For this reason the act of summoning a daemon carries remarkably little moral weight within the Pale Dynasty. Citizens do not summon demons, devils or angels in the superstitious sense, they summon daemons much as one hires a mason or purchases a horse. The ethical questions arise only afterward, when the matter of Invocation is considered.
Invocation is the collection of contracts, oaths and mutually acknowledged obligations that bind daemon and vessel together. Without Invocation there is no lawful possession, only heretical trespass.
The observant reader may notice that the Crown's treatment of debtors solves two problems simultaneously. The soul becomes a cruet while the body itself, having already been paid for, becomes available for lease to daemonkind. The least of these eagerly compete for such opportunities, as a fresh mortal body offers experiences otherwise unavailable to a young daemon. Thus it is entirely possible, indeed commonplace, that the cheerful young moneylender excitedly learning the pleasures of tea, music and sore feet inhabits the very body whose former owner now shuffles silently through the streets a short distance away. The Crown considers this arrangement an elegant demonstration that nothing of value need ever be wasted. One could even claim this ethos is the backbone of Master Excisios' financial manifesto; "Waste is immoral, everything has value and everything should be used."
The majority of daemons upon the peninsula arrived by invitation generations ago and now exist comfortably beneath the Pale King's law. They occupy every conceivable profession; there are moneylender daemons, landlord daemons, cooks, barristers, surgeons, street sweepers, scribes, executioners and innumerable others besides. Badarr, let alone Maluna, would scarcely function without them. Unlike mortals, whose societies tend to be organised around family, inheritance or nationality, daemon society appears remarkably vocational. Ask a daemon what they are and they are just as likely to answer moneylender, cook or barrister as they are to give you their name.
The least of daemonkind are known as jin. Outside a vessel a jin is little more than smoke, light and uncertain intention, possessing only the faintest grip upon the material world. Young jins eagerly seek Invocation not merely for safety but for experience itself. The sensations of flesh, hunger, fatigue, warmth, pain and joy are intoxicating to beings who have never possessed nerves with which to experience them. It is common for a newly Invoked jin to spend weeks enthusiastically tasting unfamiliar foods, touching every available surface and asking deeply inconvenient questions.
They are by all accounts really rather endearing and indeed, often young jins become convinced that they have invented eating, an error their handlers generally permit for several days before correcting. A particularly amusing anecdote recounts one unfortunate jin reportedly spending three months believing hiccups to be a form of prophecy.
Possessing a mortal body means accepting its limitations just as readily as its strengths. Equally curious is the matter of sleep, especially when one considers the Pale King's Dream Tax. Daemons themselves possess no natural need for rest, yet their vessels invariably do. Most describe the experience as akin to waiting politely in a darkened room while someone else dreams nearby. They perceive little of the dream itself, though many claim to awaken with strange impressions or emotions lingering from the vessel's unconscious mind. Older daemons often remark that they can tell when their vessel has suffered a nightmare long before the body itself has fully awakened. Whatever actually happens, the Oneiromantic Inquisition seems content to tolerate the arrangement.
Unlike mortals whose existence is sustained through Soul and the continual refinement of Essence, daemons exist through Aether. Every thaumaturgical working leaves behind traces of spent magical potential. This residue, discarded by ordinary spellcraft as waste, is known as Aether. To mortals it is little more than invisible runoff but to daemons it is breath itself.
Within every daemon exists a metaphysical reservoir in which Aether accumulates. They instinctively draw upon this reserve to reinforce their borrowed bodies, strengthening muscle, sharpening reflexes and sustaining feats that ordinary flesh was never intended to accomplish. Their abilities likewise feed upon this same reserve, every spell, transformation or impossible act consuming carefully stored Aether before replenishment begins anew.
Many young daemons believe Aether to be limitless. Older daemons smile patiently until experience proves otherwise.
Mastery over Aether occupies much the same place in daemonic society that mastery of anything else occupies mortal minds. A skilled daemon learns not merely to accumulate Aether but to shape its flow with extraordinary precision. Strength, speed, endurance and resilience all become expressions of careful expenditure rather than brute force. More esoteric talents such as elemental manipulation, illusioncraft, transmutation and stranger workings besides become possible only through disciplined understanding of the invisible reservoir each daemon carries within itself.
