“What I want to know is, how did you meet the goddess Priscellie and Fred/Iago and others? And thank her again for doing the butcher block pod casts.”
Fred and I played a text-based internet RPG together called AmberMUSH, back in the early 90s when the internet was just beginning to hit. We did not get along well. I was at odds with a friend of Fred’s, and Fred is the kind of guy who is fiercely loyal to his friends. We eventually worked things out,
I never read this series. I'll have to give it a listen. I'm getting a little tired of the Iron Druid series. I just started the sixth book and it feels a little meh to me. The next Alex Verus book doesn't come out until July and I don't know when the next Rivers of London novel will come out. Any other suggestions?
Dude, tagged that one a long time ago. He's also associated to Nyarlahotep which ties into some other DF stuff. Randall Flagg also is the Man in the Black in Stephen King's Gunslinger/Dark Tower series.
Likes I said... your not quite getting to the source material yet.
lol what? Yeah I posted about it a long time ago. He's been in like 9 Stephen King novels.Was talking about that to Rai earlier. Here, it's technically Lovecraft and his interdimensional metaphysics. Narylahotep has a form as a very tall joyous man... that's the Gatekeeper lol... which Naryla is the soul of the outer gods. So GK and what he actually does.... well, just think about that one lol.
What are you talking about me not getting the source material yet?
The first thing that jumps out to me is the parallel with the series opener with the beginning of Cold Days. The hero, Corwin, finds himself in a amnesiac state in which he has to recover along with his injuries. Corwin has better regenerative abilities than Harry with respect to his wounds. I also noted that Corwin had been in a Psych ward which is similar to a WOJL that Jim plans a book or plot with Harry in an insane asylum without magic.Quote
Evelyn Flamel vs. Evelyn Derek. Corwin gets a business card associated with his alleged 'sister' who is paying the hospital bill for his stay. The business card stood out to me and particularly when it was associated with Evelyn as I believed it to be an Evelyn that Harry met in Turn Coat. The lawyer that had hired the Private investigator to keep tabs on Harry. Now Evelyn Flamel (Amber) is Corwin's sister but that is beside the point as far as the business card goes. It was a coincident but I think Jim, since he is familiar with Amber series, had this business card-Evelyn connection going on when he went with it.Quote
We see a motif whereby certain brothers/sisters of Corwin have dogs that protect them. I pointed out on one occasion in which a dog goes in circles before lying down.
With amnesia Corwin has a familiarity with people, places, situations that is coming back to him. Later though, it still seems he has a degree of this that borders more on cognition of multiversal events rather than just simply amnesia. This has a parallel with Harry's precognition familiarity with places, etc.Quote
Julian, Corwin's brother, leads a 'wild hunt with horn' event chasing Corwin. It is somewhat similar to DF wild hunt except that the Amber one is a generic hunting event.Quote
The large part of the series is traveling through the shadows. These shadows stretch between Amber and Chaos like an electric field around a dipole. This relates to DF traveling through the NeverNever. Time distortions occur during travel through shadows in similar ways in which it can occur with it in the NN.Quote
Again, children of Amber have a great ability to regenerate similar in ways to the ability of DF wizards.
We have known for some time that if someone has your 'true name' they essentially have you. And to give them your true name, you need to speak it.
After reading the Amber series and encountering the character Victor Melman, I began wondering about both Victor Sells and the mailman (Victor Melman) we see in Storm Front. I wondered if the mailman, having thought of Peabody, had Harry sign his name for the letter/package. Does this signing of one's name give some part, approximation of the 'true name'. After this, I then thought of those wizards that Peabody had compromised within the White Council. We know part of the compromise was the blue ink. I wonder though if there was another vector for compromise in having your name, placed by you, on print being given to another. As an example, say a wizard is mute. This person has a true name. How would they give their 'true name' out? Anyways, what do you guys think?
By the way, if this Victor mailman vs Victor Melman parallel holds between Amber and DF, it would mean Harry is 'Merlin' or at least his shadow. Nor, have we seen the last of Victor Sells. Victor Melman attempts to sacrifice Merlin atop an altar crying out for his Master.
