debtors and magic in belros
magic is pretty simple - utilizing 'life force' or 'essence' as a source of energy to do stuff. theoretically anyone can do it if they set their mind to it, but in reality it's dangerous to learn how to do anything big because it's easy to accidentally take too much energy and create an effect bigger than you intended, and potentially dying in the process. though you can use other people or living things as energy sources, in some places there's a social bias against using magic, due to its danger.
belros is the hub of magic research, exploring the limits of its applications, including how to store energy for later use. this is largely fueled by a seedy underbelly in the cities in which people can pay off their debts by acting as batteries. doing this makes it harder for them to work due to fatigue, which makes it harder to stay out of debt, and the easiest way to get out of it is to repeat the cycle. plus, if the mage accidentally (or 'accidentally') kills someone their family gets extra compensation. it's no wonder loan sharks work closely with, or are, mages. thankfully there aren't too many mages, especially ones of a level to be working with such large amounts of energy.
on the bright side, their experiments and advancements have led to some really amazing medical procedures becoming possible, stitching together wounds with a precision not otherwise viable. granted, this doesn't really improve the lives of most people and is still pretty experimental, but hey. they have managed to use magical energy to power machines and automate some things, though there's still a lot of inefficiency from wasted energy and some mages doing stupid stuff like seeing if they can turn iron into gold.
though livestock seem like they would be a better source of energy for magic, humans are preferred for a couple of reasons - cattle are valuable, and owning cattle inherently makes one wealthy to some degree, so they're a bit harder to exploit and would generally have to actually be paid. unless a mage owns their own cattle, though most prefer to live in more urban areas and wouldn't like having to make the trek to the countryside.
people like to think humans give more or in some way 'better' energy - because perish the thought that we're all just clever animals - though it's pretty hard to measure in any objective way.
lastly, and why smaller livestock wouldn't be a great choice either despite being relatively less valuable (though also less energy), is that draining the energy makes the meat taste off and spoils quicker. or people just think it does, haven't quite decided yet, but regardless it means cutting into your business if customers know you've had dealings with mages. all around it's just more convenient to use people.
one well-known example of people’s wariness of magic-influenced meat is of a particular estate so warped by its owner's magic that even living chickens were turned foul, pure black, even their bones. (in reality this was just normal genetics that had nothing at all to do with magic, but one can hardly blame them for not realizing just how strange regular genetics can be)
