Beastmastery

Beastmastery involves etching patterns into the side of an egg and burying it overnight. The embryo in the egg follows the inscription as blueprints for its DNA, eventually hatching, morphing, and clawing its way above the topsoil. There it will find itself in the center of a circle of ritual stones, unable to leave until inspected and released by the Beastmaster.

Beast eggs used in the ritual can come from anywhere. One could use an unhatched chicken egg and the outcome would be unaffected by variant type. However, there is a limited "real estate" for inscriptions on smaller eggs, resulting in larger eggs (often from reptiles or certain Eagles) to be more valuable and more desirable. "Egg hunting" for large eggs is one aspect of Beastmastery, and often times involves raiding the nests of large creatures such as wyverns.

Beastmastery is an exhaustive practice. All inscriptions must be drawn absolutely perfect and as such conjuration has developed into its own trade. Sometimes, if a marking is drawn even slightly incorrect, the creature will come out diseased, dead, deformed, or not hatch at all. It may hatch as something else entirely, or hatch more than just the intended creature. These unintended hatchlings are known as "fleas" and can range wildly in morphological and behavioral diversity. They retain absolutely no submission to the Beastmaster, are unaffected by the stone circle and have the ability to cause any sort of havoc if unchecked.

Complex inscriptions such as speech takes up a lot of the real estate of the eggshell, as one must also inscribe high intelligence and several other markings for it to function properly. Higher intelligence means a beast that is more free willed and harder to dominate, so only the foolhardy or heroic attempt a literal communication link between them and their beasts.

Patterns have been discovered regarding which designs bring up which type of creature. For example, size of the creature is often indicated by a series of loops. Taking away one of these loops is similar to editing a genome, and as a result will make the creature smaller. These patterns allow Beastmasters to "test" certain experimental designs, which are done most often at the Beastmastery Library among experts.