Current Perks (As of Chapter 3):
Summoning Basics: This perk gives you an understanding of the basics all summoners are expected to know and gives you the ability to summon in the first place. Summons typically remain active for an hour before a cooldown of twice that time and a summon cannot go beyond roughly 30 meters from the summoner. A summoner cannot normally have more than three summons active at any time. All of these may be trained up to increase the active time, decrease the cooldown time, increase the range of the summons, and increase the number of summons.
Summoning may also cause physical or mental fatigue, dependent on the power of the summon compared to the summoner, limiting the summoner to some degree as they cannot easily summon something significantly stronger than themselves without causing severe fatigue, unconsciousness, or even death if they overtax themselves. This fatigue can be reduced over time with practice, increasing the power and endurance of the summoner.
By default, you can choose if your summons are the same individual each time or a snapshot of a creature. The former are capable of learning and developing, but will have personality quirks and will remember how you utilized their abilities while the latter will be predictable in how it will react but will reset each time it is summoned.
Combat Skills: This perk gives you five years worth of experience in various combat skills. You may distribute this experience across any number of weapons or combat related skills, such as tactics, sapper training, scouting, or fortifying areas. This perk may be taken multiple times, increasing the amount of training you gain and can distribute by an additional five years.
Calm & Collected: You have the ability to keep a level head and remain calm at all times, even when you are subject to fear, anger, or other extreme emotions, you remain able to think clearly and can keep a straight face. Additionally, you can easily mask your emotions and can keep your voice as calm and steady as you appear, never stumbling over your words or misspeaking unless you do so deliberately.
Academic: You are a skilled researcher, able to read quickly, organize information you've gained, and extrapolate from that data more readily, with fewer mistakes and false leads. You also find that books are nearly as good a teacher as having an actual person there to aid you.
Presentation: You have learned how to present yourself effectively to project a specific image, if you want to come off as a goofball and be underestimated, you can easily pull it off, and if you want to present as intimidating and dangerous, you can do so. This can also be used on anything you make, such as making a song sound incredibly upbeat despite having a particularly dark theme to it. This is just an impression, and if forced to back it up, you'll need to rely on yourself for it.
Grounded: You always seem to remain a very down to earth and well adjusted individual. No matter how much power you obtain, no matter how inhuman you become, you will be able to retain your sense of self and sense. You will never go mad with power or lose sight of your roots.
Observant: You notice little details and patterns that others may overlook, some of which may prove useful to you. This gives you an impressive degree of pattern recognition and the senses on par with the best a human is capable of having. You can also pick out when people (or your summons) are hiding something from you.
Good Rapport: You are able to build up good will with others very easily and aren't subject to the internal biases that others may have normally, the sort of thing that would make someone decide they don't like you on first meeting. They may still grow to not like you after getting to know you if you aren't the kind of person they like, but it will never be an initial gut reaction based on biases, both hidden and not-so-hidden.
Charming: You have a natural pull to you, a personal gravity or magnetism of personality that just seems to draw people in and ingratiate you towards others. You have a natural and easy charm to you that just makes people like you more readily and makes social interaction easier. You are also really good at breaking the ice and getting other people to interact and find common ground with each other.
Insight: You have the ability to sense and pinpoint the supernatural in a number of ways, key among them being able to see through illusions that would hide the supernatural from view. With time, you could potentially refine this to allow you to see into other layers of reality as well.
Perspective: With the number of creatures of unusual origins you encounter and interact with, you may find yourself dealing with rules and ideas that are fundamentally alien to your sensibilities. Fortunately, you adapt to such things quite quickly. You are virtually immune to culture shock except for the most extreme of cases and are easily able to shift your mentality to handle changing circumstances quickly and with minimal strain placed on your mind. This also gives you the ability to shift your thinking to match those of inhuman and alien creatures to gain insights into how best to interact with them.
Comprehension: Tapping into the outer spheres in order to summon beasts and monsters to do your bidding exposes you to those self-same outer spheres, and the effects they can have on the psyche are myriad. Fortunately, you are immune to madness-inducing effects, mind-bending horrors, and corruption in all of its forms. This makes summoning far less risky.
Loremaster: You have a memory that is fundamentally perfect, with instant recall, perfect indexing, tamper-proofing, and the ability to suppress, but not forget, memories you don't want to taint anything. You are also well-studied in history, gaining a deep knowledge of local history, which updates to an equivalent level of knowledge in future settings. The more history you study, the deeper the knowledge you gain each jump will be.
Intuition: You are a natural problem solver, able to look at a problem and spot where the issues actually are and understand them, as well as insights into how they can be solved with your current abilities and skills or if you may need to learn something new to fix the issue.
