Results of the Ghenesh-hunt: One

Bleys, Llewella: unhurt
Flora: bashed, cut up & mildly poisoned but is now well practiced at fighting Gheneshans, which was the point
Osric, Tanitheel, Bree, Dain: bruises, mild cuts
Finndo: heavy bruises, broken bone in right foot, cuts
Martin: wounded left arm (left hand minus part of two fingers), minor hurts
Clark: minor wounds, two broken fingers in right hand
Palatine: exhausted but only lightly bruised & cut
Fineas: various nicks, scrapes and bruises over the course of the weeks
13 & Dara: bruised, wrenched and scorched, minor cuts.
Galina: rattlesnake-type (essentially acidic) bite in left leg; hospitalized three days.
All the Trump Gaters: nagging headaches.
Samurai: ~40% casualties to troops involved
Hellmaids: ~20%; BP initiates down from exhaustion for a while
Weir and Royal Guards: ~15%

Galina’s trap stopped about 90% of those fleeing on the main drag. Some were able to take subsidiary routes, most of which led to the ones Fineas and Martin were attacking.

Both Fineas and Martin, with their magnesium-bolt armed troops, were able to stopper their routes until the refugees backed up into enough of a mass to roll over them. You nailed maybe half of the totals in each route.

Tertiary routes went unguarded and were used until the base mirrors were destroyed.

Some Gheneshans escaped along the temporary shadow paths made by the armies brought in by Osric, Finndo and Palatine, or sent in by Bleys and Gerard.

[Palatine, BTW, was exhausted. Staying in contact with her barbarian horde while Logrus-shifting incrementally, is really freaking hard.]

Once Gheneshans made their ways to sizeable rivers and seas they were pretty safe from anyone but Dara, Tanitheel, Dain, Palatine and Bree; and the Gheneshans have the numbers to overwhelm those five. How many get lured out by other, captured and converted, Gheneshans depends on the deals being offered.

Locals, the humans, are initially too frightened to help in the hunt. After a while they get really into it but always kill, never capture. The worship ceases. This doesn’t apply to anywhere near a barbarian (Manchurian IJA, “Mongols”, “Visigoths”, “Bedouins”, “Moghuls” -- The IJA, "Mongols" and "Moghuls" show admirable discipline; the "Moghuls" are also reilgious fanatics; all are highly atrocity-prone) horde, since the horde employs its SOP against foreign locals. Once the hunt is wrapping up Gerard orders Bleys to arrange for the hordes to attack each other. He doesn’t need them annihilated; he just doesn’t want some khan to form an effective, aggressive state in a high magic shadow for lingering Gheneshans to take over.

Humans of Ghenesh are unusually resilient. Their average Endurance is about = to Chaos. They take quickly to magic, having participated regularly in a magical ritual (feeding their mana to the power network) most of their lives.

Palatine and House Hendrake would like a share of the Dreen and Eshva. She’d also like to cherry-pick some of the surviving Vazdru. Hendrake notions of acceptability are broader than Gerard’s.

Palatine isn’t the only one. Bleys, Llewella & Martin (for Rebma), Florimel, Rinaldo, and Jacob are all interested in acquiring useful shapeshifters. They look at Tanitheel as the exemplar of what a Gheneshan can become. (Well aware that Tanitheel took a long time to develop, first as one of Sir John Gaunt’s underlings, gradually earning a knighthood, BP initiation, then ennoblement and eventually a small barony.) The Basilisks would doubtless be interested if they knew. Once they do know they’ll check out the splinter groups with an eye to eliminating them, absorbing them, avoiding them or establishing business relationships.

Session 47 Game Log

Thirteen and Tori

Clark is watching Tori and asks Thirteen about helping him learn some mental defenses. Thirteen boasts his mental prowess. Clark talks to Thirteen about elementals and summoning. The alarms go off and they all trump to the main floor of the castle. There are two Gheneshans flying away with Kelamon and one of Flora’s kids and her student. Tori pulls a pocket full of coins and tries to get mental control of the one with her mother. Kelamon is released in the air and Tori forces her way through the mental defenses and takes them down. Thirteen takes a few shots and them and when he sees Kelamon fall he does a spell to slow her fall. Flora is able to take the other Gheneshan down and save her daughter. Gerard is put in charge of torturing duties. Tori asks him not to kill him because she promised him and his family a slow painful death.

Dara

Dara returns from the family meeting and tries to trump Toriana but Tori is unable to answer right now. Dara trumps through to Flora who is in Amber. Dara wants to take out the queen now.

Thirteen

Is briefed on poisons by Tanathiel and they pump up the prisioners with anti-shifter drugs.

Fineas

Finds Dara and asks to talk to his dad. Dara yells out for him. Benedict shows up and they discuss the Geneshanian situation. Fineas asks how they used to keep them in line and Benedict goes into details about the old days. They talk about shutting down the Geneshaian power source. Everyone agrees that the queen must die. Benedict thinks they will be going after other power sources. Fineas makes contact with Dom Daniel to let them know to shut down any open mirrors. They offer to teach him an ultraviolet spell to keep them off. Bell asks permission from Fineas and he agrees and they are all teleported to a lab.

Thirteen

Does a staff check and family check for more Geneshaians. Gerard and Thirteen check each other out for signs of Geneshaians. They decide for family they should try and trump them. Dara asks her dad if he can check people out. He is not able to do so. Thirteen questions Joreian and finds out the Chaosite had told who all the nobles are and even who Sir John is. Thirteen goes to check out Delwin and Sand to make sure they are not more plants. Delwin and Sand ask what is going on and who he is. They don’t want a stranger (Thirteen) to touch them they ask for Flora, Tanathiel, or Gerard.

Toriana

Calls a family meeting by starting to trump people. The group talks about what to do with this situation in regards to the mirrorverse. They are living in a medival level technology shadow. Clark volunteers an army. Zhartra comes into the meeting a bit later and tells Fineas not to worry about wells that she will take care of this. Toriana brings up that someone should mention this to Corwin.
Toriana learns the spell for ultraviolet light. Toriana and Dara go to see Turjon and decide to use their blood in the vat instead of Turjon’s. They work on getting donations for the cause.

Fineas

Fineas trumps Jazra to let her know what is going on. He outlines their strengths and weaknesses for her. He calls Lirazel and talks to her about the situation as well. Fineas proposes an agreement with house Basilik and using her new family member as an assassin against the new enemy. Zhartra also agrees to forgive him if he ventures out on this quest and alliance. Fineas wants to check out Gelerack’s old strongholds.

Thirteen

He raids his coin machine and resets it. He seeks out Clark and explains the coins, but Diego had already explained them to him. He works on setting up a portable lighting device. He also makes a UV grenade. He works on some magnesium grenades and bullets. He starts mass production of these items in Vulnavia.

Anarchy

They go to Chaos and talk with Dara’s family. Dara’s family runs down the family and what has been happening. They are talking about absorbing house Mionbie. The motion to absorb them passes. She asks Luke to help clean up the Helgram mess and to give her a logrus master. Palatine offers to go with Dara to assist her. She is a logrus master. Palatine wants one of her men to be able to walk the broken pattern. She grabs a Darrick as a lower logrus master. The enlarged group heads to Amber. Palatine really wants to meet Gerard and Flora. Palatine had four guards. Bleys takes a pretty fast through shadow to close to the Gheneshans. Bleys brings along his people, and Thirteen brings Kirsten and Genavieve. Toriana works on her own lighthouse on a stick, based on a suggestion from Fineas she works on a trump conjuration artifact for sunshine. Bleys makes a mirror out of a rock to show off.

Fineas

He trumps Kiytung and warns her of what has transpired. He calls Calvin into action to get his gear ready for the journey. Fineas wants Calvin to act as his squire for this mission. He calls Reynaldo to get his intelligence brief. They talk about the area’s defenses. Reynaldo says a man named Rennick is in charge of the castle/ice tower. Fineas decides to get a few rangers and maybe some weres.

Anarchy + Thirteen

The group goes into the mirrorverse and not to long thereafter they run into a patrol. Dara and the hellmaids toss the patrol of two easily. She lets any hungry hellmaids feed on the spoils if they so choose. They decide to throw the bodies to the horses outside the mirrorverse. Bleys kills the next two guard patrol. Golina wants to get a bit further in. Thirteen, Golina and Toriana do the mapping bit and this takes around five minutes to complete. Bleys runs everyone into Ghenesh and the group tries to locate the pylons. On the fifth locate we have less time then we wanted and we get attacked by every animal in the area.

Session 46 Game Log

Fineas

Fineas is in Amber city settling a Garou minion of the Beast named Lucy in with Valery. She's to study Valery for her Master and bodyguard him if necessary. A concerned Weir Guardsman points out that Lucy has no personal scent at all; she smells only of her garments and accumulated dirt -- not easy to notice in a sea port. It is suggested that Lucy talk to Tanatheel.

Fineas goes to the Castle to see Sir John. He is down in the baths, and Fineas joins him. Fineas tells him that he has something secret to talk to him about later in private. Sir John is pretty beat up, and when Fineas asks about it Sir John tells him that there was a riot in Kashfa. Fineas is concerned that Sir John was checking up on Jasra. Sir John admits that he was indeed. He was pleasantly surprised with Queen Jasra's balance of restraint and force in dealing with the rioters. They talk about Osric and Finndo and what they are up to now. Osric and Finndo were told about the Mirror-verse (hard to keep it a secret when most of the populace knows and all mirrors have wards and guards on them) and are willing to help out against the Courts. 13 qnd his adventures in the sewers are the next topic of discussion. Fineas questions Osric and Finndo’s subtlety Lirazel is brought up. Fineas feels that she should be let go, or made to have an accident. If he was in charge he would let her go. Sir John tells Fineas that Flora agrees and that keeping good standing with her house is a good policy. Fineas brings up the idea of marrying off 13 to Lirazel. Sir John is sure that it wouldn't go over well with the rest of the Royals once they realized that they could be next; Flora would certainly never set such a precedent that could be used on her. Fineas relates his most recent experience involving Valary. Clark is brought up. Sir John says that he seems to be rational, possibly brilliant and happy to make himself useful. Vulnavia’s military is discussed.

Checks up on his Remens that are being trained. The are in the middle of building a new permanent camp. Things are well, but some info from the Mirror-verse has piqued Fineas’ interest. Much political intrigue.

Finds out scary things his Father Brand, and some of the things that he was up to. Back to the Mirror-verse to check out the some of the things.

Toriana

Tori gets a trump from Turjan. Fake Decla’s body is not working out the way it should be. Tori wants to see if Decla was fully real, if She was fully Amberite. It does not seem to be real enough. It might be a Shadow Decla. Tori ponders what is going on with Decla, when Flora trumps her. She has a mission for both her and 13. Tori is polite and asks if Heinrick is available. The assignment is Earth.

13

Sewer. Clean. Lucy stalks Valary. Fineas sends Kirsten and Zheneviev to amber and they get cleaned up. Trump call. Flora. Delwin and Sand. Chumley and Tananda. Geneshian magic style. Tori hi-jacks one of the bad air elementals, which says it was bound by "the Fox-headed man". 13 goes and investigates. A mirror source. Close by binding magic. 13 moves toward the source. Tori sends Delwin and Sand to Amber along with their doctors. Tori recalls Flora's security out of the near Mirrorverse. They get out just ahead of attacking nasties and destroy all the mirrors in the facility by pressing a single button. 13 is attacked by fae thugs whose numbers quickly grow really dangerous. Battle. Tori in a helicopter extracts 13 and the vamps along with one thug. Two giant glassy hawks -- like Tanitheel's fast-form -- fly up to scout and are driven away with fireballs and the coptor's Vulcan cannon.

Fineas

Oversees vetting his new peasants. Spies are found and dealt with -- SOP from the Luung court. Does some motivation of the troops. Trumps mom and she is bathing. He talks to her about the riots and if there are any political prisoners as Ruin always needs more settlers.

