Summon Binding

"Welcome. As you see, the circle traps you incorporeally; the crystal cell imprisons your material aspect. You won't get out unless the circle is broken. And the circle will not be broken unless I order it. We will discuss the conditions of your release..."

— Roderick Burgess, The Sandman (1989)

A useful bonus to any user of Summon Magic or a Summoning Ritual is being able to ensure that whatever you've summoned will be at least somewhat docile. Whether it's prepared in advance, incorporated into the summoning spell, or a separate spell performed immediately afterward, Summon Binding imposes magical restraints upon the summon-spell's target that force it to obey - or at least prevent it from harming - the person(s) who cast it. Especially useful in the case of a Balking Summoned Spirit.

This can be important because summoning spells allow a magic-user to call forth some pretty dangerous things — dangerous to their foes and to themselves. The summon could be a sub-sapient apex predator from another dimension whose natural instinct upon arrival would be to feast upon the unfortunate mage's face. At the other end of the spectrum, it might be a powerful sapient being like an elemental or a demon, unlikely to appreciate some arrogant mortal plucking it from its home and demanding favours instead of begging for forgiveness. Whatever the case, summoning spells also tend to materialise the summon somewhere fairly close to the summoner — likely within very feasible lunging/fire-breathing/death-beaming range.

The exact manner in which the subject is 'bound' may range from simply preventing them from leaving a certain area (usually involving Geometric Magic via a circle or pentagram), to giving them a Restraining Bolt against violence toward the binder, to leaving them fully cognisant but Incapable of Disobeying, to outright Mind Control. In all but the last of these cases, the summon might interact with their captor, expressing anything from cordiality to disdain.

Summon Binding can be thought of as a Required Secondary Power in some settings and scenarios. In others, it might be presented as ethically dubious or outright morally wrong to force the summoned being to obey the spellcaster's will. The morality of the binding can vary heavily depending on factors including the sentience and/or (im)morality of the summoned, the intent and demeanour the summoner has toward them, and so forth.

Failure to perform this properly may result in Eat the Summoner, Demonic Possession, or worse. Expect an Oh, Crap! reaction from anyone involved in the botched binding, unless they're too ignorant to realise their mistake.

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Examples:

Anime and Manga

• Fairy Tail: Celestial Spirits are contractually bound to serve celestial mages who have their keys, setting up times where summoning isn't doable. The spirits demonstrably have free will to an extent, such as when Loki forcibly summons himself to keep Karen Lilica (his master at the time) from abusing her other spirits. Of course, through Loophole Abuse, anybody who has Gemini can have them shapeshift into an opposing celestial wizard to summon and use their own celestial spirits against them.

Comic Books

• The Sandman (1989): The Hermetic Magic circle used to summon Dream of the Endless also keeps him trapped within it and suppresses his powers. This is the limit of the summoners' control, so Dream simply waits until someone gets careless and scuffs the circle.

Fan Works

• A binding circle (or rather, triangle), preventing escape, is an inherent part of the summoning ritual that Hermione Granger, Demonologist knows how to use. However, the first demon she summons insists that in future, she should make a gap in it, so that the demon can freely leave after being summoned.