Protected Soul: You have significant protection against any attempt to attack made against your soul, attempts to possess you, and abilities to subvert your will, making you effectively immune to such attacks unless you allow them through, even if they are indirect.
Communion: You are able to contact and communicate with spiritual or cosmic beings, such as gods, demons, fey, or straight up spirits. This does not compel them to speak with you, but does give them awareness of your existence and you awareness of theirs, as well as allowing you to speak to them.
Polyglot: You have a knack for languages and can speak, read, and write all common languages in this world. You can also learn new languages through exposure rather than needing an instructor or book to translate it for you, on top of learning new languages a hundred times faster than normal.
You are able to make yourself understood regardless of what language you are speaking and can understand anyone regardless of what language they are speaking. This even applies to creatures that do not innately possess a language
In addition, each language you know adds potency to language-based and vocal abilities you possess and allows you to use any language you know for any ability you possess that is language-dependent.
Summoner Archetype: There are several types of summoners with different ways of acquiring new summons, and this perk represents those various methods, which may possess some additional features that allow them to be used in other ways.
Truenaming: One of the classics. By discovering the truename of a supernatural entity, you gain some measure of power over it. By simply invoking the truename of the being, you can summon them to you and command them to do as you please. They must follow such orders, though they are likely to be resentful of this control you have. However, the more you understand the truename of the being, the deeper your understanding of them becomes, and the more easily you can command them. Additionally, truenames have power on their own and everything possesses a truename. You can learn the truenames of things and, through careful inflection when spoken, influence them.
Spellcaster: The summoning process is often called a form of magic, even for those that use technology, but now, you are actually a spellcaster, capable of performing feats of magic. With this perk, you become a skilled spellcaster as well as being a skilled summoner. This perk grants you magical abilities and training equivalent to your starting skill and training with summoning, which you can then train further over time.
Diabolism: Originally used as the term for summoning demons, this term also means the conjuration of extraplanar energies. By connecting to another plane of existence, you can draw energy from that plane to form magics akin to that plane of existence. For example, connecting to a hell dimension would allow for the creation and manipulation of hellfire, the casting of curses, and the ability to touch upon and affect the soul in a variety of ways while someone connected to a fey realm may be able to find "shortcuts" in reality, create illusions, or redefine minor aspects of reality on a small scale, such as making an illusion act real for a time. You start only able to connect to a single plane at any time, and only extensive practice and mastery would allow you to connect to more at a single time. Current Extraplanar connections: Dream Plane
Deny the Devil: Sometimes, a summon is able to gain a measure of influence over their summoner, some metaphysical trait that allows them to corrupt and taint the summoner towards the summon's ends rather than the summoner's. However, sometimes, this taint from such summons can carry beneficial effects, even in small ways, despite the dangers involved. You have the ability to allow any corruption or taint to bypass immunities you may possess and allow it to take hold, however, its ability to influence you is greatly limited, allowing you to gain any benefits from that corruption with none of the downsides. You are also unable to become addicted to anything.
Independence: There are many summoners that chafe under the tether that binds their summons to them, that seek a way to extend their range. You are lucky, Jumper, as your summons no longer have a range limit and can roam freely any distance from you, so long as you are on the same plane of existence. And even then, you may be able to change that given time and training.
Persistence: Much like range, summoners have looked for ways to extend the duration of their summons, a way to keep them active beyond their normal limits. You have broken this barrier, or maybe you're just special, and can keep any and all of your summons active indefinitely, only ending when you choose to end them, even setting it so that your summons can unsummon under specific conditions, if you so desire.
Swarm Summoner: As with range and duration, summoners have sought to overcome their limit on the number of summons they can have active, and you have broken that limit through perseverance or luck. You can have any number of summons active at once so long as you can handle the fatigue induced by the summoning process, allowing you a great deal of flexibility and power.
Loyalty (200cp): Your summons are entirely yours. No power or magic can allow someone to usurp your control over your summons, effectively rendering them immune to any attempt by another to influence them. This includes banishing them. Similarly, your abilities are loyal to you alone and cannot be stolen, suppressed, or erased in any way, shape, or form unless you allow it.
As an added bonus, your summons are incapable of harming you with their actions, at least not directly. A blast of fire laid onto you from a summoned dragon would feel like a warm breeze and the lingering flames would be harmless, but the fire causing the building you're in to collapse would still harm you. You can extend this protection to your other summons as well.
Summon Magnet: You have remarkable luck in attracting creatures that are willing to act as your summons or to find something that will provide you one in some way. Moreover, such creatures and circumstances will be safer than they rightly should, such that encountering a dragon would see you having a friendly conversation rather than being constantly at threat of immolation.
