Feral Shamanism One with Animals - Both The Living and The Dead. |
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There is a lesser known sort of power in the world. It’s the power of being interconnected with the more feral denizens of Telath. People experiencing such power are born naturally to it, for it is not a skill that can be taught or passed on. Those who practice such interconnectedness are called Feral Shamans. The oldest of these, and indeed those wisest to the feral world of tooth and claw will describe themselves as those that bridge the distance between the animal world and that of civilization. But feral shamans are far from civilized. They bond with their animal guides, borrow gifts from them, and become something far more and in many ways far less than human, elven, dwarven or the like. They shed their humanity easily, and as their bonds with their guides grow, they can shed their shapes as well. Often called howling-men, these individuals often are considered leaders to the more barbari races, and insane or unbalanced to those more civilized. Feral shamans have the ability to minister to the matters of the spirit and strive to preserve and strengthen the natural worlds influence on civilization all around them. But do not mistake them. These shamans are not druids, not caretakers of the wild bonding with trees and sky and wind. Instead, they are the harbingers of Snake’s venom, and Deer’s fleetness; indeed more Warriors of the Wild than naught. They tap into resources unknown to most people and use claws, wings, and super sensitive eyesight to chase after their own particular goals… good, bad or indifferent.
A Feral Shaman receives his or her power from their bond with an animal spirit. These spirits teach powers to the Shaman that the shaman masters only through a series of introspective self-discovering steps. The Feral Shaman spirals through these steps while being lead by their animal spirit guides. These individual animal spirits are often called animal guides, though they do not officially become guides until they bond with their Feral Shamans and begin to teach the Shaman their gifts. These guides come in many guises, and provide the shaman with the knowledge he or she needs to grow closer to the wild world.
Animal guides are intriguing things. They primarily come in the form of a wild animal or bird spirit, though more rarely guides have been known to manifest as reptilian in nature. The process of bonding with a guide is a long one. Normally the animal spirit chooses the person, somehow repeatedly appearing in their life or if the affinity is strong enough the animal spirit can have a living representative of its kind mark that person physically in some way. Marks can come in all sorts of forms. Eagles can drop from the sky scoring the bare shoulders of its chosen with razor sharp talons as a man works the fields, bringing in a harvest. Snakes can bite, scoring deep but leaving no poison within the wound as a woman reaches up to pluck a juicy fruit from an overloaded tree. Often such markings present themselves as attacks, even if the animal making its mark isn’t actually attacking. It is often misinterpreted as doing so. These animal guides make appearances all the way through a feral shaman’s life, dropping in and out of their awareness, sometimes invited, sometimes not. They can appear in dreams, as manifestations of their chosen’s personality (a light growl by a wolf bonded shaman in a moment of fear), or physically appear using a willing living member of the species.
After a shaman is marked, slowly the creature who marked the individual will work its way into their psyche. Sometimes they will dream of the animal, or in a stressful situation, an aspect of that animal will manifest itself as the roar of a lion, the vision of a birds-eye-view, or the hissing of a mongoose. Animal guides need not be fierce apex predators, though they often are. Some of the most effective feral shamans might have been marked or bonded to something as simple as a sewer rat, or as exotic as a Medonian curly tailed monkey. Once bonded, these Feral Shamans often fit into the animal kingdom in the same way their guides might. A mouse shaman for example might be stalked by coyotes or dive-bombed by owls in the night. However, often times Feral Shamans have more than one guide, and sometimes those guides can be diametrically opposite, one aspect coming forth or another. Rarely do multiple aspects manifest concurrently… so a Tiger Shaman might not have his fleet Elk Shaman aspect pulled forward the same time Tiger is present. Feral Shamans draw from these aspects as the gifts are needed and as the mood strikes them. Often they have no choice which is forward until they reach higher levels and more control of their gifts.
As already stated, Feral shamans can have more than one animal guide. Generally, as they progress in their training and skill levels, they gain a new guide at each step. All guides, once bonded, are retained. Hence, it’s not unheard of for a Novice feral shaman to be bonded to a mouse, while Journeymen shamans might have a deer, bear, and falcon as their guides. Feral shamans never gain more than one guide per level. Animal guides are always living animals of a non-sentient nature. A feral shaman might be bonded to a horse, for example, but will never be bonded to a unicorn at lower levels. Semi-intelligent creatures, like a gryphon or Pegasus, will rarely be bonded too… and only at higher levels. Grandmaster feral shamans often find themselves bonding to mythic or intelligent creatures like a phoenix or unicorn, though that isn’t necessarily the case. A Grandmaster feral shaman might indeed find himself bonding to a mouse. Everyone is different. No two shamans are the same.