Literature

• In A School for Sorcery, Tria and Lina sit inside a pentagram drawn on the floor to summon a Dire Woman. The Dire Woman obediently brings back Gray when ordered to do so, but when Tria accidentally erases part of the pentagram (by moving backward in horror at the monster Gray has been transformed into) the Dire Woman immediately escapes.
• The Bartimaeus Trilogy: When a magician summons a demon they usually draw a pair of pentacles - one, the larger and more complicated one, binds the demon so it can't escape, the other contains the magician and protects them from the demon in case they made a mistake, or against anything it can still do from inside. Once successfully bound the demon can be tormented and compelled to serve the magician so they are free to leave the pentacles without being promptly devoured, though the demon will typically continue to seek an opening.
• The Belgariad: Demons are summoned through complicated incantations that force them into a corporeal form and put them under the summoner's mental control. In addition, the summoner protects themselves by staying in a pentacle. If either are disrupted, the demon is free to take revenge before returning to Hell. One summoner takes a step outside the pentacle in fright when he notices he's losing control of the demon, and two more make the fatal mistake of drawing their pentacles on water, where they can wash away.
• Black Summoner: Summoners like main character Kelvin control monsters via summoning contracts that bind them to the summoner and allow them to feed on the summoner's mana. Nonsentient monsters like the slime and worg he captures have to be beaten down and then captured with the contract magic, while intelligent monsters like Revenant Zombie knight Gerard and demon princess Sera have the capacity to give verbal consent (Gerard wagers his consent on a fight with Kelvin, while Sera agrees in exchange for Kelvin protecting her from the current Demon Lord).
• The Divine Comedy: Virgil tells Dante of how the witch Erictho summoned his soul from Limbo and forced him to retrieve a damned soul from the Ninth Circle of Hell, only letting Virgil go when he successfully brought it back to the land of the living.
• Discworld:
  • Parodied with the Lancre witches, who occasionally summon demons and ensure their compliance using whatever they have on hand, such as by threatening to whack one with the big copper ladle they used to summon it in the first place.
  • Eric: Eric Thursley summons a denizen of the Dungeon Dimensions into a runic circle that shocks it if it tries to leave, and later uses a "conjuration of duress" to confine it to a room with a verbal order. The spells are quite effective—only, instead of a demon that would trade wishes for its freedom, he summons a hapless human by mistake.
• The Dresden Files: Summoning tends to involve some combination of binding in magic circles, I Know Your True Name, and negotiating payment. For instance, in the first book Harry summons a fairy by drawing a circle, setting out a dish of honey and a small piece of preservative-free bread (in later books he uses pizza) dipped in a drop of his blood, calls out the fairy's true name, and activates the circle after he enters.
• The Familiar of Zero: For mages in training, summoning and binding familiars is a rite of passage that determines their future education and is a measure of their potential. The plot is kicked off when the Inept Mage, Louise, summons a normal human boy named Saito from another world and binds him as her servant. It's implied the familiar runes Mind Rape Saito and make him forget the bonds he has with his family and old world and, over time, replace them with a desire to serve and protect his master. This is confirmed in the light novels, where the Mind Rape from the contract is undone and Saito gets all the feelings of homesickness back in a large burst and complicates his relationship with Louise.
• How to Build a Dungeon: Book of the Demon King: In the first chapter, aspiring Sorcerous Overlord Ein Sof Aur summons a succubus named Lilu as a familiar—primarily serving as a walking mana battery for his spells as well as the first girl in his Battle Harem. He binds her to his service with a written contract of length and detail that is absurd even by demon standards, such that Lilu isn't able to finish reading the whole thing before her eyes get tired; she goes ahead and signs it to get it over with.
• Johannes Cabal: Demon summoning rituals don't actually mind-control the demon but invoke their infernal higher-ups for the authority to boss them around. When Johannes summons the independent devil Zarenyia, she cheerfully explains that she's bound only by her word, so they cut a deal and begin an Odd Friendship instead.
  Johannes: I abjure thee, O spirit, to be bound by this covenant! By the power of the great Adonay, I...
  Zarenyia: Are you trying to bind me? You are, aren't you? You're trying to bind me! [wink] You naughty boy.
• Pact: It's a common skill amongst practitioners to be able to summon bound Others in order to do one's bidding, with them having strict orders not to attack the practitioner in question.
• The Scholomance: In The Golden Enclaves, El tries to evacuate a friend from a dangerous Pocket Dimension with an obscure summoning spell. It has a built-in compulsion of obedience, but she figures she can deal with the mind control sometime her friend isn't in mortal peril.
• The Tower and the Fox: Sorcerers can summon demons with their own abilities, but need a power boost, such as from Calatian blood, to bind them to their will. Sorcerers without enough power to bind demons get cursed with afflictions that can only be removed by the same demon that bestowed them. Said afflictions range from itchy skin to removing eyes and fusing the skin over the sockets, depending on the strength of the demon.

Live-Action TV

• Supernatural: Sam and Dean summon demons all the time, but the demons are neither obedient nor happy about being summoned. Thus Sam and Dean perform the summoning on a Devil's Trap charm, so the summoned demon will be stuck in place. Sam and Dean then give them a choice; do what they want or tell them what they want to know, or they'll just walk away and leave the demon trapped there.

