I confess myself troubled by the rise in mages binding multiple spirits to a single object. Among the Mortalitasi, interacting with spirits is a serious, even intimate undertaking. These "spellbinders," as they call themselves, bind many simple spirits, usually to books or other easily compartmentalized objects set with runes, and they have stripped the interaction with spirits of its importance, reducing it to a mere mechanical exercise. Perhaps I have grown more reverent in my old age. —An excerpt from Life Among the Dead, by Enchanter Rodomonte van Heigl, senior member of the Mortalitasi