A note of caution here… Animal guides can be aggressive, defensive, and sent by their feral shamans to do dangerous and harmful things to people, places, and things. Other Shamans realize this, or can if they are ever attacked or witness such behavior. In response, they strengthen themselves, learn to use tools to defend themselves, and remain vigilant.
Feral shamans only have one mentor or a set of mentors – their Animal Guides themselves. Animal guides are the only ones that can teach Feral Shamans their craft, and often this teaching comes disguised or through an introspective inner journey, vision, or traumatic event in the Shaman’s life. Feral shamans can’t be taught by other Feral Shamans, through written word, or by self discovery. They must be chosen by an animal, marked or bonded, and then guided into their learning. Only those individuals who open their awareness to the animal spirits that choose them, accept those spirits, and really attune themselves can learn this skill set.
Why do Feral Shaman’s Exist?
Humans, indeed people of all races, have become far too removed from the natural world and its denizens as a whole. Conversely, the natural world and its populations have lost its understanding of civilization. Society cannot exist without nature. So it is said that Carmelya solves this problem by bridging the gap between worlds through the joining of the two. This joining produces Feral Shamans, who indeed act as living bridges. Feral Shamans are neither truly good nor truly evil. They fall somewhere in between. Many lean heavily one way or the other, but by their very nature, they often walk the middle pathway. They are, instead, the guardians and protectors of the animal world. Feral shamans often become advocates of their Animal Guide species, and often make the world safer or easier for the animal guides that choose them. This happens in conservation, education, and in changing that guide’s portrayed species situation in life. A lion shaman might seek to free individual animals that are kept in circuses and private collections in order to return them to the wild. A duck shaman might work night and day to prevent a local farmer from draining a marshland to water his fields. These protective and guardian-like roles manifest in very diverse ways.
The Process of Becoming a Feral Shaman
As stated before, Feral Shamans do not train under anyone. Rather they are chosen by a specific animal guide and often marked. These guides merge with the willing potential shaman in a process called a feral merge, where some of the animal guide’s essence is infused into the living shaman. Once these potential shamans get singled out by an individual guide and marked, then the training begins. Prior to being marked, Feral Shamans are often unaware or ignorant of the species that marked them, meaning a cat lover will not be necessarily marked by a feline type animal guide. They might be suddenly marked by a grass snake or mongoose instead. Normally, but not always, the species is completely unknown to the newly marked feral shaman; going no farther than saying, “Yes, I’ve heard of a beaver though I don’t know anything about them.”
Once marked, however, that all changes. Often the Animal Guide that marked them haunts their dreams. They might start seeing their Animal Guide frequently. This animal will become a reoccurring theme in their lives. Years might pass, in fact, from the time a person is marked until they fully realize their shamanistic potential. Over time, the animal that marks them will manifest itself in many ways. Sometimes, if the bond is very strong, it will be fully known for what it is to the person bonded. As the bonding progresses, traits the animal has such as keen eyesight, sharp claws; a powerful warning growl, will start manifesting in the feral shaman until such a time as the shaman is able to borrow the animal guide’s numerous gifts. This borrowing reaches such a point that the feral shaman will be able to completely shift their shape into that of the animal guide.
As time passes, other abilities will manifest. The feral shaman will find himself having an affinity towards his animal guide, and all the creatures that hold that shape. He or she, say bonded with a rat, will have no trouble communicating with the rats of a city, assuming a rat shape, and living life as a rat. Rats will be incredibly friendly towards a rat shaman and as the shaman gets more powerful, other species similarly related, mice and other rodents, will treat the shaman with reverence as well. A higher level bear shaman would have no issues snuggling up in a den of bears and sleeping soundly among them, regardless of the exact species. That being said, a rat shaman might have an incredibly hard time being around a predator animal that routinely feasts on rats… say a cat or snake unless they have another guide to balance this tendency out. Otherwise tame snakes might strike and turn predatory in the presence of the rat shaman without any warning, due to the nature of their relationship. Conversely, a wolf shaman might have a terrible time finding a horse willing to bear them as a rider, and might have to invest the time to work with a mount until it accepts them. Animals sense animal shamans more acutely than other people ever could.
