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Diners of Amber Addendum
Here is the Addendums to the Diners of Amber Article. As I got to add more, and found that I might enjoy telling a few tales about places represented on the cards, I decided to go all out and make an additional book.
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King Random's Deck Trump Images{{
Diners of Amber}Compilation of Locations
Neal's Diner, New Velri City, Ruthar, United States of Antherica
I was speaking to Sergeant Garry Gavno, a Calro member of the elite Amber Guard, and a frequent pattern guardian, about Neal's Diner. He gave me the scoop on what they did to Sveldt.
The story is that Constance Kieln, a very tough Dreanan man despite the name, who holds the rank of Captain in the Amber Guard, was one of the first Amber Guards man to do service under Random at the card club beneath Neal's. He was a sergeant then. He and several guys got the tattoo on their upper arm, and Sveldt thought it a very funny little device.
At a later time, while getting some other tattoo work done, Sveldt made his little insult. Constance dragged Sveldt directly to Amber, to the compound that the Amber Guard calls home. 30 guys, led by Julian, took him deep into shadows where monsters dwell and beat the living hell out of him for a couple months. They put a band of healing on him and fed him to a passel of lions and tigers and bears, oh my, who could rip him to pieces but not fast enough to keep the healing band from repairing him. So they ripped him up as fast as he healed for about a month. They then unceremoniously dumped him back at home, short three days.
That is as good an object lesson as I can imagine for those who desire to cross the Amber Guard.
Aglevar's Kitchen
Mirelle turns out to be plenty alive despite the wishes of the sons of Rilga. Deirdre turns out to have survived her plunge into the abyss but was so traumatized that her mind was damaged. She now holds the form of the wolf and is bonded with Fleece. I could make doggie-style jokes I suppose but let us just take them as read. Brand is alive too, and in distress deep in the abyss. Gosh, what a pity. I no longer believe that Finndo and Osric are dead but I have no proof to the contrary.
Eric is still dead. I checked.
I recently purchased a little plot of land on the slope of Kolvir. Well, purchased is not the right word, but you know what I mean. I am currently designing my own tomb. Corwin had the right of it. It is always best to be prepared.
I was not going to talk about the Brolics, also called the Dreanans, but since I am going to the trouble of creating a whole new volume I guess I can heap some shit on my least favorite Golden Circle Kingdom.
Dreana, ruled by the House of Brolic, tends to breed true a depressingly hostile mindset. The world itself is heavily forested. Wood is one of their main exports.
Dreana provides something like 1/20th of the military of Amber, enough to make them a common presence in Amber. They are a fair skinned, dark-haired race as a rule with a shocking blotch of blue hair every so often. They are fiercely pro-amber, and rumor has flown for a thousand years that the kings of Dreana, Lords of House Brolic, would jump like a cat if a Grand Ducal coronet were ever dangled before them. Trading in the royal crown of Dreana for an Amberian Grand Ducal coronet might make them citizens of Amber but it won't make them any more pleasant. Apparently the sticking points involves details of fealty and the acts of submission required to convert a sovereign realm into a part of the Kingdom of Amber. It figures that it would take a thousand years to get the Dreanans to bend knee.
A disproportionate number of Dreanans become sergeants in the Amber military because they want to pick fights so often they need muzzles and the officer corp can provide this. The run-of-the-mill Dreanan is boring, loudly depressing, loudly pessimistic, mean-spirited, combative, and miserly. They rarely go in for the arts because they tend to be stupid and uncreative too.
If this seems a bit harsh then you go check them out yourself.
They export a dazzling variety of raw gems because the people in this shadow never developed the craft of stone cutting or adornment. Thus gems have no value in Dreana except as export items. After 12, 000 years they still have not got the idea that gems look cool, and make great additions to daggers, crowns, rings, and other pretty things. Not that they would notice; 'Pretty' is lost on them. They have no tradition of jewelry beyond crowns and circlets. These they wear but they are nearly all the same. There are about 12 levels in the Dreanan aristocracy and each level has a distinctive style of coronet All dull, all plain, all made from silver. In a shadow with massive amounts of Mithril, far beyond normal proportions, these people make their circlets out of common silver.
