Diners of Amber addendum
Diners of Amber Addendum
Here is the Addendums to the Diners of Amber Article. As I got to add more, and found that I might enjoy telling a few tales about places represented on the cards, I decided to go all out and make an additional book.
Included with the addendums about the various locations is a Content Addendum. Such as it is.
When Jeweled Amber had a Geocities page this article was well linked to the Diners of Amber page
[Diners of Amber]
Compilation of Locations
1 The Lighthouse of Cabra 2 Castle Amber 3 Neal's Diner 4 Aglevar's Kitchen 5 Sea View Garden, Amber 6 Oracle of Mandalay 7 Gutsedvem 8 Racsir Isle 9 Tombs of Amber 10 Brolic's Tower 11 Lou's Market 12 Braldig's Tinkery 13 Vine River 14 Wala Heights, Taxorami 15 Mandalay 16 Castle Arden 17 Adrian's Dramaturgy 18 Vale of Rocks 19 Phil's Diner 20 Church of the Unicorn 21 Jeweled Road, Diega 22 Halzir, Taxorami 23 Berlin Train Station 24 Vale of Flowers 25 Big Tree 26 Braldu's Retreat 27 Oracle of Drisna 28 Calrabon, Eurth 29 Salisgir, Unari 30 Fantalin, Thelusia 31 Ang Ri 32 Beleriand 33 Falri, Mandalay 34 Fane of Zila 35 Ganras Galleries, Vies 36 King's Retreat 37 Gerard's Hunting Lodge 38 Oracle of Night 39 Tower of Grief 40 Tir Mar Gala 41 Moondance Cafe 42 Rebma 43 Sardis, Ny, NY 44 Gugenhiem, NY, NY 45 Footman's Garage. Ny.Ny 46 Alrus, Begma 47 Church of the Serpent 48 Lighthouse of Hiemnal 49 The Garden 50 Vulsar Base 51 Jack Rabbit Slim's 52 Domain of the King Bar & Grill 53 Milliways 54 St. Masvir of Arkens Links 55. The Stone of Skulls
1 The Lighthouse of Cabra
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Castle Amber
Neal's Diner, New Velri City, Ruthar, United States of Antherica
I was speaking to Sergeant Garry Gavno, a Calro member of the elite Amber Guard, and a frequent pattern guardian, about Neal's Diner. He gave me the scoop on what they did to Sveldt.
The story is that Constance Kieln, a very tough Dreanan man of the House of Brolic, despite the name, who holds the rank of Captain in the Amber Guard, was one of the first Amber Guards man to do service under Random at the card club beneath Neal's. He was a sergeant then. He and several guys got the tattoo on their upper arm, and Sveldt thought it a very funny little device.
At a later time, while getting some other tattoo work done, Sveldt made his little insult. Constance dragged Sveldt directly to Amber, to the compound that the Amber Guard calls home. 30 guys, led by Julian, took him deep into shadows where monsters dwell and beat the living hell out of him for a couple months. They put a band of healing on him and fed him to a passel of lions and tigers and bears, oh my, who could rip him to pieces but not fast enough to keep the healing band from repairing him. So they ripped him up as fast as he healed for about a month. They then unceremoniously dumped him back at home, short three days.
That is as good an object lesson as I can imagine for those who desire to cross the Amber Guard.
Also, Dreanans do not take insults well. Dour bunch they are.
Aglevar's Kitchen
Sea View Garden, Amber
The breakfast nook of Amber....
Sea View Gardens casts shadows of elegance. It is Flora's crowning achievement. Each of us are archetypes and this is the expression of hers. The floral displays are exquisitely balanced for height, thickness, color combinations and scent. The food is a complex menu spanning simple fair such as bagels, cream cheese and lox, cold cereal, and oatmeal to crescents, crepes, and mind-boggling other concoctions common across shadow.
Some piece of minor sorcery and structural design do keep it fairly difficult to eavesdrop.
There is a piece of etiquette that has developed in Sea View that bears mention. While one may see a vast number of people at Sea View one does not walk up and just talk to them. First one catches the eye of the person you would have conversation with then make a tiny gesture, a quarter twist of a hand, indicating you would like to approach and sit. The response in the affirmative is for the respondent to motion with of opening and closing an upturned palm. A negative response is back and forth sweeping motion with the hand. The only counter to a negative response is to rudely ignore the desires of the respondent.
Flora is very unhappy about the fact that a number of conflicts have broken out here harming the flowers.
By the way, thinking that Sea View Gardens is a better shortcut into Castle Amber then arriving through the Castle Amber trump is a bad idea. While you may get away with it once or twice, because Flora does not stock violent toys in abundance, it should be noted that Flora is often here holding court, and she is not someone to piss off. There is also a fair chance that the diners on the verandah might be violently annoyed if their lunch is disturbed. Fair warning.
The Oracle of Mandalay
Gutsedvem
I ought to snicker. Really.
Imagine putting this card in the deck. Its an instigation to get lost in shadow and never return. I only mentioned a few places i liked before but don't just look them up. This is a world. It has cities, realms, wildlife, forests, oceans, islands, and millions of people that fled other realms to live here with the tens of millions of natives.
Everyone here seems to have found their 'niche'. Unlike most worlds this place somehow subtly directs people onto the correct path to achieve whatever it is that is their heart's desire. It means that if you wanted to be an architect you become one, if you want to be in the circus you do it. If you love sex you end up a sex worker in one of thousands of establishments in this world where such work is respected. If you want to do nothing all day, you win one of the million lotteries, win big at poker, get a huge settlement, or otherwise get your hands on big money.
This is a black zone world though. There is a fair turnover in roles here and death occurs. There are gladiatorial games, wizards duels, and drag races.
There is a elaborate gladiatorial combat system that is an obsession on this world. It also spills out into Chaos. Topping this is a group of 150 Lords of the Games who gain their seats by a bloody death. A complex ranking system leads one from the lowest levels of Warriors fighting in clubs all over the world to Gladiators, fighting in regional arenas to Lord Gladiators fighting in the Main arena in Guro, Gutsedvem.
I am a Lord Gladiator until i decide which of the 150 Lords of the Games i want to kill. After that, well, this is a BZTP world after all.
For more on the Gladiatorial League see the tome Harness of Blood
Be careful.
Racsir Isle
The Tombs of Amber
Mirelle turns out to be plenty alive despite the wishes of the sons of Rilga. Deirdre turns out to have survived her plunge into the abyss but was so traumatized that her mind was damaged. She now holds the form of the wolf and is bonded with Fleece. I could make doggie-style jokes I suppose but let us just take them as read. Brand is alive too, and in distress deep in the abyss. Gosh, what a pity. I no longer believe that Finndo and Osric are dead but I have no proof to the contrary.
Eric is still dead. I checked.
I recently purchased a little plot of land on the slope of Kolvir. Well, purchased is not the right word, but you know what I mean. I am currently designing my own tomb. Corwin had the right of it. It is always best to be prepared.
New News. Yes, Osric and Finndo are both alive. Amberites are tough to keep dead. Even the dead ones have their plans.
More Good News: Brand is footloose and fancy free. can no on rid me of this troublesome brother.
I am not sure calling these Tombs is appropriate. Call them abstract portraits in stone.
