Familiars

by

Finley Vorden

Unlike the formal devotional practices required for divine patronage, familiar bonds develop through mutual trust, shared experience, and what I can only describe as spiritual chemistry.

During my travels, I've encountered practitioners whose familiars ranged from the traditional (cats, ravens, ferrets) to the frankly bizarre. A weather spellweaver I met near the Pillars of Srane maintained a decades-long partnership with what appeared to be a small thundercloud that followed her everywhere.

Types of Familiars

LIVING FAMILIARS exist as flesh-and-blood creatures who’ve formed deep bonds with their practitioners. These partnerships typically develop naturally through extended contact, shared danger, or mutual rescue. I once met a healer whose familiar, a grizzled badger with one missing eye, had saved her from Fvold-Jackals during her apprenticeship. Their bond grew so strong that the badger would arrive to comfort her during particularly difficult healing sessions.

SPIRITUAL FAMILIARS manifest as divine energy given semi-corporeal form through sustained invocation. These beings appear when practitioners have achieved sufficient divine favor to request a permanent companion from their patron. The form these familiars take often reflects both the practitioner’s personality and their patron’s domain. Rīōnne devotees typically manifest aerial creatures (hawks, butterflies, etc.) or in one memorable case I witnessed, a miniature whirlwind.

ASCENDED FAMILIARS represent the rarest category: living familiars who’ve absorbed sufficient divine energy through their bond to transcend mortality. The process appears spontaneous and unpredictable, at times triggered by extreme circumstances such as when a familiar sacrifices itself to save its bonded practitioner.

Acquiring Living Familiars

Living familiars cannot be coerced, or magically compelled. The bond must develop organically, with timelines varying from practitioner to practitioner. Some may bond on first sight, others might cohabitate passive-aggressively for several moontides before finding common ground.

Many partnerships begin when a practitioner saves an injured animal or when an animal aids a practitioner in distress. Some animals simply refuse to leave practitioners alone, appearing repeatedly until the bond solidifies. A court spellweaver in Bairora described how his familiar, an elegant silver cat, began appearing in his chambers despite locked doors and warded windows. “She made her intentions quite clear,” he explained while the cat in question supervised our conversation.

Conjuring Spiritual Familiars

Creating a spiritual familiar requires both exceptional divine favor and a specific ritual requesting your patron’s direct intervention. The incantation varies by patron, but typically follows the pattern:

“Njem uvatji [patron name] mjiru!” (generally: “Living presence [patron name] grant my petition!”)

The ritual itself demands significant preparation:

• A sacred space aligned with your patron’s preferences
• Offerings appropriate to their domain (see my materials correspondence table in Focuses)
• A personal sacrifice demonstrating commitment to the partnership

Success isn’t guaranteed even with perfect execution. The gods don’t grant spiritual familiars casually to those who will not cherish them.

Ascension of Living Familiars

The transformation from living to spiritual familiar remains poorly understood even by experienced practitioners. The process appears to require extreme emotional trauma, typically the familiar’s death combined with the practitioner’s refusal to accept the loss.

A war spellweaver I encountered during the Drethan border conflicts near Carigdon Pass described watching his wolf companion die protecting him from enemy fire. His grief-fueled attempt to heal the mortally wounded animal instead channeled it through Temrūs’s domain of righteous fury. The wolf returned as a being of living flame, retaining all its original personality while gaining supernatural resilience.

Familiars & MUSE

A familiar provides practical and magical benefits:

• +1 die to Awareness rolls when your familiar can assist (scouting, watching for danger, etc.)
• Once per Sequence, your familiar can provide comfort that allows you to ignore the effects of one Tribulation
• Your familiar can deliver Powers to targets Near to it, though doing so requires a successful Power roll

Creating Your Familiar

Familiars require their own character sheets, but forgo the selection of Paths. When creating a familiar, begin by establishing their trait scores. All familiars start with 2 dice in each Trait, then roll a d6 for each Trait and add the result to determine final scores. Choose one Trait as the familiar’s “Natural Talent” and add +2 dice to that score.

For Life Points, Living Familiars receive your Power score + 5, while Spiritual Familiars receive your Power score + 10. Unlike Living Familiars, Spiritual Familiars will never need to rest, eat or drink.

During Combat Flow, familiars act on their own turn. In addition to this, they cannot take the Charmed Tribulation.

You should work with your Wayfinder to create 1-2 special Talents based on your familiar’s form and type.

Familiar Death and Recovery

When a Living Familiar dies, you must make an Endurance roll. Failure inflicts the Tired Tribulation on you, and lasts until you complete proper burial rites or find a new companion. The loss also reduces your maximum Power score by 1 until you form a new familiar bond.

Spiritual Familiars that are destroyed can be re-summoned through 1d4 hours/ Rotations (out of combat/ in combat) of prayer.