Tori and 13

Detect the use of Mirrormastery and trace it. Find mirror. Z & K dig up mirror. Octagonal obsidian 4’ DIA and 3” thick. Spells on it, tricky and unusual Gheneshan traps. Tanatheel is brought in. Tanatheel is very concerned for Tananda and Chomali. She volunteers to fly in and catch up to the enemy; Tori can then Trump in attack forces. Tanitheel augments her swift-form's speed with spells and rockets down the mirrorverse corridor at over 250 mph. She passes a large force of Gheneshans, the captives and a teleport circle, flies back and her defensive spells last long enough for Tori to Trump 13, the vamps, Heinrick and herself through. They're swarmed by things like mini-ogres, ogres, and animal-men but Tori manages to open a Gate to Gerard and his force of Royal and Flora's commandos. They annihilate the first wave, grab the captives and a few prisoners and Gate back to the medical facility on Gerard's orders. Tori blows up the Teleport circle en passant.
Fineas

Rebma. Bad boy school. Chanicuts. The teachers are pretty frazzeled. They are not model students. They do not seem to be able to be changed from their Chanicut point of view. Calvin, Dennis and Ramona. He trumps Bleys and the two of them come up with a good plan to deal with the kids.

Tori and 13

The thug fae, "dreen", start turning slowly into charcoal when exposed to sunlight. Tori comes up with a shade spell to keep them from burning up. Tanathell works on healing (and a kill switch) one of the nobles, Jorian. Jorian serves Queen Vala of Ghenesh. The fox-headed man is Lord Vron. Kiros Helgram, that house's spymaster in Amber, had come to Ghenesh to cut a deal against Amber. The Gheneshans caught him and extracted every scrap of information, then used him to start initiating the Gheneshan nobles, "vazdru", in Mirrormastery. The whole of the Vazdru, since Kiros's captors swiftly eliminated or dominated all the other monarchs. Vala and the others are spread out over a wide area of Shadow now. Jorian claims that Queen Vala was curious about Flora and Earth, that they detected interesting things at Delwin and Sand's hospital, and that Chomali and Tananda attacked them.

Fineas

Need to find a tech shadow. Needs to break Chanicutt’s with boredom. Takes the oldest boy out into shadow. Tells Calvin that he is going to a squire. Rank problems. Duel and humiliation of Calvin. Lirazel witnesses Calvin swear by his House's honor to obey. Lirazel’s question: “What is your families disposition toward the Vampire Vrykos”? House Basilisk was interested in adopting him.

Fineas: “Live and let live”

Lirazel is released from her parole to Amber. Works on Calvin and uses long shots to do use on Denis. Makes a deal with Lirazel to give her a trump of Dom-Daniel in exchange for some info: other shapeshifters are scouting out Dom-Daniel's region; they do not seem to be Chaosian.

Tori and 13

Informs Flora about the Geneshians. Flora talks to Tori about Clark and send him through. Clark had been tasked to figure out how the Castle wards were breached. He believes the Castle is sentient but he isn't powerful or adept enough to be sure.

She Goes to the Castle and checks it out. It is like a huge, shy, very stealthy earth elemental. It is embarrassed about its wards being penetrated. It is under orders to not talk and directs her to Dworkin. Clark is hungry and Tori takes him to Rebma and he likes the food. He's shy about women and mentions that they're too fragile. Tori tells him the women in Rebma and some other places are tougher than that.

Fineas

Trumps Galina and contacts her in mid Pattern-shunt. He talks to her about Geneshians with knowing that‘s what he is doing. Mirror-verse discussion. Make plans to meet in the future over tea. Galina has had difficulty processing her experiences with Dworkin and the Unicorn. They were confusing, overwhelming and a lot like being dosed with hallucinogens. She did drink from a spring containing water that fit the family phrase, "of which all other is but a Shadow". Fineas suggests she start writing a journal and keep track of things that she has seen. She has been making attempts with poetry. She decides to walk back to Amber to get it out of her system.

Game Log Session 45

Cry Havoc- Session 45

45.

Dara / Toriana:

Turjon is still analyzing the genetic materials in hopes of growing a new body for Benedict. The vats begin growing clones based upon the samples brought back by Tori and Dara. Dara sets a guardian demon to watch over the process while Tori makes a trump or two of the place. Dara summons Benedict and asks him to separate out the taint from his blood she had saved. After he complies, Dara consumes it and begins shifting it to form a tattoo. She decides to do it properly she should visit Tori's trump shadow. Tori agrees to take her there but before after some time there Dara gets a trump call from Finndo. He wants information about chaos so that he can more effectively combat them (or so he claims). Dara arranges for Finndo and Osric to meet Tor Hendrake. Some discussions take place and Tori tries to con them into going on a Helgram hunt. The conversation devolves into Tor flirting with Tori and the finer points of spanking. Unable to get their uncles to go hunting, Tori and Dara head into the mirrorverse to look for Helgrams to torture. They experiment with shapeshifting Tori to a combat form more suited to survival in chaos.

Thirteen:

Thirteen continues his whirlwind tour of Vulnavia with his mother and meets with Kylikki. He asks about the other concubines and learns Dawadire left to Mapungubwe. There is some hint that all of the concubines have been impregnated. Thirteen shudders thinking about the male one. Moving on from that scary thought, Thirteen has a long conversation with Clark about his future plans. He learns Clark has more or less taken control of this shadow, cleaning up Diego's mess and altering the politics to suit him. Mirelle continues feeling out Clark's suitability and is offered interviews with the various assistants. Thirteen talks with "Monk" for a time and learns more about Clark's personality. He seems likely to want a "scientist of Amber" position, similar to what Diego attempted but with less insanity involved.

Fineas:

Fineas trumps Flora to get an update on things and is interrupted by a magical assault on Amber. He steps through and helps Flora investigate. It appears a ship in the harbor triggered a spell to kill off all the Helgram prisoners in the dungeon. The wards were penetrated by the use of many coins. Fineas heads out to search the dissolving ship and finds only slim evidence beyond a trace of a minor focusing power. Other family members begin showing up. Fineas has a banquet date with Admiral Chang & company, so returns to his father's manor to prepare.

Dara/Toriana:

Flora trumps Tori to report the deaths of the prisoners. Dara continues working on Tori , helping to teach her to cope with the new form. They check in with Turjon and learn the male template failed and the Dara template failed. The Decla clone is still growing and he will attempt to imbue it with a spirit. Tori is quickly changed back to her normal form and they return to help Benedict design a new body that will have a better chance of succeeding. They come up with a form somewhat reminiscent of his old one.

Thirteen:

Thirteen and Mirelle continue their interviews with Clarks assistants. Hypnotism is used to verify veracity and Clark appears to have represented himself accurately. Aside from some homoerotic overtones, his assistants confirm his history and personality. Mirelle decides Clark can be trusted to walk the Pattern. About then they are trumped by Flora and told of the attack on Amber. Clark is offered the chance to come and help investigate and all head to Amber to learn how the attack was possible and how to prevent it in the future.

Fineas/Dara/Toriana:

Fineas attends the banquet with one tiger and an assistant. He is dismayed to discover the Admiral and his cohorts are trying to poison him. He did too good a job and they have decided Fineas is too dangerous to live. Fineas escapes via trump and takes retribution. He trumps Anarchy Incorporated and asks for assistance in punishing the mortals. Trumps are made of the General and Admiral. Fineas mentally attacks the General first, dominating his body and using it to kill most of the senior officers on board the ship one by one. The General is slain in the process, so Fineas has Tori attack the Admiral. Dara provides a nice strike force of hellmaids and they begins killing as many on board the flagship as they can. After sufficient supernatural showboating, Fineas impersonates a demon from their culture and kills the Admiral in public view in the most brutal fashion possible. The Amberites leave. Fineas visits the mirrorverse to spy on the reaction afterwards.

Thirteen:

Thirteen begins assembling Amberite assistance for Carl to begin an in depth study of Amber physics and the Helgram "kill switch". It is learned that a carrier wave was beamed into the castle and the signal triggered a lethal response in organs planted within the Helgrams. The signal was non magical in nature and was thus able to survive the wards in place. Carl begins work on ways to stop such a signal in the future and toys with the notion of "Amber radio". Thirteen is then alerted to a possible menace brewing in the sewers of Amber. It seems a number of wasplike creatures have taken up residence and could pose a threat. Thirteen descends into the sewers and learns the wasps are a form of bloodbeast, probably planted by the Helgram spy who got away. They seem to be uncontrolled but are definitely dangerous. Thirteen cleans up the mess, using some tricks to get them to mass before eradicating them. Amber is saved!

Fineas/Dara/Toriana:

The hellmaids return home with a fresh batch of slaves. They are happy. Dara got to kill stuff so she is happy. Tori got to screw with minds so she is happy. Fineas is trying to be happy when he gets a call from Valeri. Valeri seems to be under some sort of surveillance by a stalker and is worried who it might be. Fineas returns to Amber to investigate and sets a trap. The stalker is confronted after Fineas recruits Kirsten and Genevieve to help. After a minor skirmish it turns out the stalker is a garou sent by the Beast to learn how a mere mortal was able to conquer his fear and face the dragon. Fineas proposes that the garou act as a "sidekick" to observe Valeri more closely and protect him. The garou balks at first but is mortified of the thought the Beast will learn she botched the surveillance. She finally agrees and is introduced to the concept of personal hygiene.

Note

Re: Dara shapeshifting Toriana

Returning Tori to her normal form took maybe 1/10 as long as getting her shifted initially, and was 1/20 as difficult.

Practice would improve on that more. Won't ever be as fast or easy as Dara shapeshifting herself though.

Once shifted to the Animal Abilities level Tori not only could fly and all, she could fight using Dara's most familiar moves -- just more slowly.

-- posted by Randy from Chez Testerman

Session 44

Dara

In Amber Castle. She talks to ghost Benedict discussed Finndo and Osric. Benedict warns her about them. Dara thinks that this could be fun

She trumps Tori. Make some plans and trump 13. They tell him that they are going to go and talk to Finndo and Osric, and they want to know if he wants to go along. He tells them that he would love to. Tori pulls him through and he finds himself back on Ki-tung’s ship. The gang is all here. There is discussion about Tori’s run in with the Crow Sisters. Off to the Pirate haven.

---

Tori and 13 take a diversion to Tori’s Happy Place. They remove Llewella’s pattern trick and 13 learns how to do it.

---

Back to the boat. Dara and Fineas make some plans. Dara thinks about hitting the mirror-verse and quickly reject it. They move on to plan “A” and go for the direct approach. They meet with Osric and he checks them out. He requires them to do “stupid pattern tricks” to prove that they are in fact members of the family. Fineas pulls out all of his diplomatic stops to swing them over to his point of view. Osric still thinks that they are shape shifted Oberon and is very wary of them. Fineas comes up with a cunning plan to convince them.

---

Dara and Tori take him to Mount Kolvir to prove to him that things had indeed changed. Osric trumps Finndo to show him that Fineas was telling the truth. Though they still think everybody is a disguised Oberon.

They express their displeasure at the changes made to Amber society in their absence. Everybody is off to the Castle to meet the Regent. The meet and greet goes better then expected. Ghost Benedict fills them in on all that they missed while they were trapped.

---

Tori and Dara discuss Jelerak’s son Turgon and his task of making a body Benedict. Dara talks to Benedict about the cloning process. They need a DNA sample of a nonempowered family member.

Dara and Tori leave and make there way to the “Grandson” of Oberon. Tori has some trouble getting in due to her disguise. They take a look at the process. They get everything cooking on the cloning.

---

Flora and 13 discuss her previous request to feign his love to his mother to get her to join the family. She went and talked to Merrell herself and Merrell has rejoined the family. Much fun in the castle as all of the adults test out each others skill levels. Fineas joins in on the fun. Finndo and Osric seem to be in line with the rest of the family’s abilities.

---

Fineas gathers his posse together for some good guy bonding. Fineas fills them in on his family background.

---

13 goes to Vulnavia with his mom to check out Diego’s half brother. They find him to be far more tolerable then Diego.

---

Tori and Dara get a sample of Benedicts DNA and the process continues. They go to Rebma to await the results. Before they leave they give Turgon a sample of Dara’s blood for good measure.

---

Fineas takes care of Ki’s ship. Checks up on the giants. He goes back to Ki’s and takes care of business. When finished they discuss Pirates.

He leaves Ki to go in search of the “fountain of Youth”. Enters into a discussion to take control of it. Gives it a coin to “feed” it. Finds out it wants blood. Fineas is very disturbed that everything in the Universe wants his blood.

He goes in search of an “Ageless Area”. Goes to Rebma to recover.

---

The meeting with Doc. Savage goes well.

---

The Benedict erector set continues on track.

