Witches, Willworkers and Familiars

Willworkers
Willworkers are humans who have the ability to manipulate the world around them in a way that seems a lot like magic, but isn't necessarily. They don't use ingredients, or spells, they have no deities or elements to call upon, and they don't need a wand, cauldron or broomstick to do anything.

What they've learned to do is essentially inflict their will upon reality and make it listen to them. They literally shape the reality around them. They can't do this to everything all at once, however. There are limitations. There are schools of thought, different understandings that allow different manipulations of reality.

A willworker's magic is all based upon understanding and belief. First of all, you can't do anything if you don't believe you can. Second, you have to understand what you're doing in order to pull it off. Willworkers have certain areas they are strong in, and others they are not. Often times, the opposites of whatever they do know are unfathomable to them. Such as those who understand the inner workings of the spirit world, are not so good at understanding some of the schools of thought that are based more in this world.

Willworking is an ability that manifests itself, often in times of great stress or necessity, high trauma situations, or otherwise. You can't learn how to be a willworker from a book, no one can teach you how to manifest it. Not everyone has the ability to become one, either. Many people obviously go through terrible things all the time--it doesn't mean they suddenly become willworkers. It varies how each person's ability manifests, no two cases are alike. Willworking is like having a switch inborn into a person's system, and it's just waiting to get flipped. Unfortunately no one knows if someone has one or not, or what it would take to set it off.

Drawbacks and Explainability
While willworkers can become very, very powerful, there is however a rather large drawback.

Reality does not like that you are messing with it. And if you do it too much? Reality slaps you. Hard. Some backlash is so hard the willworker doesn't survive it. Part of this is if it's witnessed by people who do not at all in the slightest bit believe you should be able to do whatever you are doing. It works against your own belief. Let's face it, if everyone could pull this off, everyone would be doing it. It ain't easy living in a time where people don't believe in much of anything. This actually makes your magic quite a bit harder when they're around. Now, people in the know, or supernatural creatures do not count against you, but your nosy neighbor who spies on you, or the crowd of lookie-loos gathering around to stare when something goes down will effect your ability to work. It becomes nearly impossible when there's a lot of people watching. It also makes reality bitchslap you all the harder if you do pull something off. When this hits, it hurts. It may backlash on you right then and there, and other times it may hit later, but when it takes you down, you may be down for a while. This is why many willworkers learn to keep their magic to as non-flashy and explainable as possible. Things that could be brushed off as coincidence.

It also makes a lot of them get professions that go along with whatever they might be best with, so they can play it off as being natural. For example, if your character happened to be a street magician, they could get away with a significant lot of things other willworkers would not be able to--simply because people standing around expect to see 'magic'. Granted that still does not cover huge, overly blatant things. Street magicians are cool, but no matter how awesome they are, they cannot explain away calling lightning down from the sky, or say, huge holes in reality that lead Somewhere Else.

Another example of professions that help explain what a willworker is capable of would be a scientist or engineer for those who are more scientific or technologically affiliated. This would help explain why it is you can lose a limb and make yourself a kickass mechanical one. You're just that good an engineer. Wow, isn't that cool? Did you make that yourself? Awesome, you should totally market those. It could also help to explain why you could make a pill, or some other concoction that magically makes people feel better. What's that, you've just been ripped a new one by tangling with a nasty demon? Have I got the pills for you. Why yes, they are my own concoction. They only look like aspirin with the 'as' scraped off. Oh will you look at that! You're feeling a bit better, awesome! And oh, check that out, you seem to be healing up exceedingly well!

Other Examples
Ie: using entropic forces to find a door into a locked building that just happens to be unlocked. Oops, someone must have just forgotten it! Silly janitor. Now it might have been locked a minute ago, but when you go to try it it isn't. This can be brushed off as a simple mistake, and no one's the wiser. This would not be an effect that would incur the wrath of reality. However, opening a rip in reality from point A to point B with time/space magic in the middle of the street, well...that's going to hurt. Quite a lot. Because there's really no way to play that off like it's normal.

