Chapter 5-116: Reading Material (1/2)

And now we return several years later to the Powered side of the equation...

Noble wasn’t actually my last Class as a One. That honor was reserved for... Binder.

Binder was the, mmm, more abusive and flexible of the Pact Classes. Where Warlocks had a Pact with a sponsoring Patron and could eventually draw great power from it as a direct servant and arm of that entity, Binders, well, they got around.

Binders were, in effect, master Summoners, completely focused on using the might of other beings for themselves. Thus, they could advance in four related, but very different areas.

The first was access to a whole lot of spells relating to Summoning hapless spirits bound to them and Buffing them up, your typical Slavemage ploy. Sure, the spirits were just ectoforms manifesting off immortal idealized Templates, and couldn’t really die. You were still Summoning creatures up to fight and die for you. It was basically the Enchantment/Charm school, except the obedience was already in place.

The second was a personal super-familiar, an Eidolon. This was a true combat beast, strong and growing stronger with time, a nigh-immortal entity called to the Binder, much like a Druid’s animal companion, only more exotic and magical. No two Eidolons were the same, and they tended to be reflections of the desires of their masters.

The third way they gained power was swearing temporary Pacts with mysterious entities and bargaining for special powers with them on a more temporary basis. These Vestiges, Fey, and creatures of Mythos were mercurial and unpredictable, but there were tons of them, one for any particular problem you wanted, if you knew the Names of enough of them.

The last way was actually Binding and Trapping magical beings, especially Outsiders and Fey, and bargaining with them for power... something the Evil ones among that mindset were more than happy to do, for a little thing called a soul... or for much less, if the Binder was sufficiently powerful, and had access to their Truename!

The problem with all that shit was... this world was Shrouded, and there was jack all to Call on!

Basic Summon spells wouldn’t work, because you couldn’t reach the astral space where the timeless Templates dwelled. You couldn’t call an Eidolon, because whatever timeless space they dwelled in wasn’t accessible. You couldn’t call out for Vestiges and Mythos entities, because they couldn’t be reached, either...

The only thing you might be able to do was trap, Bind, and Seal magical creatures or beings that were walking around physically, which wasn’t exactly a job you got a lot of experience at, as said creatures would go around trying to make you dead before they became a target. Bargaining with said entities would be done in the most hostile of circumstances, and Binders wanted to command armies, not be engaged in hair-rising close combat to get a creature inside a Formation and Bind it so they could extract a favor or magical power in a hostile bargain or two.

In short, what Binder gave me was more Spells Known, as they were a spontaneous Caster Class with limited spells and Charisma bonuses, meshing right into the Sorcerer Valence structure. Name Theurgy meant I’d eventually be able to infuse the spells into my Sorcerer Spells Known. Oh, and I got 2 skill points, too.

I could only sigh. Oh, well, it was just a little Karma... and maybe Binding would be important in the future. There were still some powerful shitheads running around granting Pacts, after all, who deserved to be shut down.

Nineteen total Classes I was being forced to take, many of which I simply didn’t need right now and could have deferred to at least Four or Five without any problem, not caring about the increased cost at that time.

There were enough undead to pay for me to get there many times over. Rassum Frassum Shroudborn Bloodline, Death Curse, Soul Memories, and whatever else was responsible for this!...

And what was really funny was that even without the ‘new’ Classes of Magus, Witch, and Inquisitor, Aelryinth had still possessed Levels of Favored, Soulcaster, Soul Warrior, Shifter, and all the Warlock stuff, too! I could only sit and be irked alone...

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On the third day of my Writing the new Spells for those interested, the coming Wizards, Witches, Magi, scattered Clerics, and Minstrels showed up with their own Write spells, given that I was running out of them, and I was charging them for the Write spells.

In addition, in a delightful display of solidarity, Heavenbound Hall got together and started making me Wands of Write. It was a minor spell which tons of junior Casters could use, so charging up the Wand was easy, and I naturally paid the Hall full price for it, which they split with the junior Casters, making them some easy gold.

This became necessary, as I was promptly inundated with demands for scholarly work.

I didn’t necessarily know more ‘right now’ than the strongest people on the planet... but I knew there was more out there, and I had access to those memories, and of things they simply hadn’t discovered yet. Yes, they were an information-sharing society, and once they started sharing information, they could advance with speed a medieval society would have found horrifyingly fast. La Renaissance didn’t stop just because it was magic, now.

But some things just took time. I already had knowledge of the rules and laws behind much of the magical and spiritual system here, and simply a much more advanced and in-depth working knowledge of spells and magic and How Things Worked. Indeed, there were whole schools of magical thought which were simply unaddressed because with the Shroud up, you couldn’t do much with them... like a good chunk of the Summoning and Conjuration spells.

The Theurgic Classes, where you started fusing magic of different types and styles together? Or the Arch-Classes, where you increased the raw amount of spells? They had no knowledge of them.

So, me being able to take their basic knowledge of spells and Metamagicks and blow them wide open was definitely a thing.

Making Bloodbound Pages like I was took time, and money, and nobody wanted me to stop once they realized that I could literally keep going, and going, and going. Improved Standard spells, Stat-dependent iterations of spells, uniform Raised-Valence variants of spells, more flexible spells, more specialized spells... we’d had the core engine in the Power of Ten, and there were people who had exploited them all.