016 - Magic 4
Familiarity
⭐
Sorceress | Beast | Soul | Nature
There's an old spell, one if the first ever cast by a witch. It's almost too easy to cast and never seems to leave a witch's memory. A witch instinctively can figure it out for themselves just trying to use magic without direction as a rank 0 magic: Find Familiar. You can conjure a helpful benevolent spirit being, that may or may not parasitically conjoin with your own soul. It manifests in an animal form you can choose when you summon it. Cat, crab, crow, cow, bat, butterfly, dragonfly, frog / toad, hawk, horse, lizard, octopus, owl, snake, fish, rat, raven, sea horse, spider, weasel, ferret, goat, sheep, dog... or equivalent animals (Mockingbird > Raven, Squid > Octopus) It looks like a normal animal of your chosen type, but demonstrably has greater intelligence. It's as smart as a trained dog and utterly loyal to you, and your survival and thriving is in its best interest as its life is tied to yours. If its body dies you can resummon, or dismiss, it casually, and it doesn't age. You pick whether it is male or female. Familiars can interact with spirits. Reminder that this is rank 0. Any witch can have a familiar at this baseline.
Rank 1
You lose any allergy to any animals you may have had, as well as lactose intolerance, and you can now telepathically communicate emotions and intentions through your soulbond, even when it is dismissed. You can use magic through your familiar, such as having your familiar do the pointing while you chant a curse.
Rank 2
You can now talk to any of the above listed animals that are familiar options. (Not just your choice of animal). They understand your meaning, and you understand theirs. (No need for chicken squawking. Unless you're into that, idk). Most animals wont just do what you ask without incentive and their intelligence is limited. Even your familiar tends to behave in line with its respective animal by default and could use a bit of convincing depending on your relationship.
Rank 3
Some of your familiar's qualities rub off on you, based on things that its species is known for and not actually the physiology of the animal, such as night vision and being able to jump high and land well for cats. Climbing and eating anything for goats (You'd be able to digest things and/or pass them harmlessly so long as you're able to swallow it and it isn't overtly toxic). Lighter body and better memory and intelligence for crows. (Flight is too much, no, but something like water breathing if your familiar is aquatic okay). Yes, a cow familiar does enlarge your breasts, h-hey! Eyes up here, also makes you stronger. Choose any 2 relevant animal traits. If future options grant any more forms for your familiar, you can pick one quality of similar power level to add to yourself. There is not hard rules on what constitutes a valid trait other than some reasonable cause, and it not being more potent than what's shown here.
Rank 4
You gain the ability to shapeshift into your chosen animal. It's just an animal, it doesn't have special powers, but you can still cast curses, maintain the effects of potions, drink potions, wear charms, ect. It has some distinctive markings and resmeblances to you but most people wont look twice. This goes both ways, your familiar now has the ability to shapeshift into a human! It gains human level intelligence (in both forms), and has all the personality traits that humans stereotypically assoicate with that animal, though it's still subservient towards you and obeys most commands with some room for mischief or stubborness based on their personality. Looks wise, they'd have human traits that you'd associate with their animal. Lets just say my familiar gets as busty as me! You and your familiar both can adopt features from either/or forms in a blend, such as maintaining cat ears or a tail in human form. This is is one of the primary reasons familiar spirits form these bonds with witches, they love to explore the world and are grateful for the opportunity to adopt a human form and their improved intelligence. Some may even fall in love with their masters!
Rank 5
Whatever your familiar choice, this magic is originated with cats and that extends to this; The gift of 9 lives. If you die by any means, you'll wake up young again in your own bed. You can gain extra lives by saving a cat's life, though never going above a reserve of 9 lives. A good way to stock up is by adopting cats from certain animal shelters, where they were sure to meat an untimely end. Look up which are kill shelters or not. If you see a dying cat (or any other animal, or child) you can use one of your 9 lives on it. You also age very gracefully, like a cat, and wont start to look or feel old until you're in your 70's, and you might even look like you're still in your 20's depending on how you treat yourself, no more than 45 even if you didn't take care of yourself. At any point when you're over the age of 60, you can simply mentally use up a life to replenish your body without unpleasantries. Additionally, you can now shapeshift into any form your familiar possesses, other than a Metamorphosis form.
