"The basic idea, figuratively speaking, is to be Solomon. He was wildly successful, to the point where three thousand years later the universe itself considers what he aimed for to be the default. It is theoretically possible to reconstruct what he did and bind Others to a bettter-defined promise of harmlessness, and hope for the same effectiveness that he managed."

"Okay, so, the only reason I'm not saying yes right this second is that I want to know all the specific details of the Seal of Solomon and how it works and what we'd do to improve it and how I'd go about sealing the others, but colour me very interested."

"And also exactly why it's so unlikely to work. Don't let me forget to explain that part.

The Seal of Solomon is essentially a deal saying that in exchange for not wantonly harming innocents—no word on practitioners or well-informed ordinary people like blackguards and witch hunters—an Other will be safe from practitioners. It's sufficiently vague that there are demons that have agreed after surprisingly little coercion, since they can work destruction just as well without directly raising a hand against an innocent. Don't get me wrong, it's far better than not having it, but I'm sure with five seconds' thought you can see that it's not sufficient.

If we were to get Others to agree, for instance, not to attempt direct or indirect harm out of malice, and that caught on like the original did, then in another three thousand years most Others would be peaceful by nature. Three thousand at most, that is. I don't know how long it took for Solomon's seal to succeed, just that it has always been that way in recent memory.

As for how, that varies. Often force, I'm afraid, like Solomon did. There are general principles that would come in useful. Others are repelled by materials that represent their opposites, for very weak ones you can use similarity instead, that sort of thing. But you'd have to get very good at capturing or defeating a large variety of opponents, and there are few rules that apply to all of them."

"Okay, and how would I help with that, exactly? Why is that not something you yourself can—oh, you're bound by the Seal of Solomon."

"There's a terminology difference. "Bound by the Seal of Solomon" is a phrase that gets applied to Others, and everyone forgets that part of the deal applies to the practitioner. But you're substantially correct. Solomon had a hand in the current form of the awakening ritual, and practitioners since then have been agreeing to abide by the deal he proposed. It's part of why the Seal was so successful.

That does mean practitioners before him awakened without making that promise. If you use an older ritual, or something like it, you'd be able to move against Others whether they're bound by the current seal or not."

"Would they know I was not bound by that Seal? ...would it even matter? They can attack practitioners regardless of Seal, can't they."

"It'd still matter for whether they expect you to be able to attack them. As for whether they'd know, I can't say. My guess is that most wouldn't be able to tell and some of the smarter ones would. You'd probably look different to practitioners using the Sight, but this is all speculative."

"But if not being attacked by practitioners was one of the reasons Others decided to be bound by the Seal... there'd have to be a similar advantage to being bound by whatever new Seal we made up."

"What I'd like to say is that the carrot is the ability to participate in human society as equals instead of enemies or temporary allies. But unlike Solomon you won't be able to speak for anyone but yourself, and even if you could it's dangerous for many Others to even be seen by innocents. So unless you get implausibly wealthy in any of the currencies practitioners use, it'll probably have to be all stick."

"Why not just bind me by a similar Seal, as well? If they agree to the new Seal, no one with either the old or the new one will be able to hurt them. I mean, that was already true of the old one, if I got that right, as long as they didn't start the fight the practitioners were hands off, so if the new Seal makes them unable to maliciously hurt humans... Not to mention that if this worked out eventually Others would probably accept participating in society with them."

"Mostly because I'd want to duplicate a pre-Solomon awakening ritual as closely as possible, and that seal was his innovation. But if you were to swear not to antagonize any Other who swore themselves harmless, that could have the same effect. That's all the Seal is, really, is a formal and particularly well-regarded promise. Promises don't have to be embedded in a ritual.

It's not just a question of willingness to live alongside humans. It's that even if this worked, a hypothetical peaceful Other could become karmically responsible for random strangers by walking down the street. Entrance into human society isn't something we'd have to offer even if all the practitioners on Earth were on board."

"Okay, fair enough, I suppose. What exactly would the downside of going with the old ritual be, then? For me, in the current already-bound-by-Solomon world?"

"There are quite a few.

The first one is that the Seal of Solomon has been around a long time, and history has weight. In much the same way as Others who agree to be bound gain a surer place in the world and the Seal acts as a power source, you would be weaker than you would if you awaken the same way as everyone else. The spirits like it when traditions get followed. It's possible you could change that eventually by spinning it differently, but you'd certainly be starting at a lower point on that spiral.

For the same reason, you can expect effects similar to bad karma. You'd be going against the grain of a tradition that includes effectively every practitioner for three millennia. It would be too anthropomorphic to say that the universe would conspire against you, but events would try to nudge you into either abandoning the quest or dying.