They head into the Mirror-verse to check things out. They spy the crow sisters passing overhead. They are in search of Delwin and Sands hospital rooms. Tori trumps Flora about Llewella. They make a deal to meet with Delwin and Sand in Flora’s Earth shadow Mexico. They talk about the Binding power. They work on fixing Delwin and Sand.

---

Fineas cure’s the old folks among his troops and the Remians.

Session 44 Minus

13
Flora Trumped 13, who went through to her in Amber. She cancelled her request that he make nice with his mother Mirelle, and apologized for interfering with his personal life. It would work out or not.

Mirelle was willing to stay on if she was given the survivors of the team that killed her husband and daughter, and abducted baby 13. As this was Oberon's special dirty team of fanatics, and Sir John's branch of the secret service had long since distanced themselves from the bunglers, Flora did that with the two survivors.

13 volunteered to help orient newbie family member Carl Savage when he came to Amber, and to check him out for excessive unsuitability; ie. would CS need to be killed.

Toriana
Trumped Jacob in to examine Llewella's neato Pattern trick. Just after he left two crows, radiating Binder power just a bit, flew in and turned into nude teenaged (looking) girls with black hair and eyes and brown skin. They morphed a bit of the foliage into wraps and questioned Tori politely. Where was Pan-Luum? She had been one of the people that shut Pan-Luum's shadow up. Why? Tori told them that she thought Jelerak had attacked and quite possibly killed Pandelume -- Pan-Luum? -- or perhaps driven him away. Further, Jelerak had attacked Tori's father and been killed doing it. The girls moved like Dara, very quick; maybe quicker. They were mildly interested in the "boy with the sacred power" -- Jacob -- and pleased that he was busily binding the "intruders".

They left quietly, turning back into crows (normal sized crows) and fading out, Dark Well style, into shadow.

Tori Trumped Zhartra and inquired. Zhartra was interested. If they weren't agents of the Binders in Chaos -- she'd check -- they sounded like a pair who showed up in tales from time to time. If they were the same pair, the tales were older than the Lords of Chaos themselves. Rumor had it that the Serpent had built upon an existing island of stability. An inhabited island. Several different versions told what had happened to those people; exterminated, absorbed, hiding, etc. The Binding and Dark Well powers might have been theirs. They were shapeshifters but favored certain forms: human, cat, crow, serpent or wingless dragon, possibly others.

Pre-Pattern, everything had been pretty malleable where it wasn't Bound into solidity. Zhartra had thought the first people mythical or long extinct. She advised against angering the twins; they were supposedly very dangerous physically (never defeated) and said to be immune to most powers -- Binder defenses would explain the latter. Perhaps someone should go looking for Pan-Luum too.

study guide

Fineas-related:
Sword: Werewindle
Mistress: Cpt. Ky Tung; her ship, the Widening Gyre
On board:
first mate Jian Tung (uncle of KT, middle aged Sammo Hung with a shaved head and a goatee);
Azvan;
sergeant Dao Tung (cousin of KT, weapon master, martial artist, Jet Li); Daebekkar Senior Scholar and Explorer Talifa (Queen Latifa with an upper-class accent, recently out of her third rejuvenation) a consultant and her assistants Master Ferroh (grandson, mage, junior Daebekkar)
and Jayanti (Chelayan [blue] female protégée, Alyson Hannigan in medium blue skin and silvery short hair)

In Remia:
Sullus, the Imperator to be
Hilda and Gilda (Hildamar and Gildenstern), sisters, hawkmaids, scouts, messengers

Chez Brand (Jeng-Dei palace) staff:
Mages
Kwan Ro, air and bird specialist, first among equals [tall, thin, graceful]
Sprague, engineer, the organizer of the bunch [tall, thin, spade beard, occidental]
“Tiger” Tlacoatl Man-ching, werejaguar, erltiger liaiaon [Aztec features]
Trocero, herbmaster, gardener, toxicologist [looks Italian]
“Catkin” Kubash, Librarian [‘goblin’; a middle aged but spry Chiana with green skin, a shock of black hair, sharper than human teeth, barely 5’ tall]
Sergeant Lo Ken, master of arms
Wang Fei, Cook

Erl-tigers have names like Smiler, Leaf Dancer, Two Grizzlies, One Ear, Scholar, Ghost, Poet, Wait For It.

Local authorities
The Emperor of the East, Wang Wu Jing [an asian Bn. Harkonnen]
The Governor of Bu-Yang Province, Liang Chi
Field Marshall Zu-Ma, too young, too pretty, obedient
Chief Minister, Fu Yu-Lan, [Crime, but asian]

From overseas
Grand Admiral Chang Ho, a tall, beefy eunuch
General Dzo Chew-ming [Sonny Chiba – Hattori Hanzo – with a gray beard]
Imperial Scholar (wizard) Han Fei
(still overseas) Wang Shang-chi, Emperor of the restored Lao dynasty

Dara and Toriana’s Griffin riders
The Niis (neess) Empire
Empress Shardique
Air-Captain Vwall

[I’m using random French words spelled phonetically for Nisian.]

Griffin names (given by riders; griffins are as smart as smart dogs): Flying Knife, Buttercup, Ender, Sparrowhawk, Dollymop, She-devil, Darling Lily.

Griffins weigh 700 – 1200 lbs.

Nisian adult females weigh 350 – 550 lbs.

Osric’s pirate-shadow: Baluu

Session Log - 43

Toriana
The partying continues through the night. Dara is going to handle introducing the griffin riders to Amber. Toriana is working on a few trumps she comes back and her creature tells her that a few people have been in the area. Toriana is concerned because Llewella is one of the people who has been nearby. She gets started on a trump of the shadow where she is stashing the hell maids. Dara has a conversation with Flora about the riders and the griffins. There are a couple of the Tir trump artists who show up on the outskirts of Toriana’s shadow and she goes to question them. They were brought here by Llewella to replicate and make many trumps for Marcus. Toriana is ticked off by this and she changes the area after they leave so that they cannot trump back to it again.

Thirteen
Sabine dresses up for the party and Thirteen dons a white linen suit. Kirsten gets dressed up for the party but she still isn’t really pleased about it. Kirsten attracts Sigha’s attention and they experiment with what drugs work on vampires and how well. There are brownies doing the serving. There are also a couple of Krazall bodyguards. Thirteen meets the Amber Ambassador to Tir. Thirteen asks about the Griffin family traditions and if they have been brought about. The Krazall gets into a wrestling match for fun with Thirteen. The Krazall is stronger but not faster. If
the wrestling went on for awhile then Thirteen would eventually be able to take him.

Fineas
Gerard recreated the shadow paths to Amber. He is unable to tell if the globe and atlas work together. Fineas gather intelligence on the local warlord who is trying to muscle in on his territory. Fineas decides to side with the big empire to keep it from being overthrown. Fineas meets with Chang Ho, the local admiral, and Fineas makes it clear he has no oath to anyone at this point. Fineas makes reference to the old contract they had with an ancestor of his. Fineas procures a gift for the local king from Brand’s collection of weapons. He decides that Mr. X and the tigers should take the gift for him. Fineas continues to scour the books in his dad’s library. He is looking for how to rescue someone from one of the shadows of slow time. He finds out to do it quickly you need the jewel of judgment and pattern. Fineas resolves to check the atlas for the location where he believes Osric and Findo are.

Toriana
She spends time unworking the area around hers so that existing trumps will not work. Llewella shows up and they argue about who has the right to be here. Llewella goes off and starts to work on a different area of shadow and tries to obscure what she is doing from Toriana. Llewella locks down the area so that trump doesn’t work and makes a cloud of pattern energy, which causes the area to keep shifting. Toriana decides she is going to study this area and affect.

Thirteen
Thirteen makes notes on the little creatures that are being very useful like the mosquito eaters. Thirteen inquires about taking the fight more to the Griffins and they tell him they want more time and training for trump artists so they can do gates. Marcus asks about Flora and what she is like. They really want Flora antidotes and Thirteen has to think really hard to come up with some. Thirteen tells them the whole back story of Diego and Flora and omits no details.

Fineas
Finds out that Osric and Findo are likely already loose. Fineas pulls out Thirteen’s trump and calls him. Thirteen agrees to go through the trump to Fineas after an hour of getting things together. Fineas tells Thirteen that he came across his father’s possessions and a book. There are shadows that slow time down to the point where people cannot escape from them. It appears the shadow storm release the trap that was holding them. He thinks they came into normal time flow a month ago. The initial tracks disappeared into too much nothing. Thirteen is going to have to zone out and really study because he has not tracked a pattern user that does not want to be found. Sabine tags along with Thirteen and Fineas. Thirteen is slowly able to pick up the trail. They feel like they stepped into an ideal shadow where an armored knight on an armored horse confronts them. The knight tells him they must prove themselves if they wish to pass. Sir Mortlake of Esterhousy tells them he is fine to fight. Osric and Findo were through here. Fineas bests the knight and asks him of his uncles. They had stayed three days and ate, drank and whenched.

Toriana
Toriana studies the trick that Llewella did to lock down the area. It is a trump trick with a pattern overlay. After about a half day Toriana tries to work and tries to replicate the lock down. She spends a few days teaching herself to lock down trump. Toriana locks down the hospital in her shadow. She then begins to make a trump of the hospital to get around the lock down. Toriana goes to check on the meeting the chaosite was supposed to have. She trumps Fineas and he asks her to step through. Fineas brings Toriana up to date on the situation with Osric and Findo. Toriana trumps Benedict and talks to him. She asks him if he wants to come through and tells him who she is with, He decides he does want to come. Benedict is able to manifest through the trump. Fineas apprises him of the situation.

All
Benedict tells Fineas that the brothers are not as good as Benedict in warfare but more on Fineas’s level. Benedict thinks they can be brought around and join the family. Benedict tells the group that the world is very different now from when they were in Amber. He wants the group to be straightforward with Findo and Osric. They will probably try and rescue Cymnea, who is long dead. She has a tomb in Rebma and Moire is their grand niece. Fineas asks about shapeshifting and if they can do it. Benedicts advice is not to let them bully you or they will not stop. Fineas asks about Benedicts wishes as far as how he wants to be. He would like a body again. Fineas talks to him about a possibility of having his body rebuilt and that is really what he wants. Benedict is sure that house Hendrake knows of his current condition. Fineas asks if he can make a trump of Benedict. Benedict gives his permission. He makes it clear he does not want to be enslaved. Benedict admits he has lost his pattern abilities. Fineas asks if Benedict can spy on Bleys without him knowing. Benedict doesn’t think he can. He thinks that Dwarkin has mostly integrated Oberon. Benedict tells Flora’s mother’s sad story.

Thirteen
Thirteen is going to continue to track the brothers. He finds an area where there are ships and exotic people. The people are all human. He comes to a hill fork and gets asked what his business that brings him here is. Thirteen describes the men he is looking for. They recognize the description as Captain Osric. His men do not get sick and are wildly successful in their raiding parties. Thirteen asks for the name of the ships and where they are assigned. Thirteen is propositioned because of his nice pretty white suit.

Fineas
Trumps himself to Amber and Flora is sleeping. The guard knocks on the door to wake her because Fineas insists that it is important. Fineas apologizes for the late hour when she finally comes to the door. He tells her that Findo and Osric are alive. Flora has the library scoured for information on the brothers. They discuss the medieval ways of thinking in regards to the brother’s view of women. Flora tells Fineas about Carl Savage the aire spair that Eric had. They talk about house Hendrake being rearranged to be more Amber friendly. They discuss that Toriana and Llewella got into an argument.

Toriana
She tries to trump Dwarkin and is unable to. She trumps Dara instead and asks if she is up for some fun. Dara needs a couple hours. Toriana decides to find the jewel of judgment but she is unable to get a read on it. She bounces around from shadow to shadow but is still unable to get a read. She goes to the grove and Dara calls back. They are going to look for grandma and grandpa and decide that blood and a ritual might do the trick. They make up a ritual for summoning the unicorn. Golena shows up at a full run. Golena is eventually able to provide them with a bead that should summon or allow them to talk to Dwarkin.

Thirteen
Calls Kirsten and brings her through to him. They discuss the Findo and Osric situation and the jars. They go through the weapons they have available. They decide to make a blood trail in their wake. Kirsten gets to snack on one of the victims. They approach the two boats but the gangplank is not down. They yell down at Thirteen to see what he wants. He has a few words with a sailor and decides to jump up to the top of the boat.

