Editing Diners of Amber (section)

==='''Fantalin, Thelusia'''===

[[File:PT-Fantalin.jpg]]

Ancient Thelusia. Vast and mighty is the second ally of Amber, the second signature on the [[Golden Circle Signatory Treaty]]. Only Rebma sits higher in the Council of Nations overseen by Amber.

Thelusia is like the next-door neighbor you can't get to return your hedge trimmers and who never asks for his snow-shovel back. So many interactions occur between the kingdoms that the cultures are nearly identical. This has cosmological reasons as well as practical ones.

When a stage show goes on the road, its first stop is the Imperial Theater of the Dramatic Arts in Fantalin. While there are universities aplenty in Amber itself, the Imperial University of Thelusia houses the Amber Chair of Sorcerous Arts. This is in Fantalin. The Great Green Shrine of the Unicorn is the most massive temple of the Unicorn in the Golden Circle, dwarfing the Shrine of the Unicorn in Amber. The Athenaeum of Oberon, attached to the Imperial University of Thelusia, contains more original manuscripts from the Golden Circle than any known place. The Museum of Imperial Thelusia is the second greatest Museum in the GC containing more masterpieces than they can display.

Fantalin is the capital of a nation that comprises the entire known surface area of the planet it resides on. Even Amber shares her sphere with Rebma. Fully 1/4 of the military of Amber comes from Thelusia. It is the first major kingdom outside of Amber that is not in some way a Shade of Amber herself. It is big. All of the elder royals were unceremoniously dropped at Fantalin by no less than Oberon, and educated by the School of Royal Rights, Fantalin. Perhaps Random should revive the custom.

I would dearly love to poke fun at stodgy, loyal, ancient, and fanatically pious old Thelusia, and at my alma-mater IUT while I am at it. To tweak the noses of the Deans and professors that so dominate the culture and act as Miss Manners to its superior, Amber.

But I can't.

In Corwin's chronicles Oberon in the guise of Ganelon speaks of his youth in Avalon. It stuck in my memory. I have hoped, even prayed, since I read Corwin's Chronicle myself, that before Oberon slew him those words were originally Ganelon's. That Oberon repeated them to Corwin, at an appropriate moment, as homage to the man Ganelon once was. Corwin swears he repeated the tale intact.

Ganelon says, "Youth, love, beauty-I knew them in Avalon. Proud steeds, bright metal, soft lips, dark ale. Honor."

We should all have such a place. Fantalin, in Thelusia, was mine.

<span style=color:green>Addendum to Fantalin'

<span style=color:green>There is a tavern called Bent Copper's Drop, near the White River in Fantalin. It is a college tavern. I could tell you some stories about that place, believe you me.

<span style=color:green>I would like to write those tales out, but I tear to think of them. Days of youth when you believed in impossible things like truth, justice, loyalty, honor, majesty, duty, and spoke deep pacts against anyone who soiled these things. But in time they were soiled. All of them. Truth is in the eye of the beholder, justice can be bought, betrayal has a market value, honor falters, kings are just men, duty is as much an anchor as a it is wings, and pacts can be negotiated if you know the right wizard.

<span style=color:green>So we grow out of such belief in absolutes and accept that these things exist not as glowing points, but as points on a tape measure. Things with starts and conclusions. Hopefully, things that can be regained. Then in our elder days we come to believe in them again, but this time, with a touch of wisdom, and a sad smile for those in the first bloom of youth, clutching these ideals to their breasts. 

(GM-Notes:I was always bummed I didn't get any PCs interested in higher education.  I had a lot of silly frivolous scenarios set in Fantalin around the school. Young love, feuding rivals, demanding teachers.  Fantalin is not just where young Amberites would be sent to school for book-learning.  All the Golden Circle worlds probably did as well, for centuries. Getting a degree at Fantalin and returning to [[Alagulpa Riesa]], a small but vital Golden Circle shadow on the trade routes out of Diaga, would be like getting a Harvard law degree and returning to practice law in Fiji.  After Patternfall I had planned for young lords of Black Zone worlds and even young Lords of Chaos to attend Fantalin.   

Then at some point I hoped to introduce a person I hoped to have rock the Amber universe by accepting a very public teaching position;Dowager Queen [[Cymnea]].  This person would have the goods on the Elders and the PCs would do well befriending her.  Sadly, it never happened and she remains a recluse.

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===='''''Augmentation to the Original'''''====

<span style=color:lightgreen>Here we come to a tricky part of this missive. The extra part.

<span style=color:darkgreen>What lie below this point were not part of the original trump deck published Jan 1, 5250. Forces that remain obstinate despite my personal suspicions magically added them. As I stated in the introduction of this reprinted version of my article. "Diners of Amber," I believe it is Dworkin mucking around with these cards. But he isn't talking and I am not forcing him too. I am merely putting my cards on the table, as it were.

<span style=color:darkgreen>So if my edge in commenting on these is too dull or too bitter, you know the reason and who to deliver you complaints. As I also said above," Come whisper me your objections."