A History of Magic: The History of Conjuration (D&D)

Contents

Previously: Abjuration Subschools and Selected Spells

It appears that the earliest conjuration spell was an elementalist’s attempt to give form to energy pulled from the elemental plane of earth, producing a rock. These early experimenters came predominantly from the earth and water focused elementalists, seeking to greater harness the power of their elements of interest. Ever since, conjuration’s focus since has unrelentingly been on the conversion of energy to matter. Initially this represented the creation of new items from unformed energy, and this remains a significant subschool even today. As the shield mages came to prominence these proto-conjurers found themselves with a surfeit of other-planar entities intensely interested in patronizing them. It is not without significant irony that some of the very first contracts by which modern conjurers summon were established by shield mages in efforts to prevent such incursions. However, with little coaching, these magicians became quite able to engage in the callings and summonings of their own.

                In many places, the result was open war between the shield wizards and ill restrained summoners who would, all too frequently, lose control of their putative “slaves.” During this time shield wizards would come to be known as abjurers as their focus shifted more heavily towards these battles. During this time the summoners would master the ability to convert true matter into energy without losing the information stored within its form. This, combined with the skills they had already mastered, would unlock the secrets of teleportation to them. This discovery would also have a clear impact on the broader community, as it redefined the upward boundary in the potential relationship between material components and the energy constructs they helped build.

                As magical practices do, summoners finally suffered their own winnowing, the least pragmatic and careful caught between abjurers and their own called “allies” and “servants.” As the practitioners of this path thinned out they began referring to themselves as conjurers, separating themselves from their reckless and careless predecessors and peers. Practitioners of the school of conjuration allied themselves with conjurers, improving their abilities to bind and hold summoned entities in exchange for their formulae for material conversions and knowledge of various entities. This partnership further developed the rites by which many types of entity are still barred from this world and limited when summoned or called.

Next: Conjuration Subschools and Selected Spells

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So, Conjuration is the first school to really lose significant hunks of power. First, I nudged a lot of the elemental direct damage back into the Evocation school, but then I started drawing big clear lines that ended up excising the the extradimensional space. Like everything I did in this project they both went to create a clear conception of what the school does and how it works. While the extradimensional spaces share a visual component with other types of "pulling things from thin air," it becomes problematic to join that with actually creating things from thin air. One of the two felt like they had to go somewhere else, and the rest of the school would fall in line with that style of manipulation, but they were simply too different to feel coherent together. Of the two, creating things from thin air is, to me, the clearly more "conjurer" trick, while manipulating space falls into the category of "high-magic" spells that do clearly magical things without innately tying into other activities, the previously mentioned briefly considered temporal school of time/space/flight.

There were several points at which conjuration very nearly became the earth/water pair of the elemental set (with air/fire staying in evocation). However, the spell earthbind convinced me there was an "elemental earth energy" that could be used. (Ironically, earthbind is misfiled under transmutation in it's land-grabbing over-definition as "changing things," ie; magic.) A little more digging around pulled up other things, like earth tremor or gravity manipulation (ie; reverse gravity) that are clearly "earth" but also clearly more evocation than conjuration- which ended my idea of an easy elemental divide between schools.