Story
The cellar smelled of wax and rust. Candles guttered in shallow bowls, their flames bending inward toward the center of the circle. Edran knelt among them, robes dusted with chalk and salt, lips moving in precise rhythm. Every syllable hung in the air like a knife.
He had spent three years preparing for this night. Three years tracing names from forbidden tablets, copying sigils by the light of dying coals. He did not seek power, or so he told himself, only knowledge. But knowledge, he had learned, never came alone.
The circle was perfect. He had checked it seventeen times. Blood from his own hand sealed the final rune. The air shifted, the candles flared blue, and then the shadows began to move.
It stepped into form, a thing that might have been human if not for its skin like shiny black leather and its eyes that burned like distant suns. It regarded the circle with lazy amusement.
"You know my name," it said.
Edran swallowed. "I do. I call you forth to bargain."
The demon’s smile was slow and cruel. "Then bargain, mortal."
He kept his voice steady. "I offer a fragment of my life, freely given, in exchange for knowledge of the lost city beneath the marshes."
"A fair offer," the demon said. It tilted its head. "But you misunderstand what ‘life’ means to me."
Edran’s hand trembled. The candles dimmed.
"Specify, then," he said, heart hammering.
"I will take your sleep," said the demon. "You will never dream again. You will close your eyes and stare into the dark until death. In return, I will give you what you seek."
He hesitated. The silence pressed upon him. The demon leaned closer, the edge of its form licking the air like flame against glass.
"Accept," it whispered. "Or draw a better circle next time." The deamon quickly lashed out and with one finger flicked the tip if Edrans nose. Not hard enough to damage, just to make the point.
Edran nodded once. A contract appeared before him, and he pressed his bloody thumb to it. The circle flared white, and the demon was gone.
When dawn came, the marshes whispered to him, names of stones and ruins long buried. His eyes burned with knowledge. And when he tried to sleep, he found only the dark, endless, waiting, filled with shapes he could no longer banish.
He had his answer. The demon had its price.

The Scholar’s Gamble

Summoners are mortals who dare to call upon demons, not through blind desperation, but through calculated study. They are the learned heretics, scholars who believe that knowledge and preparation can tame the infernal. Unlike witches, who trade their freedom for power, summoners seek to borrow that power, temporarily, and on their own terms.

They spend years collecting scraps of infernal lore: true names, sigils, seals, and rituals. To a summoner, the demon is not a god to worship or a master to serve, but a dangerous force to bargain with. Their arrogance lies in the belief that intellect and preparation can outmatch the cunning of a creature born of malice.

Circles and Names

The summoner’s greatest defense is the circle, a structure of chalk, salt, and blood that both summons and binds a demon within it. As long as the circle holds and the demon remains within its bounds, the demon cannot strike. But every summoner knows the truth: circles fail. Chalk cracks, names are mispronounced, and demons are patient.

To call a demon safely, one must know its true name and understand what it desires. Some crave blood, others suffering, others only amusement. The art of summoning is not just control, but negotiation. Each pact is a contest of wit and will, a game where the price of losing is one’s mind or soul.

The Art of Bargaining

Summoners do not bind themselves for life. Their pacts are transactional, one offering, one favor, and then release. A sacrifice for a task, a task for a task. The more skilled the summoner, the more precise the terms. But even the most careful words can be twisted.

Demons delight in bending agreements to cause harm without breaking them. A demon asked to kill a tyrant may do so by collapsing his castle upon his people. A demon tasked with finding lost knowledge may steal it from the summoner’s own memory. Every deal has a hidden blade. Even more, they love to try to create a situation where the summoner will fall into deeper dependency of the demon by necessity.

Make no mistake, demons bargain honestly, but never in good faith. They'll honor the contract, but will twist it to fit their designs at every opportunity.

A summoner’s strength is not measured by the power of the demons they call, but by their ability to choose which demon to summon, and to leave the circle alive when the task is done.

The Cost of Practice

Summoning takes a toll. Each contact leaves traces of the infernal upon the caller. Prolonged dealings warp the mind, twist the dreams, and slowly erode the barrier between the mortal and the abyssal. Some summoners claim to hear whispering even when no ritual is active. Others begin to see faint shapes watching from the corners of rooms.

A few lose the line entirely and become what they feared, vessels through which demons act freely in the world. These are called open summoners, their bodies living conduits for powers they once sought to master. Open summoners are rare and feared, for through them, demons may act without ritual or name.

The World’s Judgment

As hated as witches, summoners are feared as well as despised. They consort with the same beings, even if they claim to do so with control. Temples condemn them as corrupters of the natural order, and most common folk believe summoning to be a step toward damnation.

Yet rulers, generals, and ambitious nobles sometimes employ summoners in secret. A well-placed curse, a vanished rival, or a demon forced to spy through shadows, such services are too useful to ignore. Of course, the summoner always charges a price, and not all who hire them live long enough to regret it.

