Familiar creations.

I have been throwing ideas around for characters who are Familiars, Or characters that are Familiars.

To prevent some of the annoying bits with familiars, like they only turn up when needed for something, like in Order of the stick before the current arc, I want all familiars to have personality, or at least the same level as a extra should they be an extra's familiar.

The bases I want to cover in my setting.

1. Familiars are intelligent, if still tied to the fact that they are animals.

Familiars start out as dim as a doornail, but after the ritual that binds them to their owner is finished, over the next few weeks the familiar will reach a similar level of intelligence as it's owner.
So if I was going by 3.5 type attributes, WIS, INT, and CHA, would rise to at most the master's reflected stat, perhaps WIS and CHA lowered to reflect the animal's nature.

2. Familiars are a battery and conduct for magic.

Besides the expected small bonus to it's owner, a Familiar allows a mage to run around wielding significantly more energy then they could without their Familiar, allowing greater feats of magic, as well being able to use magic through their familiar like normal.

Both the master and the familiar hold their own supply of magical energy inside them, a mature familiar can use their own supply of magic to do things. But togather, the master and familiar can dish out far more powerful spells, (mostly in the evocation sense.) because the output is doubled.

3. Familiars can only be small animals.

Unless say, you have some insane level of resources to drug a large bear and getting the whole ritual done while preventing it from starving while doing so.

Besides the familiars view their master as equals, (at least early on.) and should the larger animals play as if their master is a equal, it could lead to accidental mauling. As well Familiars tend to misbehave before they mature, and it is much easier to handle familiars that you can physically pickup with one hand.

4. Familiars become a super power version of that same animal.

Of course we got the dire versions, but not in that sense, more of the animal becoming magically better, endurance and the ability to claw you of course.

As the animal is infused with magic from it's master, it matures, and it becomes very hard to kill, and tend to be significantly supernaturally better at it's own species focus. For example a Ferret familiar can find a rat to eat, and catch it far easier than a normal ferret. As well the normal small sized animals after maturing become next to impervious to falling to their deaths, they just shake it off... their masters not so much.

5. Familiars mature
As a familiar exists, it ages on a different scale, it no longer ages as a animal, but as a immortal magical beast... of cat sized doom.

Immediately after the ritual to bond to the familiar is not any different from the mage that did the ritual, how ever its behavior is practically super glued to the mage. As the Familiar matures they can spend more and more time away from their master, and in the end become independent.

The Speed of maturing is time as well magical ability based, and they tend to mature faster under tense experiences. At the very least, the Familiar improves with the Mage.

Maturity effects a vast group of things, mostly meaning they can survive should their master go say die, and they become increasingly magical in their own right.

6. Familiars reflect on their owner, and the opposite.
The tendancys of both sides of the bonds reflect unto each other.

Like for Example, my character Kloe, and her familiar Alex.
Alex likes Shinies of course, and is a bit hyper active.
Kloe likes to learn odd bits of things, and hyper focuses on things.

Now after the bond matures.
Alex in addition from before also actually picks up random information.
And now Kloe has problems focusing on things. (And she has a passing interest in shinees.... meheheh...)

Positive and negative reflect on each other.

7. Familiars and their masters share their senses.
Both sides can always find each other, unless extreme measures are taken.
Before maturing the mage may be overwelmed by the familiars senses.
Later on after filtering that over load, it just takes a bit of focus to see through each others eyes.

Extreme emotions are felt on each side, until the the familiar matures, when the familiar get's its own personality, and full on emotions.

If they are together in the same place, they can direct each other too threats, and all that.

8. Blah blah and blah.

Yeah, internet is going to die again, next time I guess I will write up on what I see the familiar bonding ritual is, I want to make it decently interesting.

Character design : Andrian - Part 1

And now for more character development for Andrian.

This picture on the left was drawn by me.
Two weeks ago I decided to illustrate Andrian.


I think I have a creative fun way.

Lets rattle off some basic things.

Name : Andrian ' Marten ' Drake
Race : Human
Height : 6'1 / 6'2 (Undecided)
Weight : 175'ish pounds.
Eyes : Green(mostly)
Hair : Rich Brown

Personality : Normally cautious until the fight begins. Generally with conflicts he takes cautious routes, only taking the direct method when the stakes are risen.
He acts very aggressively should any thing be taken from him, seeing that he had some uh... "every" thing taken from him at one point. I'll talk about that later on.
While fighting he gets a bit excitable.

Now his back story.

His family was generally known as fearsome combatants, known for coming back to avenge their own deaths. These stories were formed from some legal outmaneuvering that a long past ancestor did to the Fea which allowed all members of the family to reincarnate and comeback.

The catch was that only actual fighters, those that have seen combat and are always relatively ready for it counted. (So the retired actually go to final rest and do the full death cycle thing.)

The reincarnation though took years for the warriors to come back, because this reincarnation is just skipping a few steps of the normal process, and rudely bumping into other parts of the operation.

(In general reincarnation is set to :1 in my setting, mostly just souls get recycled type stuff.)
The cycle is like this.

1. Death
2. Soul is sent into limbo. (While the proper paper work is being done.)
3. Soul is sent to the correct Afterlife/punishment (If applicable)
4. Soul is sent to the astral sorting machine to be reincarnated as similar creatures.(Mostly Levels of life, intelligent souls tend to stay that way, and animal souls are just that. Though punishment can include a cycle as a animal then back as a humanoid creature.)
5. The Creature's soul is sent to a creature as it's being birthed. (If space is vacant.)
6. Creature goes about life and dies, go back to 1.