Brolic's Tower
I was not going to talk about the Brolics, also called the Dreanans, but since Dworkin has me going to all the trouble of creating a whole new volume I guess I can heap some shit on my least favorite Golden Circle Kingdom.
Dreana, ruled by the House of Brolic, tends to breed true a depressingly hostile mindset. The world itself is heavily forested. Wood is one of their main exports.
Dreana provides something like 1/20th of the military of Amber, enough to make them a common presence in Amber. They are a fair skinned, dark-haired race as a rule with a shocking blotch of blue hair every so often. They have a heavy distinctive brow and a tendency towards square jaws. Their eye colors tend to change on a monthly basis based on the individual's current food intake. Weird. The Blue, those with blue hair, have deep light blue eyes, a more elfin stature, dramatically better balance and eye-hand coordination. Someone mated with something different somewhere in the ancient past. Dreanans tend to encourage the Blue to travel offworld.
They are fiercely pro-amber, and rumor has flown for a thousand years that the kings of Dreana, Lords of House Brolic, would jump like a cat if a Grand Ducal coronet were ever dangled before them. Trading in the royal crown of Dreana for an Amberian Grand Ducal coronet might make them citizens of Amber but it won't make them any more pleasant. Apparently the sticking point involves details of fealty and the acts of submission required to convert a sovereign realm into a part of the Kingdom of Amber. It figures that it would take a thousand years to get the Dreanans to bend q knee.
A disproportionate number of Dreanans become sergeants in the Amber military because they want to pick fights so often they need muzzles and the officer corp can provide this. The run-of-the-mill Dreanan is boring, loudly depressing, loudly pessimistic, mean-spirited, combative, and miserly. They rarely go in for the arts because they tend to be stupid and uncreative too.
If this seems a bit harsh then you go check them out yourself. Better yet, consider the following.
They export a dazzling variety of raw gems because the people in this shadow never developed the craft of stone cutting or adornment. Thus gems have no value in Dreana except as export items. After 12,000 years they still have not got the idea that gems look cool, and make great additions to daggers, crowns, rings, and other pretty things. Not that they would notice; 'Pretty' is lost on them. They have no tradition of jewelry beyond crowns and circlets, signet rings and household badges, unit insignia and pilgrims tokens. They wear crowns and circlets but they are nearly all the same. There are 12 levels in the Dreanan aristocracy and each level has a distinctive style of coronet. All dull, all plain, all made from silver. In a shadow with massive amounts of Mithril, far beyond normal proportions, these people make their circlets out of common silver.
I personally believe the reason the Dreanan's have not joined the Kingdom of Amber is that they can't figure out how to divest themselves of the 12th step of their coronets. I once had an argument about this with the King of Dreana. He refused to understand that he could simply start calling the King's Crown, the Grand Duke's Coronet. I pointed out to him that the Ducal Coronet and the King's Crown top the Dreanan scale of 12. He could swear fealty and then the ducal coronet and the Grand Ducal coronet would top the Dreanan scale. He argued that it was called the King's Coronet and asked how could he call it anything else. I asked if he wanted it to be a princely Coronet but he pointed out that the Dreanan scale does not recognize the rank of prince, except as a non-Dreanan rank. I wanted to shoot myself to end the argument but gunpowder does not work in Amber.
The crack about not recognizing princely rank made me think he was insulting me but you can usually tell when a Dreanan is insulting you because their lips quiver and they start throwing punches. I think he was just being stupid. I give them this; they don't go in for long drawn-out shouting matches. If they generate the brainpower to insult you they are ready to fight and throw the first punch. I hate to admit that this is one of the virtues I admire in the dreary dreanans.
The Dreanan social system allows advancement but is as rigid as any caste system in all shadow. As any historian will tell you, caste systems lead to social and technological stagnation and a lack of incentive to improve living conditions, develop medical advances, and expand mercantile activity. They also devalue historical study leading to 'unsound' historiography and a development of religious systems based on mythic characters. That’s the Dreanans to a tee!
I think the House of Brolic eventually conquered this world because someone in Brolic said, "Hey, lets make our duke's coronet a little bigger than everyone else's!" Thus are nations created in the stupid shadows.
They use the Amber currency system because despite vast gold, silver, and Mithril reserves, they never developed a metal-based currency or a currency of any form. Before Oberon and Finndo came to this shadow regional warlords stole whatever they wanted from each other and raided the subsistence farmers for their chow.
Understandably they do not go in heavily for mercantile trades and have developed a practice of hiring Calro merchants to sell their wares. In 12,000 years they have not gained the talent of double entry bookkeeping.
The Calro who have served the Brolics over the millennia have made themselves unbelievably rich, husbanding resources with skill, and flooding Amber markets from time to time. One must admire the Calro who have created this immense fortune at the same time that one can shake one's head about casting pearls before swine.
A brief comment on money and the Dreanans. Since the usual Dreanan is confused at best about money and oblivious to it at worst, you can cheat a dreanan outrageously. You can charge nearly anything you want for worthless junk and most dreanans will pay it. You can convince them a one room apartment in the harbor district of the city is worth the same as a manor in the hills because its close to the water and the water is great. Despite having vast amounts of mithril in their world they frequently mistake mithril ingots for silver ingots and pay for a bottle of Bayle's with mithril. They don't even think of asking for change or saying something to the bartender like; "Start me a tab." I know this having seen it done. I told the bartended to start the Amber guardsman who made the mistake a tab. A couple of months later heard that the same guard was shocked to be asked for payment despite having drunk 'for free' for months. I laughed so hard i gave the establishment a very large amount of mithril and told them to never charge the man again.
However. The Dreanans are not all stupid. Remember, shadow has vast diversities. If you are cheating one and they say something like, "Hey, i think you are cheating me." Flee immediately. If they figured it out that far, you have only a moment to escape before they lay hands on you and pummel you to pulp. Conmen beware, the Dreanans are willing to beat you senseless and take the punishment for lawbreaking if they think you needed killing. They don't kill lightly though. If you cheat them they may only break your arm bones. Each and every one. Each and every one every time they see you, for the next thousand years. Persistent and determined are our dour friends in brown and blue.
There are no native musical styles. The people of this shadow never conceived of a need to record the legends of their ancestors in any format other than long, dreary, unbelievable recitations of facts, odd magical occurrences, and gossip. No bardic performers, musicians, or minstrels, theater or drama, Dreanan histories read like laundry lists and are heavy on genealogy, light on details. Off-shadow historians classify Dreanan histories as 'unsound'; a technical term for worthless.
The history of Dreana is so crammed with vicious warfare that the architecture of the world developed a siege mentality that is unbelievably stout. The Tower of Brolic is but one example of thousands of incredibly stout fortresses, albeit the pinnacle of such edifices. This is what brought Oberon and Finndo to this shadow in the first place. They were looking for theories of castle construction and they sought in shadow for a place where local conditions created strong fortifications. Once Oberon and Finndo found a household they could manipulate they helped the vicious weasel in charge of it to conquer the world. This was the great Duke Agnot Brolic; a more miserable bastard 'sound' histories have rarely documented.
