One of the most beat-up books I own is a hardcover of the First Chronicles of Amber. I've read it probably more than any other book I own, despite the fact that I don't really like them all that much. You see, I like the setting. I don't like the characters and don't find Zelazny a particularly great writer....but he came up with a fantastic setting.
I game Amber Diceless all the time, attending at least one Ambercon a year and playing with local friends. So, this book is one of my most used gaming books. I find I refer to it for information more than the actual Roleplaying Books.
Starting Amber-in-Exile, I'm starting the second Amber game I've run set where the first book and most of the second book is canon, so I'm re-reading the books and I found this:
Corwin writes in chapter six of Nine Princes that there are three ways to travel in shadow, as far as he knew, that only the children of Amber could do.
The first is shifting of shadow or walking. He says nothing of this power coming from the Pattern, but actually says this power comes from the blood.
The second is use of the cards, created by Dworkin.
The third was the Pattern, also created by Dworkin for the family and according to him and it initiated the walker into, according to Corwin, "the system of the cards" and at its end could give the user the abililty to "stride across shadows."
Now, some could argue that this means that someone needs to have walked the Pattern to "stride across shadows," to shadow walk...which is what Wujick says in the rulebook, but unless there is another passage that says one has to initiate to the Pattern to walk shadow, I read this as saying that ending it, you can teleport across shadow but to simply walk, you need only be a child of Amber. I also read it this way: To create trumps and use them with any degree of skill, you have to walked the Pattern, since it initiates you in to the system of cards.
So, I begin to think that Wujick got it wrong. Does anyone who knows the novels better than me, know of a passage in the first series that infers that one need to walk the Pattern to be able to shadowshift?
All went well. Well, it went well from a story viewpoint, but no so well for the protagonists.
One of the great joys of Amber is that players have the greatest power I know to affect the plot. In a D&D game, the players can't change the very nature of the dungeon so they don't have to fight past the Gelatinous Cube, but in Amber players can choose to go to a shadow dungeon where there are no Gelatinous Cubes....or they could go to the shadow dungeon where there was nothing but Gelatinous Cubes, if they wanted.
With that in mind, I designed a scenario to be completely flexible. To start the game, two of the elders had their plan. Bleys and Corwin were making plans to make another attempt on Amber, this time with a new secret weapon that Eric would never see coming: a giant trump gate to Amber carved in to the side of a mountain which the players nick-named "Mt. Trumpmore." (As I pointed out to the players, Bleys likes to do things BIG.) Bleys and Corwin would march the men and women of Icon to their "final battle in heaven," armed with weapons of Marl (The Guns of Marl?) that would work on Amber.
The PCs were, of course, most interested in learning the PCs plans and snooped around to find out what their parents or uncles were up to. Eventually, brought in to the plan and given their roles in the attack by Bleys, the kids were ready to fight to put one of the guys on the throne. (Suprisingly, they never asked which one of them would be king.)
Some characters talked to Eric and learned that Eric was willing to accept them in Amber, if they were willing to sell out their parents. Like true Amberites, the PCs decided to find out more.
One PC, Lewis, son-of-Llewella, discovered a new pattern, not in Amber and walked it reverting back to the time they had last walked the pattern, unknown to them. They reverted to fetuses. Llewella later explained to her fetus sons that they should have let her know before they walked the pattern. Ah well.... Now to find a way to turn them back.
The game ended after the PCs learned that Mt. Trumpmore, in Icon, had been blown up and Bleys and Corwin ("The Pinky and the Brain of Amber.") were now missing, unreachable by Trump.
"What are we going to do today, Bleys?"
"The same thing we do every day, Corwin. Try to take over Amber!"
So, since it is very important in Amber to know who has a trump of who, I've come up with a plan. To start the game, I'm giving each player index cards with the name of each person or place they have a trump of with the name of the trumps subject and who created the trump. (This will be important because we have several trump artists in the game and there will be times I will need to know who created the particular trump being used.) At the end of each session, I will collect up the trumps people have and rubber band them together with their name on the top card to represent they are the one currently holding that set.
Llewella settled on the shadow-world of Proteus. The world was discovered by the survivors of a great space battle, Proteus is one of the universe's greatest mysteries....and sadly for the locals, it is a mystery they have not been able to share, for they have never been able to leave the planet or communicate with the galactic empire they came from.
"Ensign O'Dell! Status report!"
The Ensign looked up from tactical and swung around in her chair to face the Commodore. "Sir, the shields generators were destroyed by that last hit and there is another wave of raiders coming in!"
The GSF Yamato was one of the largest and most impressive ships in the Galactic Fleet's Space Fleet, but Commodore Cain heard the great ship groaning under the strain of the damage. He looked at his tactical viewer and could see that the remaining ships of the fleet were in similiar shape.
"Lt. Inara, send word to the fleet to prepare for space jump. We will retreat to Mars for repairs. Inform the Battloids that they need to the landing bays." The "Old Man" turned to the navigator, "We'll be jumping in 2 minutes, Mr. Burton. You'll need to work fast."
The Yamato groaned as it was hit by another volley of Bynari missiles. Explosions could be heard on the starboard side of the Battleship and the view-screen flared up as one of the enemy attack ships exploded in a blinding light. "I thought the starboard cannons were off-line!? What took out that Raider!?"
Cain looked down at the Tactical display to see Captain Corva's Battloid flying around in the midst of a formation of Bynari Raiders. 'What the hell is he doing? I gave the order to return!"
"He's buying us time, sir."
The Yamato leaped, but just as they leaped, an attack by one of the attacking ships rocked the ship, throwing off its navigational system. Instead of Mars, they found themself looking at an unknown, impossible world. It was a world so large that it seemed flat and went on as far as the sensors could detect. As if that were not strange enough, there was no sun, but instead the world itself, seemed to give off heat and light. Unable to escape the gravity of the world, the Yamato crashed. That was 2,000 years ago.
The survivors of the Yamato found a world covered in a strange liquid. As far as their scientists could tell, the liquid was water and noone had any ill-effects from drinking it, but it glowed.
The world, which they named Proteus, had been occupied before and the survivors found abandoned cities that floated above the great ocean of Proteus. On the underside of the Proteus cities, great hanging plants that appeared to be something like a sea-weed were harvested for food and the great cities had the water flow through it, providing light, heat and power to the cities, although the residents could never figure out how this worked and some of the early attempts to understand the technology led to disaster as whole cities sunk beneath the waves of Proteus.
The human-piloted robots of the Galactic Space Fleet, the Battloids, were used in the early days to explore the under-waves, but something strange started to happen to the Battloids. As the waters of Proteus started working its way in to the Battloids insides, the insides of the Battloids began to change as if the waters themselves were changing them. 2,000 years later, it is now impossible for the techs of Proteus to repair or rework the Battloids and without materials to build new ones, the people of Proteus keep the Battloids stored away, in case their enemies ever find them.
Life for the Proteans is comfortable and easy. Food is plentiful and much of what they need is supplied by the cities or the sea. They managed to adapt some of the products of their previous world to life in the cities and Proteus now has a television network and several other comforts of the old worlds. Travel from city to city is mainly done by use of another thing left by the world's previous occupants, flying skiffs that seems to pull energy from the waves somehow.
It is on this world, that Llewella settled. She lives in the capital city of Corva and noone in the city bothers her or her family or questions what job they perform for the city. This gives her plenty of time to pursue other interests in shadow. What is Llewella doing in shadow? Only she knows.