Feral Shamans will always be able to eventually speak with the animal’s voice, both communicating completely and in an unconfused manner with the creatures that hold the same shape as their animal guides. As they progress, they go from being able to communicate with specific species to the entire family of species that resemble or are related to that shaman. A beluga whale shaman will start out able to only communicate with beluga whales, but by the time he’s progressed to level 3, he will be able to hold conversations with all species of whales. And above that, feral shamans are able to access the astral plane, moving from one place to another in spirit form using their borrowed animal shape. Along with shape shifting, advanced feral shamans can travel long distances in the astral and borrow the bodies of willing animals of their guide outside their immediate area. They may even use them to perform complex tasks. For example, an owl shaman in Prime province can travel the astral, find a willing owl in Arakmat and merge with that owl by coming out of the astral within its body for a few hours to scout an army amassing on the edge of the desert. Traveling shamans that leave the astral cannot survive unless they merge with a host in the real world or return to their bodies. While gone, the feral shaman’s body will lie prone as if in a comma, leaving them very vulnerable. To really perfect this skill of Feral Merge, these Shamans must practice practice and practice. If their bodies die, they must either stay within their merged forms or they will become lost in the astral forever. Any knowledge gained from astral traveling or merging is retained and clearly remembered upon their return.
Feral shamans can assume half-forms; a hybridization between their animal form, and their original shape. Along with the shape shifting and astral travel, feral shamans can commune with animals on a very intimate level, learning information from them, and even at higher levels controlling or summoning them.
Fetishes - Tools of the Trade
While Feral Shamans require very little in the way of tools, they often do have sacred items they refer to as fetishes which help them focus at lower levels. Fetishes are always hand-made by the Feral Shaman’s own hand or gifted by a like-minded person with a strong animal affinity themselves. Fetishes can be made in any shape at any stage of a feral shaman’s life and training. And, much like an Adjurator uses their tools against the spirits of the dead, feral shamans can use their tools highly effectively against the spirits of animals. It is not unheard of for feral shamans to cleanse areas of animal spirits, or communicate directly with them using tools, and sending them to rest. In fact, feral shamanism can often parallel Adjuration on an animal level rather than sentient spirit form. Feral shamans, if they can find training, often adapt Adjuration rituals and techniques in their dealings with animal spirits. Tools play an important role in that process, though each feral shaman tends to use their tools in a unique way. Often these hand-made tools or fetishes consist of the following:
Weapons - A weapon made from the bone of an individual of the same species as the Animal Guide is a necessity. Often made from a large thighbone for a club, a piece of jaw for a hatchet, and antler for knife; this item is enriched, infused and created while in trance. This transforms it into an item as strong if not stronger than its metal counterpart.
Bowls - A bowl is used to hold water and blood that has the individual animal guide species carved or painted upon it. These bowls act as a focus for the feral shaman to more easily enter the astral or locate an individual of their animal guide’s species to ‘borrow form’.
Icon - An icon is a piece of jewelry or whole set of jewelry formed in the shape or depicting the animal guide. These icons can be anything from arm bands, torques, earrings, or rings showing the shape of the animal. Icons serve two purposes. They first and foremost honor the feral shaman’s animal guide. Secondly, they serve as a focus to more easily use their feral voices to communicate with their animal guides and the living representations of such guides.
Staves - A staff carved with images of their animal guides is often used as an anchor to hold spiritual tethers so that feral shamans wandering far and wide can always find their way home. Staves can be made of bone, wood, or any other substance that’s logical to the feral shaman’s location.
Blood - Animal blood is often the key to making any sort of connection to the animal whose blood is used. Often feral shamans will take paint made from animal blood to decorate their fetishes, weapons, and icons. They will paint blood upon themselves when they need to cut corners or take away half the time it takes to, say, astral travel or go into a trance to create fetishes. Blood is acquired in many different ways, though normally it is donated from the feral shaman’s representational animal.
Fire - Fire is a very cleansing medium for feral shamans. Often it can help them trance, and can indeed destroy the remains of real animals that might be lingering in animal form awaiting their revenge.
