Familiars

Throughout the history of magic, witches and wizards have had a noble tradition of keeping animal familiars as spiritual companions, pets and occasional useful substitutes for the mailman in times of trouble, closely bound and by their sides.  This tradition continues to this day, although the rising of urban magic has naturally caused some changes to fashion.  Owls, for example, are now rather tricky familiars to keep, although curiously enough the domestication of the rabbit as a fluffy pet means that some wizards still find it useful to keep them as mystical familiars, albeit rather fatter, cuter familiars than perhaps their ancestors were.  Wolves are out, foxes are in – indeed, the urban fox is considered one of the more useful and fashionable familiars for any wizard to keep, valuable for their powerful senses, cunning, survival skills and unrivaled nocturnal mastery of the city streets.  Pigeons are a common airborn familiar, and rats are also a popular choice, able to access pretty much anywhere and do anything.  Mice are not very fashionable, although recent trends in the domestic cat population suggest that soon the cats of the city will be too fat and lazy to pose any real threat to this particular breed of familiar.

There are also tales of more exotic familiars that urban wizards have been known to acquire.  One witch was said to adopt a motorbike as her pet familiar, which would somehow manage to appear wherever she went regardless of whether she’d driven it there, as loyal as a pet puppy.  Needless to say, this resulted in a lot of parking fines, and was for that reason abandoned as being a rather foolish choice of animated pet.  A member of the Beggar King’s court managed to bond with his own fleas, turning them into a rather irritating weapon of choice that could at any given moment hop onto the backs of his enemies and annoy them to death; and it said that in Miami one rather reckless sorcerer adopted a baby crocodile as his familiar, only to discover that the tinned meat bill once his familiar reached adulthood was prohibitive.   Thus, while it can be said that having an animal familiar magically bound to you can be a useful tool for any self-respecting wizard, the advise always stands – call your local borough council first, and consider your budget before making any major mystical choices on the subject.