i was wondering if some one would be able to give me some info as to how the summoning spells work? ...also what exactly can you summon, just demons, or can u summon elementals or other things to fight in your name?....does it take alot of AE to summon? what sort of checks have to be made?

any info as to how it works would be greatly appreactiated

-Scott

Phew... good question. But not a simple one - since magic is covered in several not-too-slim books, and summoning/conjuration takes a good part of these books.

I'd like to answer your questions now, but it's past 7 o'clock in the morning here in Germany, and my coffee cup has just gone empty... so expect a more detailed answer in the evening.

Right now only a short primer:
There are several ways to summon something in Aventuria. Sometimes I may rather call it "conjuration", since that fits some subjects better.
You can:
- summon elementals (of each of the six (!) elements fire, water, ore, air, humus and ice), from elemental spirits (lowest class) over elemental djinnis to elemental masters (highest class)
- summon spirits (that is, the spirits of the deceased, under several restrictions)
- conjure demons, from lesser demons over horned demons (middle class) to the arch demons (although I would counsel you not to do so... ;))

There is no way of summoning objects, animals, humans or such - just the above.

Gotta go to work now...

Greetings, Gea

In addition to Geas primer:

- Yes, it takes a lot of AE to summon any (usefull) being. Concerning demons and spirits, not only summoning costs AE, but the also demand a "tribute" of AE depending on what they should do for you
- Yes, most elemental beings and demons can fight for you - at a cost, or if you convince them
- For each type of Beings, special Summon-Spells exist. You make a normal spell check on those, and once summoned, you have to convince the being by an additional test - CH for elementals, and on a more complex calculated value for demons. Depending on what you want, different modifiers apply.
- There are a few additional spells manipulating the demonic or elemental effects, e.g. they create elemental walls. In Aventurian arcane lore, this is regarded as a sort of summoning, too.
- There are very few spells which can summon other creatures. Witches can summon craws, bees, bats or similar, and some elves know how to call nearby animals. The latter is no real summoning, though.


So much for now

Sartokos

About conjuration of demons:
We have several spells with a demonic component, but only a few deal with direct conjuration.
These are the invocations: INVOCATIO MINOR (lesser demons) and INVOCATIO MAIOR (horned demons). They, especially the major form, are the "short" forms of the more complicated ritual form (called INVOCATIO INTEGRA), which is safer to perform when conjuring the dangerous horned demons.
PANDAEMONIUM conjures the demonic power to the ground so that it becomes impassable (the concrete form depends on the archdemon whose power is called upon). There are several other spells, all clearly demonic, but no real conjurations.
Against demons, many damaging combat spells may be effective, but the most effective weapon against demons is either an exorcism (performed by a priest) or the PENTAGRAMMA spell performed by a magician (the effect is the same). Both are strenuous, expensive and dangerous.

And now to something more enjoyable - an explanatory text that I wrote some time ago (so I still had it lying aroung on my hard disk).