Fineas
Trumps Bleys who pulls him through the trump. Fineas gets right to the point and tells him about the brothers. Fineas tells him what he thinks the plan is going to be. They discuss the pros and cons of the plans. They would rather not kill Osric and Findo if that can be avoided. They talk about monarchy vs. dictatorship. Fineas decides he needs to find out where Thirteen is on finding the brothers. Bleys tells Fineas to tell Sir John to stay away from him for a while. Bleys is ticked about his 5 worlds in an uproar. They wish each other luck and Fineas trumps Thirteen. Between the ships there are 200- 600 sailors. Thirteen jumps up on deck and confronts the man who was exchanging words with him and throws him to the other ship. Thirteen again demands that he is the new master and commander in these two ships and wants to make sail by the end of the hour. One guy says he is right and sounds the bell to tell the sailors to come back or so he says. The ship’s crew returns weapons in hand.

Thirteen and Fineas
Thirteen brings a fireball online for the other ship. Thirteen causes mass chaos on the ships. Sabine has decided it is time to leave and starts thinking about where to exit. Sabine exits to the stable via teleport and Thirteen brings up pattern defense and starts messing with probability. Kirsten runs up towards the mast. The sailors are gathering for an attack, and Thirteen jumps to the rigging and takes the call from Fineas to pull him through. The sailors remain unconvinced that Thirteen is the new commander and master. Fineas kills the guy he thinks is the most bad ass and then begins to work through the people who are close to him. Fineas is working on decapitations for the affect. Thirteen sets off a stun spell on a large area. Fineas decides to bisect one of the sailors because they were not reaction really to the beheadings. This gets the sailor’s attention and they begin to flee. Kirsten is still working the crowd. Thirteen trumps Sabine to see if she is okay. She is annoyed with him as is Fineas. Sabine decides she does not want to go on the ship with the zombie crew. Thirteen begins making the zombie crew, and instructs them to ransack any other ship they see. Fineas is going to contact Kitung and have her ship gated through to him so they can ditch the zombie crew. Kitung is not impressed with the zombies either. Thirteen, Fineas and Kirsten join Kitung’s ship and they burn the SS Zombie. Fineas shows Kitung the route to chart.

Log 42, Oct 25, 2003

13 wondering around in space looking for traces of Logrus, attempting to identify any differences and trying to figure out how it works. With Kirsten as his companion they eventually find a blue skinned monkey sized creature. Although the creature claims to be native to the land, 13 suspects that it is a lie. After further scrutiny, 13 discovers that the creature has been magically binded to not tell the truth. 13's curiosity pays off and he learns how to magically bind and unbind.

Toriana and Dara party on in Rebma, with nothing better to do. Diego is forever on Toriana's mind, so they question Morwin as to where he may be. Morwin gives them a trump of Vulnavia. Dara, shifted as Morwin trumps in with Toriana, and they set off all alarms. Dara shifts to her natural self, and scares the life out of most there. Both girls trump out to Toriana's shadow to come up with a better plan. With everyone's odd behavior of wanting to be an artist, Toriana kicks everyone out. THe girls question Gerard about Diego, and then Dara also asks Benedict. Benedict, is no fool and knows exactly what the girls are planning, inspite of Dara's protest that they just want to play with him. They go back to Vulnavia as if on official business. They are greeted by Carl, who has a striking resemblence to Erik, and his strength is greater than Dara's. Dara questions him about his lineage, and implies that Erik may be his father, and why would his brother Diego not want him to know this. Carl agrees to a blood test and the girls question him about his loyalty to Diego. The girls also notice tat Kylliki is pregnant and Diego is the father.

Fineas is traing troops Solice is moving legions around, and Fineas ups the loyatly by bringing in alcohol. He says it's to keep the spirits up. After saking several towns, he manages to break a legion off and start moving them through shadow. He has the troops trained by officers of the Amber and Arden army.

13 has Flora take a look at the creature named Barbathos and Flora who states that he is a Griffin spy. Barbathos is freed from the binding spell and is more than happy to kill any Griffin he sees. 13 discovers that the Griffin's are responsible for the death of Lord Feldane. Barbathos leads 13 and Kirsten through the shadow paths to his home base. THey come out in a cave. They are ambushed by several Griffins, and 13 pattern shifts them out. They are pursued by a logrus tendril. 13 attempts to trump out, but the contact is broken from the logurs tendril. 13 brings up pattern defense, and the 2 are given a head ache. However, it was enough time to have Kirsten pull out a trump and they are escape. 13 decides to then go see Markus in Tier na nogth.

Dara and Toriana follow Carl to the lab and Confirm that he may be either Erik's Dierdre's or Corwin's son. After convincing Morwin to give up a strand of hair, they confirm Corwin is not the father. Carl leads the girls to the guarded mirror from which Diego last left. Dara smells Diego's scent and starts tracking him like a blood hound. She then smells Giesels, and both girls proceed with caution. They eventualy come to a section where 6 very thin and hungry Giesels are surrounding a spikey thing that is hanging from the ceiling. It appears to be dripping a toxin onto them. There are also 6 other dead Giesels lieing about. The girls believe that the spikey thing is Diego shifted in a primal form, for survival. 2 of the Giesels take notice of the girls and start to head towards them. Torina casts a spell and they are frozen. Dara says that they need to colapse the ceiling to crush all the Giesels, however it may kill Diego. Toriana has no objections, and even encourages this to be done now to escape a blood curse. Dara's all for it, a little puzzled by her blood thirsty cousin. After the ceiling has been collapsed they confirm that Diego is dead, and take a few samples back with them. They discovered that the Giesel's can be killed by projected glass, and they also learn how to create the poison. This knowledge is given to Flora and Gerard. They also inform their Aunt that Diego is dead, and that they came accross the collopsed section in the cave, and that is how they found him. (Flora knows better, but says nothing) Flora puts the girls in charge of Diego's memorial. The girls find the lowest bidders and grab a lot of his belongins from home to be used. Quick and simple and off to the next adventure.

Fineas chck on Sirakey after he finds out about the death of Diego. She too is pregnant with Diego's child. Once he confirms she is OK, he goes to Brand's shadow with a few samarai body guards and Mr. X. The surronding villages are in ruins, and he is being tracked by a tiger. He approaches the palace and claims it is his by birth right. He is welcomed and informed of all the dealings of the palace, as well as the tigers that guard the palace.

13 informs Markus of the Griffins involvement of the death of Lord Feldane. Tigrath the resident logurs master, uses a tendril to follow the path of 13. He clears all traps, but by the time they get back, everyone has fleed. They do find Lord Flashheart killed Lord Feldane. With his work done, Flora encourges 13 to ask his mother Morelle to join the family.

The girs done with their punishment from Flora (Diego's memorial) decide they want to go through Fiona's stuff some more. Carefully this time they clear the traps and discover a trump sketch in a book. Suspecting it's a trap, as the sketch says idiot on it, they go through. After spending hours in a coffee shop discovering nothing new, Dara becomes suspicious. Something isn't right, and she pulls Toriana away. Dara shifts to a giant hawk and flies Torina up over the cloud that covers the city. They trump out and know that they were in a trap, and swear to secrecy, as they have many times before. They continue to rumage through Fiona's belonging. They are looking for clues to lead them to her personal shadow.

Back in Brand's shadow, Fineas asks if his mother has been there. He also finds out that the Earl Tigers have been eating the villagers as they are hungry and they have eaten all their game. Fineas has game brought in, to please the villagers. He discovers a device that Brand used to scry others and debates on attempting it himself. He sees that it is powered by sorcery and pattern.

Notes to Session 41

BENEDICT:

- Seems to have lost most or all of his Pattern attunement. Being within a hundred yards or so of the Pattern feels like being in a windstorm.

- Can sense Tualua’s power within a couple hundred yards. He can move it around with relative ease. This lets him de-transmogrify frogging victims within a minute or so. (He’s glad to be able to do something useful.)

- Can be seen by Llewella and Dara as a transparent version of himself. High-psyche wizards see a vague shape at close range. With effort he can become visible or invisible to all.

- Insists that he’ll assure his own freedom. The notion of being dependent on Dara or Toriana or anyone but himself is unacceptable.

- Is embarrassed by his ghostly attraction to blood. Dara and Tori harangued/tempted him into tasting theirs, and it does strengthen him, but it’s wrong. He can also feed on some kinds of magic.

- He can move to and from Dara, Llewella, the power-shadow where they tried to re-animate him and, presumably, Jagan Hendrake at will. He can move about freely from those starting points.

TURJAN:

- Was a student of Pandelume some ten years ago.

- Has no idea of any relationship to Jelerak.

- Got the impression from Toriana and Fineas that he’d been specifically targeted for frogging by Jelerak.

- His lover Tessaine is one of his creations. She scans as a human with mild physical enhancement and student-level wizardry, with a soul and everything.

- What Turjan does is not cloning and doesn’t involve growing creatures from embryos. They are assembled by magic from basic elements according to ungodly complex mathematical matrices.

- While Turjan and Tessaine were not thrilled to move to a backwater world with poisonous wizard politics (OK, a different backwater with etc.) they weren’t ready to argue with a Princess and Prince of Amber about it.

- Fineas and Toriana sought out a wizard with a fine town-fort who had no friends and wouldn’t be missed. As a result, they picked the nastiest mage in town and the real power in the local wizards’ council.

FIONA’S THINGS:

- Most everything but some of the furniture in Fiona’s rooms was trapped in mystical or mundane fashion. Evidently, she slept and entertained elsewhere.

- Dara and Toriana were knocked out by one trap. Florimel used them as an object lesson for Galina and her Tarngiran students.

- D & T ended up pulling the bristles out of a nice hair brush and sticking some jewels on it for something to wave around while Benny-the-Ghost de-frogged people in Lynxia.

LARGE FLYING CREATURES:

- Commonly operate by one of three principles: contragravity, psychokinesis or the Elderkin power informally known as Gravity Is My Bitch. Creatures that use contragravity have wings or jets. Psychokinetics rarely make concessions to aerodynamics. The Elderkin power is far more flexible and seems to play with inertia as well.

- Contragravity and psychokinesis can be generated by magic, biology or technology, depending on local physics.

- Contragravity works in Amber and vicinity, as demonstrated by the Chaosian wyverns in the Black Road attacks. Psychokinesis does not.

Session 41 Log

Where Are They?

Toriana is still looking after Gerard in her healing shadow
Dara is rummaging through Benedict's room in the castle.
Fineas is waking up from the drinking bout in Rebma.
Thirteen is looking into Sir Feldane's Assassination.

Dara begins still ransacking Benedict's room for anything useful when she senses a presence and hears her fathers voice chuckling. Turning around, she sees Benedicts ghost. Not being frightened, she begins to experiment with him to find out the limitations of his new existence. She asks him about a number of paintings she has found. They are mostly of family members and Dara, though three seem to be of former girlfriends. She asks who all is in his trump deck and he gives her the answers. She also inquires into the fates of Osric and Finndo. Benedict replies that they are dead, torn to pieces by dragons after Oberon felt they were about to move against him.

Fineas goes to Belkin for secret stuff. He spends a couple of days there before returning to make his rounds of Avalon and Arden. He introduces himself to Benedict's men as the new liason and meets with the various commanders to get a feel for the situation. Fineas agrees to supply a number of trump sketches to facilitate communication. A number of other sources of Amber gunpowder have been located in the shadow and steps are being taken to quietly get them under control. Heading to Arden, Fineas learns the process of taming the wildlife is still ongoing. The hellhounds are more or less dispersed and mostly uncontrolled at this point.

Toriana is pleased with Gerard's progress and leaves him to heal for a while. She returns to Amber to meet with Flora briefly. She decides to follow up on some information she had gleaned from Jelorak about his possible offspring. Going to Belkin, she asks around and locates one possible descendant named Turjan. Turjan is apparently an expert on magically created creatures. Potentially troublesome unless under Amber supervision. Through some investigative effort, she determines his home shadow and decides to pay him a visit. She is stonewalled briefly at his castle by a petty servant, so she does a brief mindrape and pushes her way inside. Turjan is suffering from frogginess and is strapped to his bed, cared for by a beautiful woman said to be one of his creations. Tori decides to trump in Fineas for backup, briefs him on the situation, then proceed to attend to Turjan's condition.