Sometimes, however, a summon is not what you may be seeking. In such cases, another boon may be provided, a blessing, a magical artifact, a favor, or some other form of boon. In such cases, these boons become a part of this perk and are fully fiat backed. This even applies to items allowing you to retain items you obtain in jump just as readily as the more immaterial boons you may encounter.
Outer Reaches: You have touched on something far beyond the norm for reality and been subjected to its abnormal effects, changing you on a fundamental level. You naturally adapt to other planes of existence and resist any attempts by those realities to warp your existence, such as the shadowfell in Faerun, allowing you to survive unharmed by reality itself.
Additionally, you are completely immune to reality warping effects and are unbound by fate. The latter means you are immune to effects that would manipulate your luck or predict your actions.
Anchored Reality: Powerful summoners are said to thin the barrier between worlds, allowing phenomena to leak through from one reality to another, others claim to act as a stabilizing force for reality as a whole. You are both. Within the range you can summon, you have the capacity to reinforce or thin the barriers between realities. Thickening the barrier acts to isolate you from other realities, blocking summoning attempts while making reality more stable and harder to influence around you. Thinning the barrier, however, makes it easier to summon, such that some summons may be able to cross the barrier uncalled, and can allow for phenomena and physical laws from one reality to leak over into the current one.
Given extensive practice, you could do both at once and be selective in how this is applied. This can be especially helpful in the summoning of extremely powerful creatures, ones that are too metaphysically heavy for reality to normally allow to exist, causing dangerous feedback that can break localized reality or harm the summons in a way that can be permanent. With this, you could summon an elder god in its true incarnation and not immediately have reality buckle and rip apart at the seams.
This can also be used to permanently kill creatures that would otherwise just return to their home plane on death, in fact, allowing you to kill any creature in a permanent manner despite their efforts to circumvent their own death as you destroy their very essence and soul.
Unveiled: Veils, masquerades, statutes; though not every world of this kind keeps its magic out of sight, there are a great many that do. But you are not among the innocent, who walk through the world unaware of the supernal truths below its surface. In any situation where a passive, large-scale effect exists that would prevent people from discovering the existence of some supernatural force or phenomenon, you are not subject to this effect. This
does not protect you from the active efforts of others, such as someone using a targeted spell to erase your memories, nor does it apply to more localised effects, such as those used to hide a particular house from view. The perk also grants you a basic base of purely mundane knowledge of the supernatural community in any world you visit where such things exist, on par with what an average member of the supernatural community would have learned within their first year of involving themselves with the supernatural.
Friend of the Strange: You are well liked by beings foreign to normality. While normal people don't treat you any differently, the further away a given being is from mundanity, the more affinity they display towards you. Spellcasters and superhumans might treat you as if you had a comforting presence or made a good first impression, but little more, while spirits, demons, gods, and cryptids will have much better opinions of you than they normally would—giving you better deals, being less harsh if you do something to upset them, and so on. Beings normally predisposed to hostility against you will still be hostile, but they will be less so, and quicker to change their minds in that regard. Even beings normally incapable of positive relations with others could learn to develop a bond with you, though this would still be a significant uphill battle.
Beneath the Radar: It can be unwise to draw the attention of those keeping a secret, and it's often easy to escape notice. You blend into the background when you want to, you know how to cover your tracks—both literally and figuratively—and you are generally skilled at going unnoticed, and ensuring your interests go unnoticed as well. Pretending not to know about the occult, preventing others from discerning your place of residence—things like this come naturally to you.
Hang On: Have you had to spend time on the streets? Or did you simply grow used to pushing yourself to the limit with long nights of obsession? Whichever may be true, you are accustomed to hunger, thirst, and exhaustion—able to operate longer than others could under such conditions and only suffering mentally once these things reach far past what would give others pause. You even have an enhanced tolerance for pain in general, able to simply ignore injuries and aches. At least, until they start to break down the body's functions.
Sixth Sense: Was it this talent that first led you to magic, or did you carve it into yourself so you would never go blind again? The imperceptible rings loud to your senses, allowing you to perceive things ordinarily invisible and peer through illusions meant to cover your awareness. What's more, supernatural phenomena of all stripes can register to any of your senses. You can hear yourself being scryed on, smell out a curse, or perceive the magic another is manipulating to predict what spell they'll cast. Your senses even hold an acclimation to otherworldly forces that ensures you suffer no negative effects from these perceptions. Gazing into hell, hearing the voice of a great old one—these things harm you not. Mind you, hell's flames still burn, and a great old one may still purposefully assault your mind or body, but perception alone won't harm you.