Perhaps the greatest misconception held by mortals is that daemons are immutable beings. This is understandable, for a daemon's personality remains remarkably consistent throughout its life and no daemon has ever been credibly recorded dying of old age, and yet they do change. As centuries pass and their mastery of Aether deepens, older daemons gradually reshape both themselves and their vessels into forms increasingly their own. A young jin inhabiting a mason's body may simply possess a mason's hands. Decades later those same hands may have become broader, stronger and better suited to shaping stone than any mortal anatomy ever could. A gardener's skin may slowly take on the scent of rich earth, while an executioner's eyes become almost painfully difficult to meet. Such changes are not considered unusual. They are taken as quiet evidence of an Invocation that has remained healthy for many years.
This perhaps explains why older daemons often appear strangely at ease within the mortal world. Whatever memories they retain of the place from which daemonkind originates are eventually eclipsed by the immediacy of existence here. A daemon asked where it came from may answer readily enough, but one asked what that place was like is just as likely to fall silent for a long while before confessing that they no longer truly remember. Some older daemons quietly admit that they remember their place of origin with perfect clarity, yet can no longer remember what it felt like to be there. Flesh, sensation and lived experience have a way of making distant certainties feel curiously dreamlike.
Like Essence, however, Aether is not without consequence. Improper control gradually overwhelms both daemon and vessel. Excessive expenditure destabilizes the Invocation itself, eroding the carefully negotiated boundaries between possessing spirit and inhabited flesh. What begins as heightened strength eventually becomes compulsion, judgment weakens and the daemon's appetite expands. Eventually the daemon ceases to distinguish between desire and necessity.
Every daemon carries upon their person a single object through which their Invocation is most strongly anchored. In the overwhelming majority of cases this takes the form of a mask, ornament or other seemingly mundane trinket though the object itself possesses little intrinsic value. Its destruction however is another matter entirely. Should this anchor be shattered the Invocation rapidly unravels as oaths loosen and the daemon's contracts cease to exert meaningful authority and the daemon Resonates.
Resonance is among the most feared conditions recognised by the Crown. Freed from every limitation imposed through lawful Invocation, the daemon begins consuming Aether with desperate intensity while simultaneously seeking new sources of power. Bloodshed, terror and the release of Soul all seem to accelerate this process. Whether Resonant daemons consciously seek such things or simply become incapable of restraint remains uncertain, and the distinction matters little to those nearby.
For this reason the Ten'ba pursues Resonants without hesitation. Ser Phobos himself is said to answer many such incidents personally, leading some to speculate that he possesses unusual familiarity with daemonkind. Whether this is true has never been publicly confirmed.
The Crown likewise considers unwilling possession among the greatest crimes imaginable, to be punished swiftly and terminally. Invocation exists to ensure mutual agreement between daemon and host. A willing vessel enters contracts knowingly, accepting obligations in exchange for power, longevity or livelihood. To force possession upon an unwilling body is to reject not merely the law but the very principle by which daemon and mortal coexist and is one of a host of taboos that society simply does not tolerate.
Curiously, this prohibition extends beyond daemons themselves. Any possessing entity such as ghosts, wandering spirits or stranger things still, becomes legally classified as Resonant should it attempt to inhabit a body without proper Invocation. In this, at least, every known deity appears to agree with the Crown.
There exists one final possibility so unsettling that most respectable thaumaturges refuse to discuss it. Should a Resonant daemon encounter another daemon weakened by injury, depleted Aether or damaged Invocation, there appears to be little preventing the former from attempting possession of the latter. A possessing entity possessing another possessing entity... the implications are difficult to contemplate and, mercifully, exceedingly rare.
One hopes they remain so, for while mortals often imagine daemons as creatures of limitless freedom the opposite seems nearer the truth. It is not their power that permits them to live amongst us, it is their contracts and like all contracts within the Pale Dynasty they remain binding only until they do not. It has often been said that mortals spend their lives attempting to understand things beyond themselves while daemons spend theirs attempting to understand bodies.
Whether any of us ever truly succeeds is difficult to say.
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