A note to the Dreanans who read this. There are beginner classes in business theory and trade at most of shadows universities. Universities are those places people go to learn things. I mention this because the Dreanan have no universities themselves. Education is a family affair and many families never bother. Some ship their kids off-world to get an education, especially if they are Blue.
To their credit, most dreanans sent offworld to attend universities never return home to live. They may visit home, or gain posting in the Dreanan embassies in the GCST worlds, but any Dreanan smart enough to survive college and avoid the military realizes how miserable their homeland is and spends much of the rest of their lives staying away from it. Dreanan ex-patriots have done well in many different endeavors including, art, business and science showing that despite their origins these people are intelligent, and capable after a little eye-opening experience. Even some that have not had such enlightenment have done well and raised to the command levels of the Amber Military.
Dworkin told me once that the problem with this world has more to do with the parameters that Oberon and Finndo used to find the place. That they looked for a place that siege-mentality had dominated the growth of the people in the shadow. Sure, blame it on cosmology.
Maybe the Dreanans can be forgiven for their dour ancestry but not for failing to adapt over the 12 thousand local years since the House of Brolic signed the GCST in 1202.
I mean come on guys. Bang some sticks together and pick up the beat. Even military music would be an improvement.
Lou's Market, New Orleans, Earth
Braldig's Tinkery
Braldig is a great guy as long as you have a strong stomach and a steady nerve. It is rumored that Braldig is a shadow of Dworkin. Figures. Aries Colbresi, Dean of Treasures at Fantalin and holder of the Oberon Professorial, a powerful sorcerer and one of the most benevolent and capable minds in Amber's service, is also known to be a direct shadow of Dworkin. Makes ya wonder, eh kinsman?
Erasmus has one of the greatest Constant action machines in existance. But not the only one by far. Just the greatest one built a piece at a time. Others i have found are bigger, but came in to being by the forces of chaos and creation.
Vine River
Add this in the region of new data discovered by Sweet-as-Vinegar Maylon Hendrake and her bloody Heirs and Spares genealogy of Dworkin. It turns out that Josef, born Hin-mah-too-yah-lat-kekt, or Thunder Rolling Down the Mountain, is a son of Oberon. Imagine that. And while his allegiance to Amber is in place his trump shows the green bar of those in the sway of Mandalay. Dworkin assures me this has more to do with Vine River's location in shadow than Josef's personal allegiance. Sure. He has a blood son as well, Red Cloud.
Wala Heights, Taxorami
Mandalay
Mandalay.. hmmm. Its a dare. Adrien turns out to be a son of Oberon and a long time resident of Chaos. He has contacts deep in shadow and some kind of affinity with the natural forces of shadow, apart of the sentient ones that seem to take care of themselves. I hesitate to call him the Arch-druid of Amber but the term is not far from the mark. Adrien is part of some deep game from the beginnings of the creation of Amber and i can't get Oberon of Dworkin to tell me a damn thing about it.
Castle Arden
Julian and I have made some peace, as have many of my siblings, since Patternfall. So let me temper my comment on Castle Arden. I do understand the need for security.
I do check my cup when he hands me a drink. I trust he won't poison me, but i don't think he is beyond putting a scorpion in it or a freeze-stone. Haha... Who knew he had a sense of humor? I think its a mark of the success of Random's reign that we elders are starting to be comfortable enough to play practical jokes on each other again.
Adrian's Dramaturgy
This entry will be unusual and hopefully helpful.
I ran into a group of Rahz Ferso fans in the Harbor district of Amber. Outside Thin Whip's actually. They had read my article and came after me to avenge Ferso's killing. Frankly i am surprised he has fans that can read, little lone find their way to Amber. 8 of these guys though they could kill a Prince of Amber. SO i scattered them across shadow in veils with the most diverse natural laws i could imagine. If any of them find their way back I'll squire them..
Vale of Rocks
Phil's Diner
Recently Random knighted Phil for his service to Amber. Our monarch sure loves his cheesecake.
The Church of the Unicorn, Amber
Jeweled Road, Cantal, Diega
I recently spoke to Benedict about this card and he said something amusing. That he said something amusing about anything is worth mentioning.
He said he thought the card to the Jeweled Road is in the deck so Random can find his way home when drunk.
Another strange thing about the card is that its fast. Really fast. Most place trumps open a gate in a few moments that you have to walk through. This card pops open with a snap and almost draws the viewer in. If one is wounded, drunk, disoriented, or distracted you can glance at this card, almost casually, and it pops open a narrow path and sucks you in. I discovered this recently and was amazed at the deck having something so useful.
It has recently been pointed out to me that in both the regular notation on this card and in the above Addendum entry i failed to actually comment on the road itself, thus making the reader curious about it. This has caused a great deal of research and paranoia. Usually reading while paranoid is amusing but i am assured that enough real conspiracies exits in Amber that creating the illusion of one concerning such a massive thing as the Jeweled Road is just mean.
So hear me all yee searchers of woe.
The Jeweled Road is a massive construct stretching from Amber to Chaos.
Through out shadow exist an innumerable variety of shadow trails created by equally innumerable methods. Most of my siblings in our youth spent some time traveling to create a network of trade routes in to and out of Amber. Some of these travel to and from Golden Circle worlds, some to places where we find items of worth in Amber. A similar situation exists in the Black Zone worlds. Also, enclaves of multidimensional connected worlds have webs of roads that can be traveled in a dizzying number of ways.
Basically, there were a lot of roads.
Next was a massive project begun at the behest of a young monarch of Amber, our Good King Random, to bring Amber the Nation out of the dark ages into at least the renaissance. This included a massive re-pavement program and an upgrading of services project featuring the creation of an extensive sewer system, running water plumbing and resurfacing of the streets and highways of amber with puzzled stone. All the streets of Amber were covered by puzzled stone well out into shadow and as far as Diaga. Houses were retrofitted with flush toilets and running hot and cold water. Sea routes were dredged. Streets were lighted by glow globes that required no maintenance. Cities created after Patternfall, the most notable being Garn, bear little resemblance to Amber save in kitschy architectural allusions, and street names. Garn looks more like a well conceived and planned Los Angeles than the magically created quaint fairytale city like Amber. Puzzled roads were part of their building as were magically produced electricity and advance plumbing.
Toll stations were established, as were frequent tiny villages just to help the weary traveler. Inns, taverns, repair stations as well as vehicle depots to help travelers from one tech level move his cargo along into another. I have enjoyed seeing computer parts being shipped by oxen teams...
So then comes Ygg, Adrian, and the Mark of Mandalay.
All acts of grand creation change things in unexpected ways. The Jeweled Road was one of these. The Mark of Mandalay was made using a number of different colored stones crushed to powder and used as a material component. Amber had just been repaved in highly puzzled stones. The powers of creation dragged these two things together and pulled on the road systems throughout shadow and created one long highway with Mandalay in the middle, and a massive Vales on either side of it.
So now many of the shadow trails have tendrils to the Jeweled Road and hence to Mandalay, Amber and Chaos. Sorcerers and drovers, merchants and corporations that had limited access to a few neighbor worlds now can trade their wares in the big cities.
