Conjuring

The Astral Plane

The astral plane is a parallel spiritual world, which all living beings are connected to through their dreams. As part of their training - or through a natural talent - conjurers have mastered the art of lucid dreaming and can shape the astral plane to their whims. They can use this skill in a number of ways.

The Astral Pocket

Conjurers all have a special part of the Astral plane carved out for themselves, which they use as a habitat for all of their bound crytures. While a cryture is crystallized, it resides within its conjurer's astral pocket and lives out its life normally with all of the conjurer’s other crytures.

Conjuring and Binding Crystals

Binding crystals are the conduit that allows a conjurer to capture, summon, and command crytures. When a cryture is bound by a conjurer, the physical essence is absorbed into the crystal, while its spirit resides in the conjurer’s astral pocket. When the crystal is broken, its mass reforms into the cryture’s body and the spirit returns to it from the astral pocket.
The close connection created by the binding process creates a kind of geas on the cryture, compelling it to comply with a conjurer’s commands, except in certain extreme circumstances. Due to the astral connection, the cryture always understands its conjurer’s intentions, even without verbal communication. This type of communication only functions in close proximity, where they can hear or see each other. A conjurer can’t summon a cryture without its specific crystal, but anyone with an occupied crystal can summon the cryture inside it. A cryture summoned this way has no obligation to obey the summoner, and its conjurer knows immediately when it has been summoned by someone else.

Attuning and Using Multiple Crytures

Once a day, when a conjurer sleeps, they will need to select which crytures to attune for the next day. While a cryture is attuned, the conjurer has full control over them and they will obey almost any command while summoned. If a conjurer summons a cryture that isn’t currently attuned, it will simply walk around in a daze, or re-crystalize itself at the first opportunity.
A conjurer can have only one cryture attuned at a time, normally. However, the Capacity ability allows a conjurer to attune additional crytures at once, up to a maximum of four. A conjurer may elect to keep some attunement slots open, in which case they may fill them later while meditating during a short rest.
While a conjurer has multiple crytures attuned, they may summon any number of them at once, but each summoning beyond the first requires them to spend 1 Mana.

Training Crytures

While a conjurer sleeps, they may spend experience to train their crytures in new classes. Once a day, they may also have two crytures that share a class train with one another. The cryture with the lower level in the shared class gains an extra level in that class. A cryture can only gain 1 level each time they train this way, regardless of how many shared classes the two have.

Essence Harvesting

Essences are powdered or liquid remains of crytures, typically created when a cryture’s body becomes too damaged to house its spirit. They are the primary ingredient for crafting magic items, and a catalyst for spells. Essences can also be created from clippings of certain material from crytures, such as fur or nails. Each cryture regrows these parts, so a conjurer can harvest essences from his own crytures, gaining 1 essence per week of the cryture’s type. If the cryture has multiple types, the conjurer chooses which type of essence to harvest.
Defeated wild crytures dissolve into essence when they reach 0 Health. The type of essence collected this way is determined randomly, according to the cryture’s Loot Dice.

Affinity and Enmity

Affinity and enmity represent the state of your relationship with your cryture. Affinity is the long-term bond you have with the cryture, while enmity represents the current tensions between you. When a cryture reaches 5 enmity, it will refuse to obey its conjurer, unless they make a Sense + Binding roll with a difficulty equal to 10 minus the Cryture's Affinity. This roll is required every time a conjurer gives a command to the cryture.

Gaining Affinity and Enmity

When a player character does something that compliments the nature of one of the crytures they have attuned, they may make a Sense + Binding roll to improve their Affinity with that cryture. The difficulty of the roll is equal to the Cryture's Enmity + 5 while the complexity is equal to the Cryture's Affinity + 1. If the roll succeeds, the cryture gains 1 Affinity.
When a player does something that offends the nature of a cryture that they have attuned, or if the cryture is reduced to 0 Health, that cryture gains 1 Enmity.

Reducing Enmity

Once a day, a conjurer may try to make amends with a cryture they’ve offended to reduce their Enmity. This requires a Sense + Binding roll with a difficulty equal to 10 minus the Cryture's Affinity, and the complexity is equal to the Cryture's Enmity. On a successful roll, the cryture’s enmity is reduced by 1. The world builder is encouraged to give bonuses to this roll if the player makes an effort to describe how they’re trying to make amends.

Natures

Natures affect how a cryture gains Affinity and Enmity. When a player chooses a starting cryture, they can select the Nature of the cryture themselves. However, when a conjurer first binds a wild cryture, they must roll 1d10 to determine the Nature of that cryture. Each number on the die corresponds to a certain Nature, as follows.

1 - Aggressive

An aggressive cryture lives for conflict. It loves to fight, first and foremost, but any chance for it to show dominance over others gives it a similar thrill. Being calm and passive is the bane of an aggressive cryture.

2 - Anxious

Anxious crytures prefer to avoid trouble whenever possible. They are at their happiest when their conjurer steers away from conflict and achieves things by de-escalating tense situations. They despise having to fight battles that could be avoided.

3 - Calm

A calm cryture is never in a hurry for anything. It likes to do things methodically and take its time with any task. Calm crytures hate to be rushed and resent being forced into difficult situations due to rash decisions.

4 - Curious

A curious cryture lives to explore and try new things. These crytures never leave a stone unturned and expect their conjurers to try every path they can take, even if there’s danger. They hate to miss out on anything they haven’t seen before.

5 - Empathetic

An empathetic cryture feels good when those around it feel good. It does its best to cheer people up and likes to ease the problems of others. Turning a blind eye to suffering, or worse - contributing to it - will turn an empathetic cryture against you quickly.

6 - Jealous

A jealous cryture loves attention. It seeks praise from those around it and expects undue favoritism from its conjurer. Jealous crytures especially loathe when others receive the same at their own expense.

7 - Lazy

Lazy crytures don’t like to expend more effort than necessary. They would prefer it if their conjurer handled everything without their help, but when they must do something, a lazy cryture likes to get it over with, using minimal time and effort. Lazy crytures hate to go the extra mile and will take shortcuts whenever possible.

8 - Mischievous

A mischievous cryture can’t keep itself out of trouble. It respects guile and risky behavior, especially when it’s achieved at someone’s expense. Mischievous crytures are annoyed by people who insist on playing it safe and above-board.

9 - Noble

A noble cryture seeks to act with honor and commands respect. It never backs down from a challenge and eschews underhanded actions in general. Cowardice and deceit win no respect from a noble cryture and it would rather lose with dignity than win by cheating.

10 - Serious

A serious cryture likes to get things done. It respects a conjurer with a good work ethic and feels fulfilled when getting its own hands dirty. A serious cryture loathes people who avoid work or procrastinate.