One danger of using too much willworking that slaps you is it can permanently flaw you. Older willworkers often wind up with quirks that are related to the type of willworking they do. For example, if a willworker does a lot of spirit based magic, eventually they may become a spirit magnet. Whether they're wanting to or not, spirits may just flock to them all the time, annoying them, trying to mess things up for them, etc. Or for time magic users, time may eventually stop running properly around them. It may randomly change pace, either speeding up or slowing down in an uncontrollable fashion. Even if it's not a significant pace-change, it could definitely mess up your day. You could miss Lost!

Another danger of willworking is it may not always work. Nothing is 100%. If you mess up what you wanted to do? It'll turn back around on you somehow. So don't go eroding some jerk's car just because they parked too close to you--even if no one's around. You might mess up and suddenly your clothes all rot off. And that is what we call 'awkward'.

Often times after a lot of willworking in a short amount of time (generally a night or so), one of those aforementioned quirks may hit you for a short time. Wow, there really are a lot of drawbacks to messing around with reality, aren't there? Why yes, yes there is. So think it over before you do it. No one wants to go home after a hard day of battling evil, good, fill in the blank and all small objects they go to touch teleport itself two feet away. Makes watching whatever you Tivo'd difficult. Or say you happen to be the healer for your particular group. Sucks to be you when that backlashes after a while and you wind up with duck-feet for a few days.

Power Levels and Schools of Thought
After all that you still want to make a Willworker? Well alright then, don't say we didn't warn you. Their abilities are actually structured through two levels. First is understanding. You can't do anything unless you understand the nature of reality and your part in it. You have to understand how you can ignore the rules everyone else has to follow, and instead of adapting to reality, you make reality adapt to you. Basically what this means is it dictates what levels of effects you can use within your schools of thought. It is simple levels of one through five. If you have a higher level, you can use any effects from that level and below. So for example, if you have a level three, you can use levels one two and three for your schools of thought, but can't use higher level effects than that.

Understanding
Level 1- You're starting to get it. There are small things you can do, most of it non-flashy but it's definitely there, and it's definitely your own doing.
Level 2- You understand a little better now. Your effects are generally more useful as well as more encompassing than others. They are more overt, you can really see how you're effecting the world around you.
Level 3- Oh, do you ever get it now. So that's how things work. This is the point where most willworkers get into the nitty gritty. Unfortunately this is also the level where they start learning a whole lot more about the downsides of being a willworker because this is where effects start becoming much more blatant and unexplainable.
Level 4- Now you're getting into the good stuff. You're also getting to the really badly blatant stuff. Which means you kick more ass, but you also may spend more downtime being messed up from reality smacking you around.
Level 5- You get it. You actually get all of it, or as close to all of it as one can get.

Schools of Thought
Corporeal
The realm of all things tangible, this school of study grants the willworker control over physical matter in all it's forms. The early lessons focus on small-scale study of both organic and inorganic matter, and the process that transitions between the two. As the willworker gains understanding, they gain with it the ability to control the properties of the world around them. Many focus either on one side or the other, living or inert, but those who specialize in such aspects of reality can express some talent in both. Corporeal magics are commonly direct, and their backlashes tend to follow suit; most commonly the element manipulated retaliates in kind.

Aesthetic
The flip side of the Corporeal, Aesthetic focuses on concepts such as probability, mental disciplines, and even the nature of time itself. Willworkers who pursue these ends often seem to learn more through self-exploration than formal study, and no two perspectives ever align exactly among their experts. Backlashes among these talents can be spectacularly dangerous, leaving the willworker the victim of Fortune or trapped within their own mind.

Kinetic
The tether between Corporeal and Aesthetic, Kinetic regulates the pulse of the world and all the invisible forces within it. Willworkers talented in the Kinetic School can harness raw energy in almost any form, from the raw electricity of a power storm to the signal a cellular phone picks up. This also involves the spiritworld and things relating to it.

