Editing Diners of Amber (section)

===<div class="center" style="width: auto; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;">'''The Newsstand.'''</div>===
<div class="center" style="width: auto; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;">[[File:Newstand.jpg]][[File:PT-Newsstand.jpg]]<div>


If anyplace needs, thrives, or dies on accurate news, its Amber.

The first of the Antheris Deck is Big Jim's Newsstand.  This is on the corner of 5th and Bandolier in the city of Nenton, Antheris and anchors the <big>[[Rendoltin Plaza]]</big>, an Anorusa model [[arcology]].  This near-Amber shadow has a great deal of casual travel among the Golden Circle kingdoms.  Nenton is a trade route hub and distribution center.   Most tech works here as does most magics.  The standard of living is early space travel despite the availability of better due to the orbiting Amber Star Fleet bases.

So why put a Newsstand in a world moderately addicted to computers? Because this trade hub of Amber is a hub of information as well.  Information from Chaos to Amber.

And Big Jim Torrio collects it all.   Big Jim is hilarious.  He is fat, and athletic.  Cynical and idealistic. Wise and foolish.  He seems to know everything about everything, and since he is rarely wrong it isn't boasting.   He carries copies of the same magazines from dozens of different shadow.  He collects everything he sells.  He collects.  He has a rabid passion for baseball cards and he personally has been responsible for the development of the game in numerous shadows.  He collects Comic books, which are sort of like fireside tales in colorful pictures and cheesy language.  He owns millions.  He collects fiction novels and has one of the best collections I have seen.  

Remember what I called Fiction novels?  [[Travel Guides]], thats right. 

If you need info, he might know something.  "Big Jim might know something" should be the first line of any investigation. 

SO who is he?  Well obviously he is a wizard.  He holds a Shade Pattern imprint and a Broken Pattern imprint.   This makes him an Amberite of one of the lesser realms that somehow broke out of the locked systems that such shades rule.  I have shared many a burger with Jim and he refuses to talk about it.  I am sure something bad happened. Something he either escaped or started.  Since I know he will read this he knows I am looking into it. Casually, of course.

<span style=color:darkgreen>Addendum

<span style=color:darkgreen>This place has a vast collection of periodicals despite the rise of different types of more accessed media. If you must you can link in your tech devices for a small fee. When asked why paper instead of data feeds he says paper, like knives, work almost anywhere.  True indeed. 

<span style=color:darkgreen>Among this plethora of magazines are a series of comics called graphic novels. They are a step between comic books and novels designed for people who can read but like the pretty pictures better. The availability of certain titles in the serialized works is spotty at best. Just as well. Among them I recently found a title called “The Red Prince.” Disturbingly they turned out to be a comic based on my own recent adventures. Now I know the whole deal about fiction/travel guides. And I know that many of our adventures find their way into fiction works in shadow. But I am not comfortable to have them available to the collectors at some place you can get to by trump.

<span style=color:darkgreen>Is there no privacy? 

<span style=color:MediumSeaGreen>Newish Information-Recently I happened to wander through some [[Shade Realms]] on an unremarkable mission. One in particular had little to recommend it since it seemed to be a shadow of Amber where an early war went badly wrong. The remains of the Castle were overgrown and lived in by bucolic residents herding sheep and goats and such.  Upon examination the disaster must have taken place at a time when the city surrounding the castle had not spread into the [[North Riding]].  When [[Ober]] and [[Yaj]] were little more then fishing villages.  Rebma was in ruins far worse then Amber and was totally uninhabited except by the normal denizens of the sea.  The Mer race that inhabits our Rebma was long gone here. 

<span style=color:MediumSeaGreen>Traveling around that level of Shade I found no [[shadowtugs]] for the sea lanes or shadow trails that we younger elders put down in our own youth. This tells me that whatever happened occurred before Eric was born and the rest of us probably didn't ever show up in that shadow.

<span style=color:MediumSeaGreen>Speaking to the natives they had ancient fireside tales that spoke of Great Obiryon and his four sons, Olo, Flint, Bela, and Birtik.  The details of the story were fanciful as such stories get after centuries.  Yet it suited its people to provide morals, fables, and a frame of history for a people who need few details and little education. What caught my attention and pushed me to examine the place further was that Olo was also called Yimtoryo.  His description met Jim Torrio to a tee.  

<span style=color:MediumSeaGreen>So I asked Jim.  He nodded and said, "We all have our regrets, do we not, Prince of Amber?"

<span style=color:MediumSeaGreen>Yes we do, sir.

<span style=color:Green> By the way, my niece Elyane lives in a garret near the Newsstand.  Her building is part of the Rendoltin Plaza [[Arcology]].

<span style=color:darkred>((GM-Notes:This was intended to be a big campaign.  A Middle-power campaign.  Something tough enough to be dangerous to tough cousins and players familiar with the universes history and my GM style.  The idea starts with much of what Bleys found.  A Shade Realm with a bad history.  My thought was one that failed before the actual creation of the Kingdom of Amber.  So that the power struggle may not have been dynastic, perhaps not even personal.  Just something that happened because all things are possible.  It occurred before Eric was born, before everyone else was.  Its something that happened when shadows of Oberon, Osric, Finndo, Benedict, Borlak and Clymnea was all that existed of the family of Ambir.  It was going to depend on what the PCs in the game turned out to be and how to get them all involved in a campaign together, what the goals and rewards would be.  Was it personal disaster between the family members?  Was it something that happened at the time of Finndo's time as King of Amber, thus effecting this shade realm?  What lesson on cosmology was needed? Where there chunks of power around?  The primal pattern of this realm is intact still. Perhaps the PCs would want the pattern itself for construct use, and things could move from there.  It would have a variety of shadows of people they would know like Bendict, Osric, Finndo, Borlak, Clymnea, Margot, and others from the dawn of time.  Legendary chaosians, Calmirians, who knows.  Pity it never happened. Anyway... make of it what you will.)