Despite the danger inherent to magic, Mayes have for obvious reasons always wielded tremendous power in Maeleff. Even aside from their personal power, this is a world whose people were raised and evolved with magic and sorcery being just the way certain things were done. The ability to use magic is of course to some extent damaging to a society's "technological" growth, insofar as they have never had a reason to learn how to do certain things without magic.
Now of course, things are a bit different. It's been 500 years or so since the gods died and their Blood ran. The people have had 500 years to get used to the idea that magic is dangerous, destructive and poisonous. So there has been a rising movement to learn how to do things without magic. Philosophers, scientists and engineers are just starting to appear, looking for other ways to do things.
This of ourselves sets up lots of neat conflicts. Old power structure looking to keep its grasp of things vs. those looking to brak away from that while structure. Neophobes vs. Neophiles.
