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Cryomancy is magic involving the removal of heat from an object by converting thermal energy into magical energy, thereby cooling the object. The conversion to magical energy is not perfect (some small amount of heat is released after removing it from the object or area of effect), however I do not believe this will affect your answers.

• Food can be cooled from room temperature to just below freezing (30℉/-1℃).




• Food can be magically maintained at the intended temperature indefinitely. This is done by enchanting the area around the food, not the food itself. The maximum area of effect is a radius of 15'/4.5m.




• The effects of Cryomancy on food are similar to those produced by flash-freezing. Additionally, if it can be frozen via flash-freezing, it can also be frozen using Cryomancy.

Question: How would Cyromancy affect the eating habits of Medieval peoples?

• Magic is unavailable to the average person, forcing the employment of mages (much like the average person today not having direct access to flash-freezing equipment). The majority of mages are of equivalent social status as a blacksmith.




• For the purpose of this question, assume we're talking about London during the 1500’s

A few first ideas:

• Food becomes less seasonal


• Exotic food becomes available


• Some diseases might become rarer because it is easier to provide a steady diet


• Famines might be avoided


• Icecream & cold drinks in Summer, of course

Maybe forget about food, what else can you conserve?! Dead bodies! Okay, also food in some
cases. But

• Could also open up things like autopsies for crime investigation.


• Plagues might be avoided by freezing areas where they develop. Or by generally advancing medicine.


• Make hot places more habitable


• If there is an area in the world where farming food is cheaper this might become a more economic trait since the food can be transported faster. The transport cost might however be the limiting factor here, reducing the impact.

Maybe the general impact is not that high because people already knew how to preserve many foods, of course now you can keep the strawberries without turning them into jam but that might not be worth paying a wizard. Depending on how rare they are.

This is going to vary based on several factors - for example, how long do your enchanted cold-spaces last? Is this something that a Mage can cast on your Larder once per year, and you use it as a fridge for the next 12 months? Or, does it need to be renewed weekly?

In the former case, you would probably see "travelling Mages" moving from village to village throughout the year, spending a week or so renewing enchantments (private for the well-to-do, or communal spaces for poorer families to share) much like a merchant. In the latter case, nobles (or merchants and farming cooperatives) might keep a couple of mages on staff to ensure their perishables don't, well, perish.

Food storage and preservation is going to be the first big boon - 'fresh' milk, fruit or vegetables for more of the year, instead of cheeses, jams and chutneys. Meat could be kept for longer without salting, smoking or pickling. Both of these will improve the nutritional value of the food (or, rather, remove the requirement to reduce it for storage) and lead to people being healthier

Nobles might also start experimenting with frozen foods and deserts to show off their wealth - assuming that cryomancy was not too cheap or common.

You couldn't "Flash Freeze" at the temperatures you're talking about, in fact, at 30 degrees F, you might not even turn water into Ice (the specific heat of water is insanely high. This means that the change of state from liquid to gas or solid will take a long time and some extra energy. Ever have a soda from a cooler explode on you because it's frozen, but when you grabbed it, you could have sworn it was liquid? While it was below freezing, it maintained a liquid state because it hadn't be distubed... the depressurization of the gasses generated the specific heat energy to cause it to solidify and water is at it's most dense state as a liquid... the ice takes up extra space, which causes the fountain.).

That said, Ice was harvested by various methods as far back as the 1750 BCE! By the 16th century, it was a major export commodity of Saint Petersburg, Russia during the winter when the waters would freeze and it was not uncommon for wealthy people throughout Europe to keep Ice Houses to store snow and ice from their property. Alpine Nations and Scandinavian Countries also had Ice Harvesters (as depicted in Disney's Frozen. It was a real trade.).

Manufacturing of Ice was developed in the Americas and made it cheap enough to make proto-Fridges called "Ice Boxes" which would use the Ice to keep the insulated cabnit cool and it was, historically speaking, not that long ago that it existed (My Grandfather's parents were Ice Manufactures).