Spirit Beasts

Spirit Beasts: A Primer
Spirit Beasts are the spiritual essences of creatures that have dwelled in a given locale. Enterprising players can bind them to a talisman and make them fight for you to gain levels and become more powerful. The talismans are available off-the-shelf. The work? That's on you.
Binding
In order to bind a Spirit Beast, you'll need a talisman, purchased at my shop, Ilixil's Bestiary. (You may remember Ilixil, the extremely unfortunate scientist, from that time that he got devoured by his pet shade-skinks. He got better.) More than that, you're going to need to prepare that talisman. Preparing a talisman isn't hard if you have a bit of Magical Items Use training, but the good news is that anyone can do the preparation for you. But how do you prepare a talisman?
Blood. Lots of blood. You're going to have to go out and slaughter creatures that have blood. The stronger they are, the better the quality of their blood will be. That means that beasts from the Rift are going to provide you with some amazing quality life-liquid, and kobolds are... well, not. You can collect this blood using syringes and vials that I also sell. Noticing a trend here?
Once you have a vial full of blood, you're going to pour it on your talisman. If you're exceptionally bad with magical items, your talisman's probably going to break at this point. Otherwise, you'll either succeed famously or not do so well. Good news: you can try again. You won't even need to buy a new vial!
Now you're going to have to find a beast. The good news is that common beasts, the first type that you'll be able to bind, are everywhere. Most of the wilds around your various towns have a few different options. Every beast has its own strengths and weaknesses, which we'll go into soon enough. You can invoke your talisman anywhere to see if you can find a Spirit Beast there.
Once you've successfully invoked a talisman, you can attune it to a specific beast. Finally, once you're sure you've found the beast of your dreams (or at least one that's mildly acceptable) you'll offer the talisman to the beast. Only a prepared talisman can be offered. Anyone can bind a beast, but it will definitely help a bit if you have some Spirit Lore - Summoning skill.
Beast Statistics
Every beast has its own strengths and weaknesses, as I mentioned before. They are all competitive, but may require different tactics to be successful in battle. The traits of beasts are as follows:
Power - The strength of a beast's attacks.
Defense - The ability of a beast to defend itself.
Speed - How fast a beast is.
Insight - How well a beast can determine its opponent's tactics. This is important!
Accuracy - The likelihood a beast is going to hit with its normal attacks.
Health - A measure of the beast's life force.
All of these traits also have different growth rates. A creature may start off with a lot of Power but not grow very much, or may begin with middling Insight but have a quick growth rate!
In addition to these traits are ones that don't generally change: 
Special Attack - The typeo of special attack that the creature does.
Elemental Attunement - The element that a creature is bound to. Attuned creatures will do and take more or less damage from other elementally attuned creatures depending on their attunement.
The elements are as follows:
Fire - weakest against Water, weak against Earth, strong against Air, strongest against Spirit
Water - weakest against Spirit, weak against Air, strong against Earth, strongest against Fire
Earth - weakest against Air, weak against Water, strong against Fire, strongest against Spirit
Air - weakest against Spirit, weak against Fire, strong against Water, strongest against Earth
Spirit - weakest against Fire, weakest against Earth, strongest against Water, strongest against Air
Fighting
The entire reason you want to bind a Spirit Beast is so that you can have it fight other people's Spirit Beasts, right? So you'd best get good at fighting. When you summon your beast, it's going to start attacking its opponent at will. But this isn't just a matter of strength against strength! No, sir. You need to guide your beast in order to have it do its best.
Your creature's going to settle into a stance as soon as it begins the fight: Turtle, Wolf, Serpent, Hare, or Crane.
Turtle is strong against Hare and Crane; is weak against Serpent and Wolf.
Wolf is strong against Hare and Turtle; is weak against Crane and Serpent.
Serpent is strong against Turtle and Wolf; is weak against Crane and Hare.
Hare is strong against Serpent and Crane; is weak against Wolf and Turtle.
Crane is strong against Wolf and Serpent; is weak against Hare and Turtle.
Your creature's Insight may give you a glimpse at what stance your opponent's beast is in, but otherwise you're going to have to watch the fight and try to adjust your tactics accordingly. If it seems like your beast is taking a lot of damage and doing very little, you may want to switch to an opposing stance.
