Servant-Spell

While many magicians preserve traditions of living within a community and working with their hands, others – especially the wealthy and antisocial – isolate themselves and try to meet their daily needs with magic as often as possible. The Servant-Spell is a common tool for these: it imbues an inert object with a spirit appropriate to a desired task, which animates the object for the following twenty-four hours. In general, the task is simple and appropriate to the object animated: a broom that sweeps on its own; a chest or table that carries things around; a stylus or quill-pen that takes dictation. As a rule, the servant can be commanded to start or stop its task, to follow its master or go to a visible location, or just wait. A group of servants may also be created at once, and can act in concert; servants created separately are unfortunately not especially aware of each other nor prone to cooperation.

The base difficulty of the servant-spell is d8; if the object is ill-suited to its task (e.g. a broom asked to carry), the difficulty rises by at least one step. If the object is already enchanted and bonded to the caster, or is set to work entirely within the caster’s place of power (in which cases the object being lost or leaving the area will render it inert), the difficulty decreases by a step. The base cost is four strain or fatigue, plus two more for each additional object imbued. The caster may also sacrifice a point of Constitution per object to make a servant-spell permanent. A rare version of the spell imbues an intelligence equivalent to a young child and forces a single object into an appropriate shape for a task when possible, such as by adding arms and legs to it. This version increases the difficulty by two steps and doubles all energy costs.