Editing The Journey of Vance and the creation of the Kingdom of Vulsara

==='''Vance Looking Down'''===
He walked to the edge and looked down into the dark clouds below. Drawing his blade, he looked down its edge. Drawing out the ring borrowed from vault on the world of his charge, he placed it on his finger. Sighting down its lines of power he saw that in the land he meant to explore it would function well, as if it had been created there.

He had visited the Fane of Zilla and sat in his alcove for a time. He spoke to the Chaosians who frequented that place and enticed a few to advocate for him, one way or the other.

His son came up beside him, clad in magical harness, and it artifacts of power, yet uncomfortable besides. Looking to him he remembered the dark skin and the ridged forehead of this proud man's mother

“Father, are you sure about this? It seems folly.”

Nodding, “Yes, the elders have might you and I never shall possess unless we take great risks. I've no intention to go to the bottom. We've trumped there after all. But there Is much to be learned of Pattern and Chaos below. A shadow of the pattern is but a short distance from here. A few hundred levels downward. And it floats unchained... I mean to claim it and bring it home. That is a great risk the elders will respect. Will go with me still?”

Frowning, “You question my honor? One thing, if I die, I would prefer my soul went to Sto Vo Kor then to be trapped down there. Do you think that possible?”

Laughing, “If it is, then mine will go there with you. Let us find out together, son”

Stepping forward, he felt the air around him cry out madness.

His son followed.

-----

Tucked beneath a Waderly Tree's huge bloodred-vine leaves with the screaming fruit, Vance and Agrom gnawed jerky of some thing that hopefully hadn't been sentient. The city they had recently left had been less of a horrorshow then the ones higher up the levels of the abyss. That lives of misery were born and lived and died in such realms was a testament to the resilience of life. The things they had seen in reaching the shade of the trees of death had been beyond his imaginations.

Now he knew where nightmares grew.

“Father, I can't tell, how long have we been down here?”

Withdrawing a pocket watch from the small pocket of his levis, he looked at the stacks of spinning arms.

“Its hard to say... This thing usually works everywhere. Here...the best I can say is it looks like it balances out. A thousand years on one level, a week on another, back in time for a century. So we could leave the Abyss and no time has past and pass ourselves going down as we go up, or we could come out for Random's 1000 year Jubilee. Fifty-Fifty, place your bets.”

“Mothers going to be really angry.”, slapping away a thumbsized biting fly with canine teeth.

“That's ok. She was really angry the night you were conceived. Good times” Vance chuckled at the memory.

Agrom lowered his wrinkled brow at his father, a gesture akin to humans rolling their eyes.

“We have three paths onward. Level through the Waderly Forest of killing trees. Down the crevice on the left with the razor rock fragments. Or up and over the rise to the right, which I think puts us back up to the level with the twisters of razor flies and mustard sauce.” Agrom growled out. “When the beasts get back, hopefully they will tell us which hell we plan to die on.”

“Ya, it will be awhile before I order mustard on my mystery meat dogs after that village. I'm not sure we didn't eat the residents.”

Agrom growled out. “I can see where that would be a problem for you. As far as i'm concerned they were just talking food the moment we got there. Huge pig snails with legs and tenticles. There was noway we were going to survive this journey without eating demon of one kind or another.”

Nodding, Vance stood and shouldered his pack. Magic and electronics being falable here it had been nessesary to replicate camping supplies before the powers of the replicator and the Mandalayan production plates failed them. The trumps didn't function here either. Since the food ran out they had had to survive on local provender.

Looking up through the leaves Vance spots two tiny spots in the sky flying to them.

“They are coming.” Agrom nods, seeing them as well.

Two tiny dragons, a palm's span each, fly down to land on a palm each. Vance's tiny red-black dragon smells vaugly of scalding acid as it looks up in silent communication. The blue beast landing on Agrom's hands chills it despite the frightful heat of the land. Tucking its head beneath a wing it quickly goes to sleep. After sliding the beast into protective coat pocket, he looks to his father.

“Well?”

Vance nods, letting the beast crawl from his palm into a coat pocket.

“He says the floating pattern is just past the razor realm downward. Its guarded by Agalxaxs, ice demons of some kind for the most part, a warrior race. There are several Ava Durfiro of Guard and by Majosa Dufiro of Warfare. Worst of all is a Lord of some kind, bearing the Logrus imprint and the imprint of the Abyss. Any way around it thats a hard fight. “

“Aye, tis true. The Logrus wielder is your business. I can manage the Warfare Dufiro. As for the rest....”

Nodding Vance agrees. “The Lord of Chaos is mine. You take out the Masoja... We have to hope Caxtl and Grali can handle the Ice Demons till we pitch in. The Dufiro of Guard are not typically warriors unless attacked. We clear the rest then recover, then deal with the Gaurds. Going to be messy. Have your death curse rehearsed son, just in case.”