I personally believe the reason the Dreanan's have not joined the Kingdom of Amber is that they can't figure out how to divest themselves of the 12th step of their coronets. I once had an argument about this with the King of Dreana. He refused to understand that he could simply start calling the King's Crown, the Grand Duke's Coronet. I pointed out to him that the Ducal Coronet and the King's Crown top the Dreanan scale of 12. He could swear fealty and then the ducal coronet and the Grand Ducal coronet would top the Dreanan scale. He argued that it was called the King's Coronet and asked how could he call it anything else. I asked if he wanted it to be a princely Coronet but he pointed out that the Dreanan scale does not recognize the rank of prince, except as a non-Dreanan rank. I wanted to shot myself to end the argument but gunpowder does not work in Amber.
The crack about not recognizing princely rank made me think he was insulting me but you can usually tell when a Dreanan is insulting you because their lips quiver and they start throwing punches. I think he was just being stupid. I give them this; they don't go in for long drawn-out shouting matches. If they generate the brainpower to insult you they are ready to fight and throw the first punch. I hate to admit that this is one of the virtues I admire in the dreary dreanans.
The Dreanan social system allows advancement but is as rigid as any caste system. As any historian will tell you, caste systems lead to social and technological stagnation and a lack of incentive to improve living conditions, develop medical advances, and expand mercantile activity. They also devalue historical study leading to 'unsound' historiography and a development of religious systems based on mythic characters. That’s the Dreanans to a tee!
I think the house of Brolic eventually conquered this world because someone in Brolic said, "Hey, lets make our duke's coronet a little bigger than everyone else's!" Thus are nations created in the stupid shadow.
They use the Amber currency system because despite vast gold, silver, and Mithril reserves, they never developed a metal-based currency or a currency of any form. Before Oberon and Finndo came to this shadow regional warlords stole whatever they wanted from each other and raided the subsistence farmers for their chow.
Understandably they do not go in heavily for mercantile trades and have developed a practice of hiring Calro merchants to sell their wares. In 12,000 years they have not gained the talent of double entry bookkeeping.
The Calro who have served the Brolics over the mellenia have made them unbelievably rich, husbanding resources with skill, and flooding Amber markets from time to time. One must admire the Calro who have created this immense fortune at the same time that one can shake one's head about casting pearls before swine.
There are no native musical styles. The people of this shadow never conceived of a need to record the legends of their ancestors in any format other than long, dreary, unbelievable recitations of facts, odd magical occurrences, and gossip. No bardic performers, musicians, or minstrels, theater or drama, Dreanan histories read like laundry lists and are heavy on genealogy, light on details. Off-shadow historians classify Dreanan histories as 'unsound'; a technical term for worthless.
The history of Dreana is so crammed with vicious warfare that the architecture of the world developed a siege mentality that is unbelievably stout. The Tower of Brolic is but one example, of thousands of incredibly stout fortresses, albeit the pinnacle of such edifices. This is what brought Oberon and Finndo to this shadow in the first place. They were looking for theories of castle construction and they sought in shadow for a place where local conditions created strong fortifications. Once Oberon and Finndo found a household they could manipulate they helped the vicious weasel in charge of it to conquer the world. This was the great Duke Agnot Brolic; a more miserable bastard, 'sound' histories have rarely documented.
A note to the Dreanans. There are beginner classes in business theory and trade at most of shadows universities. Universities are those places people go to learn things. I mention this because the Dreanan have no universities themselves. Education is a family affair and many families never bother. Some ship their kids off-world to get an education.
To their credit, most dreanans sent offworld to attend universities never return home to live. They may visit home, or gain posting in the Dreanan embassies in the GCST worlds, but any Dreanan smart enough to survive college and avoid the military realizes how miserable their homeland is and spends much of the rest of their lives staying away from it. Dreanan ex-patriots have done well in many different endeavors including, art, business and science showing that despite their origins these people are intelligent, and capable after a little eye-opening experiences. Even some that have not had such enlightenment have done well and raised to the command levels of the Amber Military.
Dworkin told me once that the problem with this world has more to do with the perameters that Oberon and Finndo used to find the place. That they looked for a place that siege-mentality had dominated the growth of the people in the shadow. Sure, blame it on cosmology.
