>>5780552>>5780542>>5780514>>5780478>>5780489>>5780458>>5780437>>5780434>>5780413>>5780408>>5780406>>5780403>>5780394"Extraplanar Binding and Summoning," began the Mage Proctor, a stern-faced and middle-aged woman with the beginnings of liver-spots, but fierce grey eyes and a rod-straight spine to match her tall hat. "Or, as I'm sure some of you have heard it called, Beginner's Demonology."
Some of your classmates in the course whispered excitedly, but she clicked her tongue loudly and all faces turned once more to her.
"It is not," she corrected them, "a demonological course. The Hawksong mages' Tower does NOT offer demonology of the sort some of you were envisioning—the naming calling up, binding, and commanding of Hellish entities. Such activities are FORBIDDEN, by order of Paladin King Archos."
You had heard about that, of course. Most had, but there was always a sense of autonomy in the Tower—of intellectual transgressiveness which lent some bolder or edgier students false hope. It was a relatively recent edict, after all, born out of some attack by a Southern terrorist group which had (so rumors went) claimed the life of the last Archmage and exploded the Endless Fountain which had been a gift from the elves to the Men of the North at the end of the War of Elves and Dragons. Southmen were always more open to demon-dealing—some even said devil-worship—but given the alleged presence of possible cultists from Hawksong within the ranks of the Tower Guardians who had helped enable the plot, demonology and demonism had become offenses punishable by the stiffest means in years since.
"If you are skilled in Elementalism, you may have already had some inkling of the summoning which we WILL be doing: the calling up of elemental energies from planes of Fire, Water, Air, and Earth, and their formation into constructs. You may have even created a few 'elementals' of this sort in your previous years, albeit weak ones and without autonomy. Our objective here is to be able to create more LASTING and POWERFUL elementals... And to CONTROL them, even when we cannot directly supervise them."
This was exciting enough to most students, of course, though a few lamented the inability to summon a hellhound ("so badass!") or a succubus (for obvious reasons). It was the next part of Mage Proctor Klein's introduction which caught YOUR attention, though:
"Where demons and other named spirits are concerned, CONTROL is the operation I will be teaching you. You will learn to BIND them, and to BANISH them. This is the proper course of action when faced with a demon, and it could save your life if some dark magician from some OTHER discipline sees fit to summon one... Or one of your randy classmates forgets that succubi were more likely to possess and devour a summoner than to bring them cookies between classes and nestle under their desks during long lessons."