The road itself is 30' wide and impervious to most damage. It can't be pried up, blown up, or bitten off. The time ratio is fast too. The little villages and way stations are at the same time ratio. Its as if the travelers can take a leisurely trip and lose nearly no time getting to whatever off ramp they are trying to get to.
I commented on how willing the card is, drawing the viewer in. Once there they can get to places of healing and commerce fast or slow, at their choice. They can also use whatever travel method they like till they exit the road onto local traffic. So if you pick up a load of teak planking and transport it on a diesel 18 wheeler you can drive it from Jakarta all the way to Zilla or Amber before having to transfer the load to local conveyance. Neat Trick..
The road can be walked from Amber to Mandalay in 10 days. From Mandalay to Chaos in 5 days. It takes 2 days to clear Mandalay. Call it 17 days from Amber to Chaos on foot if you avoid being distracted. 10 days by Horse. A good Hellride can make it in 5 days but the rider will be a wet mess by the time the ride is finished. A casual trip might take a month. Now everyone can make the trip. Lucky us.
Halzir, Taxorami
The Berlin Train Station
Vale of Flowers
One quick comment on the Vale of Flowers. When the Jeweled Road was created at the time of the
Big Tree
I just learned something about this place. The only way for magic to work in this realm is if you are wearing the Jewel of Judgment! Nice Trick, my liege. Of course discovering that was an uncomfortable surprise for me.
Braldu's Retreat
I recently discovered that this shadow has a cosmological oddity worth noting.
Braldu's is meant as a place of rest, and sleep is one of the most common activities. It is also a place of solitude. For some reason it is also a place immune to boredom. The nature of the realm is that what ever you choose to do with your time you really enjoy it and get plenty of relaxation out of it. Bodily functions move toward peak performance. If you are hugely fat and come here to exercise you really enjoy it, get maximum relaxation, and the time it takes to burn the fat is nearly cut to a 1/20th of the time.
If you come to read you can devour tome after tome without rest. If you came to paint then your mind tosses up visions that simply must be transferred to canvas.
After it all you feel like you have been asleep for months and had just woken up refreshed and ready to face the day, month, or year.
Pretty clever. Nice place to do magical research.
Oracle of Drisna
Calrabon
More and more I find myself thinking a lot went on before I was born that no one bothered to tell me about. The restaurant called Oberon's Fire is significantly named. It is not simply an homage to Oberon. It seems during his nasty-stomping days a huge bunch of nasties almost got the better of Old Oberon and the boys. They had to fight tooth and nail against a massive number of beasts and in the end Oberon was forced to use the Jewel of Judgment as a fire focus to destroy them. He was young though and the power of the jewel got away from him. Nice to know he was not always perfect.
So he became a immolated burning torch as the jewel fought to consume him and he fought to extinguish the fire. To quench it he threw himself into a massive pool of water, which burst into steam. The fire of the Jewel of Judgment was scoured off Oberon and remained in the pit. It has remained there ever since, never flickering. So the meat cooked over the massive barbecue pit is prepared by master chefs who know how to cook meat over a primal fire drawing its fuel directly from the Jewel of Judgment across vast expanses of shadow-veils. Cool trick. Nice fire.
By the way. Oberon's Fire is run by a great man named Aggus Fet Arman. He is a great guy and a cook of unparalleled talents. He has been a general in the armies of Calrobon and served at Patternfall leading troops. He retired to take up full time his hobby of cooking. he is an amazing cook...
He has an aged pepper sauce that is possibly the best condiment in shadow. Many a lady of Amber has rolled her eyes when someone mentions it in conversation, since it tends to distract the attention of all the male in attendance, who consider it some sort of holy material. I don't know if its holy, but its worth the attention. Its a sort of, well, it tastes like.. uh... well... its a pepper sauce of the blackish red variety. What it contains is a state secret that Aggus Fet Arman guards with his life. I once heard him say he didn't even make it on Calrabon.
Hmmmm a clue....
Salisgir, Unari
This idyllic place has fallen out of favor of late. The association with Doria has soured its romantic appeal. There are a number of small private shrines here. Most to the unicorn of course. It was at one of these shrines Doria committed suicide. Luckily while she died, her death was not a final one.
Trust Dory to ruin a perfectly good paradise.
Fantain, Thelusial
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.
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.
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.
Above is the original,below is the New.
Ang Ri
I recently had to go here for purposes not necessarily pertinent to this article. Once there I went through a series of trials and tribulations which included an encounter with a weapon-master. This guy used a weapon he called a Deathwheeler. It was a pike on the back end, and on the front business end was three rows of curved knives. 4 curved up and forward, 4 curved down and backward, 4 in the center curved right and 4 in the center curved right. A pike point stuck straight forward. The knives spun somehow. The damn thing looked deadly as all heck. They have ones that don't magically spin. They have armies using it. Scary...
Beleriand
It figures on of us would find this place.
On the topic of Travel Guides and fictional characters.
Doria was the main person disadvantaged by the use of these books. But others are there too. Some people are collecting the various versions of us and trying to figure out which ones were most accurate. Many of us have hunted down these books and devised defenses accordingly. Be forewarned.
Falri, Mandalay
Fane of Zila
The Fane of Zila turns out to have some very tricky rules and the place is massive in the extreme. It is a disorganized mishmash of cathedrals, basicilas, and churches. It seems that the forces of chaos and shadow casts a powerful shadow of the finest examples of each religion's temple into the fane. This means that even if a prime temple is destroyed it's shade is here. That does not mean the mad priests of Zila can't go adding and changing things. Some forgotten temple, massive in size was taken by the priests of Zila and converted to the Cult of Amber. When Chaos legalized the Amber cults, they inadvertently added a massive basilica, originally a Temple of Benedict created in shadow, that now houses the great Amber Cults. This has had some strange effects on shadow and I am afraid to say it may be making gods of us all.
I think I will take some time to decide if this is a good thing.
Ganras Galleries, Vies
Oh, the things that I could say about this place! Let us just say this is a very chatty place, filled with very chatty people, who have sources of information from Budapest, to Peking, to Los Angeles, to Johannesburg. They also have contacts from Amber to Avalon, Mandalay to Chaos.
Since most Amberites are familiar with earth history, being frequent guests there, it happened like this.
Napoleon demolished Europe by 1805. Ignoring Russia he sent armies to take Scandinavia just to get people used to the cold. After this every soldier in his army learned to deal with cold weather and eventually were able to invade Russia, from Finland, if you can believe it, and conquer Russia in 1812.
This meant that by 1815 everything in Europe from the Orkneys and Ireland to Italy and the Low Countries, Russia to Spain and Portugal was now France. Not subject nations, they were provinces of France with new, or at least, renamed aristocracy.
Africa was not very organized anyway so all it took was some missionaries, some assassinations and a judicious use of patronage and military might to take Africa from Cairo to the Cape of Good Hope. An impressive act of barbarism paired with the acquisition of an impressive Grand Duke made short work of Africa. Napoleon met a young Shaka Zulu in 1807. Soon the young man was a colonel of the French Army, fighting in Algiers and Egypt. In 1816 when Shaka's father died he went to take control of the Zulu nation. He took along about 20,000 seasoned French/Algerian instructors and enough weaponry to destroy any stone age people that reared their ugly heads. Within 15 years the Zulu, loyal French citizens everyone, had conquered Africa and Shaka Zulu was not only a Marshal of France but a Prince of the realm.