Harry did notice that the mailman had just changed at the beginning of Storm Front. So, it could be that one or the other of the 'mailman's' were the bad guy. And, someone had to do in the other. I don't think Harry ever mentions getting a new one.
So, it could be that the 'mailman' was somewhat of a protector of Harry. Preventing those who would try to get to Harry via ink, or handwritten signatures.
I'm now thinking of the Larry Fowler lawsuit. Will Harry have to take the stand or something, or need to say his Full Name in court. Just because some got his name in Cold Days, doesn't mean there won't be others that try to make that same attempt.
"Please state your full name for the court"We never have been able to settle the question of whether a person can intentionally mispronounce their own Name to avoid that sort of issue. I lean toward the idea that you can, based on the fact that you can apparently get a true Name correct accidentally (as Morgan very nearly did back in I want to say SF)
:Every supernatural being out there:
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What is the World's End Bar, and how did it come to be?
The WEB was originally a normal bar in San Francisco, named the Chestnut Street Bar and Grill. Since events and fights kept spilling into the local constabulatory's lap in San Francisco, the bar was eventually set adrift, a sort of free-floating Shadow of its own, and renamed the World's End Bar. There was a mirror which led to the Hall of Mirrors, and the door out led to many different Shadows.
The WEB has undergone several complete redecorations (usually thanks to Jurt). Since the Hall of Mirrors imploded, the WEB has been redecorated yet again, and now has a magical glowing corner in place of the mirror. It continues to serve its purpose as a sort of neutral ground, easily accessible by many.
Why is the Jewel not in Coral's eye?This Jewel is the Jewel of Judgement. It is used to attune oneself to the Powers of the Pattern to allow oneself to effectively use massive cosmic forces. It can also be used to create a new Pattern, a way into a completely new multiverse, or creating one from scratch.
This information is theoretically discoverable through roleplay.
How are three Patterns balancing, if at all?
Whether or not they balance is a cosmological question, and possibly plot material.
Where's Undershadow?
It has never turned up in play, and therefore likely doesn't exist as such on AmberMUSH.
After finishing construction, Merlin set Ghostwheel to work indexing Shadows in the same way that a search engine indexes the internet. Similar to a search engine, Ghostwheel can find, track, and retrieve objects from Shadow; this includes the ability to move people and objects between Shadows. Ghostwheel operates by creating pseudo-Trumps for every mutation of Shadow and then searching them.This would be similar to Demonreach's ability to grab Prisoner's and stash them in his prison. It could be rather, that GhostWheel is what finds, tracks, and retrieve's these entities then places them on Demonreach for Demonreach/Warden to be the Prison.
There is Shadow and there is Substance, and this is the root of all things. Of Substance, there is only Amber, the real city, upon the real Earth, which contains everything. Of Shadow, there is an infinitude of things. Every possibility exists somewhere as a Shadow of the real. Amber, by its very existence, has cast such in all directions. And what may one say of it beyond? Shadow extends from Amber to Chaos, and all things are possible within it. There are only three ways of traversing it, and each of them is difficult.
Amber casts an infinity of shadows. A child of Amber may walk among them, and such was my heritage. You may call them parallel worlds if you wish, alternate universes if you would, the products of a deranged mind if you care to. I call them shadows, as do all who possess the power to walk among them. We select a possibility and we walk until we reach it. So, in a sense, we create it. Let’s leave it at that for now.
If the forays of chaos kept occurring on my desire-walk through Shadow, then they were bound up with the nature of the desire and would have to be dealt with, one way or another, sooner or later. They could not be avoided. Such was the nature of the game, and I could not complain because I had laid down the rules.
For a moment I regarded the Pattern—a shining mass of curved lines that tricked the eye as it tried to trace them—imbedded there, huge, in the floor's slick blackness. It had given me power over Shadow, it had restored most of my memory. It would also destroy me in an instant if I were to essay it improperly. What gratitude the prospect did arouse in me was therefore not untinged with fear. It was a splendid and cryptic old family heirloom which belonged right where it was, in the cellar.
"Why have we been brought here and shown this thing?"
