Editing Jurt

Below are two notes.  The first is an old one.  The second is new.

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=='''''Note One- An ex-patriot of Chaos living in Amber.'''''==

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The Articles of Submission make good reading, your Majesty.

So with all due regard to not being in service to you I will write one, unbidden, as a member of House Barimen, if only by blood, and not fealty.


My journey has been crooked.  It bumped into many rocks.  It was a long series of accusations, paranoias, panic, and self-inflicted wounds.

Yet time heals.  In time I took to shadow.  As you know in my travels I managed to find a place, known to yourself, where I was able to assay the pattern. 

You guard the place now.  Is that fair? With all the heirs of Barimen in Chaos these days? 

I'll leave that to you.  I don't write to fight. 

After sometime it made sense for me to get as far from the region of my discontent as I could.

So I came here, as far as I could go.  Having no plans I started hosting raves in abandoned warehouses.  Some how, in those places, Thin Whip was born.

I, Jurt, son of Dara, great grandsonish of Benedict, am a loyal Lord of Chaos.

But Thin Whip; he was born in the City of Amber.

Call on me as you wish.  I will answer.  I'll always come if dinner is provided.

Jurt, also known as [[Thin whip]]

[[File:Thin-Whip1.jpg]]  [[File:Jurt-ja.jpg]]



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'''''Note Two'''''


<Font Face="Viner Hand ITCt"><Font Size ="4">Jurt's Article of Submission

My liege, if you choose to be,

It has occurred to me that the time has come to revise the note I once sent you.  Things have occurred that have made me decide to leave my allegiance to Chaos behind.  If you don't mind I'd like to take a moment to discuss why.

I could speak of the grievances my mother whispered in my crib while she bemoaned the loss of my brother Merlin to the love of Corwin and Amber.  She married an elderly suitor eager for her ripe pink flesh and in her anger at Corwin she bedded him.  That Despil and I came of it so worked out well for me, but there was little more then a business arrangement between them.  They are partners in power not lovers in the bower. 

Chaos, if you were unaware, is a place of great rage and great madness.  Madness is a profession for some, and avocation for some, and an obsession for some.  I fell in the category of the later.  I was angry at the brother created to rule in Amber and to rule in Chaos.  A brother who was doted on and given the best instructors.  Despil and I got no such education.  We fought for everything we gained.  Despil went the political route though service to Chaos.  I sought revenge.  

Its been 50 years in Amber since Merlin and I shook hands and left those wars between us behind.  Not that he was ever much of a participant.  He was a respondent.  I wronged him in echo of a million vendettas that fill the histories and folklore of Chaos.   I tried to live up to the wickedness that surrounded this son of Sawall, of the blood of Hendrake and Helgam. To make a name for myself that would be fit to join the tomes of those great houses. 

And it hurt like hell.   I lost a pieces of me in every fight.  I lost loves and friends.  I lost fingers and ears.  I was obsessed enough to force my way through the brutal training one must pass through to be able to assay the Logrus.  That's epic madness, my liege.

In the end none of it did any good.  No amount of power was going to let me supplant Merlin in Chaos or in my horror of a mother's heart.  

So I visited my brother the Ambassador of Chaos, Despil, in Amber and found there some thing I liked.  The people.  The sea breeze. The food.  The knifings in the Harbor District.  The illusion of innocence in the ladies of the North Riding.

Then you and I had a long talk over cards, cigars, and Bayle's red wine.   We came to an understanding.  So I wandered around shadow a bit and decided what Amber needed was a really disputable dive joint.

I gathered a few rascals I'd run across in shadow.  I summoned a few dufiro and a few old fiends from Chaos.  We opened Thin Whip's Place.  At first it was a moving rave.  Low tech but magical.  Amberites loved the open displays of sorcery I provided.  The sign of the Logrus I painted on the wall scared some of them crazy.  But if you can't handle the scene don't buy your gin from me. 

That was a good life.  I made new friends and they brought in new customers.  I got harassed by the police and as tough as they were it was like a loving caress to me.  Things happened.  Eventually we had the business with Bleys at my place.  That was a close call and that you put your faith in me to handle it was unnerving.  I was trusted. Whatever else was done to me in Chaos; I was never trusted.  

I set up a floating poker game for you and it attracted some real high rollers.  It was interesting being the Chaosian at that table.  The unknown quantity.  The provider of dreams.  The confidant outside the circles of power.  It was exhilarating and intoxicating.  

In time many of the family came to me when they needed just a little information they couldn't find.  A little magic if that wasn't their forte.   A different view on a matter that their hidebound thinking could see the way around.  

Then something very strange happened.  I find it hard to express how it effected me.  It was late.  I had had a rough night at Thin Whip's.  A couple killings in a bar-fight, so prosaic.   I was exhausted. Then as was smoking my last cigar before turning in I got a trump call.  It was an Amber trump so I answered.  It was Benedict and he was in a fight. He was holding them off by blade and asked me almost casually if I could come through and identify the creatures he was fighting and why he couldn't kill them?  I went of course.  It amuses me to report that he was besieged by hamsters.  Well, hamster men.  They are a race near chaos and are something along the line of tall, fuzzy, deceptively strong kobolds.  Not a one of them could lay a blade on Benedict for obvious reasons, but he could not seem to wound them either.  See, they heal like claymen and can only be hurt with bronze weapons. As soon as I arrived I conjured a box of copper broadswords and he and I stood together, side by side, and made short work of a few thousand of the fuzzy wood eaters.

We stood there afterward as he looked over the bronze weapon.  Then he said it.   He put his hand on my shoulder and said,  "bronze, huh? I would have been chopping on them for days.  Its good to have you in the family, Jurt"  Then he picked up some artifact he had come for and trumped us back to Amber.  

I sat in the courtyard of Castle Amber till dawn, just thinking.  Around then some guardsman came by and gave me coffee,  pilot biscuits, and a slab of fried ham, as he was doing to everyone he thought was on guard duty.  I guess being coated in hamster blood counts. 

It occurred to me then that whatever else I could say, I now had a family.  Contentious , duplicitous, mendacious, arrogant, and infuriating, but family.  Family in a way I had never known in Chaos. 

Then recently I returned to Chaos and Sawall to tell them news that should have been of great importance to them,  That my brother Mandor had married Princess Fiona of Amber and they had a son named Henry.  But did they jump at this news? no...They were concerned about something else.  In anger I did something rash and final. 

So it comes to it.  I have burned my bridge behind me and all ways forward lead east.

I give this Article of Submission to you now and when you ask, I shall bend knee.  After that my sword and my intrigue is yours to command.

'''''Lord Jurt of Amber, Son of Gramble Sawall and Dara Hendrake, of the line of Prince Benedict of Amber and Princess Lintra Hendrake.'''''  

Known as '''''Thin Whip'''''. 





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[[Thin whip]]

[[Jeweled Amber]]