The Fea's boon skips the system from 2 to 5. In a way joining both souls together. But it only goes from Intelligent to animal to prevent some painful story justifications.

Andrian actually dies now, and is reincarnated. Before that the bounty hunters come and actually kills him instead of him somehow running away. At the time the bounty hunters came he was a member of the milita, all other members of the family having fled the bounty hunters before had become more "Civil" in profession, meaning no reincarnation.

The group making sure his family doesn't comeback know the type of creature that this part of the family becomes after death. (After I get to comic story stage, I will explain this further, after all the family's original bloodline must be getting thinner, it could be many generations.)
Time their attack with a mass pouching of their own design to kill off all pine martens they could find. Reducing the population and the birth rate massively of the target reincarnation creature.

So when Andrian fights and falls to a strangely compentant group of assassins, there were no new births of pinemartens, the assassin's mastermind was hoping that Andrian would end up in the next part of reincarnation (3) before any were born.

That would have been true if the Changeling in charge of making sure this reincarnation thing gets messed up dropped him into another plane, were there was no mass hunting.

In this new plane Andrian was merged with a Pine Marten, and lived out 3 years ignorant of his past ability and existence, until the third year where his human mind started to resurface.

Normally it takes until the end of the animals normal lifespan for the human mind to come back, but a strange mix of magical happenings jump started the process. Namely a unnamed kobold attempting to make him a familiar, the ritual failed and he fled.

Over the next few months his mind came completely back, still abnormally effected by the pine marten that he is effectively still is. Using the idea that were-creatures, the first ones were of evil spirits possessing animals, Andrians resurfacing mind does the same, in a less malicious way of course.

From the start I wanted Andrian to be a weak shape shifter, or were-weasel of some sort.
Though the classification is confusing now, after reincarnation is he now a Were-marten or Were-human... Either way he can change into both, but prefers human simply because he can over all function better human.

So once his mind resurfaces he attempts and succeeds at learning the local language, and what he had known before stays with him erreily. (A part of the Fea's boon.)

The boon also instructs him how to turn back, which he tries after preparing with a decent sum of stolen clothing. But the transformation took much longer than it should have, reflecting the presence of the pinemarten inside him. instead of cleanly turning him into a human, he has become a natural were-pine marten/human... THING...

That transforms slowly, I dunno, I don't see him changing in a round.

After a few weeks he gets his bearing, and starts a quest to return home, and deal with those that had killed his family! and himself? ... yeah. I got plot twists in the future for that.

I have decided that this is Andrian's Canon, even if my 3.5e game for some reason won't allow it, I want it to be some how mentioned. The next part I am going to brain storm on methods of getting the spirit of this in 3.5 dnd, and working.
Also with decent draw backs and other stuff as a conflict only for this character.

Character design : Andrian - Part 0

Andrian... my first orginial character who mutated and budded other characters before the first concept died off as each aspect became their own character.

Andrian's current incarnation is a Physical adept, a term that I use for my setting for people who have broken the glass ceiling of the body. Now... this says nothing of the actual skill that the person has.

But before we go into the aspects I wish to create and forge for this character lets go over his history.
urg...

He started out named Flint, Who was from the FUTURE, in the setting he became a mage knight. Who was insanely fast, durable, had silly amounts of magic, and reaked of suetastic existence to myself now.

At one point I had even decided his personality got drastically changed when he was in danger or people needed him, to a bit of a bazerker.

I am now actually glad that this version of him faded, and now afterward in my great self proclaiming "Duh", I noticed I could put each "Cool" concept into a completely different character, instead of concentrating them into one guy making them godlike.

--
Flint himself, still from the future, became more of a ghost in shell type augmented person, with technician skills rather than mad melee and magic. In fact I had decided despite the low tier magic being dabbler access, he has non and is completely immune to non-psychical blows. (Fireballs works, Ability drains do not.)

Any fighting Flint does would be with a SMG, raining down decently accurate bursts while using wireless "Hollywood hacking" to take over things or taking off limits of mecha destroying the target and the mech.

I still need to decide on the limits that the augmentations give him, I see him surviving explosions, rattled but survivable with a repair job and a new can of spray on skin...
--
But enough on that, lets actually talk about Andrian.

Andrian "Marten" -Last name pending. (Maybe like Drake or something silly "Royal" like that.)

His first name randomly pulled from the Extraordinary book of names by the late Gary Gygax.
The second while punning kinda weirdly, if it makes sense it depends on the order the story goes.
His last name hmm... I want something low level aristocrat sounding, because his family earned the name during large conflict. (Far far before Andrian's birth.)

Conflict rises up, now somewhat lazy Drake nobility high-tale it away, far away.
They are reasonably safe were they were, but the Drakes were remembered as very fearsome warriors, so they got dealt with by lots of well payed assassins.

The majority of the drake family was seperated, but Andrians parents stuck togather and gave birth to him. It took 18 years after this for the assassins to find his parents.

Andrian coming back from mandatory milltia training came home in classic movie style with both of his parents dead. A bit with lots of dead assassins, a few holes from the mage that the assassins hired, including a hole that the mage's corpse is in. His parents heads were gone, but at least a dozen corpses of fallen assassins littered the small homestead.

He quickly scanns the area and grabs his stuff, knowing that they will find out that his parents had a kid. Even if it pains him to leave the body unburied.

And probably like a idiot or something somehow manages to hide for a few months without being found, then fails at one time, manages to escape through fea bargin and then falls through a demtional rift! Bam... ok, yeah.