Demons and the Dance of Control

Demons view summoners with a mix of disdain and amusement. They see them as clever children playing with knives. For all their careful sigils and rules, summoners remain mortal, imperfect, fallible, and easy to tempt. Eventually, they will make the fatal mistake.

Many demons pretend to be weaker or dumber than they are, waiting for the summoner to grow careless. Others reward obedience with truth, helping their summoners rise in power, only to betray them when ambition peaks. The summoner believes the circle grants control. The demon knows it only grants time.

Theories and Fears

Some scholars whisper that summoners are essential to the demons’ designs. Every ritual opens a small rift between worlds, weakening the veil that separates Heroica from the infernal planes. If this is true, then every successful summoning, no matter how brief, brings the world closer to ruin.

Others suggest that the most powerful summoners have already crossed the line, no longer mortal, no longer human. Some believe they dwell in hidden towers where the air stinks of sulfur, commanding armies of bound demons and waiting for the day their circles finally break.

Possible Secrets

The Circles Are Never Perfect

No circle, no matter how carefully drawn, is truly flawless. Every ritual creates a minute imperfection, a flaw too small for mortal eyes to see. Demons sense these flaws, learning from each summoning. Over centuries, they adapt. Some scholars fear that one day, a demon will step through a perfect circle simply because it has learned how. Perhaps they already know, but it suits their designs more to pretend and negotiate.

The Names Are Alive

The true names of demons are not static words but living fragments of their being. To speak a demon’s name is to wound it, and to invite it to notice you. Every time a name is uttered aloud, it grows weaker for an instant but also aware of who spoke it. Some summoners go missing days after attempting to memorize a new name.

The Demon’s Choice

Summoners believe they control which demon they summon, but ancient texts suggest otherwise. Each demon chooses whether to answer the call. Some allow themselves to be drawn deliberately, knowing the summoner will ask for something they already desire to see done. The illusion of control may be the greatest lie of all.

The Hidden School

There are rumors of an ancient order of summoners who learned to work together, binding their circles in unison. By linking their minds, they could summon and imprison demons far greater than any one of them could face. The order vanished centuries ago, leaving only scattered fragments of their sigils carved into ruins. Some claim their final summoning still lives, imprisoned beneath stone.

The Eternal Bargain

Some demons refuse to leave when dismissed. Instead, they offer the summoner a “gift”, a mark, a vision, or a token of gratitude. In truth, these gifts serve as silent pacts that allow the demon to return unbidden later. The summoner may never know the door was left open until it’s far too late.

Adventure Hooks

The Iron Circle

A burned ruin lies deep in the woods, marked by a ring of blackened earth that never cools. Travelers vanish near it, and strange voices whisper at dusk. A nearby village hires the adventurers to cleanse the site, but within the circle is a summoner’s body still standing, eyes open, waiting for a command from something unseen.

The King’s Advisor

A ruler long admired for his wisdom suddenly becomes cold and erratic, his temper cruel. His trusted advisor is rumored to be a summoner who “keeps the court safe from unseen forces.” In truth, the demon he bound has begun whispering through the king’s dreams. The players must expose the truth without earning the wrath of either man, or the creature that links them.

The Silent Tower

On the cliffs above the sea stands a crumbling tower that rings with hollow chants each new moon. The locals say it belonged to a summoner who called a demon of silence, and now the waves around the cliffs make no sound. A scholar offers gold for any fragments of the summoner’s journal. The climb is treacherous, and the silence hides more than echoes.

The Summoner’s Apprentice

A young apprentice seeks help. Her master has vanished mid-ritual, leaving a half-drawn circle and a demon’s claw still twitching inside. She insists she can finish the ritual safely if someone protects her. But finishing it might be exactly what the demon wants.

The Crimson Ledger

A noble’s entire fortune was built upon “contracts” written in strange crimson ink. When he dies, the ink begins to fade, and his heirs find themselves haunted by unseen collectors. They offer the adventurers a fortune to recover the summoner who forged the deals, before the debts come due.

The Warlock’s Coin

A soldier finds a strange coin on the battlefield and begins to hear voices promising victory. He starts winning every fight, and soon his company worships him as chosen by the gods. But the coin bears an infernal mark, and the “gods” may demand a final battle no mortal can win.

The Chain of Names

The adventurers discover a scroll listing dozens of demon names, each crossed out except one. The writing matches several missing scholars and alchemists across the realm. Whoever holds the last name will either complete their work, or unleash the demon that all before them failed to bind.

The Scholar’s Legacy

An old summoner dies peacefully, leaving behind a vast library sealed by arcane locks. His last wish is that the adventurers deliver a specific book to his estranged daughter. Unfortunately, the book is written in living ink, and the demon bound to it wants freedom more than gratitude.

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