A Familiar's Memory

[firelistener]

I haven't found anything very official for 5e on this, so I'll ask:
Should (or could) a familiar have memories of its existence before being summoned by someone for the first time with Find Familiar?

A familiar is supposed to be "a spirit that takes an animal form" of the fey, fiendish, or celestial variety, so it's some kind of being outside of existing as an animal. My question is about the existence as a spirit prior to its relationship with the spell caster. If you think one way or the other, why or why not?

[noob]

I haven't found anything very official for 5e on this, so I'll ask:
Should (or could) a familiar have memories of its existence before being summoned by someone for the first time with Find Familiar?

A familiar is supposed to be "a spirit that takes an animal form" of the fey, fiendish, or celestial variety, so it's some kind of being outside of existing as an animal. My question is about the existence as a spirit prior to its relationship with the spell caster. If you think one way or the other, why or why not?

Maybe the familiar is created at the first casting?
Or maybe familiars are souls of dead casters who had familiars once which are then forced to never tell their past by the spell but which remember all their life thus forcing them in a painful existence of servitude separated from the people they knew before.(thus making them secret edgelords)

[Anymage]

So long as you're not trying to pull any fast ones, I don't see why not.

I'd also leave this up to the player, with the DM being able to veto anything that seems too silly. Your celestial familiar won't know how to blackmail the king or where to find buried treasure, but there's no reason it wouldn't be able to mention the glories of the upper planes. So long as it's extra player fluff, I don't see the harm.

[sithlordnergal]

I rather like this idea. It could create a perfect plot hook, or be a way for the DM to easily pass along information to the caster.

EDIT: You could even have it act as a sort of double agent. Make it so every time you summon a Familiar, its a different spirit. If the caster treats their Familiar poorly, the moment it dies it lets itself be summoned by some enemy of the party, and then it can report on the party. Or vice versa, the party might be able to unintentionally summon the Big Bad's Familiar, treat it well, and they start helping the party while pretending to serve the Big Bad.

[Chronos]

Remember, though, that familiars take on the statistics of their assumed form, including Intelligence score. So for anyone other than chainlocks, a familiar's memories are going to be a sort of jumbled mess or perceptions, not the coherent sort of memories an intelligent creature would have. And there's nothing that says that the original spirit was any smarter, either.

[firelistener]

Remember, though, that familiars take on the statistics of their assumed form, including Intelligence score. So for anyone other than chainlocks, a familiar's memories are going to be a sort of jumbled mess or perceptions, not the coherent sort of memories an intelligent creature would have. And there's nothing that says that the original spirit was any smarter, either.

Interesting points. I was mainly asking this since I have been writing a 5e-based story (recreationally; not too seriously) with a celestial spider familiar. I've been writing the telepathic dialogue between the wizard and spider in a mix of English and descriptions of images or emotions. A spider only has 1 Intelligence, so perhaps I should lean into the sensations more and strip away the English/Common words coming from the familiar. I mostly based that off the actual Telepathy spell, which dictates that the familiar can indeed understand language through telepathy, but I suppose that doesn't imply it can also use the language itself.