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Ten to twelve-thousand years is my upper limit, and that really needs a quality specimen and my familiars' support. I haven't tested my limits with distance to that extreme a degree, since the cost of the flight to a closer summoning location would be worth the reduction in risk. Even being a few hundred miles out of their original range can add a lot of difficulty, and that really stacks when it's something extinct... Like I can summon a common pigeon with really no effort at all. There's more time spent drawing the circle than there is on the calling. But a teratorn takes hours and hours.

[without breaking a beat as she starts on disemboweling the deer]

Edited 2019-09-26 04:09 (UTC)

[Nodding, just holding the deer steady for her as he watches her work.] That makes sense. The location thing. What's a teratorn?

[piling the organs into a bin to the side and shooing away her suddenly VERY interested familiars. they may be skeletons but instincts want those snacks.]

No, greedy butts, you'll make a mess. Later— Teratornithidae is a family of extinct vulture relatives. Rocs are bigger, but for non-magical animals, they were some of the biggest flighted birds around. If not the biggest! I've been working with one for a locomotion study, since there's still some work to be done on figuring out how exactly they got airborne and how agile they were on the ground.

[Chuckling.] I'm sure there'll be plenty of leftovers. Might even get fancy cooked meat.

Oooh, giant bird. That does sound cool. Maybe I could help? I'm pretty good at math and trajectory stuff.

Unfortunately, I have neither the loaned teratorn skeleton, the notes, the cameras, nor the motion-tracking computer programs with me. I do a lot of work where I summon something so it can participate in someone else's study.

Ah. That's a shame. Well, I guess if we ever run into big birds, might be a thing to keep in mind.

So you need to put parts of your soul in the summons though?

No? If your soul is getting involved in a standard summoning, you've messed up badly.

Ooooh, so it's just familiars that need it and summoning is different?

Generally, yes! My familiars are a somewhat confusing case since they are necromantic summons, but they serve a very different role than other creatures I summon, skeleton or otherwise.

So familiars aren't usually skeletons?

You do get some, since dead creatures technically have a magic flow after you've gone and raised them up, but most familiars are going to be live magical animals, like one of my friends has a white dog for hers. Monsters, or magical beasts, like unicorns and griffons also work. Mine qualify both for being dragons and for being dead.

Is there a reason they're so rare? Like it seems like it'd be a lot harder to kill a skeleton familiar than an alive one. Which seems like it'd be real traumatic?

[both of the dragons swing their heads up to glare at Dusk, spiky hackles raised and bristling. eliza's smile wavers.]

Um, it would be, but that's not really a factor we need to consider. There's protections for familiars.

....no offense? Is that offensive?

[What is that wavering smile?] There are?

It's... gauche?

...which part? Because I think I said something bad and it's hard to say which.

The last two parts.

....so dead and killing familiars? Bringing up alive versus dead?

[Isolde leans over Eliza's shoulder and hisses]

Discussing familiars on the merits of how easy they are to kill or not, especially paired with the question of how traumatic that would be... That's really, really tactless.

...ah.

Yeah, now that you say it, that makes a lot of sense.

Sorry.

[pets Isolde's muzzle, shushing her]

It's okay, you didn't know.

I can be pretty tactless if I'm not watching it. And morbid curiosity.

I don't mind morbid curiousity normally, just um. Not as applied to me and mine.

Yeah, that's fair.

Mm. To sort of answer your question though, if one of them died unnaturally, I would have to be hospitalized. Probably immediately, since none of you have the right magic to ward the aftershocks.

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schrodingerscockroach - 2019-10-27 17:39 (UTC) - Expand