The Cutting Edge

The treaty between Amber and Chaos is at the breaking point. A new Queen rules in Chaos, and she is doing her best to provoke Amber. While Random tries to calm the fires, Benedict has taken the bait and fallen out with the king. Can he rescue his daughter? Can the rest of the family prevent this from becoming the war to end all wars? Welcome to the next great conflict of Amber...

Cast

The elders, then, are pretty much as you'd expect from Corwin's Chronicles. Random is a competent, but not brilliant king. Most of the others have gotten back into the normal track of their lives. Corwin's been missing for some time.

Sol's Pledge: Oberon, Eric, Deirdre, and Brand are dead. Period. They ain't coming back in this game.

One break with the Chronicles will be the younger generation. As in, there will be one. Player characters may be established in Amber, and may have participated in the war. And there will be a number of NPCs of that generation as well.

Background

The game is set a few years after Patternfall, as depicted in Corwin's Chronicles. An uneasy peace holds, with the territories of each side clearly delimited and a small neutral zone in between. By treaty and practice, each side of Ygg is off-limits to the denizens of the opposite side.

A peaceful morning is shattered by the news that the King of Chaos is dead. A new Queen, Brenna, had claimed the throne. She promptly informed King Random that two of the family's youngsters, Tara and Finn, were caught on the Chaos side of Ygg. Random called for a negotiation in hopes of averting a threatened death penalty.

Benedict, however, disagreed with taking risks with his daughter, concluding that a direct attack was the only way to ensure her safety. He quarrelled with Random, and when he stalked off to implement his plan, Random shot him. Benedict managed to trump out wounded.

Hermes gathered the readily available Amberites, and they set off to the Green Griffin, the official neutral point, for a conference with Queen Brenna. From there, Malthius and Donovan attempted to contact Benedict using mysterious means of Malthius's, while Hermes went looking for dead shadows of Tara and Finn.

Meanwhile Gerard and Random's daughter Sylvre went hunting for Corwin. The trail led them into Chaos, and when confronted by the Chaos Guard, they trumped to Faris. They found themselves at the staging point for Benedict's raid, deep in Chaos. From there they reached Corwin, and informed him of the situation.

They went with the small strike force into the heart of Chaos. Benedict's calculation was right -- it was a trap, and so getting in to the kids was easy. Now the strike force is trapped by a Chaos Army, and we are left wondering exactly how Benedict was planning to get out of this pickle...

Character Creation

100 point Amberite characters. Contributions rewarded and highly encouraged. No auction, just choose the points you want and write them down. We will be using a partial power system.

Advanced powers and powerful items are heavily frowned on. Interesting, unique, lower-powered items with real histories are strongly favored, but that may be a bit much to ask without forethought.

If possible, I'd love to get character ideas before the Con starts. My e-mail address is below.

GM Philosophy

Let me admit up front that I'm not one of those great stylistic GMs. If you get different voices and gestures for each of Elders from me at the Con, you can probably safely conclude it's a space alien pretending to be me for some unfathomable reason.

What I am (IMO) pretty good at is constructing interesting, consistent universes and letting the players roam through them. I've played at AmberCon enough to notice that with good players you hardly need a GM, and I let this observation strongly influence my GMing. Except for maybe a fudge at the beginning to get things going, I won't railroad your characters. (And I hope to avoid the fudge.)

My preference is for a low-powered Amber, where magic is a thing of wonder, not a cheap special effect for powergamers. The elders are not gods, just truly exceptional human beings. Shadows can be dangerous things. Amber is a special place, yes, but that stuff about the "Real World" is as much propaganda as anything -- I mean, Chaos is out there, too.

I hope to present a scenario which puts the Elders and the PCs in a position where hard choices must be made, leading to surprising twists on the normal state of affairs. I will be surprised if there is not serious infighting within Amber, and Chaos will be always waiting in the wings.

As such, it will be a pretty serious game. But don't be surprised if there is a strong undercurrent of humor as well -- I just can't seem to keep it out of my games.


That's all I can think of to say at the moment. If you have questions, comments, or characters, send me mail at colomon@ralf.org. If you'd like to check out the other Amber stuff I'm involved with, the Roland and Samhaoir pages are packed with information on my characters and their campaigns. Or you can return to my Amber page or my home page.