School Subjects
The schools of thought break down into even more categories within the school, and often times the willworker will concentrate down on the specific subjects of their schools as opposed to learning all of it. It goes more with what they feel comfortable with and fully understand. Which means while some abilities lie under the same schools of thought--willworkers don't necessarily know how to do any of the more individual things. In example, a willworker who's trained as a physician may know a ton about how to fix the human body, mend wounds, etc. But they may not know near anything about how to rearrange molecules in inorganic matter to change it's properties, even though both abilities lie under the Corporeal school.

Corporeal Subjects
Organic
This subject of the school of thought has everything to do with living things. From humans to animals, even plants. This is the subject that concentrates on healing, growing, mending damaged organisms at their base level. At it's highest levels, these willworkers can even start reversing damage the human body does to itself, or damage viruses have done. They can restructure genetic code if they've studied up on it enough to know what they're doing. One of the drawbacks to this school is it's highly noticeable. Healing wounds and curing diseases? Yeah you have to watch that carefully, to make sure things aren't so noticeable that reality decides to put you down for messing around with it so much. Most practitioners of this type of willworking find themselves jobs in either the medical or scientific feilds to help explain what they can do.

Inorganic
This is all the metals and any materials that were once alive but aren't anymore. So wood would fall into this category, once the tree has been chopped down. A lot of willworkers adept in this subject are the tinkerers. They like to build things, or invent things, because they can make whatever it is they're making do what they want it to. It conforms to their will, so half the time, they could make something that as long as it looks good enough? They could use it, because they could power it with their abilities, even if anyone else picking it up off the street couldn't get it to function properly. It's a good cover for the things they can do. But they can bend and shape inorganic matter to their will, as well as change the properties of it. These willworkers work at a molecular level quite often, making fine adjustments to things, or outright changing the properties of things when they need to.

Entropic Matter
The concept of entropy covers a wide range, and it's broken up between two schools. The first is it's inherent force that breaks matter down. This is rusting, erosion, decay at it's basest level. Willworkers who are adept in this subject have the ability to do this to things around them--and this includes both organic and inorganic matter. It's a highly destructive force and there's almost nothing in the way of explainability to the subject at all--which is why most willworkers who have this ability use it only sparingly, or they don't last very long at all.

Aesthetic Subjects
Entropic Probability
The other concept that goes along with entropy is probability. This subject focuses on that, and the ability to tip seemingly random outcomes into the willworker's favor. As sited above, one example of this is finding a door unlocked because it's technically possible that someone could have left it open. Lucky you. It has to do with luck, and things that could be considered luck. It's a much more subtle subject than it's counterpart in Corporeal, and is a fairly easily explainable ability to use. Many willworkers who utilize this subject are simply deemed lucky bastards.

Mental Discipline
This subject has to do with the mind, and all things related to it. Thoughts, feelings, impulses and compulsions are all covered under here. What this can do is give the willworker limited abilities that sometimes mimic psychic's abilities. It can include the reading of thoughts and understanding emotions of another, and can go as far as full mind-to-mind communication. It can also be used to put something very much like a post hypnotic suggestion into play, to not necessarily make another do your bidding, but give them the compulsion to do so. The best willworkers who use this stay back from their targets, and let them reason out why they're doing something, never knowing they were being manipulated in the first place. One drawback there is that if a person is mentally pushed to do something he or she normally would not, and they cannot reason out for themselves why they would be inclined to do such a thing, it may make them believe they are going crazy, and things go downhill from there. The easily led or manipulated are better targets for such things.

Chronology
Basically, this would be the subject that has to do with manipulating time. Whether it's to slow it down, speed it up, stop it momentarily or hop through it, this is the subject for that. It's a subject that's a lot less common than many others, for the simple reason that it's insanely obvious or can be, and it messes with quite a lot when utilized. So a lot of the willworkers who mess around with it wind up never being heard from again. Also, one rule has been passed down--when hopping between timelines--there isn't any hopping back. If a willworker winds up in an alternative timeline to their own, they're stuck there. This is another reason a lot of willworkers won't mess around with it. Things can be pretty permanent when dealing with it. These willworkers often wind up with a lot of permanent flaws due to reality slapping them for messing around so much.

