Supernatural Roles

Conjuror

"The wise know when to ask for help, and spirits… they're always eager to make a deal."

The Conjuror walks between worlds, mediating between mortal needs and otherworldly urges. Where Spellweavers bind cosmic forces and Adepts channel their inner nature, Conjurors negotiate with entities that exist beyond normal reality — spirits of the dead, elementals, maddening faeries, demons, angels, and stranger things that dwell in the spaces between. This is magic as diplomacy, as contracts written in blood and breath, as the delicate art of knowing exactly what to offer and what to never give away.

The Conjuror's path demands respect, cunning, and iron will. Spirits are not tools to be used but entities with their own agendas, personalities, and sometimes very mercenary price structures defined by their driving Hooks. A Conjuror's power grows not only from personal mastery but also their reputation in the otherworld, their skill at striking mutually beneficial bargains, and their spiritual strength to compel the required obedience when negotiation fails. They are the meeting places where mortals and spirits engage, their sanctums filled with protective circles, binding diagrams, libraries of notes, and shrines with suitable offerings to keep relationships in good standing.

Spirits are fundamentally creatures of emotion and obsession, their very existence shaped by the Hooks that anchor them to consciousness. Understanding their drives, desires, needs, and fears makes the difference between profitable partnership and catastrophic possession.

Conjuror magic operates on four fundamental principles: Perception, Negotiation, Abjuration and Compulsion.

The Unseen

All Conjurors can perceive spirits using their base Role ranks, detecting them through the veils that hide otherworldly entities from mundane sight. This isn't simply magical vision — it's an awareness of the spiritual ecosystem that surrounds mortal reality, the ability to recognize when spirits are present, active, or interfering with the physical world. It might be described as sight and sound and smells, but these are merely analogies that make sense to us as mundanes.

The Third Eye/Second Sight is the Conjuror's most profound perceptual ability. Opening the Third Eye requires a full action and a successful DL0 roll, but transforms the Conjuror's consciousness to perceive reality as spirits do. While in this state, they become temporarily like a Halfling — fully present in both physical and spiritual realms simultaneously. They can see the true spiritual nature of all beings: the emotional scars written on mortal souls, the threads of possession binding victims, the glamours that deceive ordinary senses, and the hidden motivations that drive behavior.

This profound Second Sight comes at significant cost. While their Third Eye is open, Conjurors suffer substantial penalties to purely physical tasks — fumbling with simple door latches, struggling to navigate physical obstacles, requiring concentration for mundane actions. More dangerously, they become vulnerable to direct spiritual harm from still-incorporeal entities, but can also bring their full Role strength to bear in spiritual conflicts, effectively "brawling" with hostile spirits on their own turf using all their capabilities.

The Third Eye is not necessary for a Conjuror to know spirits are present; they are sensitive to the telltale signs, and can more safely perform their work without that drastic measure, but the Opening often removes all doubt.

Contracts: The Art of Spiritual Commerce

Negotiation forms the heart of most Conjuror work. Spirits want things — often desperately — but they exist in realms where mortal concepts like time, space, and physicality work very differently. The things they want are usually very mortal.

Most spirits are driven by powerful Hooks that define their existence. A ghost might be anchored by unfinished business or violent death, or the hairpin of a beloved sister that forever draws them back; an elemental seeks experiences of complexity and change, a better understanding of their own nature through human perceptions, or simply to revel in the physicality of the mortal realm; a demon hungers for emotional intensity, moral corruption, and power, while an angel seeks to promote its associated virtue, or merely to advance the will of the gods in the world. The skilled Conjuror learns what different spirit types desire and how to offer it safely, creating win-win arrangements that benefit both parties while avoiding the terrible costs of poorly-considered bargains.

To seal a formal Contract a spirit must agree to a set of terms with an oath by their True Name — which means you will have their True Name! To get them to agree is usually a negotiation for payment, but it can be coerced under duress — see Compulsion below. However managed, a successful Contract creates a special sort of Hook on the spirit. Unlike mortal Hooks which are reduced by resisting them, a Contract Hook is reduced when a service is rendered, unless some other payment is offered and accepted specifically for that service. When the Hook's last service is rendered the spirit may eliminate the Hook by Closing the Contract, which requires they completely leave the mortal realm. If they opt not to do so, it automatically amounts to an implicit agreement to another service, reinstating the last rank of the Hook. This Hook and the True Name are enough for a Conjuror to call the spirit into attendance as a free action anywhere not otherwise prevented by some explicit means, so calling a water elemental into the desert is not a problem.