Making Connections: Regardless of how well-connected your mentor may or may not have been, you'll likely have no trouble integrating yourself into various more occult circles of society. You hold the twin benefits of being able to find helpful potential contacts from even sources that normally hide themselves—should you put a bit of effort in—and of quickly building positive bonds and garnering favours with such people. If you find yourself dealing with a ghost problem, and there's a spiritualist, necromancer, or medium active in your area, you'll be able to find them—even if they don't advertise their services, or do so only through select means you aren't yet involved in.
Some of this is investigative ability toward finding practitioners of various arts and can be turned to other ends, but most of it comes from a healthy dose of luck that works exclusively toward putting you in touch with those whose goals align with yours. And once you do acquire such contacts, whatever their source may be, you'll find that they're more willing to trade their services at a fair price. This won't give you an unfair advantage, but they'll be more likely to cooperate with you—even if they normally wouldn't—and less likely to rip you off. If such trades and deals prove mutually beneficial, this willingness to continue dealing with you will only increase.
Folkloric Interest: Growing up involved with the mystical half of the world makes it less than surprising that you'd pick up quite a bit of knowledge on it. You have an extensive knowledge base on various supernatural creatures, powers, and important figures in the mystical world. This isn't a perfect knowledge base—it only covers theory and doesn't detail anything wholly unknown to others—allowing you to identify most creatures or abilities you run into, but not making you any more capable of using them yourself.
That said, knowledge is power, and being able to breach the mystery many monsters and practitioners rely on to sell themselves as invincible can be extremely useful. It lets you identify the appropriate ways to interact with other supernatural actors and discover their weaknesses. While you won't be able to recognize absolutely every mystical creature or force you encounter, you can usually figure out the basic classification of even those you don't, giving you a good starting point for further research.
This knowledge updates with information on the supernatural in any future worlds you visit where such things exist.
Natural Magic: Your magic has been a natural part of you all your life, which has given it time to influence your development. Your body is devoid of all natural flaws, never developing blemishes or detriments like bad eyesight. It heals perfectly from any wound—albeit only at the normal rate—and is always subtly nudged toward your preferences in any development. This ensures that exercise is simultaneously more effective and less necessary, and that you will age with exceeding grace—likely even lasting a few decades longer than others would, even without further magical work.
Aura Signature: Through your magical nature, your presence has become a tangible thing that can pour forth from you. Choose a single theme, as simple or complex as you desire. Perhaps it's 'flame,' or 'the faint impression of a depth filled with clockwork and eyes visible only within shadow.' Then choose an emotional resonance appropriate to your theme, such as fear, awe, or joy.
You now have the ability to release an aura that causes your surroundings to reflect your theme, though this is purely based on appearance and causes your chosen emotion in those within the aura. You can control the aura with enough precision to restrain it effortlessly, allow only a specific creature to perceive it, only project the appearance changes without the emotions, or vice versa, and so on. You can also impose these changes onto your spells or other abilities, changing their appearance to match your theme and letting them more easily induce your chosen emotion.
Perhaps the most notable aspect of this aura is how adaptive it is to any other powers you possess. If you have any other abilities that let you project a passive aura, induce emotions in those around you, emit a visual effect, and so on, you can meld these effortlessly into your aura, letting you control them with precision, imbue them into any spells and abilities you use, and mix and match their effects and aspects as desired. In time, you could also develop new appearances for your aura appropriate to your current nature and mix and match these together. You might start with an aura signature of machinery, but spend some time as a forest hermit, and you could develop a second theme of being 'overgrown,' allowing you to make yourself, your surroundings, and your magic appear as though mechanical, covered in plant life, or both at once.
Strange Minded: Whether it be an eldritch nature, fae countenance, or primeval beasthood, your mind does not run on the same inherent processes as that of a mortal. Though this has no effect on your outward actions, any attempt to read or reshape your mind is bound to failure unless the method used is specifically reworked to match your mind—something only possible with at least some amount of direct analysis.
What's more, such failed attempts at touching your mind will cause damaging backlash on those not themselves possessed of an otherworldly mentality, resulting in pain, confusion, fear, and with more extensive exposure, even long-term derangements.
Ritebound: It is common for inhuman beings to be interacted with through rituals, whether to garner their service, tap into their power, or simply query them for their wisdom. For many beings susceptible to these effects, this can be bothersome, but it can serve as a valuable tool as well—and it certainly is for you.
