting a petition and then playing referee. 0 authority in the sense of having any power in a government.
Magehaven is a magical protected neutral ground. Its as far removed from a government as i can imagine.
Even a power vacuum is closer to a government, because someone will try to grab that power.
He is implementing government policy, which makes him part of the government
to-all-intents-and-purposes. The only question here is whether he is a Carpenter or just the Someone-Who-Chops-Wood, that is to say whether he has any recognised official status, but from the wood's POV it's irrelevant.
You read things into certain sources that aren't there while other sources are ignored entirely; voluntarily obeying the government is still obeying the government. A person may volunteer to accept a better punishment of their own choosing in place of a worse punishment chosen by others (if given the option). It is better to 'volunteer' to leave with your whole host of followers and remain powerful, than to be thrown alone onto some gods-forsaken world where you will be quickly enslaved by the locals.
In life there is such a thing as an
'offer you can't refuse' and this is often implicitly understood rather than stated outright. We know they aren't genuinely choosing to go to the Oasis because there
'simply isn't anything in it for them'.
What do the Oasis Godir gets from being at the Oasis? Presumably what they would gain is the ability to actually kill the other Godir and their followers, but they actually enjoy a relations BONUS from being participants in the trial, so that isn't it.
Meandor also doesn't agree with you about Magehaven, to talk about you ignoring sources.
Meandor explicitly says that Magehaven fell into anarchy. Him saying that wouldn't make any sense in your vision of an anarchic Magehaven, for the same reason the following phrase,
"Last Wednesday the water became wet," is nonsense.
That we don't move resources from our 'old games' to our 'new games', could be explained by the existence of a formerly Neutral government in Magehaven. The rules of Magehaven might prohibit Godir from moving resources through it to support their various war efforts, because doing otherwise would violate Magehaven's policy of neutrality in the conflicts between the Godir.
Were there actually Anarchy in Magehaven, this would no longer be the case. We would move vast amounts of resources from our 'old games' through Magehaven and as long as we could keep them from being stolen (which really just means extra resources dedicated for security) then they would arrive at our 'new games' to fix the game in our favour and to counter us, our enemies, would then do exactly the same thing themselves.
The political result of this ends up being an immense centralisation of power, since the bigger, older Godir have the resources of extensive off-map holdings to call upon while newer Godir have no such holdings and the result is a situation where newer Godir can never successfully challenge the older Godir.
Then all that needs to happen is that one of the larger, older Godir defeats all the other Godir of similar strength to themselves and now we have a
King-Of-The-Universe, since nobody exists that can funnel the essentially limitless resources via Magehaven needed to defeat them. So when you think about it, certain Godir (I'm thinking of Yaka) might actually seek to throw Magehaven into anarchy because that would facilitate their ambitions.
The existance of a government in Magehaven, levels the playing field among Godir and this works against the oldest Godir with the most extensive domains.
.png){kind=avatar}
