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A Guide to Dragon Amber
Dragon amber is named for its visual similarity with amber. Nearly all dragon amber is translucent. The amber forms when stones have undergone a high amount of exposure to dragon flames. This typically occurs within a dragon’s den where the dragon rests their head when sleeping and their breath falls upon the rocks around them. The small amount of flames over the years imbues the rocks with magic. This rarely occurs outside a dragon's den, but dragon amber has been found at locations of great dragon battles where rocks have been stuck over and over by the full force of dragon breath attacks. Dragon amber is often used as a magical conduit, such as wands or talismans. Potent forms are able to generate their own magical properties.
The type of dragon flame the stones were exposed to determine their affinity and colour. Green may denote earth or poison for example. In some rare cases the stones were exposed to multiple types of dragon magic. This results in multi-coloured amber. These are referred to as rainbow dragon amber. Because dragon amber will exhibit magic relating to the type of dragon flame they were exposed to, rainbow dragon amber can produce multiple types of magic and is especially valuable. Typically dragon amber will exhibit offensive magics, such as projectile attacks like fireballs and blasts of frost. Elemental attacks can also take the form of claws and wings. There are some effects which will never be achieved by dragon amber, such as teleportation, transmutation, mind control, curses and hexes, and summoning. Rare effects include illusion, healing and body modification.
The value of dragon amber varies greatly, potent amber can be broken down into many small portions for magic jewellery such as rings and amulets. A potent dragon amber ring may be able to summon a blast of fire or a few fireballs. They can also be grafted to weapons to add elemental effects. Less potent forms need to form large sections of of the weapon to have any effect. For that reason a pebble of highly potent Rainbow Dragon Amber may sell for hundreds of times the amount a large chunk of less potent, single affinity amber.
The method for valuing dragon amber is three fold. First, the clarity of the amber. The clearer the stone, the more magic it has been exposed to. Second is the colour. A single colour is most common an denotes a single affinity. Very, very more than two colours stones have been found and these are worth far more than single affinity ones. The final check is the size. This is the most easiest to judge, but can be the least important.