Salt – Used much like fire, salt is used to cleanse space and set traps to get these spirits of animals freed from their after-death fetters. Salt can form enclosed circles, or be buried with the remains of a spirit animal guide. It is somewhat unlimited in its applications, though it’s often used similarly to a way an Adjurator would use it against the spirit world, closing off the feral shaman against hostile or antagonistic animal spirits.
Other fetishes are often used as well. Sometimes a bard who’s also a feral shaman might have a drum decorated with the image of their animal. Dancers might use dance costumes made from the fur or hide of their animal guide species. Storytellers might have masks made into the shape of their animal guides… all this is quite common and the examples are too numerous to list. Feral shamans are creative people and often find new types of fetishes all the time.
The Complete Skill Tree of a Feral Shaman
While levels 1 and 2 of feral shamanism are rigid and wholly fixed in how feral shamans learn, at level 3 through 5, their skills broadened drastically and go many different ways. The more creative a feral shaman, the more powerful they become. Feral shamans can not only shape shift, but they can heal themselves, and animals that hold the same form as the feral shaman’s animal guide. They can astral travel, borrow gifts from their animal guides, and defend their representative species in numerous ways.
Often the starting level of a feral shaman’s journey is the hardest to adapt to. Feral shamans might question their sanity at first, feeling confusion over being marked, and eventually over the merge itself. This can be a traumatic event in the feral shaman’s life, and may take a long time for the individual to adjust to. Hence, this is often why animal guides mark feral shamans early on, well before merging, to ‘accustom’ the feral shaman of that animal guides role in their life. At this level, a feral shaman will have only a single animal guide.
Feral Mark - Often, but not always, a beginning feral shaman is marked by an animal. This mark (usually a scar, bite, animal attack) is considered a gift and will identify that shaman for the whole of his life with the animal who chose him or her.
Feral Merge – This is a complete bonding with the animal guide. This bonding takes place only after the feral shaman potential has come to terms with the animal that has chosen them and wholly accepts it into their life. Merges come in various forms and sometimes can be instantaneous or a slow process. Once ‘merged’ a feral shaman cannot ‘unmerge’. The process is permanent. They can, however, reject the merge and choose not to become a shaman.
Feral Voice – Once properly merged, feral shamans will find they can communicate on a somewhat limited basis to their animal guide forms. As they progress in level, this communication gets stronger. At lower levels, Feral Shamans often only experience teaching or conversational dreams. This communication can happen to living animals, animal guides, or the spirits of animals. They see gradual symbolism, though starting at the next level, a shaman can often make themselves understood to the animal types its feral guide takes. At the third level or higher, the shamans can have whole conversations with these animals… understand them clearly, and be understood by them instantaneously.
Feral Affinity – This is where the feral shaman discovers that if they are bonded with, say, a jaguar, and they encounter a jaguar in the wild that’s starving, the jaguar will nevertheless allow them to be overlooked as the next meal. At this level, animals start to really tolerate the shaman’s presence in their environments. They might not act friendly, but they definitely aren’t hostile.
Feral Walk – This is the ability of new Feral Shamans to enter the astral and walk there within their animal guide’s shape. This is a taxing process at this level, and feral shamans should not to be discouraged over the meditation and contemplation such abilities take as it does get easier with time and practice. It can take a feral shaman upwards of a half candlemark to enter the astral. Often Feral walking at this stage requires the use of a water or blood-filled bowl, body paint, trancing, chanting, or the playing of rhythmic music. While feral walking, feral shamans are vulnerable to attacks by animal spirits, and their physical form remains prone and unresponsive. Often this form, at higher levels, allows a shaman to shift shape within the astral for ease of travel.
Feral Senses – At this stage, while the feral shaman cannot ‘borrow’ gifts from their animal guide, they can borrow senses. Senses would include sight, sound, sense of smell, and the odd skill like echolocation or biosonar. At higher levels, feral gift allows a feral shaman to borrow say the claws of a tiger by growing large claws.
