Simon sez:
> Why should you expect this? Do wild horses naturaly just walk up to passing
> humans and offer to give them a lift? Can you walk up to a wild
> mountain goat and milk it wile it just stands there placidly eating grass?
I like this analogy. It's a fair argument against spirits donating MP voluntarily; but why not under the influence of a control-type spell?
Also, we ride horses because horses have optimal SIZ and STR for our purposes. We could equally try to ride goats or milk horses - they're just not so good for this purpose. (Remember the Goat-Riders of Prax?;) So why should we bind dumb (1D6 INT) "Intellect" spirits to store our spells when we could bind smarter spirits? I guess the answer is "Because they're the only ones which can hold spells for others to use". But why is this?
Furthermore, although its possible to ride horses bareback, most folks use a saddle and bridle to make things easier. Similarly I imagine shamans can tailor their binding enchantments to specific purposes. I don't think binding enchantments are necessarily all the same: you wouldn't use a saddle and bridle when you're milking a goat, after all.
> Power spirits are good for yielding spells the same way cows are good for
> yielding milk. Ever tried to milk a pigeon or train messenger cows?
I wouldn't try to store spells in a spirit with no INT either.
> I don't see binding as being a form of slavery, more a form of domestication.
An interesting distinction there. I suppose "domestication" for fixed-INT spirits; "slavery" for normal-INTs. So a Good(TM) Shaman might have qualms about binding a human spirit (ghost). I reckon any rational spirit would go completely nutz after a couple of weeks being bound.
It's surpirising there aren't more mutually cooperative relationships between shamans and spirits. Y'know, feed it some MP each day and it stays around without having to be Bound, or somethin'. Or is this how a fetch is meant to hold spirits, through cooperation rather than force?
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CW.
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