You are now capable of devising methods by which others can interact with you in an occult fashion, allowing you to create rituals that others can use to trigger your abilities and draw your awareness. Such rituals cannot produce effects beyond whatever you are normally capable of, but for this purpose, you are considered 'capable of' personal teleportation, telepathy (only in speech, and without added translation), scrying, transferring your own powers to others temporarily (no longer than a day), and projecting your powers at a distance—all at a slightly more than planet-wide range. However, you can only use these powers as part of a ritual.
You may choose what rituals others can perform to you in any amount of detail you desire, including but not limited to only permitting specific people or those with specific characteristics, demanding sacrifices (as long as you have some ability to collect them), and so on. The rituals must have at least one person other than yourself performing them and can only be performed by someone at least vaguely aware that they are performing a ritual. You may also render any of these rituals inactive if you no longer desire them.
Chosen One: Maybe there's a reason you wound up getting dragged into all this. Whether or not you believe in destiny, it sure seems to believe in you, wrapping itself around you like a cloak. Fate is on your side, giving you opportunities to beat the odds and survive dangers in ways that suit your desires and methods. Any time some already-present, outside form of fate could work in your favor, such as in the form of a prophecy or some predestined fact, it will be strengthened, becoming much harder for others to defy or bend in ways that would hinder you—and much easier for you to resolve in ways that would help you.
Meanwhile, if such a force would work against you, your destiny will lighten its touch, with negative fates that should be absolute becoming possible to defy and break—although the probabilities might still be skewed against you. Your great destiny also makes you worthy of… just about anything, metaphysically speaking. If something is intended to be able to identify great kings, the pure of heart, mighty villains, or fantastic heroes, they'll always register you as being able to fill that role. Draw the chosen one's blade, wear the crown of the one true king, open the door of destiny—no tests of worthiness will hold you back.
Items (As of Chapter 3):
Book of Shadows: Whether it's a practical necessity for your chosen magic or simply a matter of convenience, it can be wise to maintain a spellbook in which to store your knowledge of your arts. This book, which has an appearance of your choice, has a variety of benefits to assist with that.
It automatically updates with detailed notes on any form of magic or power you know or previously knew, serving as a useful teaching tool or method of refreshing your skills. If the power in question must be 'prepared' from writing or is otherwise dependent on written formulae to function, this book always contains valid formulae of all relevant kinds.
The book has an unlimited number of pages, both those dedicated to these magic notes and for anything else you may elect to write down within. Despite these unlimited pages, it is easy to sort through and never appears larger or heavier than a normal book. The book is highly resistant to damage and will restore itself—including any lost writing—over time should any damage occur.
The book has a bound writing utensil which never runs out, which you can call to your hands or dismiss as desired while the book is on your person.
And finally, it can absorb other books to add their contents and properties to itself. As an extension of this, you may import any number of books or other pieces of writing you already possess or obtain in the future into this book, granting it any supernatural properties of those pieces of writing and transcribing their contents into a new 'chapter' of the book.
Contract Kit: Sheafs of magical paper made from fey trees, inks infused with genie blood, and a book on demonic laws, all the tools you'd need to write out a formal contract with another creature. The combination enhances the binding magic of a contract by a fair margin, more than the simple handshake deals used with the Contract Summoner Archetype.
This item can be used to learn how to make magically enforced contracts over time, but will take considerable study of the book and could take years to get to the point it can be reliably used for such.
The Vault: You have a connection to an extradimensional space (by default this is your cosmic warehouse but can be its own space as well) connected to a simple trinket (such as a ring) that you can will objects in your possession into at any time. Items so stored can be summoned once more to your hand.
You can benefit from items stored within the vault as if they were on your person, though not worn. Any item that provides a benefit just by being in your possession will continue to provide you its benefits in the vault despite its displacement from you. You can also summon phantom copies of wielded items to use in place of the original. (Not Yet Unlocked)
You can benefit from items within the vault as if you were wearing them. Any items that provide a benefit just by being worn will continue to provide you its benefits in the vault despite not being worn. Additionally, your summons can benefit from the items within your vault as if they had the above version of this item, though you can choose to selectively apply which items grant their benefits. (Not Yet Unlocked)
Containment Room: This large room is designed to make blind summoning both possible and safe, but is equally useful in ritualistic magic. This room provides a hefty wellspring of power you can draw on to fuel your summons and acts to ward such summoned creatures so they cannot act against their summoner, as if they were trapped in a properly constructed ritual circle. This does not allow you to command summons beyond your ability to control, but ensures you'll be heard out and allow you to potentially broker deals with summoned creatures.
Any form of ritual magic, not just summoning, is also empowered and partially fueled by the power that naturally accumulates within the room, allowing you or anyone allowed to use the room to perform much more power intensive rituals than they otherwise would have had the capacity for.