Knave doesn’t really have wizards because it doesn’t have classes. The best you can really be is a kind of magic user in the way someone is a Twitter user: possessed of a bunch of weird words and a staggeringly low quantity of self-restraint. This removes all of the robes and pointy hat business and allows you to get down to cases.
But I still like wizards in my game. I want them to be plot hooks, though. I want wizards to be mad at my party or to have things for my party to do for their own obscure reasons, and I definitely want to give the players the opportunity to root around in some wizard’s tower and make off with their stuff. That’s what I think of when I see Peter Mullen’s illustration on p. 26 of the rulebook: this guy has just come home to his tower to discover some of his magic nonsense is missing and he is not taking it well. One of the other things I like in the picture (and there’s a lot to like: it’s Peter Mullen, after all) is the little imp or familiar or whatever it is watching his boss cast some spell. It made me wonder if maybe the party could have made off with this little guy, too. And that made me want to make some rules for him. So, without further ado…
Familiars in Knave
Knave doesn’t have much in the way of explicit world building, so I’ve defined spell books as recorded names of spirits in my campaign. A spirit’s name is discovered and inscribed by a wizard in an arduous process. The time involved is what takes spell creation out of the hands of player characters. You could always retire your character and become a wizard, but you can’t do research full time and also hold down a field position. (I come from academia; can you tell?) Casting a spell from a spell book is essentially summoning the spirit with its name and forcing it to do some task. Spirits don’t generally like this, and it’s tiring for them to manifest something in this reality, so they can only be called on once a day.
But some spirits kind of like messing around in this reality and want to stay. These kinds can become attached to their summoners, who keep them around by sacrificing a bit of their blood to the creature. In return, these spirits, incorrigible gossips as they often are, whisper the names of other spirits into their master’s ear. But they are flighty creatures and cannot usually remember a name from one day to the next.
See what I’m setting up here? If you want a way to add chaos spell books (Knave, p. 21) into your game a something distinctly different from regular spell books, you can use a familiar to do the job. Familiars take d4 hit points every morning from their masters. In exchange, they provide a new spell without taking up an inventory slot. If not fed every day, the spirit discorporates and sulks in the spirit world until called back. It leaves behind a pair of scorched prints where last it sat, and anyone looking for such marks can call the spirit back to serve them: loyalty is a concept for mortals.
Familiars are really just manifestations, so any damage they might take simply discorporates them to be called up again. While in the world, they serve their masters in a desultory fashion, though they may be bribed with more blood (another d4 points) to perform tasks such as scouting or retrieving small objects. They usually take the form of flying imps, but may take on the forms of small creatures (bats, toads, cats, the usual thing). Again, such a transformation requires bribery. What a familiar most wants to do is gossip about goings-on in the spirit world and watch mortals do whatever it is they’re doing.
A character may have more than one familiar, but despite their utter lack of loyalty, familiars are insanely jealous. Each one beyond the first requires a cumulative d4 (2d4 for the first, 3d4 for the second) of hit point sacrifice for summoning (and for all tasks) and a truly miserable day for the summoner and everyone around as the familiars bicker constantly (-5 to all checks involving stealth). No matter how many familiars a character interacts with, they cannot change the number of spells cast per day.
Summoning spirits to “cast spells”, potentially provokes the gods of the material plane. Tampering with forces wielded by deities and their agents is bound to attract attention from divine enforcers.