As a follow up to the servitor anon, I'd be interested to hear how you'd go about creating a servitor to, say, act as a protector for a person?
My method varies but I’ll give an example:
I go in with a specific goal in mind. What will they protect the person from and how would they do that? Are they purely there to warn the person that’s danger is nearby or are they able to defend the person? Is that defense active or passive? (Example: Would the servitor react only after a hex is thrown or before?) What will this being look like? Does the appearance matter? Is it a temporary servitor or permanent?
Then I decide how I want the create to act, move, gain their energy (if at all), and general personality. Maybe I want the being to fly around the person or sit on shoulders. Is it friendly or mistrustful? How it is powered? By the creator’s energy or from something else? (And will that consumption method be active or passive? Should the servitor actively try to feed itself or should it only accept energy from a particular source?)
The next decision has to be whether it’s bound or floating. Bound servitors, I’ve noticed, are less likely to change or grow too quickly in power. By bound I mean they’re attached to an object of some kind. A charm, necklace, statue, tree, etc. (I’d caution against living things like trees though - the servitor may develop it’s own will, abandon you and become a tree spirit very quickly, although this may protect or save the tree in question). Floating servitors will just kind of hang about. The issue with floating servitors is sometimes other folks perceive it as a threat and will try to cleanse it. Depending on how the servitor is powered (consuming the creator’s energy versus collecting it from something like natural water sources) it may be dispersed and not come back.
The final decision is what will you do with it if it does develop it’s own self-will? Becomes aggressive or snippy? Or goes rouge. What it if consumes negative or tainted energy? What if it meshes with another being, is taken from you, or simply goes away and doesn’t come back? All of these things can happen and contingency plans should be put into effect for all of these what-ifs.
Once everything’s settled, I’ve forged a clear image of what I want. I’ll spend several days/weeks/months with this image in mind pushing energy at it this way and that until it starts to form itself. It might take a while depending on the details I need to tackle (one of my personal servitors took nearly five months to solidly complete)
For those looking for more sources, dig deep into historical records. They’re there. For those looking for similar concepts, think back on Calcifer’s role in Howl’s Moving Castle (both the book by Dianne Wynne Jones and the movie) and Phillip Pullman’s His Dark Materials. You might also want to consider concepts like Pokemon, as that has some similarity.
But that’s just how I’d do it, in general. Other practices have been developed and used.