Demons are the "Uncreated Ones". They exist beyond the world, the creation of Los and Sumu, and their nature is so different from the nature of any being of the creation that they are beyond understanding of the human mind (because of that, most people who are not used to dealing with demons find them purely horrible). Demons can't enter the world without the aid of magic, so they need to be conjured. Creation represents order, and demons represent chaos - so they cannot bear order and seek to destroy it. That's why conjuration of demons endangers not only their conjurer and the ones around him, but also the world itself - every summoned demon can possibly enhance their power over the creation. Their home is the 7th sphere (or "the sphere outside of the spheres"), most commonly called "the netherhells", where every archdemon holds his domain. The "soul-mill" is common to all of them, the place, where the immortal souls of men are slowly wretched and tortured until they are released into their new existence as another demon. Only the vilest evil-doers do not fear this fate - all others hope to spend their afterlife in the sweet oblivion in Boron's halls, or even in one of the paradises of the Twelve in Alveran.
Demons can roughly be sorted into three classes of different power: the lower demons and the horned demons, forming the "people" and the "nobility", so to speak, and - standing above of them - the twelve archdemons, the "dukes of the netherhells". Every archdemon represents a vile, perverted counterpart of one of the Twelve - where Praios stands for law and justice, Blakharaz propagates revenge and unjust terror; where Rondra stands for fairness in combat, Belhalhar's lust is regardless bloodshed and cruelty.
Regularly dealing with demons results in slow decay of body and mind, and pacting with them results in the loss of the immortal soul. However, quite some people (especially conjurers) are ready to give away their soul to receive power right now and here, so they make a pact with an archdemon. The archdemon gives his pacter sinister powers and lures him into service with the promise of even more power - and with every time he calls upon his pact, the pacter moves forward into a higher "circle of damnation" and becomes more and more a wretched parody of his former self. Finally he loses control over the pact or reaches the 7th circle of damnation, and the archdemon has another willingless servant on Ethra or a soul to serve him in the netherhells.
Of all other people, deonts of one of the Twelve are especially open to the hidden lurings and silent promises of their god's counterpart when they are in distress. It seems as if converting a priest of a counterpart deity is a special interest of the demons.


Feel free to ask any questions. I just didn't feel able to write another introduction for this vast topic when I don't know what you'd like to know.

Greetings, Gea

Gea, your source for information. ;)
Promptly added this to my DOC file, ready for the next one who asks.

gwaedin

Is it against copyright laws to ask for the check and proceedure to cast one of the summoning spells??

do regular spells such as polymorph, paralyse, be my friend work on demons??

Legally it is against copyright laws, yes.

But FanPro usually is very decent concerning fan pages and forums and the information given, as long as you don't spoil their earnings.

And in the case of translation, I specially asked Thomas Roemer (responsible for TDE at FanPro Germany) what was possible. Essentially, we can translate any rule, as long as wouldn't require posting long quotes from the Basic Rule book.

But I still won't give you the checks. Simply because I don't have my books here, so I don't kn ow them myself.

Procedure is quite complicated, as different modifiers depending on creature, time, circumstances and good-will of the GM can influence the spell. This also is not simple.

Not all regular spells work on demons, those you mentioned, I think, don't. Illusions don',t. Combat spells again should.
Here again, someone should answer who has the rules nearby.

Sartokos, not very helpfull this time, sorry

I'm not very much into demon conjuration - since I never played a conjurer, I never had to learn the procedure of conjuring a demon.
But I'll try to give you the most important facts.

As I already pointed out, there are basically two spells to learn for a conjurer:
- INVOCATIO MINOR: this spell can only conjure lesser demons, works pretty fast (5 actions for the conjuration itself, then it takes 2d20 actions until the demon appears). The only conjuration that is nigh useable in battle.
- INVOCATIO MAIOR: this spell can be used to conjure any class of demon, lesser as well as horned ones (please don't ask me what happens when a conjurer tries to invoke one of the archdemons with this spell - personally I think instant death to the conjurer would be the most merciful fate). It's important to know that this spell has two forms: the first one is the short form (the "field version") that is performed in great haste (40 actions for the conjuration itself, then it takes 5d20 actions until the demon appears), to the expense of safety. The second form is the original ritual version, also called "INVOCATIO INTEGRA", which takes much longer (exactly the Difficulty of Invocation in hours, which ranges somewhere between 5 and 28), but is also a lot safer for the conjurer. However, both forms are basically the same spell, so the conjurer has always the same value in the I. MAIOR, no matter whether he performs it in short or long form.
Any conjurer with a sufficient amount of mental sanity left will opt for a maximum of safety for the invocation. Because the difficulty increases in conjuration can become pretty overwhelming, there are several possibilities to ease invocation:
- the "True Name" of the demon can help a lot. The conjurer should have at least a clue about the True Name of his demon (or the invocation will be massively hindered), on the other hand, True Names have certain amounts of "quality" (depending on how close they come to the "True" True Name), and good quality True Name helps much more.
- The paraphernalia should be right. These are not only the conjurer's arrangements directly around the invocation circle (like choosing the right place, correctly arrangement and drawing of the invocation heptagram, sigils and the circle of protection with correct magic chalk, invocation candles, ...), but also influences like star constellations and correct dress (bare feet, black tunic).
- Providing the right donaria for the demon (in most cases, donaria should fit the domain of the demon). For example, possible donaria for Blakharaz (Tyakra'man), the counterpart of Praios, would be: Amber stones with enclosed creatures (as grotesque as possible), gems of night-black or blood-red colour, instruments for torture or execution, tongues of demagogues or judges, ash of burnt law codices, hands of thieves (cut off), ...

