Oh my god... that was so beautiful. A part of me wants to just have him give in now. But that would severely shorten the story.

Robots are totally superior to slaves though. :-P

I... just can't think of a way for it to work. I'm trying, but I can't think of a good solution. Everything I come up with is flawed. For instance, if we say the war threw them into a semi-apocalyptic dark age, then what stopped the magicals from escaping and roaming free, with the lack of infrastructure and all?

If we say that most of the world has better tech, then why does Alexi practically still live on practically a early 1900s level of technology? Furthermore, slavery would be less necessary, again, because of robotics.