"It does not correspond to the true state of affairs," I said. "It is the true state of affairs."
Ganelon turned toward us.
"On that shadow Earth we visited—where you had spent so many years—I heard a poem about two roads that diverged in a wood," he said. "It ends, 'I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.' When I heard it, I thought of something you had once said—'All roads lead to Amber'—and I wondered then, as I do now, at the difference the choice may make, despite the end's apparent inevitability to those of your blood."
"You know?" I said. "You understand?"
"I think so."
He nodded, then pointed.
"That is the real Amber down there, isn't it?"
"Yes," I said. "Yes, it is."
"Anything you like. Have you any preferences? My flight from Chaos to this small sudden island in the sea of night? My meditations upon the abyss? The revelation of the Pattern in a jewel hung round the neck of a unicorn? My transcription of the design by lightning, blood, and lyre while our fathers raged baffled, too late come to call me back while the poem of fire ran that first route in my brain, infecting me with the will to form? Too late! Too late... Possessed of the abominations born of the disease, beyond their aid, their power, I planned and built, captive of my new self. Is that the tale you'd hear again? Or rather I tell you of its cure?"
My mind spun at the implications he had just scattered by the fistful. I could not tell whether he spoke literally or metaphorically or was simply sharing paranoid delusions, but the things that I wanted to hear, had to hear, were things closer to the moment. So, regarding the shadowy image of myself from which that ancient voice emerged, "Tell me of its cure," I said.
I could not be truly harmed because the Pattern protects me, and who but I could harm the Pattern? A beautiful closed system, it seemed, its weakness totally shielded by its strength. ... My blood, with which I drew it, could deface it. But it took me ages to realize that the blood of my blood could also do this thing.
It was realized long ago that the two kingdoms can never be merged, or one destroyed, without also disrupting all the processes that lie in flux between us. Total stasis or complete chaos would be the result.
I wish that you had never been born and, failing that, that you had died sooner. Enough! It diminishes me to reflect so. Be dead and trouble my thinking no more.
We never used to word “love,” though it must have run through her mind on occasion, as it did through mine. It was, I suppose, that I didn’t love her enough to trust her, and then it was too late.
This was my father’s tomb—well, cenotaph—built long ago when he had been presumed dead. It had amused him considerably to be able to visit the place later on. Now, of course, its status might well have changed. It could be the real thing now. Would this cancel the irony or increase it?
“It means nothing to be able to transport yourself anywhere,” I heard her say, “if you are a fool in all places.”
You can make me play,” I said, “but you cannot make me choose. My will is my own.”
I no longer felt my body. Time was an alien concept. The striving was no longer striving, but a form of elemental movement now, beside which glaciers rushed.
No matter what you are and no matter what’s been done to you, there will have to be some element of choice for you, sooner or later. You are greater than the sum of your parts, Merlin. No matter what went into your birth and your life up to now, you’ve got eyes and a brain and a set of values. Don’t let anybody bullshit you, not even me. And when the time comes, if it comes, make damn sure the choice is your own. Nothing that’s gone before will matter then.
What is the World's End Bar, and how did it come to be?
The WEB was originally a normal bar in San Francisco, named the Chestnut Street Bar and Grill. Since events and fights kept spilling into the local constabulatory's lap in San Francisco, the bar was eventually set adrift, a sort of free-floating Shadow of its own, and renamed the World's End Bar. There was a mirror which led to the Hall of Mirrors, and the door out led to many different Shadows.
The WEB has undergone several complete redecorations (usually thanks to Jurt). Since the Hall of Mirrors imploded, the WEB has been redecorated yet again, and now has a magical glowing corner in place of the mirror. It continues to serve its purpose as a sort of neutral ground, easily accessible by many.
This story picks up with Corwin (yay!) after he leaves Chaos. He rides a blue horse named Shask, a Chaos creature who can talk and change shape. Shask warns Corwin about the Dancing Mountains which lie between the shadows of Chaos and the shadows of Amber and are constantly shifting.
