Summon Minion

The first spell that leaves something behind that walks. It takes a second and a half to gather, opens a seam in the ground within three tiles of the caster, and a knee-high golem climbs out of it and stays for an hour.

It is made of what is underfoot

The spell has no material of its own. What comes out is whatever the ground at the caster’s feet already was, so the same rune raises a Minion of Sand on a bank, a Minion of Grass in a meadow and a Minion of Water in the shallows. The ground in Rare Icon is eight footings and this is eight minions, none of which is a row in here: see world::terrain::Footing, which is the table the game already keeps for what a tile is.

That is the point of writing it as target: ground rather than target: self. The spell is cast at the earth, and the earth answers with the only thing it has.

What it is worth

power is two, which is what the minion hits for, and it is chosen against Holy Shield: two is exactly what that ward turns aside, so a minion is a spell that does nothing at all to a warded target and something to everything else. The garden worm bites for the same.

range is three tiles, which is placement rather than reach — far enough to put the thing between you and what is coming, close enough that it is still a decision where.

duration_ms is one hour of world time. At Rare Icon’s twenty-minute day that is about fifty seconds at the table: long enough for a fight, short enough that it is not a pet.

cast_time_ms is twelve seconds, which is far and away the longest cast in these tables. It is length for its own sake rather than a cost: the whole of it is Agis arriving, making something of himself, and giving up a piece of it — and that is worth watching at a pace you can follow rather than hurrying through.

The number is the only place that pace is set. The ritual is a fixed count of drawn frames, and actor::summoning shares this span out among them, so lengthening the cast slows the animation and shortening it hurries them. There is no second number to keep in step.

A summoning is therefore not a spell you get off in a fight. It is a thing you do before one, somewhere you are not being hurried. It is also twelve seconds of standing still: moving breaks a cast and the rune goes with it, so the real cost of a minion is finding somewhere safe to spend the better part of a minute’s worth of attention.