Conjuration

Summoning, creation, calling and passage between places

A conjurer calls a planar being while creation magic forms a stone guardian and a teleportation gateway opens onto a distant realm. SpiralWorlds illustration.

Conjuration is the magic of arrival. It brings creatures into a caster’s presence, creates matter or useful effects, opens passages and moves travellers without requiring them to cross every intervening mile. Its greatest practitioners do not merely produce things from nowhere: they understand distance, destination, identity, obligation and the dangerous difference between borrowing a power and commanding it.

The school at a glance

What Conjuration Does

Conjuration is best understood through four broad practices. Individual games and editions classify particular spells differently, but these ideas remain the school’s clearest shared identity.

Summoning

Summoning produces a temporary creature, object or manifestation that answers the spell for a limited time. It is often used for battlefield allies, scouts, mounts and specialised assistance.

Calling

Calling brings an actual independent being across a planar or supernatural boundary. The visitor possesses its own will, history, loyalties and memory of how the caster treated it.

Creation

Creation magic forms matter, objects, substances, terrain or quasi-real servants. Some creations vanish when the spell ends; others endure because the magic has assembled something that can continue to exist.

Teleportation

Teleportation moves creatures or objects without ordinary travel through the intervening space. The spell may cross a room, a kingdom or a planar boundary, depending on its power and destination rules.

The essential distinction

Calling Is Not Summoning

The two practices may look similar when a creature appears inside a circle, but their consequences are radically different.

A summoned being

A summoned creature is tied to a temporary magical effect. Its presence is limited by duration, concentration or the spell’s ending conditions. In legacy d20 rules, a summoned creature normally returns when the spell ends or when it is defeated.

Summoning is therefore suited to temporary aid: a creature arrives, performs a defined function and departs with the spell.

A called being

A called creature is actually transported into the caster’s world. In legacy d20 rules, the calling itself is instantaneous, the visitor remains after the spell has resolved and death is real rather than a temporary dismissal.

Calling is diplomacy, coercion or invitation involving a genuine supernatural participant. The creature may negotiate, resent confinement, remember a broken promise or return later under its own power.

Question	Summoning	Calling
What arrives?	A temporary manifestation or magically sustained visitor.	An actual independent being transported into the scene.
What ends its presence?	The spell’s duration, dismissal, disruption or defeat.	Departure, release, escape, another spell or the creature’s own actions.
Does the visitor matter afterward?	Usually only through the immediate effect and consequences of its service.	Yes. It can remember terms, witnesses, injuries, insults and obligations.
Best dramatic use	Battlefield support, scouting, utility and temporary companionship.	Bargains, supernatural law, dangerous negotiations and planar politics.

Training and practice

The Conjurer

A conjurer studies relationships that most spellcasters can ignore. Where is the destination? What occupies the arrival point? Which name identifies the intended being? What token, map, seal or sympathetic object establishes a connection? What survives when the spell ends?

The finest conjurers combine geometry with diplomacy. They calculate distance, prepare safe arrival spaces, catalogue planar correspondences and learn which beings can be requested, compelled or never addressed at all. A careless conjurer can open the correct circle to the wrong destination—or call the correct creature under disastrous terms.

Common instruments

Circles and boundaries: define an arrival place, a protected working space or a controlled point of negotiation.
Names and seals: distinguish one being, court, destination or supernatural authority from another.
Maps and sigil sequences: encode a place accurately enough for travel or repeated access.
Offerings and contracts: establish payment, hospitality, service, witness and consequences.
Material correspondences: provide a physical relationship to a plane, element, creature or intended creation.

A powerful horse rears while a handler struggles to control it — Creation magic can produce servants and mounts such as the Phantom Steed. Henri Regnault, Automedon with the Horses of Achilles, 1868; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; public-domain reproduction.

Worldbuilding consequences

Conjuration in the World

Conjuration changes institutions as readily as adventures. Once rulers, guilds, temples or colleges can move people, call supernatural specialists and create useful matter, geography no longer has the same authority.

A wizard inscribes a luminous teleportation circle inside a guarded medieval hall — A permanent Teleportation Circle is infrastructure: a guarded route, a state secret and a political privilege. SpiralWorlds illustration.

Travel becomes privilege

Courts, colleges and merchant powers that control teleportation routes can move envoys, healers, intelligence and elite agents faster than ordinary armies or messengers.

Fortresses need depth

Walls and gates remain useful, but secure sites require concealed interiors, controlled arrival chambers, dimensional wards and procedures for identifying unexpected travellers.

Planar diplomacy becomes real

A court that repeatedly calls outsiders, elementals or supernatural messengers acquires obligations beyond mortal law. Treaties may have witnesses who cannot be bribed—or debts that cannot be inherited safely.

Created matter disrupts trade

Even limited creation magic affects hauling, provisioning, construction and scarcity. Permanent magical creation is therefore likely to be taxed, licensed, monopolised or watched by guilds.

Summoned labour raises questions

Temples and academies must decide which summoned beings are tools, which are persons and which services are too dangerous or exploitative to permit.

Ecology crosses boundaries

Repeated summoning, failed gates and escaped called creatures can introduce unfamiliar predators, diseases, magical substances and supernatural rivalries into a region.

Limits and failure

Risks, Boundaries and Countermeasures

Conjuration is powerful because it bypasses ordinary limitations. Good adjudication preserves the school’s power while making destination, duration and control matter.

Occupied destinations

Arrival magic must resolve what happens when the chosen space is occupied, unsupported or otherwise illegal. Use the exact procedure from the active spell and edition rather than inventing one universal result.

Destination knowledge

Seeing, remembering, describing or possessing a sigil for a destination are not interchangeable. The spell itself determines how precisely the caster must know where they are going.

Control is never implied

Appearance does not automatically mean obedience. Summoned creatures follow their spell; called creatures follow bargains, restraints, loyalties or their own judgement.

Temporary and permanent creation

A created object may be sustained only by magic or may remain after an instantaneous effect. Duration and spell wording decide whether it vanishes, decays or becomes ordinary matter.

Dispelling has limits

Dispel Magic can end an ongoing conjuration when the rules allow it, but it normally cannot reverse an instantaneous teleportation or erase a permanent result after the magic has completed its work.

Special wards matter

Antimagic, dimensional anchors, locks, forbiddance effects and planar barriers may obstruct specific forms of conjuration. Ordinary walls do not automatically block magic that never crosses the intervening space.

A hooded spellcaster materialises inside a guarded stone chamber — Dimension Door does not create a corridor through the wall; it places the traveller at another point. SpiralWorlds illustration.

Curated SpiralWorlds paths

Representative Conjuration Magic

This is a guided selection rather than a complete spell catalogue. Each page explores a different consequence of summoning, calling, creation or magical travel.