Grinning, unsheathing his bat'leth, running a thumb along the edge, “I wish I knew what day it was, so I could know if its a good day to die or not. I'll just assume it is.”

==='''Agrom's Arrival in Ang Ri'''===
The land was rolling in the way a land might be considered rolling if endless soup bowls were placed side by side, row after row, alternating up and down. Yet coming upon the land one would not notice the uneven condition of the ground because of the forest of thick leaved inhabited Unsat trees.

The forest stretched from horizon to horizon only broken up by the buildings where harvested tree leaves were stored and packaged and the one rather commercial looking building that housed the administrators of the farm as well as the immature and uninhabited Unsat bushes. In that building residents of Ang Ri arrived and took service as resident intellects in the stubborn little bushes allowing them to grow quickly to be great and useful trees towering thirty feet or more.

Such things happen in many place but certainly under the purplish sky of the world of Ang Ri; a member world of the Black Zone Pack Instrument that defines the worlds in alliance with the Courts of Chaos and a world represented by a card in King Random's Trump deck.

The flying workers flit among the trees checking them for progress, tagging them for harvest or for a tending by a Unsat practitioner if one of the resident intellects decided to end his service early. Light skinned, ethereal, 6 armed fey, they handle the plants with care usually, but can be rough on them in need. They direct the harvester birds that crouch over the trees to be harvested. The birds rip them stalk and root from the ground and deposit them for processing. The farm, while massive, is typical of its kind and unremarkable except for the occurrence that shocks the valley this particular morning.

Into the light purple sky erupts a noise like unto the end of worlds.

Mighty and shaking, an earthquake in the air, come tongues of red fires and flows of black ice and avalanches of green diamonds the size of grapefruits as well as other clutter and refuse drawn from a level of the Abyss far below the levels even Lords of Chaos usually do business with. These things come from hellish lands and crash in the silent air of dawn. The deluge gouges a swath out of the trees whose inhabitants gain a different experience then they expected and signed up for as the trees burn in instantaneous glory.

From the eruption is spit a rolling figure at terminal velocity as if it had been falling a great distance among the rubble and finally leveled out and gravity betrayed it. Rolling, tearing trees in his passage he lands face down, his cloth a torn shambles and his body the bearer of thousands of cuts and scrapes. Skin torn loose flapping in the air, bones exposed, a wrecked rag-doll of meat and blood. That he breathed still does not mean he won't die soon.

The ripping birds and tending fey wove over to the still form and grabbed him up and taking him to the processing plant. Encrusted with chaos refuse he moans in agony, if not yet in death.

The crew laid him out on a pile of harvested leaves. Soon the administrator arrived and used his magics to determine what he could of the stranger. A minor corporate sorcerer, he quickly decided whatever this rumpled creature was this was far above his pay grade. Removing a contact stone he called his superior.

Outside help arrived in the form of a wizard of the Ninth Circuit who quickly determined this was no mere traveler. Whisking him away to the Capital Hall, he presented the still form to the Council of Grasbi. whose senior member, Hontas the Red, a great wyrm of the Council of the Wing, examined the creature with his arcane powers he put the form in stasis and decided to pass this along as others before him had done. He shifted to his orcish form and withdrew a set of trumps and drew one from a land to the West.

Speaking to the card a man steps through quickly. His human form is unfamiliar to Hontas but his power signature as a Lord of Chaos is clear.

Speaking softly to the Dragonlord, the Lord of Chaos thanks him and levitates the form, tethering it to his hip. The dapper dressed Chaosian pulls a card from his own deck; one he has never used before and is somewhat curious how he will be received upon arrival.

Stepping through the card, well within his rights to do so as a member of the bloodline of Amber as well as the houses of Sawall, Helgram and Hendrake of Chaos, he is greeted politely by the staff on Trump duty. The ever-ready medical staff quickly moved to tend the barely alive floating passenger, establishing a stasis field around him.

Officers come to greet the Lord of Chaos, noting the novel situation and passing word up their own chain of command. Moments later Prince Benedict arrived, in a Star Fleet admiral's uniform. Examining the form he approved treatment.

Hours later, after a tour and a lunch with friendly officers, Prince Benedict, the Acting Commander of Star Fleet, and Prince Despil Sawall, the Ambassador of Chaos to Amber, looked over the Klingon body buoyant in the healing liquids, attached to a collection of wires and drouds.

Thus did Captain Agrom, a Lord of Amber, the son of Lord Vance of Amber, come to survive his ordeal in the Abyss before Chaos.


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==='''Conference in the Tower'''===
[[Conference_in_the_Tower]]

==='''Coincidence of Birth'''===
[[Coincidence of Birth]]

==='''Kingdom of Vulsara'''===
[[Kingdom of Vulsara]]

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