And of course it's dangerous. Solomon tackled the strongest opponents that he could turn against stronger ones. Practitioners do not have long life expectancies, and this path involves much more danger than the practice usually does. Any slip could be fatal. Not to mention the fact that some people are happy with the status quo. You might end up with practitioner enemies, who could use the first two downsides against you."

"Well, I needn't start trying to convert people to the new Seal right away, do I, I can get some power somehow before that. And the spirits like confidence, they like theatrics, so I can use that to counterbalance the weight of history a bit? Either as in 'what I'm doing is the right thing and I'll prove it to you' or just the general fact that being confident and showy and dramatic and theatrical is basically a personality trait. Especially because I'm going to get a demesne at least as big as yours, even if you can't tell me I'm not gonna settle for less, so that'll be strike one in my favour."

"Be careful with absolute statements like that once you're awakened. You'll get temporary power boosts as long as you're acting toward the goal, and permanent karma if you succeed, but if you fail then you'll lose more than you gained and be at risk of being forsworn.

That said, I am hoping to get imitators once my position is built up more. I certainly wouldn't object if you managed to take and hold a large demesne somewhere the same way I do."

"Right... I'm pretty sure I can leverage that. That sounds like a good way to get power, I'm cocky like that. Okay. And you can't tell me how you managed to get a demesne this big, but then again I know literally nothing about the ritual or what it is that limits a demesne's size—I presume you can't tell me that, either? ...do I need to know this before being Awakened?"

"No, not at all. You'll have time after. I can tell you, though, everything but how I did the ritual.
There's no hard limit on size, but the soft limits are that larger ones will attract more objections from the neighbors during the ritual and that there will be more challenges from outside to defend against afterward. I handle those by parceling out fiefdoms to powerful Others that want an area to rule in exchange for helping me when challenged. This does mean the demesne has to be the kind of place that Others would want to be. I run it as something like an amusement park, where they can attack humanlike images with impunity the way they and their predecessors could hunt humans before Solomon. And this works.

If you say you're going to do something, you have to succeed. People who gamble with that almost inevitably fail eventually. And remember that you can expect bad luck if you get far enough to threaten the status quo. Even something as simple as "I will bind this ordinary minor goblin" can fail if they have unexpected allies, or die before you manage it, or some large number of other ways. Confidence can certainly make you stronger, but that's not the only variable here."

"Noted. How did you deal with objections from the n—you said you were secret. How did you manage to claim half the city as a demesne and stay secret?"

"A large part of that was before and during the ritual. Can't say. The part that came afterward is mostly space manipulation. Someone who looks will see nothing out of the ordinary, and even a practitioner would have to look at exactly the right point. You shouldn't have stumbled in here, if an idiot visitor hadn't left the door open. So to speak."

"Okay... Yeah I'm done, then."

"You're sure you want the altered ritual? You can expect Murphy's Law whenever you're hunting monsters that are bound by the Seal of Solomon. You'll be able to stop doing that at any time, but the fact that you'll be weaker would be harder to correct. It'd take at least a promise to obey the practitioner's end of the Seal, and possibly also a ritual. And I should stress that this is dangerous. If you were to swear never to give up it would be the next thing to a suicide mission. Not to mention the fact that it would take impressive life extension even to find out if it will ever work."

"Immortality is forever," she points out. "I won't swear never to give up, at least until I'm much surer this is going to work, but."

"The other thing is that it might not even be necessary. Humans are in the process of surpassing Others, and I am trying to help accelerate that. If we're lucky, things that go bump in the night might stop being a threat before your Seal catches on like Solomon's."

"A corollary of utopia would be making everyone who wants to into a practitioner, if the tradeoffs are only the ones you mentioned. And how are you trying to accelerate that, exactly?"

"I mentioned running my demesne as a sanctuary for Others that wish they could still hunt humans. While they're here, they aren't anywhere else. This is supposed to play into the fact that human populations are increasing and changing the world faster than very many nonhumans can keep up with. Goblins, for example, have been nearly barred from developed cities, by accident, as a side effect of the invention of modern plumbing.

Meek little humanity is inheriting the earth. I provide a safe haven for the Others who might otherwise fight it, and humanity wins that much faster. That's why I hope for imitators. Maybe other practitioners with large demesnes, maybe Lords of cities, maybe some other thing. I can't do this by myself, but I can do it as an example." And there's that audible lack of a gong going off again.

"So this is compatible with fixing the Seal of Solomon, but we'd be working along different dimensions. The plans would succeed or fail mostly separately, and two successes might involve wasted effort in the overlap."