Bold

Bold is the familiar of the young mage Jonathan River in the campaign Zincirsiz ("Unchained"): a brown owl, the same colour as Jonathan's eyes and hair. Jonathan, at fifteen and a student of the Archon, had managed to summon it about a week before it is first seen flying about his room.¹²

Nature

Jonathan explains that Bold is a fey spirit in the shape of an owl, and that if it dies he can summon it again; calling it back is a ritual that takes time and burns its components, not something done in an instant.³⁴⁵

Jonathan speaks to Bold in thought and looks through its eyes; when it is too far away for that, it flies back to him with news. Bold understands his questions but cannot recount what it has seen in any detail. It is usually reserved, yet its distress showed when it saw the plants and small animals harmed after an acid rain. In deep, unnatural darkness its night sight shrinks to a very short distance. When Master Otto had heard it described as an eagle, Jonathan called the owl down into his hand to set him right.⁶⁷⁸⁹¹⁰

After Jonathan formally bound himself to a noble house, he worked its ornate V crest onto his own robe, onto an armband for his companion Olaf, and onto a small leather strap for Bold.¹¹

The orc camp

Bold watched an orc camp from afar while Jonathan studied it through its eyes. Later, made invisible, it was sent into the sleeping commander's tent: it opened a drawer with its beak and, once Jonathan's companion Blink had taken the shape of the key, turned it. The real rod was carried off to Jonathan, and a copy and an ordinary pin were left in the locked box. Bold kept the rod hidden in the forest, and up in the trees at the meeting place, until it was safe to return it.¹²¹³¹⁴

Journeys with Olaf

On the road with Olaf, Bold spotted three orcs, and Jonathan lit a branch through it to draw their eyes while the two slipped away; it also saw wolves ahead, and later the orcs of the camp fighting among themselves. After the acid rain Jonathan tied the rod to its foot, asking it to carry the rod to Michael at the Archon should anything happen to him.¹⁵¹⁶⁸

From above, Bold narrowed the area described by the shaman's directions, and Olaf's digging laid bare a buried stair and door. Beneath the mountain it helped Olaf in a fight by distracting their foe. Leaving a hollow, it stopped the pair and showed Jonathan, through its eyes, a woman they had met before standing with five or six people at the entrance they had opened. It wove ropes between stakes so that Olaf could cross a chasm, and later helped in a fight against a suit of animated equipment.^1718192021

The search for Lady Teresa

Bold and Olaf spotted small villages, a distant city and a road. In the elf commander's quarters, when urgent news came, Jonathan stepped outside and had Bold listen at the door: Lady Teresa was missing and was to be searched for quietly.²²²³

At a house in the forest Bold checked the house and its surroundings, and was seen eating cherries in the great tree beside it, which bore peach-like fruit on another branch. It scouted from above as Olaf followed a trail, and kept watch at night while the two rested.²⁴²⁵²⁶

In town, made invisible, Bold kept watch from the roof of the inn and later from the roof of Captain Markus's house. It saw the captain come down the street, tense, glancing behind him and at his house, and drew back behind the roof before he noticed it; it also saw a witch hunter outside looking for a better view of the house.²⁷²⁸²⁹

Through Bold's eyes Jonathan picked out Teresa near a tree, and she looked up at the owl, showing she had noticed them. In the caves beneath the forest its eyes showed a snake moving along with the group across a ceiling of water. Left as a lookout at an entrance, it saw movement in the bushes and trees but could not tell who was going where.³⁰³¹³²

The journey south

On the journey south Jonathan sent Bold up to search around a burned town. In a farming village it carried a stone made to shine, one face covered with cloth, to light the way for a search party. Flying over a lake, it could not make out the creatures in the water.³³³⁴³⁵

Bold sensed movement in the bushes around the sheep farmer Lena's house that it could not put down to an animal. Later Jonathan sent it into the house to make a noise; the children found their mother asleep, put there by Jonathan's own spell, and slipped out. At the waterfall Bold watched a girl who had hidden during a game, saw her look away and walk towards the lake as if hearing a call, but saw nothing calling her; after the rescue it noticed Zarama watching from distant bushes.^36373839

Later it flew ahead along a natural corridor Olaf had opened and found a wider space reaching the water, where Jonathan saw through its eyes a cave that looked like a more natural form of an old entrance.⁴⁰

Spoiler: Later eventsRevealSpoils: Zincirsiz #4; Zincirsiz #5; Zincirsiz #6; Zincirsiz #15; Zincirsiz #24 · Say what you have read

In the fight beneath the mountain, a spirit's sword struck Bold and it vanished like a puff of feathers. Jonathan explained that this was no final death for a familiar, and called it back with the ritual in the hollow where they sheltered.⁴¹⁴⁵

During the escape from the mountain, Bold's attempt to snatch a document was not shown to succeed. When the great Azbo seized all four companions to cast them out, falling rocks struck the owl and it vanished; it was with them again by the time they scouted the land outside.⁴²²²

After a span of time that neither Jonathan nor Olaf could remember, Bold did not answer his call, and he had to burn components to bring it back; Blink played around the returned owl.⁴³⁴⁴

To test the vanishing lake, Jonathan sent Bold diving. The water did it no immediate magical harm, and it made out faint movement in the depths; through it Jonathan learned that the water itself held no magic. Unable to swim back up, Bold drowned and left its spirit body, and Jonathan summoned it again by ritual, Blink greeting it fondly.⁴⁵⁴⁶⁴⁷