Editing Diners of Amber (section)

==='''St. Masvir of Arkens Links'''===

[[File:AT-Masvir.jpg]]

Well, of course the deck would include a golf course. You think we are savages just running around banging on each other with blunt objects?

Now anyone that takes it upon themselves to give you golf advice is violating one of the primal rules of the universe. Don't talk about anything you don't know anything about. Sam Sneed once said all you need to know about golf is to take the stick, hit the ball, make it go in the hole. I spent a lot of time once in a shadow that golf is very popular in and I can attest to that statement. It is possibly one of the dumbest games ever tossed out by pure chance and, as Mark Twain said, is one of the best ways to interrupt a perfectly nice walk. I shoot 10 under par myself.

Frankly I didn't know Random liked golf but I asked him about it before I dropped in on this place. Turns out he is a fanatic about it. Who knew? Of the many things I thought I might do with my brothers over the years this was low on the list.  I doubt it would have actually made the list, we being a bloodthirsty people. 

Then after this card arrived and I asked him about golf it all snowballed. There was a surprising amount of excitement about a new card in this increasingly long collection. Soon I found myself on the tee of the third hole at the Big Mount course at St. Masvir's with Random, Julian, Caine, Vance, and Flora. Turns out Flora played the pro circuits on Earth for about 90 years. She shoots 15 under par, my brothers. Don't bet a bent copper wing against her. She won that day, beating all her brothers.

It was a gorgeous spring day and the weather was just perfect. I never felt closer to my kin then that day. I owe it all to Random being king, Oberon being mostly dead, and Caine, who painted this trump, being a golf nut. He shoots 14 under par. That day Flora shot 16 under par, Random shot 13. I managed to tie Caine at 14, Vance shot 11, and Julian shot an abysmal 5 under par. 5 under par may be good for the pro circuits but Amber is a tough crowd.

Golf has its detractors. Benedict and Corwin both hate it with a bloody passion. Ben actually growls when it is mentioned. So if I ever have to fight Ben, I would prefer it be on the links at St. Masvir's. With my luck he hates it because he can't break that 18 under par plateau. The bastard probably wants to shoot 18 in 18 and nothing less.

On that day Flora hit 4 holes in one.  When we talked about it that night Benedict actually cursed and smashed a tankard on the table.  Seeing his legendary cool snap like that just made the world rosy and bright.  I think that was the day I started liking him a little.

St. Masvir of Arkens Links is an amazing place. Fully 23 complete 18-hole courses ranging in difficulty from bunny to masters. An awesome driving range. It has a Masvir Route of 300 holes. It also has a 1200 hole miniature golf course, a gigantic video arcade, a 12 mile miniature race track for go-carts, and an amazing amusement park with 200 thrill rides culled from the most maniacal places in shadow. Six Flags, a giant chain of amusement parks on many earth worlds, only contributed 4 rides. The bar for inclusion here is high.

For those unfamiliar with St. Masvir, I shall enlighten you. He is an Urth Roman Catholic saint who settled world problems in an earth shadow of 1495 to 1655 by taking opponents in world crisis's and making them play a full Masvir Route of 300 holes. It is this route that is the center piece at St. Masvir's Links. A Masvir Route is a course of over 200 fairways that one picks and choose which they want to play. While most shadows have 9 or 18-hole courses as standard, Masvir courses are also popular in shadow. 

Masvir also forced two very serious world leaders to play 60 holes of miniature golf. He personally designed 48 of the silliest, oddest, most difficult of the emblematic miniature golf holes, most in theme to the conflict between the two. Whatever their issues with each other it was difficult for them to not laugh when the issue was seriously brought up in their future councils, making declaring war very difficult because each knew to do so would incur not the wrath of their foe, but the mirth. Hense Masvir's sainthood for extreme cleverness, amongst other aspects of his life. 

I prefer the 18 hole courses myself. At St. Mavirs they have Big Mount, Flip-Fair, Andrew's Downhill, and McCormack's Waterways, amongst the many 18 hole trips. I have played several on their worlds of origin.