Oh, but it's not as simple as that. If things are going especially bad, you can tell your creature to guard, which means that it will take much less damage at the cost of being poor at attacks. This can be a lifesaver if you're taking a pounding and need some time to figure out how to turn things around. When you're ready to go back on the offensive, tell your creature to strike.
And then there are special attacks! Every beast has a special ability. You should only tell your beast to attack when you're certain that you're in a stance stronger than your opponent's, as special attacks are much more damaging then. They won't do much, and some won't work at all, if you're in a same or inferior stance!
Customizations
You can customize a lot about your beast! There are potions for sale in my shop that allow you to improve the traits of your beast. These can help you improve already good traits (like making a beast with a lot of Power really, really strong) or shore up ones that your beast lacks (such as enhancing the Insight on a beast that's not very aware). There's a limit on how much potions can do, but I might be convinced to do a little more for you. Wink wink, nudge nudge.
I can also work on your beast's appearance. You want your twitchy giant rat to look like a snarling fanged rodent? I can do it. Want it to look like a snake? Probably not. I can change its basic appearance and the greater detail when you look at it while it's fighting for you. But that's not all! I can even change what its special attack looks like, within reason.
Onward and Upward
Once your first beast reaches its twentieth training (don't worry, that will take a bit) you'll be able to bind your first uncommon beast. Uncommon beasts are a bit harder to find, lurking in special locales. And once you've gotten one of those to its twentieth train, there are rumors abounding about legendary beasts that only exist in a single place. These will obviously take some serious hunting to find, but the good news is that you have pleeeeenty of work to do before then, now, don't you?
Auchand
>How many different spirit beasts are there totally; including common, uncommon and legendary? We need to know how many pokeba... erm talismans to buy to collect them all.
There are currently 107 Spirit Beasts. Of those, 39 are common, 16 are uncommon, and 52 are legendary. If you want to be a Pokem--er, Battle Pet--er, Spirit Beast master, well... that would take quite a bit of time. Each talisman holds three Spirit Beasts: one common, one uncommon, and one rare. You have to reach max level with the common to bind an uncommon, and max level with the uncommon to bind a rare. Yeah, I know the numbers are a little skewed if legendary beasts make up a plurality of the system. This is because legendary beasts are found in individual rooms. Uncommon beasts are found in parts of areas (and no, not giving hints!) Common beasts are realm-wide except in towns.
>Are there kobolds with katanas?
No, but if you're clever, you can use the system to find out exactly what happens when a kobold attempts to use advanced armor and weaponry. It's... not pretty. I'm only half-joking here.
>What is the benefit of having high quality blood?
It makes offering a talisman to a beast a bit easier.
>Off the shelf. Since there will be possibly some folks who cannot take all their characters to EG, is it possible to pick up talismans at EG to give to another character?
Yup!
>Creature types. Does the talisman picked up affect the creature that can be summoned with it? So far, I've seen rat and roa'ter - will there be a list of creatures (common/uncommon) that we can find, or is that now an in-game puzzle and left to discovery?
As an immediate next project, I'm thinking about doing some sort of enchiridion (let's not call it a Pokedex) for people who'd like to collect information on beast locations. Finding all the common beasts should be relatively easy, as you can step outside a town and start attuning. Common beasts are available in the surroundings of Wehnimer's, Kharam Dzu, Solhaven, River's Rest, Icemule Trace, Zul Logoth, Pinefar, Ta'Vaalor, and Ta'Illistim.
>Or, will this merchant come back in a month or so after we've had time to tinker?
I intend to make customization for the talismans broadly available. I'll probably restrict modification of the beasts themselves (i.e. special attacks, custom look descriptions) to me for a bit, as they're a little tough to do at the moment.
>How will one know relative statistics of spirit creature, in order to best make use of stances and/or strategies?
This is a good question. In testing, I found that a high-power, low-intuition creature like a roa'ter could definitely get its butt kicked by even a low-health, speedy creature like a rat if played well. Insight is kind of a fun stat. But yeah, currently you can look at your talisman to get a readout of relative stats. Like this:
>look talis
A simple clay talisman is currently attuned to a spectral thrak of 1 train.
Its Power is high.
Its Defense is low.
Its Speed is low.
Its Insight is moderate.
Its Accuracy is moderate.
Its Health is moderate.
Its Power will grow slowly.
Its Defense will grow quickly.
Its Speed will grow at a moderate pace.
Its Insight will grow at a moderate pace.
Its Accuracy will grow at a moderate pace.