Maybe the Dreanans can be forgiven for their dour ancestry but not for failing to adapting over the 12 thousand local years since the House of Brolic signed the GCST in 1202.
I mean come on guys. Bang some sticks together and pick up the beat. Even military music would be an improvement.
Lou's Market, New Orleans, Earth
Braldig is a great guy as long as you have a strong stomach and a steady nerve. It is rumored that Braldig is a shadow of Dworkin. Figures. Aries Colbresi, Dean of Treasures at Fantalin and holder of the Oberon Professorial, a powerful sorcerer and one of the most benevolent and capable minds in Amber's service, is also known to be a direct shadow of Dworkin. Makes ya wonder, eh kinsman?
Add this in the region of new data discovered by Sweet-as-Vinegar Maylon Hendrake and her bloody Heirs and Spares genealogy of Dworkin. It turns out that Josef, born Hin-mah-too-yah-lat-kekt, or Thunder Rolling Down the Mountain, is a son of Oberon. Imagine that. And while his allegiance to Amber is in place his trump shows the green bar of those in the sway of Mandalay. Dworkin assures me this has more to do with Vine River's location in shadow than Josef's personal allegiance. Sure. He has a blood son as well, Red Cloud.
Julian and I have made some peace, as have many of my siblings, since Patternfall. So let me temper my comment on Castle Arden. I do understand the need for security.
Recently Random knighted Phil for his service to Amber. Our monarch sure loves his cheesecake.
The Church of the Unicorn, Amber
I just learned something about this place. The only way for magic to work in this realm is if you are wearing the Jewel of Judgment! Nice Trick, my liege.
I recently discovered that amongst that this shadow has a cosmological oddity worth noting.
Braldu's is meant as a place of rest, and sleep is one of the most common activities. It is also a place of solitude. For some reason it is also a place immune to boredom. The nautre of the realm is that what ever you choose to do with your time you really enjoy it and get plenty of relaxation out of it. Bodily functions move toward peak performance. If you are hugely fat and come here to exercise you really enjoy it, get maximum relaxation, and the time it takes to burn the fat is nearly cut to a 1/20th of the time.
Pretty clever. Nice place to do magical research.
Calrabon, Eruth
More and more I find myself thinking a lot went on before I was born that no one bothered to tell me about. The restaurant called Oberon's Fire is significantly named. It is not simply an homage to Oberon. It seems during his nasty-stomping days a huge bunch of nasties almost got the better of Old Oberon and the boys. They had to fight tooth and nail against a massive number of beasts and in the end Oberon was forced to use the Jewel of Judgment as a fire focus to destroy them. He was young though and the power of the jewel got away from him. Nice to know he was not perfect.
So he became a immolated burning torch as the jewel fought to consume him and he fought to extinguish the fire. To quench it he threw himself into a massive pool of water, which burst into steam. The fire of the Jewel of Judgment was scoured off Oberon and remained in the pit. It has remained there ever since, never flickering. So the meat cooked over the massive barbecue pit is prepared by master chefs who know how to cook meat over a primal fire drawing its fuel directly from the Jewel of Judgment across vast expanses of shadow-veils. Cool trick. Nice fire.
There is a tavern called Bent Copper's Drop, near the White River in Fantalin. It is a college tavern. I could tell you some stories about that place, believe you me.
It figures on of us would find this place.
Falri, Mandalay
Fane of Zila
The Fane of Zila turns out to have some very tricky rules and the place is massive in the extreme. It is a disorganized mishmash of cathedrals, basicilas, and churches. It seems that the forces of chaos and shadow casts a powerful shadow of the finest examples of each religion's temple into the fane. This means that even if a prime temple is destroyed it's shade is here. That does not mean the mad priests of Zila can't go adding and changing things. Some forgotten temple, massive in size was taken by the priests of Zila and converted to the Cult of Amber. When Chaos legalized the Amber cults, they inadvertently added a massive basilica, originally a Temple of Benedict created in shadow, that now houses the great Amber Cults. This has had some strange effects on shadow and I am afraid to say it may be making gods of us all.
I think I will take some time to decide if this is a good thing.
