...Tyrant of Skalaunt (Skalaunt is the empire he cobbled together by conquering many independent city-states). So his armies have wizards with them, and his smiteserpents are thug adventuring bands with wizards. Everyone else works magic in secret, behind closed doors. So they...
...CAN 'go crazy with magic,' but not in the way you were thinking of. Over fifty years ago, I created the Realms as a high-magic setting, with many gods and cults. Stormtalons is a low-magic setting, with six gods. It is NOT the Realms with serial numbers filed off. :}
I thought with lesser eyes ... one can be creative with any evil scheme but I'll read the books if the Tyrant has any benefits for the protagonist for joining up lol
...magic of the sort D&D would call "arcane," the local Heirophar spies send the local Heirophar enforcers (popularly called "smiteserpents") to present you with this choice: serve The Heirophar as one of his wizards, or die. Here and now. There's a reason his nickname is the...
They COULD...but the problem is that there's a nation of priests (Rheligor) who want folks to be farmers and nothing else...and they are the only thing that keeps The Heirophar (big bad archwizard) from ruling the entire Mits-free world with an iron fist. If you publicly use...