Kinetic Subjects
Energy
This subject deals with energy in all it's forms. This includes light, electricity, heat, cold, etc. It includes radio waves, radiation, cell signals, and everything of that nature as well. They are able to bend them to their will, redirect them as they choose, and generally play havoc with them. For example, if they don't want to be seen, they can bend light around themselves, rendering them functionally invisible.

Spirit Working
This subject has to do with everything related to spirits, including the spirit plane. These willworkers have abilities that are similar to Mediums in some cases, but are wider in range. They can have the ability to interact with spirits without crossing to their plane, and they can in fact go to their plane. These willworkers have a freer pass between realms, and while it's never really advisable to go poking around in them, some do. They most certainly can. They can also bind spirits, unbind them, and otherwise force them into servitude if they're of a mind to. They can do it, because things spiritual are at their fingertips.

Space
Where there's time, there's space, and spacial perceptions. These willworkers are also ones who often wind up getting hit too much with backlash. The subject has the ability to mime teleportation, with the ability to open portals in reality from point a to point b, and they can open them wherever they want at the higher levels. Because it has to do with how everything is laid out, they can even do things through coordinates. They're walking GPS units, with the ability to get you anywhere you need to go. It just isn't good for them to do it too often, because nothing can really explain a door in New York that opens to Berlin.

Focuses
When willworkers are beginning to learn how to effect the world around them, they often times have a specific way of focusing their abilities. This is something that they may initially be convinced they need it to do anything, but as they better understand how things work, they will realize they do not. If players choose to have a focus for their characters, they will be able to have a bit of an easier time pulling off effects when they have their focus, however on the flipside of that, if they do not have it, they can't perform at all. For example, if you choose your grandfather's antique pocket watch, if you have it on you when the shit hits the fan, awesome. However if it's shot out of your hand or you left it home in your other pants...you're going to be useless.

Witches
Witches are humans those who use magic by spells, ingredients, rituals, etc. Anyone can do witch magic, though not everyone can do it well. There are family lines that run strong affinities for it most often. It's generally a hereditary trait but doesn't have to be.

A witch's magic comes from belief, and borrowed energy or power from the world around them. They know how to draw in the powers from the earth and the things in it. Plants, minerals, etc. That's what the spells and rituals are. They're a focus for whatever the witch wants to accomplish.

Witch magic is one of the most versatile forms of magic out there. Its wide range is one of its strongest features. Nearly anything can be accomplished through witch magic if you have the right spell and the knowhow to pull it off.

Most witches are not into more than one kind of magic. Usually they stick with one type, because the others are highly opposing to whatever they might be into. They're quite different mentalities to work with, and while people can mix and match, it's not very common.

General Drawback
The rule of three is alive and well. Anything you do will come back on you threefold.

Black Magic
Black magic sort of rides the line. Witches do it quite often, but usually after they've been pushed into it, or if they're of a more power hungry bent. Those who seek more destructive magic but don't want to go head over tincups into the serious backlashing stuff use black magic, as it's not nearly so bad as blood magic.
-Black magic does not necessarily mean evil magic, it is simply magic which is more likely to cause harm or can cause harm whether to specific individuals or the area around you.

-Black magic is also spells which are considered to be actively altering nature
-Black magic is addictive - because it tends to have the widest effects with the least effort, it sucks in a lot of practitioners. All magic had a price and if the price isn't blood or effort, it's addiction.
-Low level black magic is easy to come across, easy to master, however the higher the level of black magic, the harder it is to find. Once you get to really high level black magic (such as the creation of fades) the methodology is almost impossible to find and the possibility that it will backlash is huge.

