Familiar

Basic Description

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| Summon Familiar                                                          |
|--------------------------------------------------------------------------| 
| Level:  6                                                                |
| School: Conjuration                                                      |
| Syntax: familiar <type>, familiar <command>                              |
| Cost:   50 sp                                                            |
|--------------------------------------------------------------------------|
|    Conjure a familiar of the requested type. Summoning success is        |
| based on your conjuring skill and your guild level, as compared to       |
| the level listed on the following chart.                                 |
|                                                                          |
|   .----------------------------------------------------------.           |
|   | Level      Type           Origin           Reagents      |           |
|   |----------------------------------------------------------|           |
|   |   1        cat            natural            none        |           |
|   |   5        dragonet       natural            none        |           |
|   |   9        spunky         faerie         -* unknown *-   |           |
|   |  12        cu sith        faerie         -* unknown *-   |           |
|   |  15        teranim        elemental      -* unknown *-   |           |
|   |  16        sylph          elemental      -* unknown *-   |           |
|   |  17        salamander     elemental      -* unknown *-   |           |
|   |  18        undine         elemental      -* unknown *-   |           |
|   |  19+       asteri         astral         -* unknown *-   |           |
|   `----------------------------------------------------------'           |
|                                                                          |
| Do take note: should your familiar die, the sudden severing of the       |
| link will damage and stun you.                                           |
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Additional Information

A few excerpts from the Red Book of Conjuring.
 
   For unknown reasons, the mind of the domestic cat predisposes it 
to familiarhood. Speculations on this date back for centuries, going 
so far as claiming cats and catfolk are a current, degenerate form of 
an elder race steeped in the old ways of magic.
 
   A more prevalent and accepted theory associates house cats with 
faeries. Indeed, Irusan, the Faerie King of Cats, exists, but if he's 
truely feline, or merely disguised as such, is debatable.
 
   Higher level mages can bind the local breeds of dragonet as 
familiars. Dragonets arguably lack a cat's intelligence, but are 
decidely better endowed with natural weaponry.
 
   Beyond dragonets, calling familiars becomes a matter of piercing 
through to realms beyond Astaria. The first supernatural familiar is 
the spunky, or will-o'-the-wisp, a low-magic faerie that spends most 
of its time on the material plane. Spunkies, being faeries, have a 
natural, though diminished, resistance to magic, and their bright, 
fiery forms can sufficiently illuminate dark areas.
 
   The other bindable fay is the cu sith, or faerie hound. Faerie 
hounds are markedly smarter than their mundane counterparts, but 
their wild, magical nature makes forging the link between mage and 
familiar difficult.
 
   For high level mages, the elemental spirits can be pressed into 
servitude. On their planes of origin, elemental spirits can't be 
distinguished from their native element, but when conjured to our 
material plane, they manifest in much different forms.
 
   The teranim, or elemental spirit of earth, appears as a stocky, 
grayish-brown humanoid, while sylphs, the elemental spirits of air, 
manifest as delicate females enclosed in glowing blue orbs. 
Salamanders, the spirits of fire, appear as large fire-shrouded 
lizards, and the undine, or water spirit, manifests as a pale, 
mist-wrapped woman.

   True master mages can bind asteri, or prismatic wraiths, as 
familiars. The asteri are native to the astral plane, and their 
native form is undescribable. Given this, they tend to manifest on 
our plane in truely bizarre ways.
 
   Being formed from a pure magical source, Asteri are immune to 
direct magic and psionic attacks, but most evocations and other 
elemental congeries can harm them. The asteri also have limited 
second-sight, though its nature is still debated.
 
   Some rumors have surfaced that other familiar types might exist 
but the specifics of the conjuring have yet to be isolated.