Tabletop Games

• Call of Cthulhu: The game has a number of spells for summoning servitor monsters. A smart conjurer will also use a spell to bind the summoned monster so that it is under their control when it arrives. Unfortunately, there are no spells to bind Cthulhu Mythos deities when they are summoned...
• Dungeons & Dragons:
  • Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 1st Edition has several spells that could force summoned beings to obey, including Spiritwrack in the Player's Handbook and Exaction, Dolor and Torment in the Unearthed Arcana supplement.
  • 3rd Edition:
    • The spell magic circle against alignment can be used in combination with the planar binding and dimensional anchor spells to imprison a summoned extraplanar being ("Outsider") of the specified alignment within the location for as long as the circle of powdered silver making up the magic circle remains unbroken (though the spells have to be renewed periodically).
    • The spell line summon monster creates a short-lived projection of the creature rather than call it up in the flesh, but the creature must either attack the summoner's enemies or obey any instructions the summoner can communicate to them.
  • Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition: Zig-zagged as a general limitation of Summon Magic.
    • Planar Binding targets a single Outsider and - if it fails a saving throw - forces it to follow the caster's instructions to the best of its ability for the spell's duration. It only has to obey to the letter, though, and can still engage in malicious compliance if angry. If it passes the saving throw, it is under no such obligation.
    • In contrast, Planar Ally summons a non-hostile Outsider entity with whom the caster may then bargain for aid. The entity isn't under any compulsion to agree, but is kept in place until either it and the caster manage to work out a trade, or they fail to do so (in which case it will leave).
    • Conjure Animals, Conjure Minor Elementals, and Conjure Woodland Beings all summon relatively weak creatures that must obey the spellcaster.
    • Conjure Elemental and Conjure Fey summon more powerful entities under the spellcaster's verbal control. However, they become free-willed and hostile if the spellcaster ever loses concentration on the spell.
    • Infernal Calling and Summon Greater Demon summon an obedient but unfriendly devil or demon. It will constantly fight against the spellcaster's control via saving throws over the course of the spell; succeeding frees it to act however a monster that's Made of Evil wants.
    • Conjure Celestial summons a powerful angelic being that's friendly and cooperative, so long as the summoner's instructions don't conflict with its Character Alignment, presumably because the summoner is usually a powerful agent of the gods themself.
• Mage: The Awakening: In 1^st edition, the spells to control a ghost or spirit are separate from the spells to summon one, so the mage needs to act quickly after the entity arrives. In 2^nd edition, the summoning can be cast at a more advanced level to build a command into the spell.
• Pathfinder
  • First Edition: The spell magic circle against alignment can be used in combination with the planar binding and dimensional anchor spells to imprison a summoned extraplanar being ("Outsider") of the specified alignment within the location for as long as the circle of powdered silver making up the magic circle remains unbroken (though the spells have to be renewed periodically).
  • Second Edition's version of planar binding is a ritual that incorporates the magic circle as an optional step that requires a crafting skill check rather than a separate spell. If the summoners neglect to include it, or fail the skill check, the called creature can attack the summoners or leave without making a bargain.
• Sorcerer (2001): Summoning and binding a demon are two separate rituals. The former has a chance of failure, with the summoner's player having to roll with their Will against the demon's Power; the latter succeeds automatically, but the player's binding roll determines whether their character or the demon has the upper hand in subsequent interactions (as the book puts it, "demons love to be poorly bound").
• Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay: Daemon summoning rituals normally let the summoner attempt to enslave the daemon through a contest of wills, and a properly inscribed ritual octagram contains the daemon and strengthens the binding. The key words are "normally" and "properly".

