A possible set of new magical arts...
Summoning: the mage attempts to draw the attention of nearby magical entities (including intelligent animals). They can try to attract everyone or slap some simple qualifications on it, like every rodent, every mouse or every spirit. If they're familiar with a particular person, they can try to attract them (of course, if they're out of range, it will fail). It can't really compel them to come, but it does get their attention and signals your presence.
Summoning doesn't actually require an Edge to learn, but most mages are unaware that it's even possible. If someone teaches you the basics in play, you'll be able to spend XP on it. Sometimes a mage in dire need casts it by accident (rolling Magic + 1d10 vs the difficulty, so unless the player blows Hero Points on it, it probably won't work) but this is rare.
Binding (Edge, Requires Summoning 5+): this Edge allows the mage to prepare some sort of host to accept a bodiless spirit. They not only attract the attention of nearby spirits (or a specific spirit, if they're familiar with it) using Summoning, they offer it a physical form to inhabit. This could be a constructed golem of some sort or a magically prepared corpse or just a physical location that you would like the spirit to inhabit. If you want it to remain in that form indefinitely without your aid, you'll need to sever your Binding.
Otherwise, when you stop concentrating the spirit has to struggle to remain corporeal and will eventually be drawn back into the spirit world. Weaker spirits will usually vanish immediately, but powerful ones may be able to remain for several minutes (these are also the ones most likely to be able to manifest on their own for brief periods without outside aid).
The difficulty with Binding, of course, is finding the right spirit. It doesn't give you any direct control over the spirit's actions, so if you want an animate servant you better find a spirit that wants to serve you.
Spirit Types: this is the tricky design issue, of course. What sort of spirits are desirable? The mice who experiment with this would try to classify them, naturally.
Servitors: spirits yearning to be born. They tend to "imprint" on whoever gives them a body, attempting to serve that person to the best of their ability. They can't speak or really reason, but they can understand their creator's spoken commands pretty well. A few can hear their creator's unspoken wishes, too, but these are very dangerous because they might act to fulfill urges you don't want fulfilled (like murdering someone you dislike). Servitors want to serve their "parent" but have been known to go malign when treated sufficiently badly. They have a lot of trouble understanding anyone besides their creator, since they only have a psychic link to them.
Placed in a location, a servitor spirit will still want to help its binder, but will generally be incapable of mustering more than a few soft breezes or a tiny change in temperature. It's a nice way to keep a house relatively dust-free, though.
Malign: spirits that are filled with hate and anger. They generally want to hurt and kill things and are quite violent. They usually mistake their creator for part of themselves (because the creator's aura will be in their new body) and won't harm them, but anyone else is a viable target. Malign spirits are often much harder to convince to serve you than Servitor spirits... they'll generally only serve because they believe that you're leading them towards new prey, or because they're so stupid that they think that you're part of them. Really intelligent malign spirits have been known to pretend to be other sorts until they see a good opportunity for murder. Stupid malign spirits make good guardians; they don't really have a sense of impatience, so they can be put in a spot and they'll stay there indefinitely, ignoring their creator but killing anyone else.
Placed in a location, malign spirits speed up the rate at which it decays. Collapsing parts are generally delayed until a potential victim appears in the right spot. "Cursed" locations are often inhabited by malign spirits, whether they were bound there deliberately or are manifesting on their own.
Healers: very rare. These beneficient spirits seek to soothe the pains of those around them. They can even be drawn into a living host (where they will attempt to repair any wounds), but will flee it the first time that the host suffers any real pain, so you generally need to keep the host drugged and pain-free for the duration. Unlike Shaping magic (which can only treat gross physical injuries like cuts and broken bones), healing spirits can treat things like poisons, cancers and other illnesses.
If bound into a location, they tend to promote the growth of plants and the overall health of anyone living there, but they usually flee if the area is "desecrated" with violence or extreme negative emotions.
Healers can't be bound in unliving tissues for long. They'll immediately lose interest and peel themselves away.
Observers: considered practically useless. Observer spirits just want to watch the physical world. Given a body of some sort, they simply sit there and look around. Occasionally they'll muster enough motivation to move closer to some interesting event, but for the most part they do nothing but watch. It's possible to use a Link spell so that you'll see what the observer sees, but it's usually not worth two severings to create one. Placed in a location, they'll watch whatever happens there, but won't be able to move elsewhere.
Guardians: guardian spirits are protective of their environment. Normally placid, they often turn violent if their peaceful home is disturbed. They aren't particularly smart, so it can be bad to wander near a guardian's home right after it's been disturbed by something. They act sort of like bees: if you act like you belong and don't make trouble, they ignore you, but once they're stirred up they can become dangerous to everyone in the area.
Mischeivous: these spirits delight in whimsical pranks and are generally more annoying than dangerous. Given a physical body, they'll often make brief, ineffective attacks, then pursue if the target flees and flee if they don't. If pursued, they'll lead people on a merry chase... the crueler ones will make sure that the chase leads through a desolate and dangerous area.
Hm. It might also be possible to bind spirits into items, but that allows for the creation of enchanted items... probably most spirits wouldn't stay in an item unless it really interested them. Violent spirits in a weapon, for example.
Posted by Kiz at November 17, 2005 01:01 PMCommentsPost a comment