I dont have street magic*

#1. "A magician may only summon a spirit that corresponds with his tradition". Does this mean that you just cant summon a fire spirit if your a shaman or a wind spirit if your a hermetic mage? Or does it mean I can only summon a specific type of spirit like Air/wind?

#2. Im pretty unclear on the terminology shamans use and what powers to be calling on. What would I call on for beast spirits??

#3. Should my totem or mentor spirit affect how summoned spirits look or rather can it? I chose to get +2 to air spirits but my totem is bat. There were some cool powers air had like Engulf. I was thinking a swarm of bats would engulf the target if a spirit used that power. Or like if an air/wind spirit used levitate on somebody it might look like a giant bat carrying them? Or would I only be able to make a beast spirit look like a bat. I know you can make them materialize and look however you want but im asking what makes sense.

#4. Oh do spirits have names. If I summon a free spirit and dont bind it and it performs all the services it is owed and goes back to the manaplanes is there any way I can call that specific spirit back later?

#5. Binding spirits looks like a big pain in the butt so what benefit is there besides the fact that they dont disappear every 12 hours?

1. It means that when a hermetic magician conjures a spirit it will be an elemental. It won't be a Work Loa or a Sky Hero (no game emchanical distinction, but the difference is obvious to any onlooker). It also means that a Hermetic Mage can choose to summon a Fire Elemental or a Water Elemental, but not a "Beast Elemental" because Beast Spirits are not on the Hermetic list.

2. You call upon platypusses for help and the Earth sends a Platypus Avatar to aid you in your quest.

3. What makes sense depends upon the tradition. So if it makes sense to you that hen you conjure air spirits they appear as clouds of bats, that's how they are going to appear. And that's what they are going to do pretty much every time you conjure an air spirit. Meanwhile when a hermetic mage calls upon an air elemental a Djinn appears and does stuff. Each "makes sense" in the tradition that it's coming from, and yet noone in the world is going to confuse the two as being the same (even though they do have the same attributes and power lists).

4. "Free Spirits" is a game term, explained in Street Magic. But again the answer is "It depends". Some traditions have spirits which are different every time they are summoned, some have spirits which are different every place they are summoned, and still other traditions have only a small list of spirits who keep making repeat appearances. It's a roleplaying concern and there isn't just one right answer. However, mistreating spirits will get back to every spirit you ever summon, so it's not super important if you are summoning the same spirits over and over again or new ones every time.

5. You can have more than one of them at a time and they can add in dice for sorcery tests. But yeah, the cost and drain is incredibly high.

-Frank

Oh yeah you get those more powerful services.

Well thanx for the help, maybe....hehehe(a joke about all the depends you gave me)