I need some clarification on the shadow soul activation:

1. When placing the shadow soul on the map via "faithful friend", can I directly activate (i.e. move 1 space) it thereafter, before my regular actions? Or do I first have to perform my hero's further actions and then move it?

Not sure here as the wording of "faithful friend" says "at the beginning of your turn" while the rules for familiars say "activate before your actions".

2. Lets say I start my turn by activating the soul and moving it one space.

Then I perform my first action, "dark servant", performing a search action within 3 spaces of the soul. The shadow soul is taken from the map.

As second action I perform an attack, which does not fail. With "soul bound" and 1 fatigue I place the soul next to the target.

Now, can I activate (move 1 space) the shadow soul again at the end of my turn? It was taken from the map in between and might be considered another familiar (however identical in terms of characteristics)? Initially I thought, no way. But the wording on the skill cards left me wondering - "place a shadow soul", indicating that thematically, there is no single shadow soul...

So I am wondering, should this second placement on the map be considered a "new" shadow soul, and can a hero activate more than one familiar in his turn? The rules on familiars did not clarify this to me sufficiently.

Grateful for any input and clarification!!

1) The hero turn is structured like this. Your shadow soul activates either between steps 2 and 3, or between steps 3 and 4. Therefore, your hero does all of his "start of turn" abilities and equipping of items BEFORE the familiar activates. Likewise, he would do all of his end of turn things AFTER the familiar activates.

2) No familiar (including the shadow soul) can activate twice in a single round unless an ability specifically allows it. For example, the Necromancer has a skill that lets him activate his reanimate as one of his actions. However, it still holds that no matter what, a familiar will activate either before your step 3 or after, but not both. I may be mistaken about this, but I think there might actually be an FFG ruling that you can't activate a summoned stone, summon another during your turn, and activate that one at the end of your turn. That is, the summoned stones activate as a group.

Thank you Zaltyre!

Just started a campaign with the shadow walker class, love it already

Got a follow up question, the wording in my language on the skill card is slightly different than OV:

"shadow puppet", would that allow the hero to use abilities like sorcery? Or is it strictly limited to abilities that require surge(s)?

Thanks again!

"Surge abilities" explicitly means surge abilities- abilities like sorcery, reach, or "automatic" pierce X are ignored. Note- this is the same for the skirmisher's "dual strike".

thanks again dont find that skill too powerful then...well, probably would have been op the other way