Need a Familiar? Many spirits will willingly and happily contract themselves and serve to the best of their ability in order to be paid, with or without a formal capital-C Contract; while their motivations are sometimes unfathomably different, commerce is still possible.

Abjuration

Often the role of the Conjuror is really as an Abjuror — one who wards a spirit away.

Wards are a primary function of the Role. Ritual Wards affect spirits and other supernatural phenomena the way walls in the physical world affect mortals. A spirit successfully so Warded must treat those boundaries as impassable. This means a warded creature, object, or place can be protected from the spirit, or the spirit itself can be limited to a particular creature, object, or place and unable to leave it. This is generally very frustrating to creatures whose typical limitations are only conceptual…

Exorcism pushes them entirely into the spirit realm, from which they cannot return without a specific anchor or explicit summoning.

Compulsion

When negotiation fails, Conjurors might resort to Compulsion — the use of magical force, protective barriers, and binding rituals or threats to command spirit service. This approach carries greater risks, as compelled spirits resent their bondage and seek opportunities to pervert instructions, but sometimes the stakes leave no room for gentle persuasion. When required, a Conjuror can engage spirits on their own terms in the realm of ideas, feelings, and will.

Spirits are not fragile constructs of meat and bone; they are expressions of fundamental forces, of ultimate Truths, of bare souls or raw, endless need, so when Staggered or Down they are merely incapacitated until they can recover. Without truly exceptional means they cannot be destroyed, but they can certainly be inconvenienced.

A vulnerable spirit (Staggered or Down) will always be at least temporarily deprived of any physical presence such as a manifest form or a possessed puppet, but they drift adjacent to the world and can be acted upon by those able to touch the spiritual realm. Once in this state, a Conjuror has three primary options to deal with them.

Exorcism was mentioned above as an Abjuration.

Extraction squeezes some relevant bit of information from them. This could be whatever the GM finds appropriate, such as perhaps the formula for a spell which emulates one of their simple powers, but the most common item is their True Name. If this roll fails it pushes them into the umbra of the spirit realm, out of reach of further attempts, but does not prevent them from coming back once recovered. If it succeeds then the character has the information desired and can use it accordingly.

Binding requires the spirit's True Name, but creates a Contract Hook much like the ones generated from negotiated contracts. This is dangerous, because the spirit is virtually always a hostile agent and has no motivation to interpret commands in a helpful way. They will generally pervert any order given as much as they can, following exactly the letter of the wording of both the command and the Contract Hook itself. This also applies to negotiated contracts acquired through means such as blackmail or threats!

Summoning

Summoning is calling a spirit to you. If you have a spirit's True Name you can almost always get their attention. This allows you to call a bound spirit to you wherever you are, or to summon a spirit from anywhere, even the deep spirit realm, with the right ritual. These rituals are also part of basic Conjuror training, but the summoning itself only calls the spirit to a specified physical location; it does not restrict them once they arrive in any way, though if they are capable of physical manifestation it can be designed to compel it for so long as the Conjuror concentrates.

If the spirit is not bound, they can resist. If you don't have the spirit's True Name you can still summon a type. Since individual spirits can be radically different, the GM determines what arrives based on the success of the roll vs. the Difficulty of summoning that kind of spirit. Summoners must be wary of a too-successful ritual calling a spirit beyond their ability to manage.

Typical Maneuvers

Maneuvers are commonly taken by Type and by Action, though others are certainly possible.

Type represents improved skill by classification of spirits such as The Dead, Fae, or Halflings.

Action Maneuvers would be concentrations in Summoning, Binding, Wards, or Exorcism, etc.

The True Names of spirits have power. Note that spirits can grow in power by the sacrifices to them; Spending additional Maneuver ranks on a spirit's True Name reflects ongoing sacrifices and offerings which bolster their strength, and can raise the base Level of a weak but friendly spirit. This tends to make them much more amenable to further Contracts.

Others might be