With Europe, Africa, and Russia to draw troops, China, southeast Asia, and Australia had little hope but the acquisition of Feudal Japan in 1819 was a serious blow to the future of Asia. Japan had roundly trounced most of China, Southeast Asia, and had nearly exterminated the Australian aborigines by the time Russia/French/Zulu troops arrived Peking in 1825. By 1830 dissident movements had been squashed, transportation issues dealt with and the standard of living in Europe, Africa and Asia was uniform and high.
From 1806 French spies had been fomenting disunion in the United States and with French support the Confederate Army rose in 1832. This death blow to the United States meant that Canada, Mexico, and the United States were divided into 8 separate regions and were completely pacified by 1839.
South America fell in 6 months. Moving troops around and visiting all the new provinces there took Napoleon 2 years. It was in Panama, where he laid out the plans and dug the first shovel full of dirt on a future canal, that he caught malaria and died.
It didn't matter. He had a son ready, a grandson in uniform, and a great-grandson in diapers.
It especially didn't matter that he died because he didn't. He merely rejoined Benedict's General Staff. The fix was in from the start.
Polynesia is still a hold out but so little government lives there than it is not worth mentioning. Besides, they need some place to send troops for practical experience.
King's Retreat
Gerard's Hunting Lodge
Oracle of Night
Tower of Grief
Tir Mar Gala Don not come here if you are evading escape and want a place to plan. You fall directly into a dreamless slumber once the stair fades away.
Moondance Café
Rebma
Sardi's, New York, New York
The Gugenhiem, NY, NY
Footman's Garage. Los Angeles
46 Alrus, Begma
47 Church of the Serpent
48 Lighthouse of Hiemnal, Kashfra
49 The Garden
At the time of the writing of this part of the article the Ambassador of Chaos was Despil of Hendrake and Sawall. He is a genial, friendly man, genuinely pleasant and complementary not to mention very funny with a kingsize sense of humor. He served as ambassador to Amber from the brink of Patternfall,5200, to 5253, when he was replaced by the lemon-bitter Maylon Hendrake. Despil was treated shabbily by chaos who deemed him to have become to comfortable in Amber. They believed he had 'gone native.'
Of course he and his mad brother Jurt abjured their fealty to Chaos in the Hendrake Cult Hall of Benedict and swore fealty to Random and Amber. So I guess they were right.
Random and Maylon are not in the habit of sharing coffee at Sea View.
50 Vulsar Star Base
51 Jack Rabbit Slim's
52 Domain of the King'
'53: Milliways-The Restaurant at the End of the Universe.
54. St. Masvir of Arkens Links
This addendum is written after a grueling game of golf between Adrian and Random. I was Random's caddy,
55. The Stone of Skulls
56 Willie's Tavern
Why this card is in the deck I do not understand. Personally I think it is a threat.
57. Camelot
Camelot? Angel's and Ministers of grace defend us.
There was a time when Corwin once sought out a place of nobility and honor. He ran right into a vein of tales, legends, people, places, and monsters the like of which boggle the mind. Uncountable numbers of these veins exist but this is one similar to what he found. In the centuries that followed many of his brothers heard the tales of Arthur, Lancelot, Gwain, Lot, Tristan, Guennivire, Isuelt, and all the rest. Having heard them, we sought them out, to live amongst them or to fight against them. Sometimes both.
So now this card arrives and what does it do?
58. Field of Gold
Ah, france
59. Twilight
If this place is supposed to be a secret why is it in the deck?
60 Nu Yark, Nu Yark
This realm is a twist of this and a twist of that. It is a high tech age where man and machine blend easily and well. Nu Yark is a place i have spent time in to unwind and enjoy the simple easy of plenty yet have the rough trade of greed near at hand. This realm is dominated by this vast city that spawns out to the horizons. It is a city of towering pinnacles of glass and steel. Many of them Arcologies that sustain their own populations in comfort and ease, at a price.
Beneath the towering spires live the grim lives of the broken the elite have forgotten who must live out desperate lives by desperate means.
This is one of my places. I come here to enjoy to crossshadow influences of music, drama, and art as well as the luxuries afforded the super-rich. Of course when I'm feeling peckish the food here is sublime.
I said there are crossshadow influences and they abound. This realm is nearer to chaos then to Amber yet it has internal checks and balances that keep a level of reasonable cause and effect in play. Of course what one considers reasonable is widely varied, depending when your last meal was, or when your child last ate.
Sometimes i dress up, and travel the dark ways and settle affairs for people unable to do so themselves. I feel silly afterwards but while i am there its vastly entertaining.
61. Moins
This is the second city of Rebma. The Kid Sister of Rebma.
62 Forever Gate
This card is to a dry and barren ruin of a landscape in which remains the Forever Gate. This is a transportation portal to any time and place in this shadow.
If you were to jump ship immediately on arriving you would find that there is no living thing in this galaxy. Not a bush, a tree, nor a prickly skinned porcupine. Nothing. It is a completely dead shadow. Millions and millions of galaxies with uncountable stars and planets and no living thing exists in any of them.
And there is no one to tell you why except the Forever Gate. But if you ask it, it will merely tell you that there are no living things because they died. Great. Thanks for clarifying.
What I have picked up is that this realm is 1 to 1 Amber. Making research time consuming. Also the longe an anberite stays there, the more unfavorable to Amber it gets, 1 to 1, 1 to 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, 2, 2.5, 4, 7, 9, etc.
Once there were vasty empires, ancient races, technological space-faring nations, unified planets, and uncountable people. There were wars, peace talks, parades, carnivals, vast trade routes and intergalactic exchanges. Sometime in their history, someone somewhere caused a chain reaction to occur that eradicated any creature that can be scientifically called life.
63. Paris
This is Corwin's doing, much to my surprise, since this is in Avalon. Not that you can shadowshift in Avlaon yet, that is still somehow forbidden. But you can get here.
Here is Paris. Late 1800's. Napoleon is dead. Napoleon III is Emperor. Corwin is Overlord. But the rest is the important part. It is a living place, exciting, vivacious. You can find music, art, dance, whatever your heart might desire of such a time and place.
But the Corwin seems to have decided to keep the Diners of Amber theme alive by locating the trump here. Here is Angeleous Lambert's Bakery.
I am not a bread person. I know people who can go on and on about this bread and this grain and that yeast. I had never really understood it. Even using the Bakery trump of the Avalon Useful Trumps Deck did little more than give me bread. But my first trip here Corwin and Mama Agalvar and Dame Margot came with me. 3 Bread people against one..
Hold on to your heart when you enter Lambert's. It smells like a very happy heaven in there and you might just expire from joy. Sourdoughs, wheat. Rye. The place is marvelous. Every shape and size you can imagine they probably have or can make.
There is an amazingly good cheese shop across the street. Lienne Lisile's place. Cheddar, not originally a French cheese, is here in abundance. Monterey Jack, Gouda, Edam, Camembert, Muenster, Swiss, Limburger, Blue, Gorgonzola, Provolone, Parmesan, Mozzarella, Soamorze, and hundreds of other cheeses I had never heard of.