Its Health will grow at a moderate pace.
Its Insight has been enhanced by 1 points.
>5) Potions for the spirit beast are temporary or permanent additions to creature's statistics? 
Permanent. There's not currently a potion for clearing stat additions, but I'm thinking that'll be useful to have.
>6) Binding common/uncommon. If I have a 20th level common rat spirit, that will enable my talisman to attract an uncommon creature (which, I assume, will be as powerful as a 20th level common rat spirit?). So.. the talisman can store multiple creatures.. or do the spirit creatures trade places?
The talismans hold three creatures, one of each tier. It's an unlock system, basically. And yeah, it's automatic.
Common spirit beasts:
Town 	Spirit Beasts
Pinefar 	arctic wolverine, seeker, glacei, fox, snowy owl
Icemule 	thyril, penguin, timber wolf, vereri, silverback orc
Wehnimer's Landing	kobold, rat, rolton, goblin, thrak, manticore
Solhaven 	shan, lobster, fenghai, roa'ter, daggerbeak, hound
Zul Logoth 	krynch, bat, whelk
Ta'Illistim 	griffin, moulis sapling, yeti, kiramon
Ta'Vaalor 	hawk, fanged rodent, urgh, wolfshade
River's Rest 	aardvark, pale crab, chimera, krovlin, pirate
Teras 	tsark, water elemental, fire elemental, cinder wasp, wind wraith
Shadow Valley 	mare, pony, stallion
Cysaegir 	butterfly, aelotoi guardsman
Ebon Gate 	swamp witch, mire wight, giant mantis, skeletal warrior
Broken Lands 	hyena, jackal
Mist Harbor 	snapping turtle, great tourtoise, capuchin monkey, seagull
I'm starting a running thread for any improvements to the Spirit Beasts system that will be coming out over the next few days, as players find bugs and quirks.
The following fixes and updates have been rolled out for Spirit Beasts:
- Blood vials should now be POURable without a target to remove any blood that's in them
- Last names should no longer be appearing as part of the stance checks
- Potions to clear enhancements are now available in Ilixil's Bestiary
- Improved the granularity of stat descriptions in the LOOK of talismans
- Level-based stat growth is now reflected in the LOOK of talismans
- Fixed a typo in air elemental vs. elemental messaging
A note on creature stats:
I've gotten a few questions emailed to me about how Spirit Beasts are statted. For the most part, the stat descriptions available from your creatures' talismans should be sufficient to determine its strengths and weaknesses, but in the interest of satisfying hungry minds, I'll spill the following. All Spirit Beasts begin with base level 1 stats ranging from 90 to 140 points, and can have stat growth levels from 1 to 4 points per level. In a talisman's LOOK, the (base stat + (stat growth * level)) is presented as a rough estimate of the stat, using the following criteria:
Pathetic: Under 100
Low: 100 to 115
Moderate: 115 to 130
Above Average: 130 to 145
High: 145 to 160
Very High: 160 to 175
Extraordinary: 175 to 190
Monumental: 190 to 210
Godlike: 210+ 
Common Spirit Beasts have base level 1 stats ranging from 90 to 130 and have a growth potential from 1 to 3 points per level. This means that, at maximum, a common spirit beast with a fully potion-enhanced stat, maximum stat growth, and with a 130 base stat can achieve a 170, or "very high" rating for that stat. They have a stat pool of 635 points and a growth pool of 12 points. This means that when I was statting them out, I had that number of points to play with, with the stipulations that the stat numbers did not go above 130 or under 90, and the stat growth did not go over 3 or under 1.
Uncommon Spirit Beasts have a stat pool of 645 points and a growth pool of 14 points. They have a stat range from 90-140 and a growth range of 1-4 points. In addition, some (but not all) of them have access to unique abilities instead of the common ones.
Legendary Spirit Beasts have a stat pool of 655 points and a growth pool of 16 points. They have a stat range from 90-140 and a growth range of 1-4 points, but they all have unique special abilities like Sympathy, Bleed, Airwall, Bone Shield, and more cool stuff. Doing the math, a legendary beast's maximum enhanced stat could reach 220 provided that they started at 140 and had a growth potential of 4.
Enhanced stats are not counted in the LOOK of your Spirit Beast talisman.
A note on leveling beasts:
There are diminishing experience returns for playing the same player multiple times in a row in order to discourage scripting. Spreading the wealth is a good idea.
Auchand