Giving something to familiars.

This is a magic school for the professional familiar.

It is the rough draft; any constructive criticisms would be appreciated.

Familiars are apt for their own, unique brand of adept magic. The rules for familiar magic, a choice of the usual adept schools, in Break Today (pg. 116) do not do justice to a particularly weird school of animal-only magic. This is aimed at GMC familiars unless the GM allows the playing of familiars as PCs.

This magic is unavailable to humans because, well, humans are not disembodied spirits possessing animal bodies – in this regard familiars have a special dichotomy which is required for adept magic.

Familiars are also dependent upon their masters – they are willing slaves; they are completely reliant on their Masters for start-up charges in a magically bound servitude. Even if they find their master’s completely disagreeable, revolting even, it is the wizard’s familiar. Just think of the relationship of Kif to Captain Branigan, even if it is comedy.

A familiar also may have access to Familiar magic even if it was an adept in life, it may not actively use those previous skills – as undead rebirth into an alien body essentially hammers a square peg into a round hole two sizes to big without lubricant. The familiar must also have an obsession tailored to the familiar school of magic. Of course it’s possible for a familiar to outstrip its master magical in performance levels.

Of course, a familiar should have at least 11% in a Soul skill called Familiar Magick.

Familiar Blast Style: The Blast style takes the form of biting and scratching from invisible attackers. At significant level, the biting and scratching turn into mauls and gores.

Stats

Generate a minor charge
By living socially with your master for a day or actively performing a trivial duty will get you a minor charge.

Generate a significant charge:
By performing a crucial task for your master such as casting a ritual that will throw off his enemies, relaying an important message to someone else, or assisting your master obtain a significant charge will gain a significant charge for the familiar. Saving your master’s life will gather significant charges as well.

Generate a major charge
If you assist the master obtaining a major charge will net the familiar a major charge. If you outlive your master (he dies of unassisted natural causes) also gathers a major charge for the familiar.

Taboo: You may never follow anybody else other than your master, there can only be one – he may send you to assist someone else but he can never get rid of you. You must ensure the survival of your master, and success of your master,

To cement the taboo, a familiar may not charge up if it’s at zero. The only way to charge up is to gain a charge from the master (as what familiars do). A familiar may continue to rack up as many charges as it can, but if it ever runs down to zero, it must “warm up” by sucking on master’s teat.

Random Magick Domain
Anything that will help cements or continues the relationship between the familiar and the sorcerer. Anything relating to the transfer of health, or abilities to and from the pair. Magically manifesting animal behaviour patterns and reasons onto the world.

Starting Charges
All familiars start with five minor charges.

Charging Tips
Stay close to home if you can help it, but even doing your master’s business abroad will help those charges. Just remember your problems start at zero charges.

Familiar Minor Formula Spells

By Tooth and Claw and Stubbed Toe (One minor charge)
The Familiar can flex reality to ensure the best in confusing the enemy. The enemy becomes incredibly clumsy – so clumsy and panicked all Speed checks made after the spell are at –30. This spell lasts one round. A failed matched pair or a fumble may elicit Rank-2 Helplessness stress checks.

The Room’s Undivided Attention (Four minor charges)
The familiar gets the ability to slink away into reality’s blind spot in one defined room. The familiar may move about in a stealthy way and not draw attention to its self unless it purposefully “leaps” out from hiding.

The familiar can only be sensed, but not found, if someone rolls a successful Hail Mary on a Notice check. The Spell lasts until someone rolls a Hail Mary. The GM rolls the check secretly.

Eyes like Compass Needles (one minor charge)
You may locate your master anywhere in the world and know the rough distance to get there.

Tabula Rice (One minor charge)
This spell gives the familiar the lowest number off two dice in experience to learn Rituals as an Authentic Thaumaturgist (UA2 .

Speakeasy (Two minor charges)
This spell allows the familiar to converse with the master and it’s understandable. The Familiar can also struggle to “speak” one-word instructions to anyone else. This spell lasts for one day.

