Humans as familiars?

How complicated would it be to take a human (with a supernatural virtue) as your familiar?
A Breakthrough?

IMHO you're going up against the limit of the Divine here. There's souls involved; it's going to get messy.

So yeah, I'd say breakthrough. Pretty significant one, too.

There has been a prior discussion of this here:
https://forum.atlas-games.com/t/human-familiars-possible/7821/1

(I just recalled it and found it using the search function, I didn't reread it)

Depending on your setting, it is not impossible to consider that somebody already made the research. If we look at the benefit of a familiar (mundane) is that aging is no more an issue - the Cords will allow him to live as long as the magi (there is not even aging rules for familiar, except suggestion that as the mage get Decrepitude, the familiar ages, but more as flavour, no RAW).

So I could see that a mage deeply in love, or with true friendship, or even possibly father-son love would not consider going through life without the other - maybe as a way to avoid an certain death due to a curse, a disease or a terminal flaw. And instead of relying on Longevity rituals - which will ultimately fails - decided to look into a more permanent solution.

The link to the older discussion provide some interesting points (with its usual share or arguments :slight_smile: ).

A darker path to consider could be that in the past (I am talking more about very Ancient magic), some traditions was binding human in a similar way than familiar, but the role of the human was to absorb all the bad things which would happen to the mage (a vessel for Decrepitude, Twilight, Crippling wounds, ugly scarces) without dying. Somehow similar to Dorian Gray portrait. A mage could try to use such information to adapt it to the hermetic theory.
Would the Order approve of such behaviour if it is discovered ? Probably not. Yet you can see some old magus considering that as a way to extent their life at all costs...

Ah, thanks!

In one saga we played an adventure where we traveled to Thebes in search of a Mystery that would allow one of our magi and his wife to be joined together with a Familiar bond.
Ancient Greek magic adapted by a small cult, used by the SG as a carrot to motivate an adventure/story. Novus Mane saga.