⭐ Necromancy
Warlock | Necro | Blood | Soul
Necromancy! The magic of souls, undeath, and visceral Bending organic matter to your whim for your own ends and contesting the very nature of mortality, Now with less grave robbing, and Necromancy has an innate Rank 0 effect for all witches: All witches are capable of seeing through the veil separating life from the dead, to see ghosts and spirit creatures (Including most demons and other things out to get you that most humans can't see). Most spirits are collected by reapers and escorted to the afterlife of a deity that claimed them, while unclaimed souls go to limbo until granted passage to an actual afterlife. But some spirits flee from their reapers or their death went unnoticed, which is dangerous, as predatory spirits can prey on the weak and the spirit can be consumed, or get twisted over time to become a spirit beast itself.
Rank 1
Beginner necros are able to weaken the veil so even humans can see spirits, as well as force spirits capable of hiding from witches to become visible. They can reanimate small corpses of animals for as long as they maintain the effect, up to 3 at once, to behave as they did in life with an echo of their life force imprinted on the body. If you visit any grave, you can use "Communion" to attempt to speak with the spirit from wherever they are in the afterlife or spirit world, but they can not notice, ignore you like an unknown number, or may not exist anymore. Be careful who, or what, you contact...
Rank 2
With just rank 2, A necro can now purify corrupted or faded spirits that they manage to subdue in some manner with a 1 minute ritual that can restore the original intelligence, as well as optionally mark them so a reaper will find them to guide them on. Can now reanimate medium sized animals, up to 9. Reanimated bodies need not be composed of the same body, but can be amalgamations. With a word of command, you can control bone within 120 meters with up to the force of an arrow or swing of a weapon, up to 3 skeletons of mass.
Rank 3
The necromancer is now able to reanimate human sized remains, up to 27, and If a spirit is available, you can bind it to a reanimated construct to give that soul a physical form, and doing so means you don't have to maintain the animating effect though it still counts to the limit, but wont fall apart if you are unconscious, and it now can't be dispelled. You can engrave the bones with runes if you know it. Souls need to be convinced to cooperate with you, you don't have unnatural influence over their choices with this alone. Your manipulation of bone also extends to dead flesh, within 340 meters and up to the mass of 3 whale skeletons, which can now have the force of a cannonball. You can spontaneously generate bone matter equivalent to a human skeleton with a minor mana cost and a second or two of focus.
Rank 4
Now capable of reanimating up to 81 constructs up to the size of whales. Bodies or bound spirits will magically emulate biological and supernatural functions they had in life up to your own power level. You can now act as a reaper to send a spirit to an afterlife you know about, though a deity in charge can reject it unless doing you a favor. You can now control living flesh and bone in order to rip bones from the living or cause excrutiating pain to those who are unprotected, such as via warding runes like most witches, within 600m in line of sight up to the mass of 10 whales with the force of an artillery shell. You can sense flesh and bone within 60m through walls. Constructs now don't require focus, can spontaneously generate as much bone as you can control.
Rank 5
You gain the ability to become a lich. You can craft a phylactery you can put your soul into, which can be any object with a minimum size of a ring, so long as it's one solid object as opposed to a composit. ie; A stone slab vs a slab of tiled pieces of stone. Small objects can be hidden and moved easily but a large object might be harder to destroy, or perhaps even notice as being special. While you have a phylactery, any damage done to your body is superficial, you can continue to remote operate your body even when all flesh is stripped away leaving only bones, even just a single skull. At any time you can abandon your body to instantly snap back to the phylactery and regrow a new body over the course of a few days. If your witch type has other methods of life extension, you can choose which occurs first, or switch that method to occur next to the phylactery instead of a usual location and from any distance. The phylactery must have a path to the open sky (or equivalent in the cas of other planes), but it doesn't need to be a straight path; It could be at the bottom of a dungeon labyrinth, and the path can be as narrow as 1 inch for up to 10ft at a time. Damage to the phylactery is true damage to you, proportional to the damage on that object. You'll feel proportional pain, and if destroyed, you die unless you have other means of cheating death as backup. Since your soul is sequestered away, effects that 'kill immortals' have no bearing on your lichdom. If your meat suit dies on you it can still be a viable target for healing magics to wake it back up, but it functions as normal even if you were to lose organic parts like eyes and ears, an undead body would still feel if it has flesh. Your reanimation can now animate beasts of any size from dragons to leviathans and you have no cap on the number of individual reanimated constructs. Sense flesh and bone within 240m, and control within line of sight with the mass of 50 blue whale skeletons. If you have a pocketspace, you can use it as an afterlife for spirits, though it can be a little unsecure compared to a real afterlife.