Spirit Smoke (Two minor charges)
Spirit smoke allows the familiar to sense the presence of spirits or spirit creatures around it for twelve hours. Spirit smoke also allows the familiar to track a spirit it has already sensed. Spirits include astral parasites and astral travellers, as well as revenants, homeless and possessing demons and anything of that intangible ilk.

Long-clawed Trick (five minor charges)
This spell allows the familiar to operate as if it had two hands with opposable thumbs. It works like a kind of teleporting telekinesis. Doors open, small objects vanish, glasses smash, keys turn, cards are shuffled.

The familiar has its Body and Speed stats used as physical strength and dexterity skills.

Gleaming Eyes and Ninja Nastiness (Seven minor charges)
If the familiar must attack anybody it rolls a four-dice Crash and selects the best two dice as its combat score. The Familiar need not roll attack dice; the magic takes care of that. When the attack is over the victim finds that his entire body is covered in scratches and little bite marks. The spell lasts until the familiar breaks from the combat.

If the familiar wishes to cast it a distance, the spell lasts a single round and only does the usual two dice in damage.

Significant Familiar Formula Spells

Chug-along Thoughts (one significant charge)
The familiar gains instant recall of what it could remember in its previous life. Essentially the familiar
Gains a standard skill at 15% (with discretion, please). If the familiar was an adept or avatar in it’s past life it remembers those things but cannot access them in the usual way. It can use its skills to teach others though – even by rote application build up those skills.

This differentiation between opposing magick schools is like you remember loving Lego and enjoying hours and hours of engrossed playing with your engineered creations. You cannot muster the same sort of enthusiasm for it again, but you certainly can watch your son play just as heartily – and even offer some advice on construction and give praise on something well done.

Telengrams (two significant charges)
You may send chunks of knowledge to your master and he to you within a six-hour window. He can see and experience all you see and experience and vice versa. Not only that but both of you have complete recall of those six hours for six days afterwards until they both fade.

Bad Reflection, Bad, Bad, Bad (Four significant charges)
By watching a mirror, the familiar may draw out its reflection into the world and temporarily have two identical bodies to do its work. The remaining reflections become monochrome and translucent.

The mind stays one, it just can suddenly co-ordinate both bodies with no extra effort even if miles separate the two bodies.

After one hour the familiar chooses which body to keep and the other one quickly crumbles into dust, while the reflection regains its colour and solidity. The same happens if one of the bodies dies.

The Quiet Stampede (Four significant charges)
The familiar can manifest the smoky spirits of all recently dead animals and get them to attack. The ghost pack is Body 15, Speed 60 and has an attack 15%, dodge 15%, and initiative of 15%. The animal pack doesn’t have Wound points but dissipates after nine attacks. It attacks once per round.

If the Skin Fits, Wear It (nine significant charges)
This spell allows the familiar to assume its previous human form just like a lycanthrope. The familiar’s human body can be adjusted by adding 20 to Body and replacing bite or peck skills with struggle.

Of more importance, the familiar gains a skill at 1% called Lycanthropy. Once this skill reaches 11% the familiar can force the change at will. It is always a significant check. Every time lycanthropy happens, the change removes 10 wounds off the current total until the Lycanthropy skill exceeds the familiar’s Body skill (track both animal and human versions).

If the familiar is ever rendered unconscious, it falls back to animal form.

Being in animal form is a severe taboo to avatarhood. Lose 10% per day if this is the case.

A human-shaped familiar cannot recharge but can still throw it’s magic with a –30% shift.

What you hear…
In Holland, brain-damaged and alcoholic half-baked Entropomancer, Braam van Niekerk suddenly and viciously jumps out in front of people and assaults them with hideous blast spells (gives them flaring attacks of Herpes), before vanishing as just as mysteriously. People that chase van Niekerk also vanish. Sometimes they reappear with fuzzed and hard-to-grasp memories. Sometimes they go for good. There is no known reason or co-ordination behind these attacks.

This is much to the frustration of the Sleepers hampered by Interpol’s dossier claiming them to be international freelance terrorists with links to criminal organisations.

Little do people know, van Niekerk’s tomcat, Skaatjie, is the world’s most innocuous agent for the Room of Rusted Things.