A Spirit Contractor is a mortal individual who is contacted by a spirit with the request to assist the world in destroying the threat of Iraeidin, should they accept the request the individual will be contracted, and thus be given magical powers of which the power and element depends on the spirit in question.
There are 149 total spirits with the distribution across the ranks as follows :
55 minor spirits
40 normal spirits
30 major spirits
15 legendary spirits
9 unique spirits
Compared to what one might expect from a magical class the spirit contractor has two mechanics that differ from the average. The first is a "Sacrifice" this is constant required action demanded by your spirit that the contractor must perform every time they wish to use a spirit's power, this sacrifice can be extremely easy such as clapping one's hands for a minor spirit, or extremely arduous, such as delivering an offering at the peak of a mountain once a month. The second is the bond rank, this is effectively the relationship between the contractor and their spirit, and how willing the spirit is to slowly allow the contractor more of their power and authority. In terms of mechanics the bond rank functions as a third scaling (in addition to tier and attribute scaling), bond rank goes from 1 to 10 so the scaling will often be much slower than the other two, but is more powerful in comparison.
With the exception of unique spirits, there are 5 major elements these being as follows : Fire, Water, Earth, Wind, Light. It should be noted, that the elements cover more than what they may sound like, for example, the water element covers both water and ice. However, a spirit can only inhabit one sub-field of an element, using the previous example, a water spirit would not be able to use any ice magic. Below is a short list of each element and their sub elements.
✦Fire = Fire/magma/Chemical
✦Water = Water/Ice/Mire
✦Earth = Nature/Rock/Metal
✦Wind = Wind/Sound/Phantom
✦Light = Light/Lightning/Arcane
With two exceptions, namely legendary and unique spirits, when a player decides to become a spirit contractor they are allowed to customize the spirit's appearance (which only they will know of most of the time), personality, sacrifice, and sub element. It should be noted that since spirits are npcs and that the gm has to roleplay the spirit how the player can customize the spirit and the limits of doing so depend on the gm.
Minor Spirit
The lowest rank of spirit, but often these spirits are kind and not picky about their contractor, expect bond rank to rise fairly easily. Due to the low power of minor spirits what they are capable of especially at the higher end can be considered limited, for example most water spirits would at some point be able to manipulate the weather, causing it to rain and the like (granted this would be at the higher end of what's possible for a normal spirit), this would be impossible for minor spirits. However, because they have a low power in comparison to other spirits, their sacrifice can be extremely easy, allowing their contractor to use their power almost naturally and with little interruptions (outside of the needed reserves). Lastly, all minor spirit contractors automatically half the reserve cost (rounded up) of the magical skills they create.
Normal Spirit ★
The average spirit, has magical power that most individuals could never imagine obtaining with a sacrifice that often isn't too time consuming or difficult, but enough to make casting an objective in the midst of combat.
Major Spirit
A particularly strong spirit, there aren't many of them but when one is seen on the battlefield, their presence is surely known, the sacrifices of these spirits are usually demanding enough that the contractor may spend entire fights without being able to use their magic. Additionally, the spirits are a bit more cautious or even disdainful of their contractor causing the act of raising bond rank to be a arduous task.
Legendary Spirit
The strongest spirits of their represented element, as one could infer, there are two legendary spirits per element. Additionally, compared to most other spirits, legendary spirits are preset in terms of appearance, personality, sacrifice, and sub-element. The reason for this is that it might be difficult for the player to offer a sufficiently challenging sacrifice and to make these spirits more complete and possible even known existences. As per what was mentioned previously, legendary spirits are the height of the element almost anything that the player can imagine within the sub-element, would likely be possible with the spirit. The user will often have an extremely difficult time raising the bond rank of these spirits but the rewards for doing some are surely equivalent to the difficulty.
Unique Spirit
Spirits represent parts of the world, each of the primary elements represent one of the core aspects of the world, the unique spirits represent a stranger part of the world that is contained within one instance. While the unique spirits aren't stronger than legendary spirits, due to their existence being naturally more abstract and difficult to quantify they have two sacrifices compared to any other rank of spirit. Similar to Legendary spirits, unique spirits are set existences and can't be customized by the player, only chosen. The common person has a limited understanding of unique spirits but at the very least most are aware of what the 9 existences of spirits are which is shown below :
✦Spirit of Time
✦Spirit of Void
✦Spirit of Creation
✦Spirit of Law
✦Spirit of Luck
✦Spirit of Darkness
✦Spirit of Life
✦Spirit of Death
✦Primordial Spirit of Fire
here are some minor outlines for easy ways to make sacrifices (this excludes uniques as each unique has a predetermined sacrifice).
these sacrifice suggestions mainly focus on the time aspect, far different sacrifices can be created but these are simple examples that can be flavored in several different ways for those who are unsure about making their own:
minor = free action per cast
Normal = 2 actions to satisfy sacrifice per cast
Major = 2 rounds worth of actions to satisfy sacrifice per cast
Legendary = 5 rounds worth of actions to satisfy sacrifice per cast