Guido Regili is a butcher on the road with a massive selection of meats. Raw, cured and cooked.
Corwin joked that he added this card to his deck so he could always get a sandwhich.
64 Vagalorat
This chaos realm is typical of the kind of wild weather worlds found in the Black Zone. Dark Skies, Lightning of a wide variety of styles. Cats and dogs falling from the sky. Don't get me started on the rain of frogs, or the rain of Frog Legs. Growing up in chaos may be hard on the people but i assure you, its hard on the frogs.
65. Temple of Resolve This place seems to be some sort of meditation space. I have gone in for a wide variety of styles of meditation. Any Fantalin trained Sorcerer is skilled at the kinds of discipline needed to be a competent worker of the crafts.
66. Tomb of the Ancestor's of Darkness
This is going a step too far.
This is not a place we should ever find ourselves. Ever achieve. Ever be trapped in. Ever go. Never use this card. It is a tease, a dare, a form of suicide. If you use this card do not call me for help out. Just kiss your ass good-bye and say hello to the Abyssal Gods that will be making your stay a really drag.
67. Rebmaras
Rebmaras? Really? A technological shadow of Rebma above the water as well as below it?
We sometimes forget that Rebma is an Empire too, and the capital of an empire at that. Many are the watery shadows where dwell kings and presidents loyal to the line of Mior. This one is a place with humanoids of the Rebma form, able to breath air and water, that is ruled by an elected council.
Each province provides a Elector and the Council of Electors appoints a Consul for a 6 year term as chief executive. Each 2 years they elect a vice-consul who serves for 6 years. The 3 vice-consulships ships overlap obviously and in theory provide continuity of leadership. The ruling Consul may be chosen from any person having served as vice-consul in 22 years. Campaigning is actively discouraged and frequently the victor of the election has no desire to serve. If they refuse they must enter exile for 6 years. Makes for some rough politics and only the ample presence of water keeps their hands clean.
Pictured on the trump is the Arcol of Remien. An Arcol being short for Arcology. The trump delivers one in the Square of Lan, a fish shaped god no longer worshipped in this cosmopolitan city.
One gastronomical peculiarity of this world is the size of their shrimp. They call them Pol Bulls but the only difference between them and what we think of as shrimp is that Pol Bulls weigh over a ton. Dumb as stumps, herdsman swim up to them, neatly pith them, then attach balloon-like floats to them for harvesting. They breed quickly I hear.
Consequently Pol is the staple meat of this realm. Pol steaks, Pol burgers, salads.. everything. I like shrimp. Seeing an 800 pound shrimp roasting on a rotisserie is awe inspiring. Recently Pol has become a import to Calrabon. It can be had at Oberon's fire, at a price.
One comment on the people here. They are, like most aquatic peoples, a soggy lot, and frequently naked. Unbashful about nudity, they are prudish in the extreme about sex. Scoring with a Marrian is a point of pride. Though the ride is rarely worth it. Shadow is too full of willing playmates to grope a soggy trout.
But there is one thing in this place that is worth noting, for the militarily inclined. They have perhaps the most amazing array of underwater weaponry available. Clockwork crossbows that fire as fast as machine guns. a wide array of propellants to fire bullets. Rapid fire net guns.
Electricity works funny in this shadow, not shocking people, so you can sit in a cafe, underwater, eating Pol Bull burgers while watching Kilf Soccer on a television. Freaky really.
68. Calmir
This card is in the deck, but it does not work.
This is a primal realm created eons before Amber and destroyed eons before Amber. A realm of limited shadows, called Eigenstates, or time paths. The Kangular powers the realm as the Pattern powers Amber. But when you assay the Kangular you gain the power to travel in Time in Calmir, rather than in shadow.
I itch just thinking about it.
69. Callahan's Crosstime Saloon
The morning I saw this card in the deck I knew that 'ulterior motives' does not quiet cover things. But I also saw connections. I began to view the deck differantly.
Callahan's is certainly a fine place to drop by and get a quick drink for several days. This card has been in my personal deck for years. I drop by to have the odd single malt whiskey and Irish beer. There are few places in the multiverse where you can find a 300 year old Aboulour single malt scotch and match it to a draft Double Guinness Stout and drink it in a place worthy of the pair. And pay a dollar for both.
As such it is a fine place, one of the finest, that is accepting of people with ---dynamic personalities. I have been a regular for decades.
Situated off route 25, 20 miles along the northern edge of Long Island, New York. It is staffed by Mike Callahan, aided by a former minister/former stick-up man named Tom Hauptman who bartends when Mike Callahan is gone. Also present is an odd assortment of regulars; Jake Stonebender; a folk guitarist and philosopher, a virteouso performer with a scared heart. A Brooklyn ragtime/punk pianist named Fast Eddie Costigan. Pytor, an alcoholic vampire and staff designated driver who drinks alcohol while transfusing victims that he drives home. Doc Webster; a nearly divine surgeon and a dangerous punster, Long Drink McGonnigle; a ex-moonshinner and jack of all trades. And lets not forget Ralph Van Wau Wau; a genetically engineered talking dog.
Throw in Noah Gonzalaes; a sergeant on the Suffolk county bomb squad, Dink Fogerty; a psychic fisherman, Mary Finn, Callahan's daughter, Lady Sally Callahan, Callahan's Wife and a notorious madam, Tommy Jensen; an empathic heroin addict on the mend, Don Domingo Montoya; an unfettered guitarist I had make my personal guitar. Also you will find the cheerful Charlies, the Mac Donald Brothers, a hobbit looking all too much like Bilbo Baggins for my taste, and a leprechaun named Fishy and now you have a glimpse at the cross section of people you might meet at Callahans.
So why come here? Well, the food is edible and cheep. 50c for a tuna fish sandwich. 50c for a shot or a beer, 1 dollar if you smash the glass in the fire place. I drop a grand in the free lunch box every time I drop by, to help those down on their luck.
Just to spice the batch of attendees lets include five more occasional vistors. A despondent ex-Lord of Chaos, defrocked of his powers, named Falowin Hendrake. A once dead pope named Joan. A man named Abe who does an amazing impersonation of Abe Lincoln that is only marred by the fact that he is Abe Lincoln, rescued just after his death in an earth Shadow. A primal beast named Spunky, who won't admit what his animal form is. And lastly, a Prince of Amber with a death wish, sublimated into alcoholism.
I mentioned connections. So here it is. These people solve problems. Emotional ones, tricky ones, unorthodox ones. So like the collection of people at Gallras Galleries, you can come here and layout a problem and get a wide range of solutions, some even useful. Then there is Erasamus Braldig, who while skilled in tinkery, has a startling clear and precise mind; organized and analytical; good for solving problems. Willie's Tavern is a fine place to pick up homespun wisdom. Mama Agelvar knows more recipes than anyone I ever heard of but she also knows more cliché's and proverbs than any sane person should. Then of course there are churches...
So- Connections. Draw your own conclusions.
