>Hey all, still kind of new to the whole WM thing. Was wondering if I get two rat talismans will they be both the same color? or is there a chance one could be diffrent?

They will both be the same color.

Your piglet and squirrel will be the same color as your rat. Possibly your lynx and bear, as well.

Somewhere in your character is a bit that defines the color set of familiars you produce. There are consistent sets of colors within each tier of familiar. I think, but have not be able to positively confirm through data collection, that your personal 'color palette' is defined once and extends across tiers. Further, certain familiars (lizards, bats, owls) have expanded colors that don't seem to have as much duplication, suggesting that one person's 'tan' is actually 'tan-set-one' and another mage may have 'tan-set-two' with all identical familiars except those with expanded descriptions.

Further complicating this is that an internal change somewhere changed the color of expanded-color familiars without seeming to have effected limited-color familiars, so it may be that owl-types and rat-types do not reference the same bit.

I have incomplete data from some 25 mages, some of which I'm not sure of the veracity. And a fair number of mages have altered familiars either because, well they got an awesome fam alteration OR they had their fam re-set to a previous color after the aforementioned color-changed bug. (I reverted my lizard, but left my much-improved owl as-is).

This is probably more than you wanted to know.

>It's a little disappointing when you reach level 50 and realize the majestic leopard you always wanted is stuck being "scruffy" (well until you can come across a fam alterer, which I will be on the lookout for at Guild Fest).

There was a system being talked about, before the GM population fell off a bit, of allow WMs to carve talismans for other WMs. You'd still have a particular set of familiars, but if you have a "scruffy" bear and you really want a "brown" one, you could buy a brown-bear talisman from a mage who naturally summons one. Sounded kind of cool.

It would also be neat to be able to decide on your own familiar, but there's a (maybe stupid) bit of magic in not knowing what's going to show up when you freshly bond a talisman and 'summon fam.' My lizard originally red-bellied lizard became hideous when the expanded colors hit. I grew to love that vomit-colored thing so much that when the glitch happened and it became, frankly, gorgeous, I had it changed back to barf.