At night, Shask turns to stone (apparently a hereditary condition) and Corwin sleeps until he is awakened by a sound. He explores to find a depression in the mountain where two figures are playing a game. One figure is seated on the ground and the other hangs upside down in the air as they move pieces on the board. Corwin recognizes the seated man as Dworkin, his grandfather. His game pieces include a griffin, the Unicorn, and Castle Amber. His opponent is soon revealed to be Suhuy, Dworkin’s counterpart in Chaos. His pieces are a Fire Angel, the Serpent, and the Thelbane (the king’s home in Chaos). Neither man can see Corwin, but Suhuy mentions that Corwin won’t make it back to Amber in time to find the Hall of Mirrors and get the answers he needs. Dworkin warns Suhuy not to underestimate Corwin. Then the two men shift position and Dworkin moves a Chaos piece, a woman, which Suhuy objects to. He needs to study the move, so both men agree to reconvene in a few days before disappearing.
Corwin returns to Shask and when the steed awakens, Corwin asks if he knows what a hellride is. Shask does, noting its often harmful effect on a mount’s sanity. Corwin thinks Shask’s mind is up to the task. Corwin knows he has to get to the Hall of Mirrors quickly and so they prepare to depart.
Mac keeps a player piano instead. It's less likely to go haywire around us. I say pub in all the best senses of the word. When you walk in, you take several steps down into a room with a deadly combination of a low clearance and ceiling fans. If you're tall, like me, you walk carefully in McAnally's. There are thirteen stools at the bar and thirteen tables in the room. Thirteen windows, set up high in the wall in order to be above ground level, let some light from the street into the place. Thirteen mirrors on the walls cast back reflections of the patrons in dim detail, and give the illusion of more space. Thirteen wooden columns, carved with likenesses from folktales and legends of the Old World, make it difficult to walk around the place without weaving a circuitous route—they also quite intentionally break up the flow of random energies, dispelling to one degree or another the auras that gather around broody, grumpy wizards and keeping them from manifesting in unintentional and colorful ways. The colors are all muted, earth browns and sea greens. The first time I entered McAnally's, I felt like a wolf returning to an old, favorite den. Mac makes his own beer, ale really, and it's the best stuff in the city. His food is cooked on a wood-burning stove. And you can damn well walk your own self over to the bar to pick up your order when it's ready, according to Mac. It's my sort of place.
One of your more weirder scenes was the journey on the Chichen Itza. That journey through the parallel universes, but mixed in with the physical ones. Where did you get the ideas? I think there was like the upside triangles of light. Do you use like random things or how did you...?
As far as going through the parallel universes, to get somewhere else, that's largely lifted from Zelazny's Amber books. I don't know if you guys read Amber but travelling through Shadow is much the same.
“Ah,” Susan said. “You want us to walk blind through a tunnel filled with poisonous gases that could explode at the smallest spark.” “
Yeah.”
“And . . . you’re sure this is a good idea?”
“It’s a terrible idea,” I said. “But it’s the fastest way to the storage facility.” I lifted my fingertips to touch the red stone on my amulet as I neared the location of the Way. It was an old, bricked-over doorway into the ground level of the apartment building. A voice with no apparent source began to speak quietly—a woman’s voice, throaty and calm. My mother’s voice. She died shortly after my birth, but I was certain, as sure as I had been of anything in my life: It was her voice. It made me feel warm, listening to it, like an old, favorite piece of music that you haven’t heard for years.
“The hallway on the other side is full of dangerous levels of methane and carbon monoxide, among other gases. The mixture appears to be volatile, and in the other side you can never be sure exactly which energies might or might not trigger an explosion. Forty-two walking steps to the far end, which opens on a ridge outside Corwin, Nevada.”
There was a moment of silence, and then the same voice began to speak again, panting, shaking, and out of breath. “Notation: The hallway is not entirely abandoned. Something tried to grab me as I came through.” She coughed several times. “Notation secundus: Don’t wear a dress the next time you need to go to Corwin, dummy. Some farmer’s going to get a show.”
“Maybe it was a grue,” I murmured, smiling.
“What did you say?” Susan asked.
