Amber Order

The Magisters of the Amber College practice the magic of beasts. Essentially, this is a form of animistic magic that holds the power, spirits, and the habitats of untamed and completely wild animals as the shaping influence and source of its power. They are called shamans by some and Amber Magisters by others.

Symbols & Appearances
The Arrow, the Bear’s Claw, the Raven’s Feather, (almost any other animal totem or fetish).

Amber Wizards can be easily recognised by their bestial appearance. They do not cut their hair or their beards, and their nails grow long and hard, becoming more and more like claws or talons. They dress in the furs and hides of animals that they have hunted and slain themselves.

They often make primitive jewellery and shamanic fetishes out of the fangs, claws, and feathers of various animals, interspersed with lumps of raw amber. They carry charms of herbs in small leather pouches, and for war and their great rituals, they make elaborate headdresses out of the skulls and horns of dangerous animals, like bears, wolves, and mighty stags.

They often carry staffs bedecked with feathers, lumps of amber, and animal bones, and they also carry bows and quivers of arrows that they manufacture for themselves.

Amber Magic
Ghur’s Magisters have embraced the savage Brown Wind of Magic, allowing them to have control over all manner of wild beasts and even communicate with them. Amber Magisters can also call upon the attributes of various spirits of the wild and are able to summon the strength of the bear, the swiftness of the hare, the eyesight of an eagle, and the heightened senses of smell and hearing of the wolf. Amber Magisters are said to be able to shape-shift, travelling on the paws or wings of wild creatures and birds if they so desire.

The Amber Brotherhood uses the Brown Wind to call upon the power of the wild spirits of nature. Their world vision is an animistic one, where every living thing, every plant, every animal and insect, and even the soil itself, has its own independent living spirit. The world through the eyes of an Amber Magister is a hard one, where the spirits of all living things must compete to live. It is a world of survival only for the fittest; where every creature has its place as predator or prey.

Amber Magisters are said to be able to merge their spirits with those of animals and go on vision-quests to learn more about themselves, the land, the ways of the spirits and how they can be pacified or bound.

Duties & Contracts
Amber Magisters dislike human company and are shamanistic hermits. They live in areas far from the settlements of Humanity. They have little or no interest whatsoever in pursuing contracts of employment with merchants or nobles. The very idea is an abomination to them. They do, however, have duties, and they take them very seriously.

Amber Magisters require no money from the Emperor and would not know what to do with it if it was given to them. They live entirely off the land and serve the Empire by searching out the taint of Chaos in those dark and wild places where the Empire’s soldiery are reticent to tread, fighting Beastmen, toppling their blasphemous Herdstones, and dispersing the Dark Magic they contain. It is not unheard of for a noble who possesses estates that has large wild and untamed tracts to expend considerable resources seeking out an Amber Magister to ask him to reside upon his estates and guard them from supernatural harm.

The Amber Magisters consider themselves honour-bound to serve in the Empire’s armies, just as their brother Magisters of the other Orders. They will only fight against the Chaotic and magical enemies of mankind, and will often receive word of any mustering of such creatures from the birds of the air. In such cases as these, shamanic Amber Magisters will join with any Imperial army facing such a foe.

The night or day before the battle commences the officers will emerge from their tent to see an Amber Magister dressed in furs and wearing a battle headdress of antlers or wild ram’s horns, crouching by a small fire, chanting softly to himself while casting bones on the earth. His headdress and his staff adorned with feathers, animal skulls, and other fetishes tell the officers who the Magister is, a shaman of the Amber Brotherhood.

Some officers in Imperial armies that find themselves posted near deep, impenetrable forests or at the foot of wild and lonely mountains are taught how to make strange totems and burn certain herbs and compounds that are signals to any Amber Magisters in the area that they require help. If seen, Amber Magisters in the region answer the summoning with surprising swiftness.

It would be useless to discuss tactics with Amber Magisters, for they will not listen. However, they can be trusted to fight with all their strength and will against the creatures of Chaos that warp and pollute the land with their presence, any enemy that causes supernatural harm to the Magister’s homelands, or the people the Magister has sworn to protect.

When the Wild Father, the Patriarch of the Amber Brotherhood, must be summoned for a conclave of the Patriarchs or for some other important matter, a great beacon fire is lit upon the walls of Altdorf that face the distant Amber Hills. The Wild Father will arrive the day after the beacon is lit and make his way straight to the Hall of Convocation.

Famous Shamans

 * Setanta Lobas, Wild Father and Magister Patriarch of the Amber Brotherhood.

Source

 * Warhammer Fantasy RPG 2nd ED -- Realms of Sorcery (pg. 119-122)