Conjuration of demons
Conjuration of demons is a form of summoning practised in Othe, centred on the calling-up of what practitioners call "beasts of alluring guise" to fulfil the desires of paying clients, including sexual and lustful ones. Within the community that keeps the practice, it is understood in blunt, unromantic terms as a trade - a piece of work performed for money, not a high mystical rite. Its sole known practitioner in the narrative is Mother Guame, who carries it out in Othe under Pal occupation.
The practice matters to the wider series because it sits squarely at the point where indigenous Allorwen spiritual life meets colonial suppression. The Pal occupiers do not merely ban or tax the trade; they reframe it as a sign of racial and civilisational degeneracy, a "primitive Allorwen" corruption that marks its practitioners as subhuman and in need of correction. This framing converts a local economic activity into evidence of inherent inferiority, and the apparatus of occupation - specifically the Cohort-Monitors - uses the charge to extract confessions and performances of shame from the people it holds. Conjuration of demons thus functions less as a plot device than as a lens on how imperial power pathologises what it controls.
Across the single book in which it appears, the practice's arc is short and sharp: it exists as Guame's livelihood, it is exposed under interrogation, and Guame survives the exposure by giving her interrogators the scripted repentance they want - confessing to every charge, recanting her "primitive Allorwen ways," and thereby turning the act of confession into a tool of her own rather than theirs. The demons themselves are never fought, negotiated with, or brought on stage; the conjuration exists in the text only as an accusation, a trade, and a weapon turned back on its accusers.
The System
How It Works
The practice involves calling up entities - described as "beasts of alluring guise" - and binding them to the service of a client's stated desire, which may include explicitly lustful or sexual applications - City of Last Chances, ch 9. The mechanism is transactional: a client comes with a want, the practitioner summons a beast to meet it, and the encounter is paid for. The text supplies no further technical detail - no circles, no contracts, no names of specific demons - because the narrative treats the conjuration not as a system to be reverse-engineered but as a livelihood being prosecuted.
Who Operates It
Mother Guame is the only named practitioner, operating in Othe as part of her local trade - City of Last Chances, ch 9. The practice is embedded in her community's economic life; it is her work, and her community understands it in the same unglamorous register it understands any other trade - City of Last Chances, ch 9. The Pal occupiers permit no equivalent indigenous spiritual practice and classify this one as a corruption requiring suppression - City of Last Chances, ch 9.
Limits & Costs
The text does not enumerate ritual limitations, failure modes, or physical tolls on the conjurer. What the sections establish is a political and social cost: practising the trade makes Guame a target of Cohort-Monitor interrogation, during which she must either sustain a denial she cannot ultimately maintain or perform a humiliation designed to satisfy her captors' need to see a "primitive Allorwen" woman repent - City of Last Chances, ch 9. The cost of the trade, as the narrative shows it, is the constant vulnerability of the practitioner to the occupation's machinery of accusation and forced confession.
History
City of Last Chances
Conjuration of demons is a practice carried out by Mother Guame in Othe, described in her own community's terms as a "vile trade" - "vile trade" - ch 9. The specific form she practises involves calling up "beasts of alluring guise" to serve clients' desires, including lustful applications - ch 9. The Pal occupiers regard the practice as a "primitive Allorwen" corruption, a framing that treats the magical traditions of Allorwen's peoples as inherently lesser and degenerate - ch 9.
During interrogation by the Cohort-Monitors, Guame initially denies the conjuration of demons to her questioners - ch 9. She later reverses this position as a deliberate tactical move, confessing to everything she had previously denied - the conjuration of demons, the demons' use for clients' lust - and offering to recant her "primitive Allorwen ways" - ch 9. The confession is thus not an admission of guilt so much as a performance calibrated to the Monitors' expectations, granting them the narrative of a backward Allorwen woman repenting of her superstition in exchange for whatever advantage the recantation affords her in the interrogation - ch 9.
Relationships
- Mother Guame - the practitioner; the conjuration is her trade, and her interrogation in ch 9 forces her to stage a performance of recantation that is itself a survival tactic rather than a genuine change of belief - City of Last Chances, ch 9. - Cohort-Monitor - the interrogating authority; the Monitors frame the conjuration as evidence of a racial-civilisational failing and extract a confession calibrated to that frame - City of Last Chances, ch 9.
Notable Quotes
- "vile trade" - the term Guame's own community uses for the conjuration, City of Last Chances, ch 9
- "primitive Allorwen" - the Pal occupiers' framing of the practice as a mark of degenerate culture, City of Last Chances, ch 9
Tags
- conjuration · #demon-binding · #allorwen · #forbidden-practice