70. Gilley's Club Now we are talking Diners of Amber! Dworkin, i can not imagine that you are a fan of this place, but i am now. In many worlds you will find vast regions dedicated to the production of horses, cattle, oil, and testosterone. Gilleys is in one of these places. Located on an earth world is this honky tonk supreme. Pasadena, Texas sports this huge establishment where you can get a beer, a dance, and a fist fight in the space of 5 minutes. Rest assured its worth the trip. The food is pedestrian but tasty. Burgers and fries, Reubens, subs, chicken dinners, and ribs, ribs, ribs. Steaks to make an amberite weep. Their steaks are not quite a Buff Cut 3 but they are large, well cooked, and cheap. I'll take three every time. The beer is cold, the whiskey hot, the tequila is fresh over the border. Don't order Vodka, that means you are a commie. This is a dancehall as well. That means hot, eager, drunk women. Adds a whole new flavor to the Diners of Amber Addendum
71. The Newsstand. If anyplace needs, thrives, or dies on accurate news, its Amber. This card is part of a 3 card set that arrived the same day. The first is Big Jim's Newsstand. This is on the corner of 5th and Bandolier in the city of Nenton, Antheris. 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. 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 at Franks 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.
72. Frank's Burgers This corner holds possibly the best burger joint in shadow. Plain. Simple. A dozen items on the menu and a hundred condiments on the sideboards. Burger, Cheeseburger, double burgers with and without cheese, polish dogs, hot dogs, Grilled cheese sandwiches, sliders, French fries, onion rings, and other fried, grilled and cold foods. Quick and easy.
73. La Bisalta This cafe is the third of a pack of three cards representing 3 corners of 5th and Bandolier in the city of Nenton, Antheris. This is a wonderful place to have coffee with someone you would like to have become a loved one. Polite waiters can find nearly everything and anything you might want to sample. Drinks, pastries, snacks, and cru-de-te.
74. Mc Hood's Roadhouse Shadow seems to adore places where heat, cold, gunpowder and bloodshed mix . In many worlds you will find a place where the urge to expand and the development of gunpowder and steam locomotion meet. This is one such place. Mc Hood is a retired gunfighter, not that he shows himself often. He has issues. But his family runs Mc Hood's Roadhouse. Here cattle hands and stevedors, gunfighters, gamblers, ranchers, sheepherders, farmers and travelers of every kind might gather. This roadhouse is in the city of Bowdie, California. Yet it seems to also be on the cross-shadow paths of many of these similar shadows. So while it might be odd to come into the common room and see gunfighters conversing with each other despite the fact one is Caucasian and the other is reptilian. It is a nexus. Through this place run a many shadow pathways. Most in the same general epoch. The natives of this world have long since learned to not ask questions of the oddities that occasionally arrive here. Similar to Callahan's Crosstime Saloon, Mc Hood's Roadhouse is a gathering place for the eclectic and the lone wolves.
Addendum
75. The Blighted Land This is just an invitation to commit violence. On some worlds people are just bound and determined to make their lives dangerous and short. They take huge risks and if they are lucky enough to survive them, may get no reward at all. This is an Earth/Aerth/Urth world that has seriously lost control. It is a testament though to how people can survive almost anything. To go over the political dimensions of this world would be pointless. They change. Sometime around the late 1900s all law and order slipped away. Wars, nuclear disasters, militarization, easy availability of weaponry, advancing technology despite worldwide carnage, an extremely vibrant commercial climate and little regard for human life are all big elements of this freak show of a world. Many of the people on this world have begun calling it the Blighted Land. Nuclear disasters destroyed vast swaths of it. Industrial waste and human refuse have spoiled another chunk but some of that is being recycled. City-States and small Regional governments rule this planet. Many people cluster around huge corporate compounds that still do most of the producing. Transportation of goods has become a death sport. The roads of this world are dangerous. There is an active sport called Autodueling that pits drivers against each other in both organized and chaotic conflict. The sporting angle of it gives a modicum of legitimization to the production of equipment that is then used, often as not, to further the insane degrees of regular violence on this world. Shadow does not judge good and evil, but it does punish the stupid. Addendum
76. Hasik Station Not everyplace in shadow is clean. Hasik Station is a dirty place where the paths of trade crash into each other and leave a big mess. And everyone gets a taste and everyone gets rich. Soldiers, fleet marines, ground troops, merchants, spies, and lunatics of a thousand flavors. And they are all armed to the teeth and trying to make a gold fullwing as easily as possible. Now, as for Hasik Station. On the planet Shatiro, a moon really, around a huge blue gas giant of planet called Halot, circling a sun called, the Sun, is a metropolis called Gadat. It has a population of over 12 million people and is only one of 9 metropolitan areas spaced out across a vast desert. They grew up around oil refineries and oil production facilities. The continent is dirt, over grown and clogged with traffic from the subterraining rail systems to the ground level roadways systems to the many levels of air transport corridors. They have given up on having outdoor trees. In Gadat is a gigantic hub of industry called Hasik Station. It has the technical facilities to qualify for an interplanetary spacestation, the storage areas to satisfy the needs of hundereds of traders, the charm of a trucker’s diner, and the cleanliness of a gas station bathroom. It’s a rough place but you can find what you are looking for in the vast cubbyholes of shops in this place. There are several long lanes where merchant ships make port and customers come on board through allyside shops to look over wares. Hand carts, wandering robot salesman, and guys selling watches and music boxes out of their trenchcoats. For all the muck of this place, it has some big upsides. I don’t know about calling this place a Diner of Amber but it does have some foods to recommend it. There are dozens of noodle shops throughout the place. Addendum
77.Lisel’s Teahouse Lisel’s Teashouse is a tiny place on wheels. It can be found in the megatroplois of Unkantar. This highly technoligical world has a lot of people of a wide variety of shapes and sizes. It has techonoligal wonders and gigantic corporations. It has urban centers with populations of over a million in a single arcology. Most urban centers have several archologies besides having spread out metropolitan regions. This planet also has vast agribusiness empires that feed the multitude not lucky enough to live in the tightly controlled Arcologies. Stress between the arcologies and the urban centers they stand above is high. Yet strolling among the shadows of the highrises and the travel centers of the arcologies is a gypsy Vardo wagon pulled but 6 very tough looking mules. A large modern cargo trailer is attached to the rear. Gently urging them onward from the front reclinging seat of the wagon is a shoirt and well stuffed woman with long greay hair turned up under a straw hat. This is Lisel. When she parks for the evening, usually near some cultural event or activity, a whole little village appears. A small village. A fire pit is set up and a fire lit. Chairs are set out. Samovars are set up on a table next to the wagon. Silver, gold, mithril, and glass start brewing a variety of fragrant teas. Homemade cheeses, jams, and handmade crackers and scones appear. Lisel is a wonderful talker, a historian, and a bit of a fortune teller. People come and gawk at this rustic woman in her homespun garb with her painted mules, colorful wagons and strange collection of attendants. People look her over but for some reason few come to take seats at the fire in one of her available folding chairs. But some do. They soon have tea in their hands and Lisel is happy to read their tea leafs once they are done. She does not charge for the readings. But a donation jar clearly encourages generosity. She has three companions beyond the collection of animals that are plainly visible when she settles in to camp for an evening. One is a short elvish looking hobbit with a very discerning palate for teas. His name is Antil Gardener and he can talk tea fo weeks. One is a fat hobbit who tends the fire and the dinner fair, named Largo Baggins. One is a Leprechaun named Vonny who seems very quiet and withdrawn for a leprechaun. That the presence of hobbits and leprechauns does not shock the populace is a sign that these creatures, if extremely rare, are not unheard of on this world. Addendum
