Summon Ancestor

When a shaman casts this spell upon his tribe's ancestral mound (the only place the spell can be cast), it causes an ancestor to come forth, drawn back as a spirit of chaotic neutral alignment. The spirit takes form as a transparent being, a combination of totem beast and primitive human. To select the type of spirit summoned, the DM rolls 1d20 and matches the result against the table below. The shaman can also try and summon a normal spirit (a minor spirit of the dead), such as a father or child of a tribal member. (These normal spirits may not leave the vicinity — no more than 50 feet — of the ancestral mound where they were buried.)

When the spirit appears, the summoner makes a Wisdom ability check (using the table's modifiers) to control it; otherwise, the spirit becomes an uncontrolled ghost (use the ghost statistics in the MONSTROUS MANUAL tome) and immediately attacks all living beings around it. However, even an uncontrolled spirit cannot travel more than 50 feet from the ancestral mound.

A controlled spirit may perform the following functions for a shaman: attack a foe (as a ghost—or another type of undead creature at the DM's discretion), guard the ancestor mound for a year (until freed again at the next Runemeet), tell the shaman ancient secrets, initiate a new shaman (only ancestral shaman spirits may do this), or raise dead (refer to the table).

The material components of this spell are the priest's holy symbol (the shaman's sacred bundle), a relic of the desired ancestor (though another may appear), and a small bonfire.