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Based on Richard Williams' Unfamiliar and adapted for use with Of Yarn and Bone.

The Broken Bond

Your character was once a mage's familiar but is now a stray living in the wild. The communion between mage and familiar is severed, but the world remembers what you were. You carry that memory like a scar, visible only to those who can see.

Marked

Unfamiliars are marked by magic. They can still cast Promises—small, ephemeral magics the world takes for granted. Anything greater and the world just... tilts its head, uncertain whether to listen.

Other animals sense the mark. Predators hesitate. Prey stare too long before bolting. Unfamiliars are tolerated curiosities, feral things caught between worlds—feared, yet when danger comes, even natural enemies instinctively call upon their marked brethren.

In the World

Magi might see Unfamiliars as living Totems—creatures literally of the magical world who could amplify spells. Or as Walking Burdens, remnants of a broken promise between mage and world. Desperate magi might even attempt to transfer their own Burdens onto an Unfamiliar, using them as unwitting vessels in rituals meant to restore balance. Sanctuary is most likely found with those at the margins—human children, beggars, the lost, the Fae.

These animals travel together out of survival and kinship and an uneasy trust—predator and prey, side by side.

They are feral, marked, tolerated curiosities in a world that isn't quite sure what to do with them.

At the Table

• Unfamiliars should have at least one Name echoing their familiar life: Once Called Nighthawk, Shadow of the Covenant, Bound to the Thornwood, Remembers the Words
• Animals retain their natural skills but are not human: they don't carry things in pouches; they don't have rations or gear in the traditional sense. A crow has its beak and talons. A cat has claws and grace. Play them as the animals they are.
• Casting with Totems means bargaining with a world that isn't sure it should listen. Spells may be less effective and will require a more feral approach to Totems: being bitten by a graveyard snake, rolling in ash from a burned church, carrying a dead thing in your mouth, clawing symbols into bark.
• Unfamiliars can speak to one another and understand human speech, but this understanding is one-sided. The world of men can be cruel to animals; you will need to watch each other’s backs.