Dara decides to find out if anyone else can see Benedict and has him pay a visit to Llewella and then Flora in the Great Hall where she is holding court. Flora is able to see Benedict after Benedict takes the opportunity to drain some of the power Flora has stored in her ring. Flora covers her surprise well and Benedict decides to pay a visit to the dungeons. Dara runs down to keep up and finds him moving the transformation residue out of the resident frogs. They are instantly restored to normalcy in the process, though no one there but Dara can see it was Benedict doing the healing. Dara tries to cover by claiming she did it. Skepticism abounds, but no one complains.

Fineas and Toriana begin the process of healing Turjon of his affliction with his anxious paramour looking on. Fineas and Tori simultaneously decide the wizard is worth taking underwing and decide to make a deal. When it is done, Turjan is grateful and willing to listen to the offer of patronage. In return for working for Amber, Turjan is offered a new laboratory, assistants and monetary support. Tori and Fineas will locate a new shadow off the beaten path where he will be able to work undisturbed.

Dara is finally cornered by Flora and interrogated about Benedict's status. He apparently requires infusions of energy and/or blood to manifest himself but is able to attain invisability to both Dara and Flora if he wishes. They decide that it is best if others (particularly Bleys or Thirteen) not be informed. It is decided to keep the information secret between Dara, Flora, Llewella and Toriana. Dara learns that Flora's ring was tailored to house her spirit long enough to enact a death curse should she ever be slain. Apparently she was at one time concerned that House Gryphon or Jacob would have her assassinated and wanted the option for revenge. The nature of the ring likely explains why Flora can sometimes see Benedict.

Fineas and Toriana begin their search for a suitable shadow to house Turjan. They finally settle upon a renaissance shadow with high magic, a tradition of mageocracy, plenty of flying creatures and faster than normal time. The shadow is named Yari and seems to be suitable. Fineas scouts out the political situation and chooses a particular stronghold to overthrow and take over. Toriana is called away by Dara, so Fineas assaults the pace via the mirror realm with his samurai. It is a quick and relatively bloodless victory. Turjan is moved in via trump gate with his equipment after a couple of days cleanup.

Dara and Toriana meet with Benedict again and decide they need a cover for Benedict's power of unfrogging victims. They decide a "powerful artifact" needs to be faked and inexplicably decide it should be a mundane item from Fiona's belongings. They break into the storage closet, set off a few traps and wake up some time later. They do succeed in obtaining the Mighty Shower Brush of Transmogrification (TM) and begin to canvas Lynxia to wield it against the holdout froggies. Some days later they have found a couple of the more clever frogs and return them to normal with Benedict's help while brandishing the Mighty Shower Brush of Transmogrification for the onlookers.

Fineas decides to forestall any unwanted probing by the other mages in Yari so he pays a visit to the mages' council. He has to demonstrate that it is a bad idea to mess with Turjan, though holds back to limit the demonstration of power. Fineas removes the various items of sympathetic magic used to control the council by the castle's former occupant, leaving only one for Turjan to study. The remainder go to Fineas' private stash for future use if it proves necessary. Fineas brings in his recently hired illusionist to assist Turjan, assigns ten samurai to help guard the place, then briefs Toriana on the progress. Fineas returns to Amber where he spends a little quality time training with Flora and Galina in the castle. Following the fencing and chair-fu lessons, he and Galina spend time relaxing with music and discussing the Unicorn.

Toriana and Dara decide it is time to go party in Rebma and hook up with Morwyn for another bout of debauchery in the strip joints of Rebma. They drink a great deal, have lots of sex and finally decide to head out and check on the hellmaids. They decide to find a sample or two of a wyvern or griffon to take to Turjan for experiments, but end up just recruiting flying mercenaries. You heard me right, Toriana actually helped recruit troops for Amber. They find a matriarchal culture where the men are sexually inactive (though effeminate) until they are turned on by specific pheromones emitted by their queen. They kill the queen and a few successors until they find a pliable monarch they can control. They move the lot to the plains shadow where the hellmaids are kept and they begin the process of integrating the forces. Dara decides to experiment and succeeds in copying the sex pheromones of the queen. She engages in a gangbang with a large number of the males.

Fineas returns to Remia to get his army recruitment under way. His pet consul to be needs a bit more time, so Fineas embarks on his mission to stir up the barbarians. Taking the swanmays, he heads north into less civilized country. Impersonating a barbarian nobleman, he begins the process of inciting the barbarians to raid the northern provinces of Remia. A possible rival to Sullus is targeted and his lands are hit first. The first town is sacked successfully and the die is set for the managed conflict Fineas wants to propel Sullus to undisputed leadership of Remia.

Session 40

Dara

-Dara Spends Some time trying to figure out how to heal Benedict. Her first thought is to Swallow his shards and reassemble them inside of her.

-She trumps Llewella to discuss her options. Llewella takes her to Moire. They all discuss the swallowing option, but it is shot down after awhile. Moire says that the poison should be gotten rid of first.

-She then goes to a nearby high healing shapeshifting shadow to get rid of the poison.

Fineas

-Leaves Baden-Baden and goes to Amber to pick up some of his Brownies. He heads for Inkos (Galina's Home shadow) and works on speeding up the time to cleanse the poison out of his system. While Fineas is doing this his Brownies are out "procuring" small portable items.

-Boris Stops by and is very interested in the Brownies abilities and he and Fineas negotiate to both their satisfaction.

-Fineas trumps Nellie and tells her that he is putting her in charge of his Rebman Estate. Several Chantris young-uns are to be educated there. Nellie and Fineas come to an agreement on what she can publish this little tidbit (putting Fineas in a good light of course).

-Fineas is trumped by Flora and given notice of the current situation. She tells him that she wishes to meet with him some time soon.

13

-13 Starts to make the round of some of the Noble houses. He meets with Lornya Chantris and they discuss Emrys Feldane, Benedict, Gerard and the future of the kingdom.

Tori

-Sick...The Royal Princess cannot be sick. Pahh! She goes to lynxia to try and get rid of all the frogged folks.

-She goes and checks on her Father (in Baden-Baden). He is healing nicely. Not liking the loyalty of the main care giver and hauls him to her "Happy Place". She finds out that Gerard is not well. The bullets in the guns that he was hit by had been charged with Tualua power. She finds Sir John Guant and tells him that she is hauling Gerard out of there. SJG give her an EMP bomb to take the place out.

Dara

-Goes to Chaos and meets with her uncle Jaigon. Healing is the main topic of discussion. Get's a bit Tualua sick, but soon recovers. She tell Jaigon that she wants to heal her father and he teaches her how.

Fineas

-Meets with Regent Flora. They discuss Blays and the Averni. Flora tries to get Fineas to talk to 13 about inviting his Mother to "join" the Family. It seems that she won't join unless asked by her son. He agrees to this task.

-Fineas talks to her about Amalathea (the Unicorn). They talk about taking over Jacob's abandoned troops. He trumps Dara to discuss Benedicts healing.

13

-He is trumped by Flora and given the task of finding out who was involved in the Murder of Emerys Fledane.

-Next he heads over to the Feldane's. He meets with Baroness Eliza. Much sympathy is given. After awhile he discusses politics and the Nobles. He asks her about Emerys and how it had happened. She tells him all about it and where it took place. Lake Cho outside of Lynxia.

-Meets with Mira Kandive and discuss' Amber Politics and Trade. Tries to encourage the Kandive's get more involved in politics.

Toriana

-Examines Gerard and how he is doing. The Abyssal poison is still working doing it damage. She attempts to drive out the Abyssal corruption. Tanintheel helps her in healing Gerard.

-Visits the "Evil Tree". Taunts some of the Abyssal creatures with the death of a bunch of other bunch of Abyssal creatures.

Dara

-Still talking Jaigon. She tells him she had been up to over the last several months. She learns about Shape Shifting healing.

-Trumps Llewella and takes Jaigon to Benedicts shards. They all go to Dara's Super Shifting shadow. Jaigon is not fully convinced about the shadow's usefulness. He feels it needs to be more.

Fineas

-Fineas spends some time checking out Arden. Goes over the training and deployment. Sends some of the troops out to retake some of the areas that Chaos had invaded. Moves Jacob's troops to other areas. Coordinates with Dara to move the Hellmaid's to Ruin.

13

-Meets with Genevive and they talk about her training and her possible future missions.

-Finds Kirsten and they head out to Lynxia and Lake Cho.

Tori

-Continues to torture the tree. Goes back to Kelamon and happy place. Gerard wakes up and he and Tori talk. They discuss Flora and Bleys and the Regency.

-decides to take precautions against Delwin and Sand waking up.

Dara

-Still working on healing Benedict. Dara Semi-frogs llewella's horses during a test. Dara and Llewella get Benedict kind of together. They find that the Benedict statue is in pain. Llewella gets everybody to a place to a where Benedict no longer is pain. Jaigon and Llewella do a blood ceremony to put Benedict together. Benedict dies during the process. A good death scene. Dara Drains all of Benedict's blood for future use.

-A Benedict copy is sent to amber via Fineas.

Fineas

-Fineas trumps Ky-tung. She is climbing in a giant tree. She feels that the giant land Shadow would be great for tourism. Azvan is there and they talk about his nightmares and Fineas checks out Azvan for froginess. Fineas fills Azvan and Ky-tung in on what is going on in the Universe.

-Fineas "Takes care of Business".

-Talks to Ky-tung about troop recruitment.

-Trumps 13 and fills him in on the whole Mirrel problem.

13

-Does some investigating in Lake Cho. Finds a shadow path that led into the shadow no more then 50' from where Feldane's body was found. Investigated the path till it disappears.

Tori

-Tori spills her guts to Flora about everything that she had been involved in over the past several days.

-Heads off to the Mirrorverse.

Dara

-Loots her Fathers room. She finds Bene's will to her that he had written before the battle. Everything is left to her (Estates, Ranches with the stripy Horses, and cool stuff).

-Dara Asks Llewella for a trump of the Uber-Shapeshifting shadow. Does a nice thing for Jacob. Picks out one of the Dangerous swords she likes. Works on a place for the Hellmaid's to go to. grabs Benedicts Trump deck.

Fineas

-Digs up those killed by the Tualua powered bullets to see if they were mutating. Finds all of the bullets and the places in the Castle that were hit with those bullets and marks them so Jacob can bind them at a later date.

-Finds all of the Wounded troops and checks to see if they are froging or not. Makes sure that people are put in place to keep an eye of possible future froginess.

-Meets with the Benedict ammo guy to make sure nothing was done with him. He appears clean. He is saddened to hear about the wounding of Benedict, but glad that Fineas took it upon himself to tell him in person.

-Goes to Rebma and meets with the Chantris kids that he is training. Fineas does a good job of trying to bind them to his authority. He's teaching them how to do things the "Amber" way.

-Llewella trumps Fineas and tells him about Benedicts Spirit. Llewella cries. He asks to be pulled through and they talk about Benedict's death, and Fineas comforts Llewella.

-Flora Trumps Llewella about putting Benedict's Spirit in an other Body.

Notes to 39

Rinaldo has 20% of his charge left, somewhat less by morning.

Flora has 10% left. Fineas has 30% left. Flora needed it more often.

Gerard was hit in the lower right throat to collarbone area, the right hip, the right arm and a graze along the right side of his head. He's lucky no arteries were severed. It looks like sniping of high-Warfare PC quality.

Session 39

Where is everyone?
- Shadow Badn Badn

Jacob gets pulled aside by Rinaldo. They discuss tactical options. Toriana mentions something in passing that gives Jacob the idea that they might be able to go into Shadow Emblyon by using the centre of the Pattern to take people in. Llewella thinks that one person can go into the center of the Pattern and other people can Trump to that person and then will themselves elsewhere. The family decides to test the theory out (among many many others).

Toriana's going to work on a breaching trump, considers trumping Jelerac's staff (not group of servants... the actually staff he carries around). Fineas works on securing allies. Jacob and Thirteen work on creating certain blood-based artifacts. Llewella takes Thirteen and Jacob out in to the Weird Parts of Shadow where they set about creating things in a particularly conducive Shadow.