Ganras Galleries, Vies
Oh, the things that I could say about this place! Let us just say this is a very chatty place, filled with very chatty people, who have sources of information from Budapest, to Peking, to Los Angeles, to Johannesburg. They also have contacts from Amber to Avalon, Mandalay to Chaos.
Since most Amberites are familiar with earth history, being frequent guests there, it happened like this.
Napoleon demolished Europe by 1805. Ignoring Russia he sent armies to take Scandinavia just to get people used to the cold. After this every soldier in his army learned to deal with cold weather and eventually were able to invade Russia, from Finland, if you can believe it, and conquer Russia in 1812.
This meant that by 1810 everything in Europe from the Orkneys and Ireland to Italy and the Low Countries, Russia to Spain and Portugal was now France. Not subject nations, they were provinces of France with new, or at least, renamed aristocracy.
Africa was not very organized anyway so all it took was some missionaries, some assassinations and a judicious use of patronage and military might to take Africa from Cairo to the Cape of Good Hope. An impressive act of barbarism paired with the acquisition of an impressive Grand Duke made short work of Africa. Napoleon met a young Shaka Zulu in 1807. Soon the young man was a colonel of the French Army, fighting in Algiers and Egypt. In 1816 when Shaka's father died he went to take control of the Zulu nation. He took along about 20,000 seasoned French/Algerian instructors and enough weaponry to destroy any stone age people that reared their ugly heads. Within 15 years the Zulu, loyal French citizens everyone, had conquered Africa and Shaka Zulu was not only a Marshal of France but a Prince of the realm.
With Europe, Africa, and Russia to draw troops, China, southeast china, and Australia had little hope but the acquisition of Feudal Japan in 1819 was a serious blow to the future of Asia. Japan had roundly trounced most of China, Southeast China, and had nearly exterminated the Australian aborigines by the time Russia/French/Zulu troops arrived Peking in 1825. By 1830 dissident movements had been squashed, transportation issues dealt with and the standard of living in Europe, Africa and Asia was uniform and high.
From 1806 French spies had been fomenting disunion in the United States and with French support the Confederate Army rose in 1832. This death blow to the United states meant that Canada, Mexico, and the united states were divided into 8 separate regions and were completely pacified by 1839.
South America fell in 6 months. Moving troops around and visiting all the new provinces there took Napoleon 2 years. It was in Panama, where he laid out the plans and dug the first shovel full of dirt on a future canal, that he caught malaria and died.
It didn't matter. He had a son ready and a grandson in uniform and a great-grandson in diapers.
It especially didn't matter that he died because he didn't. He merely rejoined Benedict's General Staff. The fix was in from the start.
Polynesia is still a hold out but so little government lives there than it is not worth mentioning. Besides, they need some place to send troops for practical experience.
King's Retreat
Gerard's Hunting Lodge
Rebma
48 Lighthouse of Hiemnal, Kashfra
At the time of the writing of this article the Ambassador of Chaos was Despil of Hendrake and Sawall. He is a genial, friendly man, genuinely pleasant and complementary not to mention very funny with a king sense of humor. He served as ambassador to Amber from the brink of Patternfall,5200, to 5253, when he was replaced by the lemon-bitter Maylon Hendrake. Despil was treated shabily by chaos who deemed him to have become to comfortable in Amber. They believed he had 'gone native.'
Of course he and his mad brother Jurt abjured their fealty to Chaos in the Hendrake Cult Hall of Benedict and swore fealty to Random and Amber. So I guess they were right.
Random and Maylon are not in the habit of sharing coffee at Sea View.
There is a piece of etiquette that has developed in Sea View that bears mention. While one may see a vast number of people at Sea View one does not walk up and just talk to them. First one catches the eye of the person you would have conversation with then make a tiny gesture, a quarter twist of a hand, indicating you would like to approach and sit. The response in the affirmative is for the respondent to motion with of opening and closing an upturned palm. A negative response is back and forth sweeping motion with the hand. The only counter to a negative response is to rudely ignore the desires of the respondent.
Flora is very unhappy about the fact that a number of conflicts have broken out here harming the flowers.
51 Jack Rabbit Slim's
53: Milliways-The Restaurant at the End of the Universe.
54. St. Masvir of Arkens Links
This addendum is written after a grueling game of golf between
55. The Stone of Skulls