How do I make a sorcerer die unfairly? (Related to previous post)

This is related to my previous post asking for suggestions and help about a story I'm writing for a language class-- that was met by extremely great responses and ideas btw, I'm super greatful for everybody who helped!!

Now, I have this one idea I have in mind which will be a point of conflict in the story.

The idea I had in mind was:

A character who is a sorcerer gets offered a deal by someone with great power in the empire. They refuse said proposal because it goes against their morals. A few bla bla blas later the sorcerer gets framed and is executed. I really need help. What I should put in the middle? How I can get this sorcerer captured and executed without the question "Why didn't the sorcerer just escape using their powers?" or "They're a sorcerer how did they get captured??" arising?

Sorry for the trouble, I'm having a writer's block at the worst timing possible so I really need help

 

I dunno, maybe went drinking in the evening and passed out after wild partying, got caught for being too high profile?

Or tripping on his feet down the stairs, gettin caught in aftermath?

 

Somebody harasses a girl, girl throws something heavy at the guy, guy avoid, thing hits sorcerer's head

Nvrmind

 

i can't really come up with original stuff, so let's just use generic stuff i've read/watched!

-the sorceror has their powers stolen/locked(maybe by a special item/treasure), and thus was captured

-the sorceror had been in a battle where they had exhausted all their powers, and thus was easy to capture. (and then their powers get locked?)

-sorceror was backstabbed by someone they trusted, maybe poisoned/drugged etc

-the sorceror gave up their power for some reason or other(maybe to save someone they loved, or exchanhed their power for something) and thus was easy to capture

 

It would be helpful to have a link to a previous post to get to know the settings better)

I will ask questions that will really be use-cases:
Is the sorcerer unique in what he/she is capable of doing? If there are other sorcerers that can do something like the characters in question, then it really is not a problem, especially if the person of influence is involved. Else, as an empire, they should have some means of overpowering the sorcerer. Whether that be bribery of close friends and relatives leading to betrayals, mass misinformation campaigns and propaganda; enforcement of the law making the sorcerer live like a rat crossing the street; a martial law even.
Can a sorcerer lay low in some deep forest in a cabin and hold up for months without the help of society? Can the sorcerer be tricked into being betrayed? Can the empire use means of mass-surveilance? Can the person of influence use personal hit squads? How far is the person of influence willing to go?
That depends on the empire and the person of influence. Think what would a huge corporation mogul that can change the law in 'Murica would do, or some very powerful senator, for example.
I would write a character for whom a problem that is solved by money is not a problem and a fine is but the price of business. They would have an extensive networkbof information and the ability to track the sorcerer 24/7. Then they'd exhaust the spirit of the sorcerer by having them be careful about leaking their location and state and make them rely on somebody and have that somebody/those somebodies betray the sorcerer when they are at their most helpless.

 

Quick thoughts and variants:
* Betrayal and refuses to see it. Best friend/rival, love interest, family member or combo.
* As someone else said , gets drunk. Added twist gets shanghai'ed. While drunk signs up for something (As asignment, a contract, magic contract, etc.).
* Hostage
* Blackmail against MC (forbidden love) or a loved one
* Another variant of blackmail. Gets embroiled in someone else's mess and stays silent to protect the other party (perhaps even the emperor or empress of a concubine, etc.). If you play chess, you might visualize it as a piece being pinned with a more valuable piece behind it or a knight's fork attack.
* A sign of loyalty, if he uses his powers to resist the empire his family will be executed three generations up and down. Plot twist it's his own rotten brother/sister/cousin who knows he won't do it to save another family member.
* Someone steals his "true name"
* His "enemy" is bound to his head or soul, so magic will rebound on him. Plot twist, his "kind" master took in and prepared the MC (an orphan?) as a vessel to transfer his soul to his body after death. MC slowly loses the mental fight, especially when his lover turns out to be a traitor and loyal to the master. Cornered, he gets himself and ex-lover sentenced to hellish torture and obliteration with a confession he enacted with the help of his master's hated rival. The confession could be for a hare brained scheme or his master using forbidden magic, and the MC needs to get around a geas preventing him from communicating about it. In essence, he frames "himself". I imagine the MC laughing and arguing with himself before the judge. To make it more heinous the master murdered his family to take him in, since the blood the would help with the transfer.I

Happy hunting.

 

If you have introduced some sort of alchemy or other power then you can have some sort of sealing magic that was secretly casted, or a item that can seal his powers. Or drug him during a party or something

 

Never read the previous post but depending on how they became a sorcerer in the first place, maybe their bloodline source had some trouble so that those who depended on that blood connection to use their powers were deprived of the ability to draw upon it. If it was a hard work training sort of acquired power then maybe someone messed with their practice or sabotaged their experiment that caused an accident that crippled or disabled them. Just some ideas.
Also reading some of the DnD materials on sorcerers might give you some more ideas.