Sir Danreese Mirs, a broken pattern sorcerer and retired Duke of Manri, Diaga, created St.Masvir's. He sought in shadow for a realm with the desired physical properties of water, grass, and sand, under a sky with perfect golf weather and uncluttered by people. My understanding is that there was a native beast he hunted into extinction though. He did it over three hundreds years ago in Amber's time. The time ratio is 60 to 1 in Amber. So you can pop in for 18 holes and get back to Amber in the hour.

This realm is like Vine River in a couple of important ways. It is a realm created and run by Amberites or their allies, for the benefit of those immortals able to traverse shadow. It has a hundred shadow trails put in place by mainly broken pattern adapts. When the King of Amber and scads of amber royals arrived the lord of this realm, Sir Danak of Diaga, broached the prospect of the shadow trails being extended to Amber. Caine agreed to over see the extension to Amber, Fantalin, Begma, and other points east and West.

As I write I have just learned that both Adrian and Swayvil play golf. Go figure.

<span style=color:darkgreen>Addendum

<span style=color:darkgreen>One might say that the game is the thing but you have to get there to play.  Recently a spur from the Jeweled Road extended from Diaga to St. Masvir's.  It may become a popular place.  One of its other particularities is that it includes the [[Aging in Amber]] element allowing people to grow young with enthusiasm.  Its almost like this place was designed to make old people grow young.  Its a bit disconcerting seeing a group of 100 year olds on a roller coaster.

<span style=color:darkgreen>While this place is a constructed one it should be pointed out that Sir Danreese did think of almost everything.  This place is huge of course and the whole planet is used by this facility.  There are restaurants, hotels, residential areas, and everything else one expects to find in a high tech world.  It has natives now that grew up there and raised families addicted to this happy place.  The Masvirians are a strangely cheerful people. 

<span style=color:darkgreen>There is almost no native crime and doing crime here is fairly silly, and a bit mean.  Like slapping kittens.  You can do it but there is little challenge and others will look at you funny.   If you steal something from a Masvirian they will usually assume you needed it more then them.  Its like many worlds with replicator technology; theft is fairly pointless.  Violent crimes are another thing.  There is a fair amount of casual violence but a lot of it is written off as poor sportsmanship.  Real violence like murder or assault is prosecuted harshly by imported police, many of them Dreanans, who are known to be fanatical about law and order and unlike the natives, are not likely to skip work for a day of golf.

<span style=color:darkgreen>When Sir Danak asked about adding trails he may have gotten more then he bargained for.  Most rulers have to beg on hands and knees for even a conversation about being able to sign the Golden Circle treaty.  Danak might have Random and Caine and Flora deliver the treaty on the back of a golden horse followed by bands and dancing girls.  St Masvir's will be a very strange addition to the Golden Circle.


<span style=color:darkred>((GM-Notes:I had a golf phase.  Not as a player, but as a spectator and a student of the game.  It has a rich history.  The scoring in the above bit is a bit off but give that a pass. I imagined this as a place PCs might bring those they intrigue with.

====<u><big>'''A slight detour into cosmology and the Symbiotic knowledge in the Gamer Worlds'''</big></u>====
One of the things I have found in connection to the [[Travel Guides]] is that there is a wide swath of what are called <span style=color:darkgreen>'''''Gamer Worlds</span>.''''' We also call them the '''''<span style=color:darkgreen>Stone of Skulls'''''</span> worlds. You'll find the Stone of Skulls on card 55 below.  Good luck with it.

These are worlds that are somehow connected in a symbiotic relationship, one shadow usually urban and high tech while the other of a wide range of descriptions. The connection being that certain individuals in the Gamer Worlds seem to be the objects of observation by people in the observer worlds. Call the Observers Players and the objects of observation Characters. There is a game 'Master' who has a wider connection to specific worlds and when a dizzying number of changes and actions occur the Game Master knows of it. Its questionable which way the power flows.  The paradigm of Urban & Diverse is not the only format this relationship comes in but it pops up a lot in relation to my family.  Mystics and madmen, Bards, authors, and sages. Dreamers and the damnedly imaginative often have similar powers of observation and share their visions to wildly different audiences.  But for the moment lets look at the paradigm of <span style=color:darkgreen>''Gamers''</span>.  ITs their method of observation that scares many in my family the most because of their ability to know such secret knowledge.