Fineas first visits the shadow god (genius loci) Bel in Belken and finds that the uber-spirit is indeed ticked off that Jelerak/Tualua stole the Brotherhood Archives out of his shadow and frogged or killed a lot of people powers in the process. Bel powers up Werewindle as a courtesy and offers to lend a hand in the payback: he’ll make two Amberites his (temporary) avatars. What that means is they’ll be able to teleport at will and bend space to a degree within any given shadow. Bel also suggests the visit another genius loci, the Thief God, whose favorite agent was frogged in Belken. Fineas and Florimel become Bel’s avatars while Benedict and Rinaldo become superdupernaturally stealthy. Both genii want help de-frogging their people. Bel wants a souvenir – Jelerak body part – if it isn’t too much trouble.

Tori collects up Llew and Bleys and sets about trying to steal Jelerac's staff via Trump. They don't get the (blood reli) artifact, but it is destroyed and all its stored magic and Binder power lost. They count that as a win.

Everyone gears up like crazy. Much of the younger generation does not opt for the effeminate elf shoes (bright green booties with short but pointy toes) Rinaldo brings in (except Tori, of course; and Benedict, then Flora), but secretly stash them to put them on later.

Tori and Fineas are a Diversion team, Flora and Bleys the other. Benedict and Rinaldo are in a stealth hit team. Jacob, Thirteen, Kirsten are in another one, and Martin and Dara, plus Galina as a specialist, in a third. The stealth teams move in by trumping to Gerard at the center of the Pattern and then willing themselves to the Shadow.

They’re armed with their normal weapons, some augmented with blood-diamond film, and heavy springbolts with diamond-filmed bolts enchanted up the wazoo and two specials – blood diamond heads made to explode into organ-seeking shards – each. That was the limit of Benedict’s, Toriana’s, Florimel’s and Rinaldo’s stored blood

The Loud group TRUMPS in, but 'stealthily', to look like they're trying to sneak in. They come under attack fairly quickly -- transformation hurricanes, necromantic energy, etc. Massed ghosts head for the two distraction groups. Violent Clouds – giant subspace elementals – leave the target castle and the shadow. Jelerak and Semirama appear on the battlements.

Galina forces a mirrorspace tunnel into existence from the full-length mirror she brought with her, pops in and makes an escape route. Dara and Martin shapeshift and speed around the castle as ghosts home in on them.

Benedict kills Semirama with a bolt; her Tualua-power aura explodes and damages Jelerak – actually it blows enchantments away and reveals him to be Eldevon, the Brotherhood’s Archmage. Jacob bolts him.

Everyone close unloads on Tualua, a (small) house-sized mass of writhing tentacles. Benedict expends his bolts and moves into melee range.

Kelamon Trumps Toriana from Amber castle: under attack, Gerard hurt, Semirama there. She goes.

Everybody sinks their 2 blood-diamond-Pattern-nasty-Bound-enchanted bolts into Tualua, who's up and out of his pit now. Most everyone moves in. Werewindle is happy, doing what it was made for. Everyone gets hurt some, whacked by tentacles or hit by secondary damage (debris, poison, radiation, etc.) from the transmogrification storms, but Tualua goes down. Unfortunately, Tualua hits Benedict (his greatest tormenter) with all his remaining Transmogrifaction juice before collapsing. Benedict turns to glass, falls over and shatters.

Back in Amber, Gerard has been sniped, the real Semirama and Jelerak are trying to get into the Castle, many Royal guards are dead -- sniped by vampire evil support troops, burning, whatever -- and in disarray. Tori Trumps Morwyn in. Morwiyn’s triton bodyguards get shot up – they’re big targets – as she takes military command and quickly has the Guards rallied and effective. Tori Trumps Jelerak himself and engages him in all-out mental combat. Tori thinks she’s winning. Kelamon helps out and Jelerak starts losing; he loses control of several spells he had going, including the one keeping uber-vamp Vrykos under control. Vrykos stops shooting at Amberites and finds Jelerak completely busy with mental combat – he twists J's head around 180 degrees and exits stage right.

Massed gunfire keeps Semirama on the defensive and abrades her power aura. Genevieve and the royal guard wipe out the enemy vamps. Tori, really frustrated with the crappy performance of magic in Amber, grabs the Gatling gun when the guardsmen bring it out from the castle murder hole and uses it to ablate Semirama's field faster. Violent Clouds warp in just as the energy runs out and Semirama splashes away from many, many bullet hits.

The main group Trumps in Queen Moire, Tori and Empress Rhandalissa with the three Jewels, and Zhartra to make 3 Binders. Benedict's pieces are gathered up, Moire thinks his spirit is there, Jacob insults her somewhat. Pattern fates are laid on Tualua, the Embelyon shadow power source and the shadow, keeping him there, separated from the SPS and the pocket shadow locked up tight. With everyone watching everyone else, it’s unlikely anyone could install a back door.

Gerard is sent to Baden-Baden. Benedict is all in little pieces. Bleys is looking around at the lack of regents. Tori hands Flora the Jewel, who takes it but says, "It's not quite that simple, dear niece." Family gathering scheduled for later, as everybody's beat to shit now. Tori gives Zhartra Vrykos' name and description and mentions that he was compelled. Zhartra isn't sure whether she should kill him or hire him. Fineas is making arrangements for a fake Benedict to make appearances, lest Amber's enemies learn of it.

Game Log Session 38

Jacob: After visiting with Dworkin, Jacob announces that the cousins are in trouble with their plan. He also does not take the news of the heads of Sand and Delwin are duplicates, and that they are now MIA. He also tells Dworkin that Flora and 13 make a brief contact with them, but it was lost. With this news a tear was seen in Dworkin's eye and his mood grew somber.

Fineas: Fineas speaks to Lirazel (spy) about the rumors of Rebma vs. Helgram. He finds out that the Helgrams are behind the attacks on all the houses in Chaos.

Toriana is trumped by a Guard in the city of Amber and is informed that all are asleep in Castle Amber. Toriana and Dara go through the trump and make their way to the castle. After waking up Gerard, Flora and Benedict they discover the jewel of judgment is missing. Dworkin took it and is believed to be looking for Sand and Delwin.

Jacob gets a sensation that something at the heart of the binding power does not work. He trumps Zhartra and states that he believes Dworkin is doing something. Werewindle leaves Fineas. Eventually all the cousins work their way to Zhartra. Binders from both Amber and Chaos arrive as well. Bindings are still holding. The blockage of the binding power lifts after about an hour. Sand and Delwin are on the ground without any arms or legs. Dworkin looks drained and throws Werewindle to to Fineas. He leaves with instructions for us to take care of his children. They no longer possess the binding power, and are brain damaged. It is more than obvious that they have been tortured and drugged. Sand and Delwin are taken to Lynxia. Tanatheel (family shape shifter) is trumped in by Dworkin. She is glowing after being fed his blood. She begins the healing process of Delwin and Sand.

Wearwendal informs Fineas that dworkin trumped right to Delwin and Sand stealthfully and unbound them there after he killed the attendants.

The brotherhood informs Toriana that someone stole the archives in Simerama. The entire building is missing. Toriana attempts to trump Jelerak. A few burned coins later, she gives up, filling that hi is tapping to Tualua or visa versa.

Fineas and Dara go through sub space to Jelerak's shadow with the help of Werewindle so Fineas can draw a trump. Once out both go to Lynxia as they are completely exhausted and need to heal. The brotherhood are in Lynxia attempting to transform people. Dara finds this out by capturing the one who came after her in her recovery room. She alerts Benedict. It is discovered that Sand and Delwin have been poisoned. Fineas trumps Bleys to get permission to use his shadow that Fiona and himself used in the past. Delwin and Sand are moved there.

13 prepares for sub space, by getting a new space suit. Jacob goes to Texorami and makes sure all is well. Rinaldo says pattern help cure the transformation from the brotherhood. Toriana works with others in Lynxia to cure the transformation to the frog form. Fineas and Dara check on Sand and Delwin. Dara stays with Tanatheel to learn more about shape shifting others. Everyone is getting ready for the battle to come.

Notes on session 37

Sub-space: Obviously, objects stored there don't freeze solid. 13's surface froze fast; he wasn't in there more than 20-30 seconds. The effect is either related to being 'deeper' into the dimension, or in a different quantum layer, or an attack by the hostile elementals that live there. If the latter, it's a sort of area attack because 13 felt no beings around him --- though he was extremely distracted at the time.

The Rebmans: [via Morwyn] Managed to not lose any cousins (though two are in intensive care) and had low casualties overall. They got maybe 1/5 of the Chanicut archives -- oblong data crystals -- before the fortresses remaining defenses could be fully activated and Chanicut troops arrived in force. Griv's rebel forces took higher losses -- they're not nearly as well disciplined and split into species factions -- but picked up lots more freed demons than they lost. The rods used to free permanently-compelled slaves are three-coin pez sticks with little blood-diamonds in them to power-glitch the geases, made by Llewella, good for about 25 shots each. (Specs available.)

They have three Chanicut children in custody; Morwyn doesn't elaborate. Galina, who saw some things, says that Baron Taran (royal scout commander, roughly equivalent to Sir John Gaunt's job, Toriana's second cousin and Fineas' drinking buddy) refused to execute children and invited Llewella to do it herself. She... didn't.

13: Sabine comes up with a nice little spell that quiets the itching without excessive numbing. Warm soaks help too.

Fineas: a messenger steps out of the Dark Well in the Keep with a package for Fineas -- three small oval cut diamonds.

Helgram ID: They all learn a 2 pt Specialization (based on SS:Animal Abilities) for doing blood tests by taste, with an emphasis on ID'ing family members.

Session 37 Log

Where is everyone:

• Anarchy Inc. - messing with Chanicut
  
• Jacob - querying dead heads
  
• Thirteen - querying the Brotherhood
  
• Fineas - Keep of the Four Worlds

Anarchy Inc
Llewella is using sprites for scouting in the mirror verse. She wants Dara, Toriana and Moirwyn to help with the next rush against Chanicut. The attack begins and the rebmans give us a trump to reach where we need to be. Two of the were's and Hienrich get poisoned on the caltrops. They are trumped to safety. Anarchy continues after the Helgram and Toriana is able to close a mirror they are trying to open. A group a gru is coming after the team. There is a flurry of spells and Anarchy creates a frozen slip-and-slide and kill anything that comes close.

Jacob considers to himself about Jelerac and if he is behind everything. He is going to find the heads of Delwin and Sand to do further testing and see if they really belong to them and if he can use the heads to find the bodies. He finds the heads in the tombs where they are supposed to be.

Thirteen finds Sabine and they look for Holrune to talk to him about Delwin and Sand. Holrune has been trying to trump Delwin and Sand for months but they are not answering. Thirteen is given the trumps. They talk about the loose abyss beasts. Thirteen asks about the subspace people and if anyone is knowledgeable. They discuss names of people who might be able to help or know something. Thirteen talks to Sabine about talking to Shealba. Thirteen is going to test the spell he was given. He finds some open space as instructed. A strange almost elemental type being carries him away after he gives the code word. Thirteen is falling 15 feet into a field of flowers. Thirteen throws a rock in the air to use pattern to see which direction he should go. This is not as effective as he would have liked. He decides to sit down and use pattern to scan for power.

Fineas gets a trump call from his mother's chief flunky. The man tells him that Jazra's trumps were stolen. He contacts his mother for ths list of missing trumps. He makes sure the castle is changed enough so that the stolen trumps do not work. He talks to his mom about why this might have happened and who might be behind it. Jazra is pissed off. She plays with Werewindle for a bit. Fineas asks about the oaths of Delwin and Sand. Dworkin is the only one who knows the exact oaths of Delwin and Sand.

Anarchy
The other Chaosian teleports in and Toriana has to jump out of the way and releases the first Choasian and throws a fake trump gate behind the second. While the second one turns Toriana stabs him. Dara is able to get to the first one subdued. Anarchy goes back to the Rebman camp and see to immediate healing. They then get gated back to Amber. Benedict greets them and calls in Gerard. The girls retell their glory and drink from Benedict's private reserve. They find out that Moirwyn isn't DIego's sister after all. He is Eric's kid. The girls go out for partying with Martin. They wake up in Lynxia with a 'I won' in lipstick on their forehead. They get to Amber for the interagation of the Helgrams. Toriana trumps in Fineas for this and Fineas trumps in Golena.

