> > What elemental demons do you have in mind? The Nomad God
> > counters were AFAIK spirits and never summoned by sorcerors.
>Nothing that specific. I'm planning games set in the west, and I feel
>there should be a lot of entities that morally flexible sorcerers can
>summon.
Depending on the Church, even morally inflexible sorcerers can summon demons. Based on Gods of Glorantha, I daresay the Hrestoli Church has an order set aside to summon the Krjalki that infest the border of the Ban in order to put them into very small bottles so that they will no longer harm the average Loskalmi. A similar justification could be made for a Rokari sect while the Borists and the Atroxi (Sir Ethilrist's mob) explicitly require the summoning of demons to maintain their political position.
Rather than adopt a position that the local church bans demon summoning outright, I think it more interesting to have them allow the practice with strict criteria on what the demons can or cannot be used for (ie no cursing fellow Malkioni). So every now and then your demonist has to undergo an audit by the local inquisition (what demons did you summon? what did you use them for? and so on). And since he's trafficking in dark forces and forbidden to use them against his fellow malkioni, they are free to vent their displeasure by spitting on him in the street. The demonist can chose to forgo all the social unpleasantries by conducting his practice in secret. But now devoid of social control, he becomes the equivalent of a secret murderer in Orlanthi society and will receive an equally unpleasant fate if discovered.
--Peter Metcalfe
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