Bindings

Servant Bindings
From the day it first awakens, a Servant seeks to create bonds with living creatures. The Servants feel this instinct as an overwhelming desire to grant aid or succor to another being, which they accomplish by creating an arcane link. The power, length and cost of this link depend on a bewildering variety of factors, but the most common recorded sorts of link are detailed below.

Disambiguation
There are always at least two parties involved in a Servant Binding- a Servant and another living being. The second party is called a Summoner, and they typically come in one of four types:

Nonsentient Summoner - A being without a well-developed mind (and this has commonly included children) is still often capible of intense desire. Nonsentient Summonses are a varient of Unintentional Summonses and characteristically produce either extremely weak Warding or very brief Possession.

Unintentional Summoner - Servants are capible of discerning powerful need or desire, and will appear to answer it of their own volition. This sort of Summonses is not common- it requires either a very extended and intense desire or an extraordinary happenstance, as most desire is too weak and distant to be noticed by Servants, and most too fleeting to give them time to locate the would-be summoner. This sort of summoning often produces Warding and rarely produces Pacting.

Intentional Summoner - An Intentional Summonses is essentially identical to an Unintentional Summonses, save that the Summoner is purposefully engaging in the act. Most individuals lack the will and patience to desire intensely for extended lengths of time, but sufficient mental foritiude and practice make it possible. These Summonses are usually done for the purpose of Pacting.

Mystic Summoner - A summoner who wishes to aquire the services of a Servant and has access to a minimal amount of magical ability can ritually summon a Servant. Rituals for summoning can be altered to specify the power, intelligence or other attributes of the desired Servant, and are therefore the only quick and assured method of achieving the desired results with minimum hassle. Mystic Summonses can be easily used for any sort of Binding.

Warding
Wardings are bonds characteristic of weaker Servants,  The Servant ties its own power to the Summoner's body, generally bestowing a boost to some attribute or bestowing a minor power. More powerful Servants can create Wardings of proportionally greater power, but the transaction remains simple. The Warding usually vanishes once the desire is fulfilled, but intentional summonses may set more complex terms.

While the Warding persists, the Servant drains a small amount of the host's life-force, generally in proportion to the power bestowed through the Warding. Even the strongest occurances of this sort of Bond have very little chance of proving fatal to the host, making them very popular among some.

Pacting
Pacting describes a process whereby an intelligent Servant will create a free link between the summoner's will and the Servant's power, allowing the summoner free access to the Servant's energies while enjoying the Servant's aid in shaping them as they desire. The price of a Pact is always determined by agreement between the Servant and Summoner; the traditional bargain is that the Pact last the length of the summoner's life, and that no price be put on the summoner until death, when the Servant carries off the entirity of the summoner's soul.

Possession
Possession is a bond associated with stupid apprentice warlocks and hubris. Possession occurs when a summoner calls up a Servant of power which far outstrips their own presence of mind or will- in the process of answering that summoner's desire, the Servant consumes the summoner's soul outright and is forced to inhabit the summoner's body until it finishes answering his last desire.

A varient technique involves summoning a too-powerful Servant and using one of a variety of techniques to feed a sacrifice's life-force to it while the summoner creates his bond. If the will of the dying sacrifice suffices to placate the potent Servant's power, the Servant will possess the sacrifice, answering to the will of the summoner without demanding any price from the summoner at all.

Melding
Melding is the most difficult kind of summonses, and is most simply described as imbuing something else with the Servant. While it is possible to achieve this through bargain with a Servant, these sorts of bonds are often not very desirable, and are usually the province of mystics who can force the Servant into accepting poor terms. Some common variants include:

Creation Binding - by imbuing a living being with a Servant of power and will of rough equivilence, a composite entity is made. While the entity remains bound to the summoner, it feeds off its own life-force; becoming, for the duration of the binding, essentially an entirely new non-Servant entity compelled to serve the summoner. This process is most easily accomplished with weak Servants and animals, but the process is possible with any living being.

Life-Imbuement - A secret art practiced by the southern Efreeti, this process involves summoning a Servant into an unliving object infused with the similarity of life. After the Servant completes its binding, it finds itself chained to an inanimate object, (usually) unable to absorb life energies but still driven to answer the desires of its masters. Servants are almost never willing to do this- but the Efreeti have discovered that invoking the name of Aturdokht causes the summoned to become biddable.

Enhancement Binding - These bindings are more advanced and powerful forms of Warding, accomplished by having a summoner with deep knowledge of the thing to be Warded direct the way in which a Servant enhances it. The trance which the summoner uses to precisely direct the energies of the Servant also allow the summoner to entirely disconnect the object of the Servant's power from the source of the lifeforce absorbed by the Servant, allowing things like enhanced swords or Warded warriors powered by slaves tormented into consenting.