Feral Communion (Animal Guide) - With this technique, a feral shaman through the use of song, dance, chanting, trance, or meditation can ‘commune’ with an animal that holds the same shape as his or her animal guide. This communion means they can ‘remember’ what the animal saw, felt, or heard; often feeling like they are taking the shape of the animal and walking around in its skin, though no actual shape shifting occurs. The duration varies depending upon the intensity of the experience, though often it takes a quarter to half candlemark to truly work into communion at this level. Higher level shamans can instantaneously commune. Often the feral shaman can gain information about the area, such as who’s passed through or what’s died there recently. As the feral shaman’s training evolves, this skill grows rapidly in its usefulness and expansiveness.
At this level, all Novice skills get easier, their voices get stronger, and their affinity more deeply bonded. Feral shamans also gain new skills involving the acquisition of gifts and the changing of their shape. Along with their Novice animal guide, feral shamans will always acquire a second animal guide that will present itself immediately, normally skipping the process of marking and simply moving onto the feral merge. Secondary acquisitions always come swiftly and are less traumatic and less life-changing than first merges. The animal guides themselves are not less powerful, it’s simply that the feral shaman has grown accustomed to the secondary presence within their psyche and finds the second instance less obtrusive.
Feral Gift – The feral shaman may learn how to borrow bits and pieces of their animal guide’s form in order to use them as ‘gifts’. A leopard shaman might be able to transform his fingernails into claws by painting them with bloodpaint and focusing his energy on visualizing claws on the ends of his fingers rather than blunt tips. Feral gifts come promptly with the preparation and focus for five minutes. Feral shamans with one rank in meditation gain instantaneous feral gifts. Conversely, an Eagle shaman might be able to borrow his animal guide’s incredibly sharp sight to scout a mountainside by drumming or perhaps holding and rubbing an ‘eagle eye’ icon. Feral gifts manifest in numerous ways. A cheetah shaman might be able to pour on the speed, running as fast as a cheetah for a few short minutes in order to escape peril. They might do so by shaking a cheetah hide rattle or focusing on spots they’ve painted across their bare shoulders just before starting to sprint.
Feral Communion (Related Species) – This skill at this level allows a feral shaman to commune with a whole group of related animals close to their animal guide. This communion happens through trance, dance, song, or meditation and can last for hours, serving to strengthen the bonds between shaman and guide. Once tranced, they can locate the members of a related species in the immediate area and identify their numbers, health, and an overall ‘feeling’ of how the animals are doing. This works with both living animals and animal spirits.
Feral Shape – At this level, feral shamans can transform their bodies into that of their animal spirits. Size makes no difference. A chipmunk shaman transforms into a normal sized chipmunk. Conversely if an Elephant Shaman transformed into an elephant, they do not stay small but transform into a normal sized elephant. These transformations are taught by the animal spirit themselves, and no two teachings are exactly alike. Transformation time varies from shaman to shaman, but no shaman can instantaneously transform until the next level. Often these transformations are painful, visually noticeable (the body contorts and actually shifts shape), and leaves the shaman stunned for the duration of the transformation which may take upwards of a half candlemark or as little as a few heartbeats. Feral shape practice can speed up this process considerably. The more experience the Feral Shaman has with shapeshifting, the faster and less stunning it can be to the shaman’s system.
Feral Essence – When in the Astral, this gift allows a feral shaman to send their awareness, their essence if you will, off to a far off place and into a related same-form Animal Guide representative. The awareness then borrows the consciousness of the individual animal, seeing what they see and trying to ascertain what they know. This is a great ability for scouting the location of troop movements, enemy camps, or finding people imprisoned, captured, and lost.
When a Feral Shaman reaches this level, they gain yet one more animal guide and a whole cohort of. Their shape shifting gets faster, their disappearances more common, and their ability to feral speak comes without effort. Also, at this level affinity for their animal guide’s representative species broadens out to include whole families of species. Thus an alicat shaman might get along with all cats from a palm kitten to a Medonian mimic. Also, at this level, feral shamans gain a hybrid form that manifests as a cross between their original species and their animal species. Feral Shamans, from this point onward, often develop their own host of skills above and beyond the list. They can focus on animal spirits and act wholly on the living animals. Often Feral Shamans that focus on animal spirits and the spirit world can develop almost adjuration like skills, though their work only effects and deals with animal spirits, not the spirits of sentient creatures.