Jacob pops an eyeball out of each skull and puts it in the mystical mix he has concocted. He instructs the people in Lynxia to examine the heads at a molecular level. .The heads are duplicates atom by atom. Jacob swears roundly. Brotherhood has the technology to be able to do something like this. Techinque used on the heads has not been popular for the last 600 years. Jacob trumps Holrune for information on Sand and Delwin to see if they were in the botherhood and they were. Jacob finds out that Thirteen is gone to see Pandaloon. He tries to trump Thirteen and there is no ability to do so.

Thirteen is moving towards the power sources in the area. He gets about half way to the source and something does a fly by and heads to where Thirteen came in. Necromantic thing moving about ranger a quarter mile out. Oversized vulture snakey type head flys overhead. In the hazy distance he sees a palace and a cleared area with a pit. He thinks he has half an hour before he is found. Thirteen brings up pattern when the beam from the pit starts to zero in on him. There is a tingliness about him and it seems to be dampening his pattern. He tries to send out a tether out towards the area where he came in. The world disappears around him and he starts bleeding from the eyes. His eyes start to freeze. He does manage to burst out the other size. He feels crappy and trumps to Jacob. Jacob feels the trump and Toriana opens the trump and pulls Thirteen through into Amber and then trumps to Lynxia with him.

Fineas follows to Lynxia and talks to Thirteen. Thirteen tells him what is going on and Fineas talks about the critters around there. Fineas asks Toriana to contact Zhartra to tell her what is going on. He asks Zhartra about binding the creatures. Jacob finally answers the call and comes through to the party in Lynxia and the party line trump with Zhartra. They discuss what to do about this creature and that time is short. Jacob tells everyone that the heads are fake. Jacob takes Fineas's suggestion and tries to get access to Dworkin. Flora gives him a trump of the guy who looks after Dworkin. Jacob looks through a window at Dworkin's yoga class that is about half over.

Dara trumps Toriana who brings her into the party at Lynxia. They point and giggle at Thirteen and how he had a worse day then they did and didn't even bring back a prisioner. Dara, Fineas and Toriana trump to Amber for the prisoner interigation. Fineas trumps Reynaldo to look after Thirteen. There is a male chaosian and a female. The trio discovers the top 3 -10 people in each house are slated to be assisinated. The Helgrams were going to try and grab a couple Rebman's for trump artists. One Helgram has mastered to the third level of the mirrorverse. They had planned to plant evidence to incriminate other houses. No one is really ruling Chaos right now. We ask about the antidote for the poison they were using.

Toriana
The assisinations were to all be done at one time. They were planning a gradual overtake of the thrown. Fineas suggests the duplication process for the prisioners. Fineas trumps Holrunen to Amber to talk abouot the duplication process. He is put in touch with people who can do what he needs to have done.

Jacob
Dworkin is flirting with 3 of his younger classmates. He introduces Jacob to the girls. Dworkin says the creature Jacob is describing doesn't sound like Pandaloon. They talk abut the subspace stuff. Dworkin says you have to use a gem to stop him and then once you stop him he can be bound. He says you should try and lure Taralora out of the shadow.

Thirteen
Benedict, Gerard and Mirelle come by to visit. He thinks that Sabine came by to visit. His eyes are ok but his ears are very messed up, and he's suffered a lot of surface-level cosmetic damage that skin grafts are used to deal with. He is very pink and itchy. Mama Mirelle give him a hug when he gets out of the goo. Sabine gets ahold of him afterwards and freaks out just a bit.

Flora and Thirteen work out a big trump push (mandala, coins, Jewel oF Amber, etc.]. They are trying to reach Delwin. After pushing through the subspace static, they reach a mind that is very badly drugged, much like Thirteen was a few days ago.

FINEAS
Lynxia's secret lab.

Fineas fills in Kai Tung on Thirteen's misadventure. Kai's been studying with Ahzvaan, whom Fineas questioned about Pandaloon, found out how he did business and that sort of thing. There's some speculation about how someone might have replaced Pandaloon and taken over his holdings and the pocket Shadow. Fineas makes a point of not mentioning the current situation with the Helgram captives, but does drop a few 'loose lips sink ships, and your future careers' hints.

He makes a note to ask Tori to ask her 'pet Helgram' if they can set up new callsigns for Helgrams ini the area and that sort of thing, possibly using the Helgram as a way into the the Helgram network.

Does a quick check in Remia and Ruin to make sure that things haven't gotten out of hand too far. Luckily the religious zealots are satisfied with the hellish nature of Ruin, so much so that they don't usually enforce universal flagellation most of the time.

Session 36 Log

Cry Havoc- Session 36

36.

Dara/Toriana:

Dara and Toriana (henceforth known as Anarchy Incorporated) begin by rounding up an appropriate retinue to travel to Hendrake Ways and negotiate the disposition of the Hellmaids still under Hendrake control. Tori decides the Heinrich must come and initially wants to bring Badger. Dara brings her four main Hellmaids. They then together decide to invite Morwyn along as extra muscle. In the end, Badger does not come along but a couple of extra weir do as well as Morwyn's bodyguard of two Tritons. With help from Galena, Dara contacts Tor and begins the negotiation. She learns her Hellmaids were split between three Hendrakes. Some were used up, but Palatine and Riana both have significant numbers of them that might be negotiated for.

A meeting is set and Anarchy Incorporated meets with the Hendrakes, successfully trading initiation into the Mirror Power in return for Dara's reinstatement into Hendrake and all remaining Hellmaids. Morwyn's presence lends an unanticipated weight of authority to the negotiation, a fact that is not lost on Tori. She tries to make sure Morwyn realizes she was not being used intentionally. Surprisingly, no deaths result from the whole proceeding and three of the Hendrakes (the friendlier ones of course) are initiated into the Mirror Power. Dara begins collecting her Hellmaids. Dara is pleased. Tori is pleased. Morwyn is amused. Hellgram will not be pleased.

Fineas:

Fineas completes delivery of the Persian heads to Sullus and begins planning for the future in Remia. He is interrupted by an urgent cry for help via trump from his mother. Fineas races to the rescue, arriving in Kashfa in time to prevent his mother's murder but not her maiming. The vile Chun had blinded her and was about to make off with his booty of eyeballs. Fineas goes into swashbuckler mode and kills Chun in a one on one fight in the courtyard of the palace. Fineas is not pleased. Werewindle is pleased. Jasra is most definitely not pleased. Fineas takes her to Lynxia where he meets up with Rinaldo. They examine evidence and discuss motives while Jasra is attended to.

Thirteen:

Thirteen spends some quality time with his mother Mirelle at the tail end of Flora's Redneck Jamboree. Thirteen postulates theories about Diego's suspected homosexuality, his disappearance and what Gerard will do about it. The discussion turns to the family in general from there. Some of the strange goings on are discussed and Thirteen decides that he should keep a closer eye on Dom Daniel. He bids adieu to Earth and heads to Dom Daniel

Jacob:

Jacob continues his investigations into which bound monster may have been moved. He checks on one notable entity and discovers a different one was moved to it's location to cover for the disappearance of the original prisoner. It is not actually bound, just incapacitated with poison and drugs. Jacob is not pleased. He quickly binds the creature while it can't resist. He examines the various energy signatures and engages in a generally unsatisfying discourse with the abyssal creature currently subdued. It tells him it was moved there by a bipedal power-using creature. Since all humans look alike to monsters, it is unable to give a better description of the culprit.

Anarchy Incorporated:

Once the initiations are complete, the Hendrakes keep their end of the bargain and announce Lintra's will was found, leaving her property to Dara. The rest of the Hendrakes do not openly oppose the announcement. Dara is very pleased. Dara sends her Hellmaids to the borderlands where they should be safe, then the whole crew of Anarchy Incorporated decides to enter the mirrorverse to go looking for trouble. They storm around, encounter a few brownies, map some of the areas and generally have a good time. Not much else is accomplished as the Helgrams have made themselves scarce in the vicinity.

Fineas:

Fineas returns to Kashfa to get things under control and to investigate Chun's activities. Rinaldo had detemined Chun was carrying an item that magnified his psychosis, probably causing him to run amok. Fineas backtracks the trail of carnage and finds evidence of a strange subspace based power at Chun's apparent entry point. Fineas begins walking shadow, tracking the strange power until he finds a significant amount of it. Some time later he finds himself at the pit with Jacob and the abyssal critter. The power residue is very strong there. Fineas and Jacob look at each other and then at the creature. None of the three are pleased.

Thirteen:

Thirteen travels to Dom Daniel where he learns Diego has been divesting himself of property. On a whim, Thirteen buys Casa de Diego as a residence and considers taking over ownership of the Burning Crab School. Upon reflection, he decides the school has been too thoroughly compromised to be worth bothering with and contents himself with stripping the mansion of the majority of the décor, removing a few bugs and magical backdoors and refurbishing the whole place to his taste. A major undertaking, but one made worthwhile by the opportunity to dismiss Diego's staff. Thirteen is pleased.

Jacob:

Jacob, Fineas and ultimately Rinaldo discuss the various heinous possibilities about what/who is behind the monster shell game and the murder of Sand and Delwin. The GM chuckles gleefully as the players give him all sorts of nasty ideas he had not considered.

Anarchy Incorporated:

The expedition encounters the stronghold of a hermit shroudling and spends a little time inconveniencing the local brownie population. They explore further and begin finding evidence of past battles in the vicinity. It is obvious the Helgrams have been working to subdue the area. A plan to go Helgram hunting is discussed but not yet acted upon.

Session 35 - @$*%#*&!

Where is everyone?
- Toriana is in Amber
- Thirteen is in Arden
- Fineas is in Inferno
- Jacob is in Inferno, at ... Well, the Pole.
- Dara is on the way to Chaos

---

JACOB stands with Rinaldo and stares in disgusted awe at the destruction that used to be a Pole With a Great @#*@%& Beast On It. He then trumps to Lynxia to talk to Zhartra about The Mess (and cry... there might very well be crying).

Zhartra wants to go see the devastation. The trio checks things out again and reports that the Creature/Beast is still on the other continent of the same Shadow (where it attacked Benedict and Gerard), but It begins to move out of the Shadow within the next two hours or so -- heading out on the 'path' that Thirteen had orginally laid out of the Shadow towards the Dancing Mountains so that the Helgram Garou would leave the area.

[Remember that? Remember how that seemed like a good idea at the time? *@#&$(%*@ continuity.]

TORIANA reviews information she gleaned by going through the mind of the Chaosite she frelled with recently -- focusing on "What's going on with Helgram in the Courts of Chaos?" Also reviews information on the Chaosite spy Her Victim met with recently in Baylesport.

Then then trumps Jacob to get an Up-to-Date. Finds out on that she's not specificially needed at this point as Re: The (*&$@#(%*& Beast. Heads to Lynxia and begins working on Trumps -- the New and Improved kind that will work in the Mirrorverse (which Tori has attuned, thus eating up her next spend). Flora calls to tell her that Benedict is back in hell the Regent seat and she's heading to Shadow Earth to teach some folks how to drive modern vehicles and Shoot Things. They discuss trump-making priorities.

THIRTEEN is talking over something "fun" to do with Sabine. Skiing is mentioned, then explained to Thirteen, then they trump Flora, who mentions the driving lessions, but also is queried about good places to go skiing. She produces names and phone numbers and a trump sketch, as well as many bits of advice and an offer to help out if needed.

Thirteen goes skiing. He does swimmingly. Skiingly? Whatever. The two enjoy themselves for a day or two and then Flora trumps them and ruins everything for advanced driving lessons.

FINEAS visits the Amber City Jail to recruit cultists.

[don't ask me, man, I just write it]

Fineas, that is, goes over the group of ne'er-do-wells, fanatics, and whores and adds them to his pack of 'combat expendables'. He checks out their level of military training and finds them about equal to militia on average with a few stand-outs. He then moves them to Shadow Ruin, where his 'expendables' are all stationed for training. Whores, useless people and religious fanatics, training in an arid Wasteland... Sounds like our new elite army. Fedaykin!

Flora trumps him and yadda yadda driving yadda yadda. Fineas makes sure this little party isn't going to leave Amber undefended. Flora reassures him and Fineas decides that driving cars at unsafe speeds and shooting things with LAW rockets requires a change in wardrobe.

DARA Does secret stuff, speaking with an undefined 'she'. The logkeeper feels that starting off with secret stuff is a fine way to join the campaign. Welcome!

Tori ruins it for the logkeeper by trumping Dara and handing her a couple of mirrorverse-grade Trumps.

