You give the questions some thought before you provide your opinion and say, "We should recruit heavily from the worst of the worst, the sort of people who will kill for just a little bit of coin or because its fun. I think we should avoid using innocent - or at least less guilty - people for our initial works, when attrition will be at its highest. Plus, while I know from Dagwood's crew my powers can be used for good, I need practice and those who are already broken I have less to fear in terms of doing damage."
Az considers your words and nods, saying, "I shall take that into consideration. I do like your logic though."
"As for the other issue, given your advice, I will probably attempt to summon something... different. When we make it to shore, don't let anyone near me for at least three days. I have a memory of something quite knowledgeable, but also quite dangerous to those who don't understand it, a being called a donju."
"Ah, yes, I know of such beings. A good pick for the pursuit of knowledge and power, if indeed rather prickly sorts. And yes, you should be fine, but I will ensure that anyone we recruit stays well away from the area you are going to summon it" Az says, his features actually serious for a moment before giving way to a small, self-satisfied smirk. "We'll be anchoring well outside waters where people will frequent anyway, so if you get the summoning done within the first week we won't even be back with the first recruits before everything is wrapped up on your end."
You nod at that. You had already expected the situation to be like that when you had come to this decision.
The next week passes much the same as things had since you had captured the frigate in the first place, although the going was much slower as you pick your way through the island cluster around New Barabas, before finally you anchor the newly renamed Bebesha's Fury in an abandoned lagoon, Dagwood and his crew taking the Spritely Sinner to go to other business for the next month while Az assembles a crew. For your part you head into the dense woods near the shore to get the ritual ready to go. If you were a normal occultist you probably wouldn't be able to pull off a summoning like this, not with the resources you had available to you. As you begin preparation of the ritual site, you go over the three general component types: necessary, supplementary, and fuel, of which you were able to skip out on the last one for the most part by providing your own energy, something most humans couldn't do.
As you carefully pour molten lead into grooves in wet sand, the base materials acquired from "borrowing" from bullet stocks, you consider that while the use of lead for constructing a summoning and binding circle is technically supplementary, for something like a danjou it was really a necessity. The eerie spirits would burn out the wards of a less sturdy or more magically conductive material before properly summoned. Also, while a vulture would be best, the gulls you had caught to provide the blood sacrifice would be sufficient, and theoretically you could get away with the blood of any bird sprinkled upon the circle, it was just that anything less would probably be taken as an insult and one of the creatures wouldn't show up. The bottle of rum was definitely supplemental though, although there were a dozen other little things you could have found to make the ritual safer and more likely to succeed.
By the turning of the night tide you are actually a little bored, your preparations completed by the setting of the sun with the only thing left to do being to wait for the right moment. Getting up, you give the circle before you one last inspection before you go into the centre and use a finger to quickly scribe a message to draw the spirit of knowledge to you, before biting your thumb hard enough to draw blood and pressing it into the soft sand. You then pick up the sword that had been left for you and go to the cage with the gulls inside. Reaching in, you grab the squawking, flapping, hateful creature by the neck and carry it with some difficulty over to the circle before you hack into its neck, near decapitating it. You would have preferred to have just cut its throat, and assistance would have been appreciated but that would have required protections for the assistants that would have massively expanded the list of things you needed and needed to do. Turning the dead but still twitching animal upside down, you pour its blood onto the inner edge of the summoning circle and then toss the corpse into the centre. As it turns out, you only needed two gulls to complete the transit of the circle, but you use up all four you had caught just in case you needed more blood or one got away before you sacrificed it - the being you summoned would know if you had extra sacrifices and didn't give them to it.
The iron and copper tang of blood charging the air with the scent that would draw the spectral advisor you sought, you then got out the bottle of rum, uncorked it, and placed it atop the bloody thumbprint you had made at the centre of the circle, careful not to disturb the writing or the gull corpses. Stepping back, you take out a whetstone and begin to run it over the blade you had, still sticky with blood from killing the gulls. The first few passes are ineffective, but you take a backward step while travelling widdershinwise around the circle for each stroke on the blade. After a few passes you have scraped away the blood and feathers enough that you manage to scrape off a few small sparks. Soon enough you are casting off improbably huge showers of sparks from the blade, which dance and skitter unnatural upon the lead of the circle and seem to dwell especially long upon the feathers of the dead gulls, glowing orange despite the blood. Finally at some point a spark lands within the open rum bottle, which becomes a sputtering blue candle for a few heartbeats.
Like a cannon going off the rum bottle explodes, tens of thousands of blue sparks rushing out to consume everything within the inner circle before crashing like a wave against a seawall when it strikes the lead edges of the warding circle. Gazing into the sparks, you feed energy from yourself into them, forging a temporary connection that will allow the spirit to manifest. You feel a considerable drain begin to take place, but already the swirling, fluid collection of blue embers is starting to coalesce into something more. Unsettling in its uncertainty of shape, the thing is best described with vague terms like 'blasphemous seafoam' or 'unquiet stirrings', the spirit takes on some semblance of form recognizable to human sensibilities when a pair of eyes composed of orange sparks open within an impression that one could pretend was a face.
"This one is ___ and has heard your summons, mortal. Speak, what do you wish to know of?" The flames speak, the words appearing in your head without crossing your ears. Pronouncing its name correctly will be a challenge, but mentally you tag it as 'Pause'.
"___, I call upon you to seek knowledge of the attachment of the soul to the body," you proclaim, announcing your purpose.
Surprisingly, the eyes narrow at you, and Pause begins, "Have you not... oh."
That's definitely not a good sign, and you immediately ask placatingly, "___, have I done something to offend you?"
The burning spirit is silent for a moment before it says, "This one has interacted with this body before." You feel your heart drop into your stomach and your stomach leap into your throat, but before things can get much worse the spirit says, "No matter, this is not frivolous. You wish knowledge of the attachment of the soul to the body?"
You nod and say, "Yes. I seek to refine my abilities, to heal the mind and the body, and I know what I need to know to move to the next step."
"Body of base clay gives rise to a mind greater than the sum of clay, which invites in the soul to be shaped by and reshape both. You, touched by greed beyond station, would be able to make great use of such knowledge, but its entirety is beyond what can be taught in many summonings, let alone a single session. Many pillars are there to learn, but the foundational three are body, mind, and soul. Speak one to be taught and reach into the circle so that I might instruct you," Pause states. You grimace slightly, the theoretical knowledge in your head letting you know that this was coming and that while its not going to be as bad as it could be, its still going to hurt.
Choose the first pillar to learn
[] Body
[] Mind
[] Soul
