On The Efficacy Of Familiars -- Bonus Snippet

On The Efficacy Of Familiars – A Brief Overview.

By Sir Alistair Quiffly

When choosing strategies for mitigating the strain of power during spellcasting, the prospect of offloading excess power to a living animal companion, or ‘familiar’, is an inviting one. Familiars have been a popular method of strain management for centuries, and modern linkage techniques far outshine the crude bonds created on the fly by isolated witches in days of yore.

Of course, the selection of a familiar is a significant and important decision, to be undertaken with great care and deliberation. Due to the involvement of other living creatures, a moral mage creating a familiar has rather less room for experimentation than one making a fetish or attempting to externalise. So it is important to ask oneself at the outset: what are the characteristics of a good familiar?

The first issue that one must consider is practicality. As useful as an elephant familiar might be, for example, it does limit one’s options for residency and international travel, not to mention the feeding bills. Most mages choose smaller, domesticated animals that are common in their region to alleviate these practical concerns, although if one wishes to be distinctive, one can choose rare animals with similar needs to common pets.

Once the mundane issues of feeding, habitat and travel has been taken into account, one must consider how well the animal is equipped for the task. Generally, excess magic manifests as a disruption of homeostatic physiological systems, so the best familiars either have a strong ability to counter these physiological changes, or a high tolerance for conditions outside their optimal ranges. Mammals are popular for the role, as a tendency to internally regulate body temperature acts as a superb sink for excess magic and is rather close to what the mage’s own body is doing, thus making it easy to know and understand the effect that spellcasting is having on one’s familiar. Mages with particularly capricious spells, however, may prefer animals such as reptiles capable of simply enduring the magical overload until the casting is complete.

But the strongest familiar in the world is no help if the familiarity bond itself is fragile, liable to break under strain and endanger both mage and familiar with the backlash. Perhaps more important than the strength of the familiar is the strength of the bond. Many things can affect the strength of such a bond, including of course the quality of the casting, but the factor of most interest is the emotional bond between mage and familiar. This is another reason why domesticated animals are such popular familiars – the bond between a person and their pet can be strong indeed.

And from this factor arises the issue that many term the Familiarity Paradox – the stronger the emotional connection, the better the familiar; and yet, the stronger the emotional connection, the less a mage should want that familiar. Familiarity is, after all, dangerous, and if one truly loves one’s pet, it is likely that one would wish to spare said pet the trials and trouble of the bond.  Thus, the most promising candidates for familiarity are also less likely to be chosen.

One solution to this problem is to choose animals that either have very high natural tolerances to magic (as discussed above), or animals that have short natural lifespans. Mice are popular as they are ‘cute’ (and easy to love) while also being relatively transportable and having short lifespans, for instance. Given how much a good familiar can expand one’s magical potential, it may be that the best mage might not be the one with an excellent memory, or discipline, or spell power, or finesse… but simply the mage who, through fate or fortune, happens to really, really love cockroaches.