To say this gives me the heebie-jeebies is a vast understatement. Caine and I once found large collections of 'fiction' novels that outlined real and imaginary details of all of our lives. It seems that there may be people in shadow able to know our darkest secrets and most private joys and crimes simply by the agency of letting themselves open to the operations of the game.

Do the math.

There are an infinite number of shadows divisible. I have been assured by Dworkin that a full set of infinity can have boundaries, Like Chaos or the Abyss, or Amber. Arguing the illogical nature of that is pointless, hard on the peace, and hard on the furniture. In these urban worlds are groups of people who meet as regularly as clockwork to 'play' these role playing games. There they believe they haul us about on strings and make us dance to their music, whatever cacophonic forms it takes, and in fact do seem to view into the lives of the characters on the Gamer Worlds. A nearly limitless number of people on vast numbers of urban worlds viewing the actions of a eclectic variety of shadows.

These shadows often have certain similarities that bear considering. Many have an 'unfinished' feel to them as if the Game Master didn't have the time to figure out a better way for people to get water than to carry it in buckets. They have a weird collection of technologies. Barbaric splendor worlds with flush toilets, public transportation, knights on horse back while the population ride bicycles, and magical entertainment devices like televisions, as if the GM-''Game Master''- can not conceive of a world with out such conveniences. It tends to be confusing.

Life is cheap on these worlds and justice is swift as a sword but you can never seem to kill the big bad guy no matter how many of his henchman you stab, shoot, scorch, or vaporize. Women tend to dress smuttier then in real worlds and that gives one a tantalizing guess as to the proportion of male gamers to female gamers!

One assumes that the degree of detail in the world, and the vast number of everyday activities that never reach the perceptive threshold of the GM, tell of the creative abilities and vision of the GM and the players.  Or, the limitations of the need of the GM to oversee his "game" means he slides shadows down to finding the one that fits into the dimensions he imagines.  I'm not sure which is scarier. 

Or they may all be spies. Voyeurs into the actions of others, dice falling to illustrate the actions broadcast from the unfinished reaches of shadow.

I have played these games, and though they may be insights to the actions of my enemies I shall heretofore avoid playing them because the thought of someone over my shoulder, dangling and plucking my strings is at once fearsome and tantalizing.

Again, heebie-jeebies.

Why, you ask, do I go on so?

The '''Stone of Skulls''' resides in just such a world. The card for this world comes after this conversation so bear that in mind as I go on.  This conversation was originally part of the description of this card but I thought it needed highlighting.   

Men wear the badly preserved skins of animals they hunted with bows despite the fact that a worm in that world exudes a nylon silk that is woven into a Gore-Tex-like fabric that the commonest peasant uses to keep warm. Knights and warlords ride horses while merchants direct spoke-wheeled wooden wagons propelled by magic and everywhere bicycles are available. Terrible menaces to the universe in the forms of evil sorcerers, liches, lycanthropes, Ork-kings, thief guilds, and cruel gods are regularly and competently slaughtered by groups of 'adventurers' of the strangest combinations one can imagine.

Powerful magics are as easy to acquire as touching an item to a big rock with a candle-topped skull.

Now to our great joy, most of what appears in these worlds is limited to these worlds. Universe-devouring god-slugs can only attempt to chew up tiny sections of shadows before sword wielding knights, and wand wielding mages come striding up and kill them. Undead kings that seek to conquer all the multiverse, rarely get far beyond a single shadow. Powerful magical items that can change the tides, mutate the races, or etch the moon, are useless outside a shadow veil or two of their points of origins.

There are exceptions. The Stone of Skulls is such an exception.  So let us look at this realm's card.