Feral Communion (Environment) - With this level of Feral Communion, a Feral Shaman can trance (either through dance, song, meditation etc) and become aware of the whole environment around them. It’s as if the world around them speaks to them and they can be made intimately aware of the dangers, poisons, risks, and overall health of the land within their immediate area. Often information can be gained from those animal spirits lingering as well as living animals. Because shamans are communing with their environment rather than their animal, this process always takes at least a candlemark, sometimes more depending upon the area of land they are trying to ‘commune’ with.
Feral Call – A feral shaman, at this level, can send out a call summoning any animals that might be in the area that are either the same form of their animal guide, or of a similar shape. Animals hearing this call with almost always answer and render aid as needed. This works with both living animals and animal spirits. The call is a silent plea along the spiritual links formed through the bonds with the feral shaman’s animal guides. Animals are not compelled to answer, but usually might feel inclined to come aid the shaman under usual circumstances. The more desperate the call, the more animals and spirits are likely to respond and the faster they are likely to come. Once in a while, rarely, if a shaman calls desperately enough, a dire or an extreme form of an animal will respond - but the shaman must be great need indeed.
Feral Hybrid – At this level, the shape shifter has progress to the point where they can stop their transformation halfway between one form and another. This hybrid form is normally massive, incredibly strong, and perfect for combat. Often feral shaman’s take this form when being protective or under extreme emotional duress. This is purely a true warrior shape and one in which each extreme is exaggerated and accented.
Feral Sharing - This is the act where a feral shaman can grant one of their animal guide gifts to another non-feral shaman through the use of body paint, tattooing, or other sorts of fetishes. These gifts are temporary and determined by the will of the feral shaman doing the sharing. For example… a tattoo of a cats paw might grant the bearer of it added grace to walk a rooftop or leap soundlessly. Tattoos and other markings need to be renewed regularly. When gifts are used repeatedly, the ink/paint/marking will fade until it’s no longer present on the person. Only one gift can be shared at a time, and normally there are ten uses allowed. At this level, small gifts can be given such as senses… or perhaps claws. At higher level, more body altering gifts can be shared.. such as usable wings at Master or perhaps deadly venomous bites at Grandmaster.
Feral Borrowing - This skill allows a feral shaman to use ‘feral essence’ and travel to another form far away. At this level however, the Shaman can borrow the form completely taking over the body of a willing host (because of Feral affinity, most members of the animal guides species would allow this), and take control of it. Using this gift, Feral shamans have used rodents to chew through prisoner’s ropes, have left messages with animals that have opposable thumbs and can write if borrowed (monkeys are popular for this, but small weasels also seem to work well), or simply to review distant somewhat dangerous situations safely in a form that no one would suspect of being an enemy spy. This is an extremely time-consuming and taxing gift. It often leaves the shaman exhausted for days after its use, and vulnerable for hours and hours during and immediately after its execution.
Upon training within level four, a feral shaman should have four animal guides and the ability to shift into all of them, including their hybrid forms. At this rate, the feral shaman feels like each and every one of his or her animal guides are part of him or her. Indeed, those forms are so melded to them, that there are characteristics evident right away to someone not used to being around the person. This means the person might have sharp hawk-like eyes, a long flowing mane of hair like a lion… or perhaps move with the grace of an elk (and possibly sport antlers like one). At this stage feral shamans are not exactly socially blended, but rather they might appear awkward in public situations or nervous in big cities (unless they have mice or rat guides). Their second to last and possibly most intriguing animal guide bonds with them at this level, and they seem to gain a whole host of skills that make them wholly fierce.
Feral Healing - At this level, through the use of their keen animal senses, Feral Shamans can look at someone who’s truly sick… either with a disease or an injury and diagnose the problem. Often when it comes to themselves, they can shift forms and heal, having mastered the perfect way to arrange their original form, rearrange it, and set it back to normal. A perfect example would be a person with cancer shifting to an animal form, then shifting back aware of the cancer and not reforming it when they reform their body.
Feral Shaping – At this level, the shifting is so absolutely perfect and controlled that a feral shaman can shift their form subtly, changing their looks however they feel like… from something minor like a change in hair color, to something major like gifting themselves with a fully functional set of wings. For granting themselves gifts like wings, they do not need an animal guide that’s a bird. They can figure out how wings work and their functionality by Feral Communion with a bird species they admire. These gifts are powerful and almost always instantaneous after the initial attempt is mastered.