Video Games

• The Elder Scrolls:
  • Summoning spells under the Conjuration discipline typically involve binding the summon (be it an elemental or a minor Daedra) such that it will attack the summoner's enemies, though they can still turn hostile with enough friendly fire. Across the games one can come across sites where unbound creatures were summoned; these sites often involve carnage.
  • The Skyrim in-game book "A Tragedy in Black" reveals that accepting a gift from a summon removes the binding, allowing them to turn against you.
• Fate Series: A Servant - a Heroic Spirit which can be summoned as a familiar - is bound to their Master by Command Seals. These are three magical seals that, when used, force the Servant to obey a specific order no matter what.
• Final Fantasy X: Most summoned Aeons obey the player without question. The exception is Yojimbo, who must be paid to attack, and which of his attacks he uses depends largely on how much you pay him (plus other factors like how often you use him, how often he dies under your command, et cetera).
• Final Fantasy XIV:
  • Mhach was once a civilization specializing in the use of Black Magic, summoning voidsent and creating rituals to bind them as a means of controlling them. These voidsent were used as living weapons against Mhach's enemies in its bid to conquer Eorzea as well as living power sources for creations like the Void Ark. However, these rituals were not foolproof, as even High Voidmage Cessair's binding rituals eventually failed 1,500 years after the fall of Mhach, freeing powerful voidsent like Scathach and Diabolos to wreak havoc in the present.
  • Reapers normally enter a contract with their voidsent avatar to borrow its powers in exchange for the aether of the reaper's victims. However, Zenos's avatar was specifically summoned and chosen by Fandaniel. Instead of a contract, Fandaniel bound Zenos's avatar to him through unknown rituals, giving Zenos the avatar's power without requiring him to spare it aether.
• My Lovely Wife: The succubi Jake summons cannot harm him and cannot disobey directions he gives them regarding their work schedules, however much they may dislike it (e.g. the Ax-Crazy Enyo begging him to let her murder someone). They can make requests of him, even aggressive and forcefully-worded ones, but can't force him to comply.
• Shin Megami Tensei: The Demon Summoning Program gives the summoner complete control over their demon, allowing them to treat demons like Mons (indeed, Megami Tensei invented the Mon). However, the demon needs to agree to join the summoner for the binding to work, and few would join a summoner weaker than them.
• World of Warcraft: Warlocks can summon a Doomguard by sacrificing one of their party members. Unlike every other demon Warlocks can summon, however, the Doomguard is hostile and you have to cast Enslave Demon in order to control it. At any time, the Doomguard can break free of this enslavement and turn right back on the Warlock. This convoluted summon method was removed in Cataclysm and the Doomguard simply became a regular summon. However, Shadowlands brought the effect back again.

Webcomics

• Erfworld: The Summon Everyman Hero spell that brings the protagonist to the RPG Mechanics 'Verse of Erfworld also subjects him to its rules. As such, he becomes a unit under his Overlord's control and will die if he refuses an order. However, he sometimes has a lot of room for creative interpretation.
• Keychain of Creation: In the Exalted-based RPG Mechanics 'Verse, Necromancy summoning rituals let the summoner exert their will on the ghost. One ghost isn't happy that his summoner plans to release him to the cycle of Reincarnation, but isn't strong enough to do anything about it.
  Misho: Oh, well, this is a summoning like any other. All you have to do to be free is successfully contest my will. ARE YOU GOING TO GIVE IT A TRY?
  Rouen: Uh... No, that's ok.
• In the DOTA 2 tie-in comic "The Summoning", Cedric's ritual to summon Enigma includes spells to suppress his powers and trap him within the summoning circle, in hopes of forcing him into a deal. Enigma feigns helplessness at first, but is completely unaffected by the bindings.
  Cedric: Let's see... a summoning invocation from Elze. A Turstarkurian rite of binding, five distinct neutralizing curses, a redundant binding... about seventeen spells in all, I think. You'll forgive me if I erred on the side of caution.

Western Animation

• In the Gargoyles episode "The Mirror", Demona steals Titania's Mirror, which can be used to summon Puck. However, before summoning him she surrounds the mirror with Cold Iron chain, which weakens members of Puck's race. Hence he appears chained up. Demona holds the chain and can cause pain by tugging on it. At the end of the episode she releases the chain and Puck leaves.
• Winx Club: The Dragon of Season 6 gets hold of the Legendarium, an encyclopedia of fairytale/legendary creatures from around the world. By reading the myth a creature comes from, Selina can manifest them in the real world and sick them on whomever she wants. Whether it's werewolves, giant hydras, or anything in between, the things she summons are completely obedient and cannot be reasoned with, mindlessly carrying out her orders until dismissed/dispelled.

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