 

A TRAP DOOR TO A MANA DEPLETED ROOM

Then he'll get his legs broken from the fall. Definitely original idea and not from a movie.

 

Maybe make it so that their death was useless, like how this one old man dies defending Naruto's clone ....
Make it so that he has no choice or opportunity to heal himself or make a run for it. Like an abrupt thing something that's bittersweet

Like he doesn't suspect anything niether does the reader everything is good and good and suddenly describe his death

 

Inexplicable power drain... For now.
Leave the readers hanging. Weave into the plot the reason his powers are on the fritz. Allows for weak to strong power growth as their powers are slowly unlocked.

 

Moral kidnapping? Drugs causing them to lose strength? Hostage?

 

What good, for the story’s sake, is that there’s magic in the world and that the mc can use it? Do you really REALLY need magic? Otherwise make him a poor country boy coming to the first time and then blah blah blah dies. The goal with writing is to keep it clean and simple. So unless magic is really important, I’d say push it aside, since I assume this is at most 1.5k word count limit.
You can make an event happen, a natural phenomenon where the magic is pointless, or even the cause of his death, but if you do that you’ll have to foreshadow it early on, otherwise the ending won’t feel like an ending (assuming the story ends with his death).
You can make the magic a naturally dangerous thing to use. Like he CAN use magic, but what comes out of his body isn’t what he had in mind. Like he thinks of making wind, and instead he summons a meteor. You can make it that he needs to use his magic to defend himself knowing full well the dangers and then dies. What you can also do, is that you never specifiy what will happen if he uses the magic, he knows something will happen, something small scale. And then when he dies the world turns against him as he...and you can even show an example of this how he needed to use small scale magic and that does cause some damage to his surroundings

 

A sorcerer jumped from a cliff to perform a flight spell, little did they know that magic that was diligently practiced is not real and a bunch of lies and fairy tales spun by fiction authors. A day later police officer found their body to be brought to the morgue, staff said the cause of death is fallen from a high place, the end. Good luck with your class.

 

HahahhHahHHHahhah reality in the poor guys face... literally!

 

@hypersniper159
You're assuming that the sorcerer is the MC rather than an antagonist or side character.

There's been a ton of suggestions, but most of them boil down to 3 things:

1. The sorcerer loses or otherwise has no access to his powers.
   • Mana drain trapped room, sorcerer's power already exhausted, etc.
2. The sorcerer has no chance to use his powers.
   • Surprise attack, poison, etc.
3. The sorcerer chooses not to use his powers.
   • Loyalty, hostages, etc.

Personally, I favor blind luck where the sorcerer gets knocked out as collateral damage from someone else's attack (which is kind of #2).

 

This is so real I'm laughing

 

Why didn't I see this when I looked over the weekend? Oh well.

My first answer is simple, there's more than one Sorcerer, even if the Sorcerer in question is the most powerful in the country, he's probably not powerful enough to take on the second, third & fourth most powerful Sorcerer's simultaneously. Combine that with jail cells & associated imprisonment devices specifically designed (potentially both designed and/or made by the Sorcerer in question) to prevent Magic User's from utilizing their magic once captured, and everything runs on from there.

My second answer is "Sorcery takes time, and can be disrupted", then the answer is just a guy with a stick hitting the Sorcerer when they went to capture him, followed by having him hit every time magical energy moved near him, regardless of the cause.

My third answer is that the Sorcerer believes in the justice system and trusted that he would be found innocent, as he was innocent, and was thus went with his arrest, only to be surprised when he was actually executed.

My fourth answer is that Sorcery is Ritual Magic. It can do all sorts of things and is incredibly powerful, but if you don't have the materials on hand you can't use it. So your Sorcerer is usually just some dude who walks around with about as much personal protection as the average citizen, who's job is to run rituals that produce magical effects. Without the materials, space and time to run the rituals, he can't create utilize his magic, and thus is easily captured, imprisoned, and prevented from using magic by a simple pair of handcuffs.

 

Accident. Plain old fashioned accident. Most powerful person on the planet walks outside at the exact moment the piano that was falling hits, etc.

 

How does magic work within the setting, and how is the empire set up? If the setting and the character's powers were more fully described the answer might become obvious. As a general rule of thumb, I think you should flesh out a setting at least 1 step beyond what the readers are ever going to see. Like if the whole story takes place in one town, flesh out the entire country in your notes. IMO that'll help make it feel like the characters live in an actual world rather than on a stage. The edges of what you choose to flesh out are at great risk of feeling like they're the edges of what you chose to flesh out to the readers as well.

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But to add a new plot idea: The sorcerer DID escape, but the place they thought was safe to escape to had been compromised.