Chapter 236: Conceptual Beings
Siobhan
Month 9, Day 11, Saturday 1:00 a.m.
Siobhan returned to her forbidden research on shamanry, where she was systematically working her way through all the texts she could find that dealt with the subject. She still felt that the practice was unpleasantly wishy-washy and poorly documented by its practitioners, but was nevertheless becoming something of a theoretical expert in the craft. As she finished one book, she picked up the next in her quickly dwindling list, Spirit Guides and Familiar Bonds: Divergent Practices in Traditional Magic.
The author posited that, while shamanry was often considered a sub-craft of divination, in many ways, it was actually a type of witchcraft. Witches set out an enticement-laced summoning Circle and negotiated a contract with their prospective familiar, who they could then use to channel their magic. Technically, if Empress Regal had been a magical beast instead of a normal raven, Siobhan could have used the raven-summoning spell as the first step to entering into a contract with her.
Witches had the advantage of easy casting of spells that fit within their familiar’s range of abilities, decreased chance of Will-strain, and an up-front advantage in power over modern sorcerers. Sometimes, depending on the power of the familiar, that advantage might last for decades. They had the disadvantage of reduced versatility, the fact that a familiar could die, and having to fulfill the terms of whatever contract they had bound themselves to. Developing a familiar’s power required work and dedication, just like developing your solo power with sorcery. While one could technically have more than one familiar—if the contracts allowed—doing so by necessity meant that progress for each would further slow.
The author argued that shamans could do similarly, either for service within the spirit realm or outside of it. Due to the transitory nature of the spirit realm, these contracts were almost always short term rather than for life. Within the spirit realm, the contract was a standard enough process, though summoning a spirit had a few quirks that were different from summoning some particular magical beast in the real world, seeing as they had no identifiable, concrete species.
Outside of the spirit realm, however, spirits required a body to reside in as part of the terms of the contract, without which they had no way to interact with the mortal world. Most often, shamans allowed the spirit to temporarily reside in their own bodies.
Hypothetically, if one could create the right body and a strong enough anchor, the spirit could be hosted in a different form. However, in practice, this was impossible for any larger and more complex spirit. No one had figured out how to make a permanent anchor, or, more importantly, a body that could properly house a spirit. It faced similar problems to any other method to encapsulate a mind within a body different from its own.
The book delved into theories about how to create a good anchor and least-horrible body depending on the spirit’s characteristics. It did not attempt to theorize about ways to overcome the current limitations on either. Anchors were all distinctly temporary, and bodies meant for the simplest of spirits. Done incorrectly, or with too-small capacity, trying to stuff a spirit inside would cause damage to the spirit as well as poor integration with the body.