"Well, at the point where we're exploring and not exploiting, I think it makes more sense to try many different plans than many people trying the same plan, if it turns out to be untenable. Also, 'Lords of cities'? And you mentioned humanlike images, earlier, right, what are those?"

"Those are some of the many things you'll run across eventually if you have much of a magical career.

A Lord is a practitioner or Other in charge of a city. They have responsibility for keeping it stable and safe, and in exchange they get power within the city. Power in the sense of authority, not force, but those are connected in the usual way. A Lord in their city gains less than a practitioner in their demesne, but it's the same kind of thing. Jacob's Bell doesn't have one. It's a small and slow enough place that it's not important enough to need a Lord right now.

The humanlike images—in this case; there are other kinds—are called vestiges. You can think of them as video game characters from a very realistic and very unsavory game. They're made by making portraits, so to speak, of real people. Completely original vestiges can be done, but it's more like using a metaphorical paintbrush instead of a camera. Vestiges tend not to last very long, since there's no power source and nothing holding them together the way a person has a name."

"...is it very hard to make one of those? If Others accept chasing NPCs rather than real humans just fine why don't they? Or, why hasn't this solution been tried before?"

"Making vestiges is primarily a practitioner skill. Most practitioners prefer to become powerful enough to not have to worry about most Others they'll come across, and leave the rest to someone else. Going out of the way to fight the ones that need fighting is rare, and my solution is rarer. I don't know if I'm literally the first, but for most practitioners the fact that Others can be dangerous is part of the background and not something to change.

The more practical reason is that few things at this scale are easy. My demesne, implement, and familiar are all suited to making this more doable. I wouldn't be able to blame most people for not trying even if they did think of it. 

The Other reason is that the visitors here do consider vestiges a poor substitute for the real thing."

"I see. And altruism isn't running high amongst practitioners, I take it?"

"Rarely. That one is partly on the spirits. Typical practitioners do have obligations to their family or bloodline, they don't have obligations to deal with arbitrary problems. So they focus on what gives them and their children karma and power."

"Delightful. And, what are your implement and familiar?"

"My implement is these pipes. I don't know whether they're the originals from Hamelin or if they were made by someone who definitely should not have had the ability to control children. I use the pipes to direct rat and dog spirits to power the vestiges so they last longer. It's not necessary to the project, but it makes it work better.

Janus is what angels used to be before they started becoming sentient the way humans were. A power of creation, or mostly just preservation these days. He in particular is a gatekeeper, hence the name. This is a large part of why I've managed to stay hidden."

"...I'm several levels of impressed."

"Thank you.

Be careful with saying you'll outdo me; the personal compatibility is more important than the degree of power. It's still safe until you awaken, of course.
Would you like to do that now, collect more information first, take time to think about it?"

"I can get Sealed after I Awaken, you said, and I need some protection now that I no longer count as an 'innocent,' so I see no reason to delay Awakening itself, since it's going to happen one way or another. More information can wait until it's more actionable."

"It is possible to protect yourself with research and fighting skills instead of magic. And by awakening at all you are agreeing to sign on to a world judged by very traditionalist spirits that care more about Right than Good. I'm guessing you won't be dissuaded by that, but theoretically you might object to treating family members as interchangeable or to outdated ideas of hospitality."

He stands, crosses the room, and takes a scroll off a shelf.

"I have a big pile of resources sitting right in front of me with some disagreeable tradeoffs but ridiculous potential, I'm not about to just limit myself to humanity. Besides, I'm sixteen, even a lot of training isn't going to see me able to do a whole lot for a while."

"I thought you might say that.

Power is currency; I may want you to succeed but I'm not going to promise you as many resources as humanly possible." He passes Sadde the scroll. "This, I got while trading for information on the Seal with a very old djinn. An awakening ritual used by some of Solomon's contemporaries."

She accepts it and starts reading it very thoroughly.

It contains annotations on how it differs from the modern ritual. It's very similar, considering the time that passed. The practitioner comes up with a word or description of what each element symbolizes to them. The obejcts involved are slightly different. No dreamcatcher or hourglass. The silver skull, coin, dagger, and some object personal to the practitioner are already there, and the flower hasn't been narrowed down to a rose yet. The inner circle from the current version's diagram is missing, and this calls for killing a small animal instead of making a food offering. Most importantly, the text in the unrecognizable otherwise-dead language is different. It does still specify a lack of clothes.

"You can do it in private," Johannes adds. "This is between you and the spirits, no sentient observers required."

"I don't particularly care, but it's kinda creepy anyway. Erm, something personal, though? Like what?"

"Could be anything. Keys to your first car. A piece for a game that you care about. As long as it means more to you than an identical object would to someone else, it's fair game. It does have to fit in a bowl, though. Boring practical reasons."

"I don't really have anything personal on me. I had a book, but it was in that backpack and I'm pretty sure it's been destroyed by something or other by now."

"Maybe not. Destroying objects can be done without paying admission here; human artifacts aren't necessarily anyone's focus."

Janus brightens, blurs, and disappears. His practitioner reaches through the space where the rat isn't, the end of his arm disappearing, and comes back with the backpack looking no more damaged than it previously was.

"...well, then. Alright, that works. I presume you have the other stuff?"

"Everything but the animal." His familiar reappears, carrying an inexplicably docile squirrel in its mouth despite the fact that the squirrel is the larger.

The other items are the kind of thing practitioners tend to accumulate, so they're in position as soon as the circles are drawn.

She starts drawing the circles, then, and after she's done, she accepts the bowls with the objects. "A dagger, a silver skull, a coin, a flower, and something personal," she says as she positions each object on each of the circles she's drawn. The something personal is not the actual book, but something written in it, on the first page. She looks at the squirrel. "Is it going to try to run?"

Johannes places the candles and other inactive ingredients. Candles may be too recent an invention to be specified here, but it calls for flames and candles are what the audience will be expecting. Same reason the flower is a rose.

"No, it'll stay asleep.
If you're ready to start, I can say something to get the spirits' attention and make sure they know what they're watching. There isn't much risk of them mistaking the ritual for the other one or failing to recognize it as an awakening at all, but this will help minimize it."

"Yeah, makes sense."