White Magic
White magic is the bread and butter of most witches. It's done for the benefit of people or the world. This is the magic where you get healing magic, and other types of protections.
-Casting a white magic spell does not involve harm - no ingredients of a white magic spell can involve harm at all. So no eye of newt, no wing of bat - nothing more alive than plants. This, obviously means that white magic users occasionally have to get creative.
-The results of a white magic spell are beneficial - lots of protection spells and wards, that kind of thing.
- White magic spells are never malicious, or cause more harm in their results than they absolutely have to. eg, a white magic warding spell will knock back the intruder to stop them trying again, but it won't kill them

-White magic spells, because of the restraints, often take more preparation than other kinds of spell.

Voodoo Magic
Voodoo magic is a type of witch magic, but no self respecting voodoo practitioner will ever call themself a witch! It's similar and different to witch magic at the same time.
- In theory, any person can do voodoo magic, but (and this is a big but) voodoo magic is heavily steeped in religion - so steeped in religion, in fact, that if you do not believe, the magic will never work for you. You cannot perform any voodoo magic unless you are involved in the religion. It is an all or nothing type.
- All voodoo magic is ritual-based - it is heavily preparation based stuff. Everything needs ingredients and there are set steps to take - there is a recipe to every voodoo spell and it must be followed exactly and in the right order. One misstep, or one thing done at the wrong time and the entire spell will fail.
- Because voodoo magic is based on rituals, it is old-world magic. The same rituals have been used for centuries and they are still the same. You do not get technology in voodoo magic.
- Voodoo magic is very specific - if a spell calls for the blood of a rooster killed on the night of the full moon, if you kill a rooster on the night after the full moon? Not gonna work.

- You cannot be self-taught. Most witch-type magic, you can learn from books. Voodoo magic, because it is so heavily ritual based has to be taught by an established practitioner. This is not the kind of thing you can ever pick up from a random book. Because of this, voodoo practitioners are rare and tend to come from long family lines.
- Voodoo magic has managed to get itself a bad name in pop culture - all sacrifices and blood. That is not what it is - you can get into that side of it, it does exist, but there's a lot more to it.

Blood Magic
Blood magic is bad mojo. It's not necessarily evil, but it's power magic. It's most often destructive by it's very nature, needing 'sacrifice' of some description--even if it's just pain--to even work. This isn't fluffy bunny magic that would ever be considered part of the natural world. Most witches would abhor this kind of magic. One thing about Blood magic, is while White and Black magic are both readily available to learn, Blood magic is not. It is uncommon, simply because practitioners of blood magic don't tend to live long fruitful lives. It's harsh, it's not going to be found at your local book store, and isn't even mentioned in most texts in regards to teachable magic. In short, it's rare and your average witch isn't going to be into it.

-Unsurprisingly, blood magic requires blood. Either that of the caster, or that of a sacrifice.
-Blood magic is neither black nor white.
-Blood magic can achieve spectacular results very quickly, but it is unstable, risky and tends to backlash.
-Most practitioners of blood magic tend to end up very scared - it is the price to pay for using this type of magic. Even if the practitioner does not have to open his/ her own vein for a spell, the spell will often cause spontaneous gashes in the skin as a price and these always scar.
-The bigger the effect required, the more blood is needed.
-Blood magic is not natural - it involves pain, possibly death and, of course, blood. This goes against the normal order of things and nature itself.
-The one thing blood magic can never be used for is healing, for the same reasons - you cannot use something stemmed in suffering to heal.

Levels
Level 1) Small spells are doable for you, you're getting the hang of following the rules, getting things down. Everything still has to be read and followed exactly down to the last detail, but you can definitely do it.

Level 2) Small spells are getting to be old hat to you, you can perform them with ease and you no longer have to look up the basic spell ingredients for certain effects, you know them fairly well. Medium level spells are starting to become available, though it's like starting from the bottom with small spells--everything has to be done to the letter and looked up done exactly right.