Feral Summoning – This is the advanced form of Feral Calling. Rather than summon individuals, the Feral Shaman can summon every type of animal of a specific kind (their animal guide’s type or related species) to them, rallying the forces and using these animals to fight or help as need be. In this case, rather than an individual wolf, an entire pack (or two or three) might answer the feral shaman’s summons. If the animals are far away, it will take them a realistic amount of time to reach the destination, but they will come. A feral summoning only need be made once per brightening. Once it has gone out, the feral shaman can be silent and still count on help arriving. This works for both living animals and animal spirits.
Feral Granting – Like Feral sharing, this skill allows a Feral Shaman to transform someone else into an animal shape (either by choice or forcefully... meaning the person does not have to be willing) with a single touch. The animal shape must be one the feral shaman is intimately familiar with. The person cannot then shift out of that shape unless released by another feral shaman with feral granting. On rare occasions a druid might be able to help a forcefully feral granted person transform back.
Feral Ancestry - At this level, the feral shaman can tap into the ancestry of their animal guides, which often involve dire sized animals, and assume these forms as if these animals were still currently living. What this means is these feral shamans would have enormous size, enormous power, and be able to fully function as these ancestral forms. A wolf shaman would suddenly have the ability to take on a dire wolf form… this works both ways though. If the ancestry of an animal guide was a smaller more unique version, the feral shaman might have access to this as well.
At this level, feral shamans are one with their animal guides and the environment the animal guides are native too. They have an intimate knowledge of their four guides, the related species. At this level, their final animal guide is normally one of enormous intelligence and sentience. A phoenix might bond with a bird shaman, or a unicorn might bond with a feral shaman that’s pure of heart. Such bonds bring feral shamans to a whole new level of awareness giving them almost complete mastery (and ability to control) the environment of the animal guide they are bonded too.
Feral History - Feral shamans at this level can touch the remains of dead animals and gain glimpses of that animals life, things they experienced and perhaps learn about their death. A feral shaman, for example, coming upon the corpse of a dog in an alley could touch that dog and see what the dog saw throughout his life and what killed him. A feral shaman in an age old elephant graveyard can pick up a bone, know that elephant intimately, and perhaps even contact his spirit to gain information on the world during that animal’s time. Kings buried with their warhorses suddenly give feral shamans access to what the warhorse saw during its life with the king (if they could get into his grave to invoke the history). Often this skill takes hours or days or years of combing through bones, spirits, etc to get the right animal at the right time to get the information a feral shaman might need.
Feral Cure - This skill takes feral healing to a new level, as a feral shaman of level 5 can shape and shift a different individual (not themselves) to rid them of disease or injury, cure lameness, replace limbs, etc.
Feral Infusion - At this level, a feral shaman can infuse an animal with the shape of a sentient creature (human, elf, dwarf, etc) that reflects the feral shaman’s own race. This grants the animal the sentience of the creature they are transformed into. Often that animal retains some features of their original form (cat eyes etc). Also, ages must be equivalent, meaning a kitten would be transformed into an infant. These transformations will often involve a basic transfer of skills gained from the feral shaman, meaning the transformation causes basic languages to convert, perhaps some reading/writing skill, or perhaps one or two basic skills such as drawing, dagger, etc. This skill set has to match the skill set of the Grandmaster shaman that transforms them. Often feral shamans create whole communities, in isolated pockets, that give them ‘company’ when the outside world might completely reject them.
Feral Slide - At this level, a feral shaman can feral walk with his consciousness, and wherever he or she ‘walks’ too they can then manifest their full form in that location after their essence and awareness arrive. This gift resembles teleportation and gating, though the process is mental and carried out via traversing the astral plane in one’s physical form rather than using arcana. This travel is normally instantaneous and resembles a shaman ‘stepping sideways’ from one reality to another. It is said they can go back and forth through time as well, though such rumors have yet to be confirmed or denied since Grandmaster feral shamans are so incredibly rare.
GM Note: Feral Shamanism should not be given out as a basic skill as part of a starting package. This skill set is highly interpretive and relies on very creative individual roleplay. Thus, it’s really not appropriate for starting packages and thus is not allowed to be granted as part of one because it robs a player of developing a feral shaman style and having the surprise of self-discovery.
Only mammals, birds, reptiles and amphibians can be chosen as animal guides. |
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