78. Talosaril This desolate place is a vast desert landscape is in a region under a very crowded sky.
79.Adzikis in Winter Ac tanu Mat ren Adzikis e Anoa Adzikis in Winter. Snow in drifts, in sweeps, in sheets, in the deep dark chill of mountains clear of fire. Adzikis is a world in recovery in many ways. In other ways, it has become something it had no hope of becoming. It is peaceful. This world was once a vibrant and thriving world just nudging into a technological age. They had discovered a type of magnetic reaction between three different type of stones that they had developed into a rail transport system and a wide variety of other technological devices. Oceangoing ships filled with well-dressed travellers. Even the manned flight was starting. There were nation states with a variety of conflicts in a gun age that relied on archery as well as rifleman. Then catastrophe struck. My investigations suggest two things occurred at the same time and they are why this place is cold. First a series of earthquakes, then dramatic cooling and a global winter. This occurred over 200 years ago in their time. They adapted. They embraced the cold. They reordered their priorities. They became poets. Embracing their pain, they began to cherish life, and love, and art, and creativity. They began to prize ingenuity and invention. They developed poetic forms and languages for specialization in certain areas. One language, Aurol, was chosen as the language of business. Another, Untalis, became the language of anger. Feloso became the language of friendship and community. Ac Tanu became the language of love. Each language had its forms and its poetry. Once each language had served different races and nation-states, but the effort of recovery made them decide to use language differently. Now there was one universal language with subsets selected to be used for specific needs. One language, Tufoli, became the language of food and drink. Here is where their genius really blooms. Since they were embracing life and suffering extreme deprivation at the same time, they learned how to use what they had well. Spices were used to cover bland and uncertain meats. Sugars were used to fill caloric intake so baking became almost a religion. They eat all kinds of things sweet. They discovered that they could make a respectable alcohol out of almost any vegetable refuse and by filtering it through specially scented charcoals got a nearly tasteless base alcohol with a variety of slight scents to cover the harsh base taste. Mixing sugar with it helped too. More about sugar in the addendum. Addendum
80. Café Americana Well, now Dworkin’s just messing with my head. This one may be my fault. IN the deserts of Africa, on the coast of the Atlantic is a sweaty little mudhole called Casablanca. Im not a desert person but I seem to have a lot of these haunts in my collection of personal trumps. This is a fine restaurant in this war-torn shadow of Aerth. To tweak Dworkin’s beard a bit I’ll call this a Diner of Amber. This is a bar for the most part and a good one. Its technically French territory, Vichy France, during a time of war. So you see a lot of champagne cocktails, Pernod, a wide variety of wines. A lot of whiskeys and brandies are available and a lot of gins. Almost no vodka, and tequilas. Some rums. There is also a brisk trade in local home distilled drinks that will peal paint of steel and skin off your throat. There is a rival café nearby called the Blue Parrot that serves a grain alcohol based cocktail that has had cinnamon and licorice infused into it and missed with vichi water. I know, sounds revolting, but it really grows on ya. There are many entertainments in this Café besides food. Music, women, gambling, and the occasional gunfight or police raid. I can also engage in my personal little hobby of killing Nazis too.
Addendum
81. Kizabat, Ancona This desert oasis is deep in a surrounding land of sand, heat, camels, sweaty barbarians and a wide swath of people coming from all points on this world. Ancona is on the world of Ulgala. This world is lodged in a sword age for the most part but has a great deal more trade then most such worlds. It has vibrant trade because thousands of years before the Rumoraki Empire built wide thoroughfares using skilled stone workers and powerful magic. These roads are over 100’ wide and are impervious to most native magics. They were built to withstand erosion and heavy traffic. They also glow slightly, providing a dull illumination for travel at night. I’m told this has to do with the type of rock ground to make the mortar for the paving stones. WayWrens placed at various intervals provide wells, and resting places throughout the system. Cities grew up at places where these roads crossed major water sources. Rivers, seas, oceans and the like. The Kizabat is one of these cities. It grew around a massive water source in the middle of a vast desert. The system of roads had to be forged through this anvil of fire or else make unacceptably long expeditions around it. So five nearly straight roads cross at this location. There is considerable evidence that Rumoraki sorcerors drew up the water here and created the system below the ground that feeds the great pools and springs that now exist. Water is sent off to irrigate huge areas for farming, orchards and livestock. Oh, and for people as well. This city has almost a million people and they all live off the cross-desert traffic somehow. Either provisioning the caravans, feeding the merchants, or tending to their own needs. Addendums
82. The Mall at Caladoon This place is a unbelievably huge shopping center in the realm Of Unara An Satar. It’s a advanced world with all the tricky tech you can imagine. Its also near a realm that the Jeweled Road passes through and has a lot of similar cosmological conditions. So if you buy a high tech toy here it will work as far in as Thelusia and Diaga. Of course one man’s technology is another man’s magic. I’d rather stick to magic. This world is a clean world. One with a great many of the inconveniences of life taken care of automatically. Clean air, clean technology, lots of greenways, well maintained parklands. Healthy food and means to recover from unhealthy foods. Its amazing these people ever leave their homes. They can live, work, eat, be born and die in their homes all over the computer systems that so integrate their lives. Of course, the price is privacy, but what’s that compared to security and plenty? Should you come to this world by a route other then the Jeweled Road it is amusing to travel a few shadows in other directions to see what this place would look like if the technology failed. Those are some very frolicsome worlds depending on which manner of failure you worked into your shadow-walking. Addendum
Content Addendum
The Cousins: Fifty years after Random assumed the throne of Amber her made a startling decree. He ordered all of his siblings to produce the childreen they hid in Shadow. Merlin was around a lot in those days, as was Martin. Jurt and Despil, Merlin's brothers, sons of Dara and Great grandchildren of Benedict had both moved to Amber. Despil as the Ambasador to Amber from Chaos, and Jurt as Thin Whip, patron of a disreputable rave bar in the industrial district of the City of Amber. By this time we also knew about Dalt and Rinaldo and Coral. Dalt was a sibling of Random's of course as was Coral, but Rinaldo was a child of Brand. We had also heard rumors of a child of Eric's names Derek and Warrick, a child of Coral and Corwins.
The final straw was Rebma sending Rene, a erudite aristocrat, to Amber as its Ambassador then casually announcing he was the son of Moire and, oh yes, Corwin.
Random had a cow. Not literally, he didn't shape shift well at the time.
So Random had a fit and drank a bunch. Then he called us all together and said this:
"Ok folks. Its time to shake the trees. Out there in shadow are our children. Some hate us, some love us, some don't know about us. Its intolerable. Its dangerous. I cant have siblings and kinsman come rambling into Amber , pissed at all creation and out for blood. Its had on my nerves and hard on the battlements.
I know some of you have kids you have been guarding. I know there are siblings of ours out there in hiding. Thats over. Bring them in. I want to meet every branch of the family tree. I don't care what grudges they bear and i don't care if they run off into shadow never to return after i interview them.
So, go get them. Fail me not"