Level 3) You can start writing your own spells now, because your knowledge of appropriate ingredients and incantations is fairly adept. You can also now start the third tier and look at larger spells, though again, it's like starting from the bottom and working your way up. Anything large or major requires research down to the letter.

Level 4) Now you're really starting to get it. Writing your own spells is getting easy for you, and so are performing them. You have learned what's truly necessary for your magic and what adds that extra kick you might need to get something accomplished. You no longer have to follow books for most of what you might want to do, unless it's the seriously taboo stuff.

Level 5) Magic is second nature to you, and you can perform it with ease. Even high level forbidden types of magic you can perform just so long as you have the right spells. Your fail rate of spells is low and people are starting to follow your spells now.

Familiars
Familiars are entities that follow a particular magic user (willworker or witch) from life to life, connected to them intimately. They come in different forms, and depending on which form they appear in they have different advantages they can use to help their chosen and disadvantages that go with it. There are seven types of Familiars.

The Animal Companion
One of the types of familiar which chooses to take the form of a common household pet, the animal companion has also in the past been referred to as a blink dog, due to its limited ability to teleport. Looking remarkably like a Labrador, a blink dog passes for a normal household pet - and to be honest, they generally have the intelligence to match. Okay, maybe that's pushing it a little bit, but they definitely have taken on some of the traits of their canine brothers. The blink dog is a loyal companion - with a blink dog at your side you will never have to fetch your slippers or your morning paper. They have a limited ability to teleport and can communicate with others - though they have no actual language skills, they are very good at making themselves understood. The blink dog is the dog that can, in fact, tell you that Timmy is trapped down the well.

This type of familiar may not have the intelligence or wisdom of others, but they are fiercely loyal, will protect you to the death and provide you with a life-long companion.

The Animal Protector

And here we have the other type of familiar-as-pet. Only don’t let this guy hear you refer to it as a ‘pet’. Probably the physically strongest of the familiars, the protector is actually a small demon that takes on the seeming of an animal - usually a cat. It has the ability to communicate telepathically - first and foremost with its magic user. It can communicate with others, but the problem with the protector is that it gives off an aura of evil. Communicating with it is, quite simply, a bone chilling, terrifying experience for anyone else. So the protector can talk to others - the question is, whether they will listen. Under usual circumstances, the protector assumes the form of a cat and when it is in this form, it has the strength and abilities of that pet. It can, however, shed the seeming and take on its full demon form, at which point it is inhumanly strong and quick (though still the size of a domestic cat). The downside of this (and the reason it rarely takes this form) is that the mere sight of the demon is very likely (80% chance) to drive any human within 10 yards other than its magic user completely insane. Magic users who are not of some kind of evil alignment do not usually have a familiar such as this.

The Ghost In The Machine
A much more recent form Familiars have chosen to begin taking, it is of course based in technology. They are often referred to as A.I.'s, however this is misleading. They are not artificial intelligence, they are a spirit in the wires. They live in the system, they're a part of it and can flow along the data and electricity lines in seconds. They can hack in and infiltrate computer systems, security systems, etc.

These types of familiars tend to be very, very wise. They're the familiars that are going to do most of their guiding by being a voice of reason for you. Teaching you what they can, even if they can't blast anything from afar. Well...unless it's by electrocuting someone by frying out circuits. But that's a fairly specific sort of circumstance.

One drawback of course is first and foremost--they don't have a form. They have no body to speak of, so they can't be of any physical help whatsoever. So as wide reaching as they can be on the intarwebz, they can't help you if you're dragged out into the woods and shot. They're helpless and useless in that situation. Now if you're being held in a high security technologically advanced matrix like prison? They're your best friend EVER. Everything's automated now anyway, isn't it? Can we say 'walks out whistling a jaunty tune'?

