As part of this ritual, you imbue your chosen vessel with a spark of your own life force to create an arcane familiar. This familiar assumes an animal form you choose from the following options: bat, cat, crab, frog (toad), hawk, lizard, octopus, owl, poisonous snake, fish (quipper), rat, raven, seahorse, spider, or weasel (see Appendix C: Creature Statistics). Upon completion of the ritual, your familiar appears in an unoccupied space within 5 feet of you. The familiar has the statistics of the chosen form, though it is considered a Construct rather than a Beast for any relevant spells or effects.

• Bound in Blood. When your familiar first appears, your hit point maximum decreases by one. If you permanently dismiss your familiar or it is otherwise permanently destroyed, your hit point maximum returns to normal. This reduction can’t be offset by any means as long as your familiar lives.
• Communicating with Your Familiar. While your familiar is on the same plane or realm of existence as you, it can magically convey what it sees or senses to you, and you can communicate with it telepathically.
• Controlling Your Familiar. Your familiar acts independently of you, but it always obeys your commands. In combat, it rolls its own initiative and acts on its own turn. A familiar can’t attack, but it can take other actions as normal.

When you cast a spell with a range of touch, your familiar can deliver the spell as if it had cast the spell. Your familiar must be within 100 feet of you to do so, and it must use its reaction to deliver the spell when you cast it. If the spell requires an attack roll, you use your spell attack modifier for the roll.

As an action, you can touch your familiar to reincorporate it into your body. When you do so, it melds into your skin, where it awaits your summons. While it is incorporated, you can use an action to expel it from your body, causing it to appear in an unoccupied space within 5 feet of you.

• Destroying Your Familiar. If a familiar drops to 0 HP, its body is instantly destroyed. If you still live, your familiar regrows a new body in 1 hour, regaining all its hit points and becoming active again. The new body appears in an unoccupied space within 5 feet of you. If you die, your familiar is permanently destroyed, and the ritual must be performed again to create a new familiar. At any time, you can use an action to permanently dismiss your familiar, which instantly destroys it.

You can have only one familiar at a time. If you attempt to cast this spell while your current familiar still lives, the ritual fails.