Calculate all modifiers of above that effectively give Spell Prowess points (INTEGRA ritual is performed, points from donaria, points from UNITATIO spell) and add them to the conjurer's Spell Prowess in INVOCATIO MAIOR and end up with an "Effective Spell Prowess".
Then calculate all the difficulty increases and decreases (such as from paraphernalia, True Name) which come from fulfilled or unfullfilled requirements, and the Difficulty of Invocation for the demon (as mentioned above, ranges from 5 to 28) and end up with the "Effective Difficulty of Invocation" for this invocation.
Then subtract Effective Difficulty from Effective Spell Prowess and make the Spell Check on INVOCATIO MAIOR (CO/CO/CH).

If you cast the I. MINOR spell or the field version of I. MAIOR, it's much easier of course (less modifiers, same principle).

Once the spell check is done, I. MINOR costs 11 ASP, I. MAIOR (field version or INTEGRA) costs 19 ASP. Keep in mind that these are only the costs for the invocation - the demon still needs to be paid with ASP for actual services.
If the spell check fails, either nothing at all happens (and no demon pops up), or a different demon appears, perhaps even a more powerful one (that might be more difficult to dominate in the end).

Once the demon has appeared, the conjurer needs to overcome it to force his will upon the uncreature he has called - he has to pass a Dominate Test.
The conjurer's Domination Prowess is calculated as follows: (CO+CO+CH+Spell Prowess)/4 (so he'll have two values in Domination Prowess: one for MINOR and one for MAIOR)
Many requirements mentioned above also influence the Dominate Test, but also some others (such as the Advantage "Affinity to demons", the demon's mood, ...). The most important influence is the demon's genuine "Difficulty of Domination" (so each demon (or demon class) has basically two important values: Difficulty of Invocation and Difficulty of Domination), which ranges from 0 to +20 (although most are below 10). It's important to know that both Difficulties aren't always similar - there are demons that are hard to conjure but rather easy to dominate (luckily it's rarely the other way round).
All influences are added up into one value, which is directly the difficulty increase or decrease to the Dominate Test.
The Dominate Test itself is as simple as can be: Make a check on your Domination Prowess (with 1 d20) with the mentioned difficulty increase or decrease.

Depending on how well the conjurer did in the Dominate Test, he may demand a certain number of services from the demon (which will be in most cases no more than two services, a really good and lucky conjurer may have up to five, a circle of conjurers might have six, and so on). The services however still have to be paid with ASP.
Services might be: Nightmare, Possession, Scare, Go to ..., Fight, Physical Aid, Spy, Search, Transport, Deliver Message, Spread Terror, Destroy, Guard, Wait, Cast Spell, Send Back. These are some "standard services", each demon also offers special services.


Any questions about that?


I also wanted to write a short note on spells and demons, but I couldn't find any general information about that. I'm sure it must be written somewhere, since I can remember that there was something ruled out about which spells can generally applied to demons and which not. I just don't find it at the moment, and honestly, I don't like to search anymore right now.
Maybe somebody else has more luck in this.

Greetings, Gea
pretty sure that she didn't violate copyright with this (...too much)

thank-you ever so much for the great posts....i really appreaciate the great details involving the ritual of summoning, as that will help me out alot :-)