Dara contacts Llewella [who's in Chaos staging a Rebman invasion] about a quick way to get to Chaos to talk with her old House about the Mirror Power and How Helgram Will Use This to Screw You. Llewella is cautious about Dara's intentions, but reasonably helpful. Dara then trumps to Tor Hendrake. He's not picking up so she tries persistence, but doesn't have a lot of luck. He finally decides to allow a short contact to figure out who's there. He's a little ... Reserved. Not exactly the joyful reunion some might have hoped for. He motions someone else out of the room, goes to a warded area and continues the conversation.

Tor doesn't think it's a very good idea for Dara to come through, but she is very persistent -- a familiar female Family trait.

[*ahem*]

Tor finally concedes and pulls her through. There's another Hendrake cousin/nephew in the room, so Tor sets up the barrier so the other cousin can't eavesdrop... or see in. Dara explains/demonstrates how Mirrorpower works, since Tor and the Hendrakes don't know about it.

But Lo! When she steps through the nearest mirror, someone's there.

Well, someone's running away, at any rate. She gives chase, as does Tor, although he has difficulties navigating the terrain without looking like Harpo Marx. Dara leaves him behind to catch the guy.

Coming around a corner, she sees the guy trying to activate some kind of disk communication thing. She throws a knife to break his concentration, closes the gap, beats the unholy crap out of him and drags the guy back to Tor's room, where Tor enthusiastically breaks the big mirror in his room.

The guy is some sort of furry minion spy critter... common among the Houses of Chaos. Dara and Tor discuss how to manipulate the spy's masters of the spies with this new knowledge.

JACOB talks with Zhartra about the Beast. Z thinks that it might have calmed down enough to talk to, but isn't willing to bet anyone important on this assumption.

Remembering that we all have our Special Strengths, Jacob figures that the best way to find someone both Useful and Expendable is to ask Fineas (and hope that he doesn't say "Well, you'd be good for that, cousin.").

He does this thing and Fineas comes up with Valeri, the guy that has been slandering Gerard in the papers and has recently been exiled from Amber. Perhaps he can act as Amber's spokesperson with the Beast and earn himself the right to return to Amber?

TORIANA continues doing place-trumps that work in the Mirrorrealm. Days have passed and she's sick of this endless "purple-haired-Cinderella-with-a-paint-brush drudgery. She sets to work on seriously examining Dworkin's Trumps and trump-style... probing into them, figuring out why they're so damn durable.

She notices that any of Dworkin's trumps of the same person are almost identical... very identical, factored out to many many many decimal points.

Hmm.

[Maybe he's got a Trump Photocopy machine. Dworkinko's. Har.]

Tori rests after this examination starts to give her a mild migraine.

The next morning she tries to find Dworkin.

Eventually she tries asking Flora, who generally keeps track of Dworkin's whereabouts (he's on Shadow Earth, lately) and tries to Keep Him Happy. D's currently watching an acapella concert in Austrailia. Flora arranges for her to get there -- pulls her through to the driving course (in Alabama, naturally) and hands her a trump of one the guys watching Dworkin [Gunter mk2].

Tori heads into the concert and finds a seat a few rows back from Dworkin.

THIRTEEN and Sabine head for Alabama. Flora's got the cars ready (many makes and models) and they're setting up a firing range for the Big Guns Training.

There's a driving track. Motorcross track. Cross-country area. Firing range. I don't know about the Family, but this could very well be the new Mecca of the American Southeast.

[They engage in evasive driving training. It's all very exciting... If you're there. :) ]

FINEAS calls Marcus to let him know about the Beast on the Loose, then goes to play with the big guns in Alabama, testing them on cars, kevlar, armored cars, armored glass, and random trees.

DARA assesses the political situation within Hendrake. Works on possible ways to feed false information to the mirror spies. She offers to show Tor how to walk through the Mirrorrealm without tripping over himself. They need a different mirror for this, so Tor goes out of the Sekrit Talking Space and snags his curious nephew, whom he knocks cold and carries into a side room. He then pulls out some weaponry and armor out of an armoire before heading into the mirrorealm again for the training.

Dara has a little trouble figuring out the mirrorside layout of the various parts of the Ways, due in part to the nature of Ways... the pair encounters a few more spies here and there and dispatch them. The spies don't hear Dara coming but can still hear the mirror-clumsy Tor.

Dara eventually finds herself looking in on Duessa Hendrake's room, where the woman's having a massage (though still has weapons around the room). Duessa is one of the possibilities for the head of the Hendrakes, but is a bit psychotic -- definitely not Tor's first choice for Leader.

Tor, in fact, would rather not have to deal with this woman anymore. Dara suggests just killing her now.... Tor doesn't need much convincing and they decide to rush in through the mirror and make the whole thing look like an attack from the Helgrams... Afterwards, they'll leave a few of the fuzzy spy bodies in the room so that it looks like she acquitted herself semi-honorably.

Duessa's good, however, and rolls for her weapons, coming up smiling. Not entirely a comforting thing... also, she's better than Dara, pressing her to try to kill her off before Tor (who's using a spell to take out the masseurs) comes in to help.

When Tor does get there, Duessa focuses on him and Dara presses her. Duessa suffers a blow to the spine in short order and things go downhill from there... The pair dumps corpses around the room... it looks like quite a fracas.

They clean themselves up and get ready to get out of here. Tor goes back to his room and makes it look like he was also attacked through his mirror. ("Which is why I broke it, naturally.")

The log keeper rests after the combat, cuz... Damn.

JACOB stakes Valeri out in the path of the Oncoming Beast like a sacrificial goat. The creature and his minion blood creatures approach.

Valeri, mouthing words fed to him by Jacob and Zhartra, offers up a deal between the Creature (Elencarnia), the Good and Righteous Kingdom of Amber, and the Queen of Air of Darkness... an agreement for mutual non-destruction and the exchange of Key Information.

[Jacob parenthetically notes that the Key Information part of the trade arrangement kind of got skipped. Damn.]

THIRTEEN is still in Alabama when Dara shows up, looking flushed and a little cut up. They chat, have a beers with Mirelle. Dara fills them in on the sanitized version of her trip to Chaos ["I warned them about the possibility of mirror assassins." Yeah, right.]

Thirteen chats with momma-Mirelle some more, who wants to know if he's any good on a motorcycle. They work on shooting from the seat of a motorcycle, dirty tricks, and the techniques to fire a Boyes from a midair jump (because Mirelle is clearly out of her damn mind).

TORIANA waits for the concert to end so she can bug Dworkin. She schmoozes him. Dworkin ponders 'something different' about her and figures out that she's "Got Mirror". Tori tells him about how the Mirrorrealm is in use by Chaosites now. He wants to see it in use and trumps them back to his place to have her demonstrate. Dworkin suddenly understands why Flora's guys are watching him from an angle where they can see his mirrors. Another galactically pointless mystery solved. Go, Dworkin.

Toriana cuts to the chase and wants to know how or where Dworkin did his REALLY FAST TRUMP COPIES. Dworkin allows that that might be useful for her to know [the GM cackles about how much of her spend Tori has already chewed up] and shows her 'his painting place' [which might not work for him anymore, due to being Dwoberon now]. The place is very cool -- like a world made out of rich oil paints and psycho-reactive.

He Does Something to Tori to help her find Her Place, then looks troubled and leaves.

FINEAS heads to Remea, where certain leaders have been plotting against him.

Those leaders suddenly suffer heart attacks. What are the odds?!? (Pretty good when you're enemy is a Pattern Initiate, schmuck.)

Rumors start up that it's Very Much Bad to mess with Fineas Maximus. People that are on his side are fortunate and lucky. People that aren't... aren't. People get the hint.

DARA learns to ride a motorcycle. She asks Mirelle if she can play with her gun, then gets ready to "go to where Flora told her to go." [ooh, a mystery] She calls "her Girls" for the trip, and assesses the relative strengths of her Hellmaids, pondering how to gather up the hellmaids that remained with the Hendrakes when she left.

JACOB
Valeri finishes up his pitch to come up with some sort of binding agreement with the Beast. The Beast isn't having any more of this Binding Business, but concedes that Dworkin did successfully make the point that the Beast doesn't not have Right of Way in All Creation. He'll leave us alone if we leave him alone.

Zhartra and Jacob allow that that will work for now (since neither of them wants to tangle with the thing at the moment). Jacob takes Valeri back to Amber after a quick stop at Texorami for tequila, which Valeri desperately needs. Writes a note to the Regent to explain that Valeri is off the hook Re: Exile Status.

TORIANA, bodyguards in tow, uses Dworkin's gift to find a place that Really Works for Toriana's Trump Making. She finds the place and draws a trump of it...

It goes VERY FAST... Probably twice as fast. Globs of pigment float in the air, responding to her psychic whim... Replicating the image a dozen times over as she paints the original -- making duplicate trumps in mid-air. She's a bit tapped out after that... not exactly tired, just that the creative trump-painting juices are used up.

[Bottom line: looks like her trump production is moderately increased... the real benefit being that she doesn't have to spend as much time on the trumps, allowing her to work on other things. The creative energy used seems to be about the same as a similar number of individual trumps would have required.]

Dara trumps her and asks her to help out with drawing trumps of areas in Chaos.

DARA then trumps Benedict, brings him through to her and lets him know how things went in Chaos... Tells him what REALLY happened. Let's him know that her plan is to retrieve her hellmaids. Benedict and she discuss success ratios and Hellmaid trainability. He asks after her hand, since it's only been a short time since it was repaired.

She trumps through to the Chaos-side Borderlands and trumps through Toriana. Heinrich is not happy with this plan. Toriana offers to give him a vacation, which in turn gives him an idea: he invites Gerard, who's been looking for something to do on his vacation. Gerard decides to come along.

Daddy coming along on a vacation is supposed to ruin it, but maybe not in this case.
[Toriana prepares for a frontal assault on Chaos while Jacob conducts delicate negotiations... This session is just too askew for words.]

THIRTEEN sips a cold beer, watching his momma teach his hot cousin how to shoot guns while riding motorcycles... Alabama suits him just fine.

Mirelle and Flora mess around with really nasty dirty fighting in protective suits... Until the suits break and Flora gets banged up a bit.

Everyone spars, drives, shoots things, and drinks. We are all one big red-neck family, oh yes.

Thirteen discusses with Sir John the question of whether or not Genevieve-the-Vampire could survive a Broken Pattern walk.

FINEAS prepares for Night of the Long Knives in Remia. Jumps back to Lynxia to do a trump of his home in Remia (useful in case things go awry). Goes back and gets drawings of the victims in Remia that he can use to identify targets. Rests up, collects lots of sharp pointy things...

He then goes back into the mirrorrealm and tries to get from Remia to "Persia" via a Mirror exit.... Hard to do, since mirrors just aren't common in this kind of technology level, but he finally ends up in the Persian castle that he's been looking for.

He finds the mirrors he needs in the Emporer's chambers, convenient, since that's who he's here to kill.

He sets himself up... finds some makeup and accoutrements to make himself look a bit like one of the Persian gods just to freak out anyone who happens to look in while he's doing his Saint of Killing imitation, and waits for the Emporer to show up.

A few concubines arrive, ignoring the ubiquitous eunuch guards. The emporer arrives, ignoring the eunuchs but not the concubines. Eventually, the ladies leave. Fineas grabs Werewindle, rushes out, decapitates the king, grabs his head, and shoots one guard with with a springbolt. The other guard is coming in at him. Fineas circles... moving toward the mirror... accelerates...

And he's gone, leaving a lone guard as only witness left to explain a god arriving out of a bronze mirror to kill the King and the other guard.

The guard doesn't try to explain it, deciding it'd be much easier to just fall on his sword. Fineas watches this and the resulting drama that unfolds. He needs popcorn for this.

Finally, he decides to hang around and see if he can pick off other contenders for the throne.

Where is everyone?
- Toriana is on the Chaos side of the Dancing Mtns, with Gerard and Dara.
- Thirteen is in Alabama.
- Fineas is in Remia/Persia/Mirrorrealm.
- Jacob is pondering a Very Bad Idea
- Dara is on the way to Chaos... again.

Re: little retcon involving Tor

1) Tor took a blood-cleaning device (he has a cabinet full of interesting gadgets) and cleaned up Duessa's room.

2) He and Dara killed all of Duessa's servants.

3) He sprayed some stored demon blood around hi