“Nothing,” I said. “Never mind.” I put a hand on the doorway and immediately felt a kind of yielding elasticity beneath my fingertips. The separation between the world of flesh and spirit was weak here. I took a deep breath, laid out a fairly mild effort of will, and murmured, “Aparturum.” A circle of blackness began to expand from the center of my palm beneath my hand, rapidly swelling, overlaying the wall itself. I didn’t let it get too big. The gate would close on its own, eventually, but smaller gates closed more quickly, and I didn’t want some poor fool going through it. Present company excluded, of course. I glanced back to Susan and Martin. “Susan, grab on to my coat. Martin, you grab hers. Take a deep breath and let’s get this done fast and quiet.”
I turned to the Way, took a deep breath, and then strode forward. Mom’s gem hadn’t mentioned that it was flipping hot in there. When I’d stepped into the hallway on the first trip, I felt like I was inside about three saunas, nested together like those Russian dolls. I found the righthand wall and started walking, counting my steps. I made them a bit shorter than normal, and nailed the length of Mom’s stride more accurately this time. I hit the Way out at forty-three. Another effort of will and a whispered word, and I opened that gate as well, emerging into a cold mountain wind, and late twilight. Susan and Martin came out with me, and we all spent a moment letting out our pent-up breaths. We were in desert mountains, covered with tough, stringy plants and quick, quiet beasts. The gate behind me, another circle, stood in the air in front of what looked like the entrance to an old mine that had been bricked over a long time ago.
“Which way?” Martin said.
“Half mile this way,” I said, and set out overland.
So we sat there while the moon fell, till the last bottle was interred among its fellows. We talked for a time of days gone by. At length we fell silent and my eyes drifted to the stars above Amber. It was good that we had come to this place, but now the city was calling me back. Knowing my thoughts, Ganelon rose and stretched, headed for the horses. I relieved myself beside my tomb and followed him.
He chuckled as he reached across the altar, raised a burning taper, and used it to light one of the others that had apparently gone out in some draft.
"I've pissed on my own grave," he announced. "Can't pass up the pleasure of lighting a candle to myself in my own church."
So I eyed the mound, one about the size of a coffin, and said, “What’s your problem?”
You, obviously, replied the occupant. Do you even know what the word stasis means? It means nothing is happening. You standing here, walking by, talking to me, for God’s sake, buggers that up entirely, the way you novices always do. What was the phrase? Ah, yes. Piss off.
I lifted my eyebrows. To date, every single prisoner who had tried to communicate with me had been pretty obviously playing to get out, or else howling nuts. This guy just sounded . . . British. “Huh,” I said.
Did you hear me, Warden? Piss. Off.
I debated taking him literally, just to be a wiseass, but decided that body humor was beneath the dignity of a Wizard of the White Council and the Warden of Demonreach, thus disproving everyone who says I am nothing but an overgrown juvenile delinquent. “Who are you?” I asked instead.
There was a long moment of silence. And then a thought filled with a terrible weariness and purely emotional anguish, like something I’d experienced only at the very lowest moments of my life, flowed into me—but for this being, such pain wasn’t a low point. It was a constant state. Someone who needs to be here. Go away, boy. A rolling wave of nausea went through me. The air was suddenly too bright, the gentle glow of the crystals too piercing. I found myself taking several steps back from the mound, until that awful tide of feeling had receded, but the headache those emotions had triggered found me nonetheless, and I was abruptly in too much pain to keep my feet. I dropped to one knee, clenching my teeth on a scream. The headaches had gotten steadily worse, and despite a lifetime of learning to cope with pain, despite the power of the mantle of the Winter Knight, they had begun kicking my ass thoroughly a few weeks before. For a while, there was simply pain, and aching, racking nausea. Eventually, that began to grow slowly less, and I looked up to see a hulking form in a dark cloak standing over me. It was ten or twelve feet tall, and built on the same scale as a massively muscled human, though I never really seemed to see much of the being beneath the cloak. It stared down at me, a pair of pinpoints of green, fiery light serving as eyes within the depths of its hood.
“WARDEN,” it said, its voice a deep rumble, “I HAVE SUPPRESSED THE PARASITE FOR NOW.”
“’Bout time, Alfred,”