The Home Body
One of the oldest types of familiars, the gnome likes to tell their magic-user that they are only there ‘as a favour’ and could choose to walk away at any time (this isn’t strictly true, but truth and a gnome aren’t always the best of friends). Prefers to be home-based and likes to sit around your front garden watching people (Does a great statue impression, especially if wearing a small rep cap and holding a fishing rod). Grumpy as hell and has a tendency to advise you to just keep out of trouble. The gnome has been there, done that and is not afraid to tell you that he told you so. That said, the gnome is a single-minded protector, tenacious and stubborn. They are home-bodies, first and foremost. Their magical abilities are liked to the home - the closer they are to home, the stronger they are. On home ground, they are almost invincible. Take them away from there and their powers decrease rapidly.

The Elemental
Earth, air, fire, water - there are four elemental familiars. Each has a placid state - an earth elemental may appear as a rock, a water elemental as part of the pond in your back garden, or the fish tank in your room (though they're not too keen on you actually having FISH in there...). The air elemental is the breeze that follows you, the fire elemental simply exists as the candle you keep burning in the corner of your room (though some magic users prefer incense - it's the spark that is important). When active, they assume the form of a miniature person made from their element. They have the strengths and weaknesses of their elemental properties. They tend to communicate more through emotions that anything else.

The Dragon
Originally of Japanese origin, they stem, it is thought, from the idea of ancestor worship. The origins, however, are truly lost in myth and legend. What is fact, however, is that this familiar is a dragon - though it appears to most as a bird (type chosen by player, but must be consistent). It is a guide more than protector - advantages are wisdom and intelligence, though it's not much good as a physical protection. The dragon familiar lost its ability to assume draconic form in public some time in the past, however it can appear to its magic user as a small dragon (about the size of an eagle). Even if familiar and magic user are in a public place, nobody else will be able to see the draconic form as it is linked into the familiar-magic user bond.

The Chameleon
Each other type of familiar has a constant form and follows the magic user from life to life. Many familiars have been with a magic user in their various lifes for hundreds, sometimes thousands of years, every time the same. The chameleon is not like this. Chameleons seem to recognise that each life a magic user starts anew has the potential to be different from the last and they adapt to this. Chameleon familiars change their form for each new life of their magic user, becoming what appears to be needed for that life. Chameleon familiars spontaneously attach themselves to their magic user on the day the magic user first uses their ability (they do not have to be called in any way, though they do have enough sense to wait until the magic user is alone). The chameleon’s form is not fixed for quite some time after this – often for several years until it becomes clear which form is most necessary for this lifetime.

A chameleon with an unfixed form flips between the other familiar forms randomly – and the form it has at any one time is not always the most useful one for the situation. It also tends to change at the most inauspicious times. A chameleon with an unfixed form also does not possess the complete strengths of whatever familiar form they currently hold and until their form is fixed, they are fairly weak. Obviously, therefore, they hope to be able to find the most suitable form as quickly as possible.

Once a chameleon chooses their form for this lifetime, they gain the strengths (and flaws) of that particular form until the death of their magic user.

Playing a familiar in Praelitis
Familiars are, by definition, attached to a magic user. As such they can either be played as an NPC by that magic user, or played as a PC by the same player as the magic user, or by another player.

If you are playing a familiar in Praelitis and you are not playing the magic user they are associated with if you hiatus/ leave the game, we expect that you will put your familiar up for adoption/ allow them to become an NPC. The sudden disappearance of a magic user's familiar can cripple the character and therefore we have to protect against this.

Playing a magic user with a familiar in Praelitis
If you are applying for a magic user in Praelitis, you have the option to take a familiar. Doing so gives your magic user the benefits which come from having a familiar. Along with this comes the advantage that a magic user with a familiar can share gain energy from the familiar and often learns how to use and control their magical ability faster. However, if a magic users familiar dies, or is seriously injured, the effects of this can be crippling for the magic user. Magic users who have lost a familiar have been known to go insane.

If you are playing a magic user with a familiar and you have, or expect to have your character lose their familiar, please come and talk to the mods about the implications of this.