Familiars

Overview

A familiar is a minor spirit-construct bound to a caster by an established bond. It is not an animal, even when it wears an animal's form: an owl familiar is a construct in owl form. Conjuration tells familiars apart by what holds their shape: a creature pattern, the commonest, gives the spirit-construct the form of a living kind, and a prepared companion houses it in a made body. The bond comes first and the familiar with it; the Familiar Call only brings it back into attendance, because calling a familiar is recall, not the free creation of an intelligence.

Appearance

Most familiars take the shape of a small creature: an owl, a cat, a crow, a hare, a lizard, or a moth, about the size such a creature would be. The best known is the night courier's owl, called down from hiding with one whisper. A familiar rarely looks quite ordinary. Its eyes hold a faint light or none, its markings repeat its caster's sigil, or it is too still, too clean, too quiet for an animal. Some show their making more plainly, with edges that blur at dusk, feathers like smoke, or a shadow that falls the wrong way. A prepared companion may be a carved or cast thing that moves, a brass bird or a jointed wooden hound, though most casters prefer a form that draws no notice.

Habitat and Range

A familiar lives where its bond is kept. Many have a symbolic housing, a box, cage, ring, lantern, or written circle, where they rest when not in attendance; others wait in hiding nearby, in a tower roof or a hedge. The call reaches as far as the bond does, from nearby to across a district, and a strong bond can hold a familiar in attendance indefinitely.

Behaviour and Temperament

A familiar attends its caster: it watches, carries, fetches, and keeps close. Its temper is its caster's bond more than its own. Some are wary of everyone else and will not be touched; some are curious and sociable and must be called off strangers. A familiar never chooses a new bond by itself, and one whose caster dies is said to go quiet or go away.

A familiar has no wishes of its own that anyone has proved. One held to a creature pattern takes on the habits of the form it wears, preening, stretching, hunting a moth, and since it also answers to Beast Tether as a trained animal does, it is hard to tell from one. It does not eat, breed, or age as that animal would.

Abilities

A familiar comes when its bond is called, by a whisper or a short chanted circle, from wherever it is hiding. Within its bond it understands its caster without many words and will carry a message, a key, or a small tool, keep watch, or go where its caster cannot. Its abilities are the bond's, not a new mind's: a familiar does not know more than it was made, patterned, or taught to know. A severed bond cannot be called across, and a familiar that is terrified or hurt may not come.

Uses and Dangers

Couriers, scholars, spies, and solitary casters keep familiars for watching and carrying, and for company. A familiar is cheap to keep in attendance and costly to make, since the bond must be established before any call can reach it. Its dangers are its caster's: a familiar is a quiet pair of eyes and a messenger nobody sees, and many households distrust any small animal that sits too still.

Lore and Belief

Folk belief makes more of familiars than conjurers do. Many people believe a familiar is a piece of its caster's own life, so that whoever kills it wounds the caster; others say it is a spirit bought from the dead, or a sign of dark dealing. Conjurers reply that a familiar is a bond and the body is its housing. Many outside the craft take an owl or cat familiar for a bonded animal, and treat a familiar's death as an animal's; conjurers know it for a construct that has taken a creature's shape, and say that a killed familiar is unmade, not dead, and can be made again only by making a new bond.

Where It Appears

• Conjuration