*Humans* as familiars?

Is there anything that prevents a magus from taking another human as a "familiar"? After all, you can take not only animals, but also intelligent spirits, ghosts, faeries, demons etc.

Finding one with magic might may be... rather hard.

Hmm, I thought you could take mundane animals as familars (serf's parma) but that's probably just a throwback from some older edition...

The difference is the soul. The free will thingy and being bound are incompatible. Familiar-ity would attack directly the free will of the human being, and probably damn them to hell straight away.

Cheers,

Xavi

Arf... I wanted to create such a topic for my Wirth character in the Novus Mane soon-to be saga, as I've toyed with the idea for some days.

Thing is, he has the True Love flaw, and doesn't want to live without his wife. So, in the long run, he has little options:

  • Take no longevity potion, to age and die with her. But he is too ambitious for this.
  • Find a way to become immortal, and take her with him.

Giving her a longevity potion is only a delaying method, especially as it will be less efficient than his.

So, mostly, he's stuck with this as one of very few options.

I'm not so sure, however, than free will is incompatible with familiarity, as familiar and magus may very well biker and all. On the contrary, the familiar bond rests on the trust between the magus and the familiar, although, IMO, this'd require original research.
=> Could such a bond be build around the stronger bond of True Love?

(Btw, I'm interested by any alternate solutions to keep her alive)

In my PBEM Game I run , I allowed two magi with true love to form something very similar to the companion bond as essentially a form of mystery magic.
As the game was/is a mix of 4th and 5th ed rules I never really wrote up detailed rules on it. I found it an interesting idea

Between a gifted and none gifted character I think it would have to be different. I would think the link would probably cause warping points , now if the 'mundane' had some magical talants or supernatural link that would probably work better as it would align them to the magical realm.

If you don't mind it will be something I bear in mind for the Novus Mane saga I can easily build a couple of plots around it and it would involve original research

Uh? Really? How so? It's not that the familiar has any less free will after being bound.

In any case, I thought the bound was symmetrical. So, just like the familiar is bound to the magus, the magus is bound to the familiar. Thus, if a soul "on the magus' side" does not prevent a bond from forming, neither should a soul "on the familiar's side".

Finally, I thought demons had both souls and free will :slight_smile:

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On the contrary, I would love it, with or without OR :smiley:

Indeed, Grimgroth&Vulcris...

Mmm good point.

I would probably allow it, but probably not quite as easily as normally.

Definitely against the human familiar concept.

As far as them aging together, I would think that (and not doing math here) that magus longevity (best) + more warping points ~= mundane longevity (not so best) + less warping points.

Of course, he could nuke her with like 10 warping points and see if she gets the unaging virtue, LOL.

I think that the standard familair ritual would not work as there is only one Soul present that of the mage , and the Familair essentially ends up sharing that Soul and Free will.

I'd say this can be a nice minor breakthrough! You could create a ritual that shared your aging rolls, provided the significant other does not have a rapid aging flaw (in which you would share her aging rolls) as long as you are married and in love. The ritual would have to be sealed by marriage, and broken by anything that goes against the vows taken (sort of bargain). This means however, that your soul can no longer be shared with a familiar or your heartbeast (just so that someone doesn't walk around with a wife, four apprentices who are his children, a magical companion from the flaw and a familiar, and you run out of players to nag him with, and it seems logical)

This could be a nice ophidian or jerbiton thing, and I already like it.

The section on familiars in the Merinita chapter of HoH: Mystery Cults says that characters with Faerie Magic can bind any living thing that is inherently faerie, and explicitly allows for the binding of a person who does not have Faerie Might but who is supernaturally aligned with the Faerie realm. Faeries are interested in people by definition, so I figured a faerie maga should be able to take a human consort or thrall. It's a more difficult process, though, because there are three additional cords that penalize the maga in relatively common circumstances.

We decided the game would be more interesting to expand the number of things that could be familiars. So, my Herbam specialist is working on binding a magical tree for his familiar. Any sort of Might is fair game. As is any creature that's been warped. I don't think it will come up in our game, so I haven't worried about the mechanics of it, but I love the idea of the Jerbiton who purposely warps his wife so that she could be bound.

If I had a player interested in such a thing, I would try very hard to incorportate into the game. But then, I find Ars more fun the more I say "yes."

I think that I'd require binding anything or one without Might to require research, and that they be magical in some way - Familiars are magical creatures. Likewise I think that binding things with nonMagical Might should, if not really worthy of Mystery status, at least be a virtue passed down by various lineages with those interests.

That said, I think True Love probably counts as enough of a mystically significant connection that fudging the research for the purposes of a great story (just think how the Church will react!) should definitely be done. After all, someone else trying to replicate it just adds another story later.

On a slightly different note, where on earth did souls ever become significant in the familiar bond? Demonic familiars are fairly traditional, after all, and demons have souls.

Well, sure, no problem at all! Why should I care?

Totally agreed.

Of course, IMO, a True Love - based familiar bond could at least have one difference with the "normal" bond: When the "familiar" dies, the magus does too, as the usual familiar connection is much more potent.

I only included the soul part to not have a magus run his own party, it was a colourful way to say "the familiar slot is taken"