In the beginning was raw, roiling chaos, out of which places, things and creatures would occasionally and spontaneously form by random chance. In general these would soon dissolve back into chaos. How long the universe existed in this form is unknown, but it was certainly for a very long time. Whether anything existed before it is also unknown.
Long, long ago the roiling chaos of the universe spontaneously gave form to the entity now known as the Unicorn. Able to survive there, over long ages it slowly grew in power and sentience, becoming able to control both its shape and raw chaos itself. It also grew in subtlety, learning stealth, form shifting and the like.
Another of these spontaneously-generated entities was Anurerishkigal. Unlike the Unicorn it required the life-force of other spontaneously-formed entities to live, and so hunted and consumed them. Because of its need for life-force, it was Anurerishkigal that learned to stabilise islands of shadow, spawn life there from itself, and 'farm' this primitive but sentient life for the life-force it needed to survive. Among these life forms were the first primitive demons.
In time the Unicorn became aware of other entities like itself, and observed and interacted with them.
However, when it first encountered Anurerishkigal, Anurerishkigal attempted to consume its life-force, and it was only able to escape after a long fight that was the first it had ever had. Even then it only survived due to its being considerably more powerful than Anurerishkigal.
Now fearing and hating other life, and wanting to remove the threat to itself that it posed, the Unicorn-to-be began to kill the other spontaneously-generated entities. Anurerishkigal was the last of these to die.
When it had killed everything it saw as a threat to itself, the Unicorn withdrew into itself.
But eventually it became bored, and carefully looked for other creatures like itself to interact with. But it found none. It had killed them all.
As it searched it did, however, find the creatures that Anurerishkigal had created as the food it farmed. Seeing what Anurerishkigal had done, the Unicorn became interested in the fleeting lands and lives that formed out of and dissolved back into the roiling chaos of the universe, and continued to stabilise a few of them, including those of Anurerishkigal, breeding the life there for interest, rather than for food, and adding elements of itself to the lives originally spawned from Anurerishkigal. In particular it oversaw the ancient demons and the ancient human race, guiding the latter in the guise of their god, Rutiostom.
In the beginning, humans and demons evolved independently on their islands of stability in the roiling chaos of the multiverse, the Unicorn leaving them mostly free to develop on their own.
Under the tutelage of their deity, The Nameless (the Unicorn in disguise), the demons learnt shapeshifting, allowing them to survive in and move through the raw chaos, and magic, becoming highly diverse in their forms and abilities.
Under Rutiostom, the ancient humans, on the other hand, learned only magic, using it to survive in their home shadow.
Using their more diverse powers the demons spread between the stable islands in the sea of chaos.
And eventually they discovered, subjugated and enslaved the primitive human race, destroying their ancient city and carrying off the surviving population in chains.
They held the human race in subjugation for millions upon millions of subjective years, breeding them into different specialised forms as the needs of the day required, and establishing a long-lasting status quo.
In time the Unicorn became bored with the largely unchanging regime created by the demons, and came to think that things would be more interesting if humans were in charge.
It helped a human slave named Prometheus to steal the secrets of magic and shapeshifting from the demons, and he secretly taught them to his people. With the aid of the Unicorn he discovered and mastered The Power, and after long preparation led a human uprising.
The demons were more diverse, but humanity was more versatile and potentially more powerful. Thus the humans eventually won, threw down the demons and put humanity into power in their place.
Allegedly The Nameless was killed by the Unicorn during this conflict. Certainly the homelands of the demons dissipated into raw chaos during this time.
Prometheus became the first human King of Chaos, and founded the Royal House of Chaos, with demonkind as the slaves of humanity, and most of the rank and file of their military.
The Royal House encompassed all those of human descent in Chaos, and grew into a huge and rambling group, making up perhaps a quarter of those in Chaos. However, the humans having been enslaved for so long, they had no real culture of their own left. So they adopted that of demonkind.
Under Prometheus, the Courts of Chaos grew into an empire, spreading its influence over many shadows, stable and not, linked by Black Bridges forged using The Power. This was, in Amber terms, millions of years ago.
Cross-breeding between humans and demons using advanced shapeshifting powers blurred the distinctions between the humans and demons of the Courts to the point where there was no longer any real distinction between them, with looks depending on chance and breeding. Thus the Royal House expanded, with its boundaries eventually becoming defined more by politics that by genetics.
Savage culling, breeding and manipulation of demonkind using eugenics, shapeshifting and vivisection by the Masters (the humans of Chaos) saw the demonic slave races turned, over a very long time, into a vast number of species and sub-species. This process also bred out most of their initiative, imagination, curiosity and originality. In many cases most of their IQ was removed too, apart from that required for basic survival, and their bred-in tasks, to the point that many of them were barely sentient. In all cases the ability to lie was also largely removed, as well as, for all but certain types, the ability to fight.
Much later, a rival to Prometheus named Typhon rose in power in Chaos, dissatisfied with what he saw as the unnecessarily slow and un-ambitious pace of the growth of the Empire. Aided by an alliance he made with another powerful entity, the Lion (another disguise of the Unicorn), in a brief and bloody revolution he threw down Prometheus and assumed the throne of Chaos himself.
Grievously wounded, Prometheus fled into the multiverse, and has not been seen since
Since Typhon's coming to the throne of Chaos, the Royal House of Chaos has considered itself to be the Children of the Lion, in a spiritual rather than a physical sense.
Under Typhon, the Empire of Chaos grew still further, expanding far and wide through the islands of shadow in the sea of chaos.
As time passed and the Empire of Chaos spread, the Unicorn saw that the Courts of Chaos was not what it was looking for. It was boring.
Humans could still be interesting, but in Chaos they were too much influenced by the culture of the demons. They were not a human society any more, having lost much of their vitality and versatility, ossifying into what was basically a re-creation of the demonkind they had overthrown. The Unicorn wanted something else.
With Dworkin Barimen, a promising student from a small, declining branch of the Royal House whom it had influenced so that he became dissatisfied with Chaos and its regime, it planned that other thing - the Pattern.
It could feel the reality of the Ordnung as the 'other' side of raw chaos, and taught Dworkin the truth about the Primal Jewel, a Real, spontaneously created artefact which it had discovered and which, until then, had remained a useless curio. Fleeing off into the depths of the multiverse Dworkin drew the Pattern in some islands of stability he discovered far from the Courts of Chaos:
'My flight from Chaos to this small sudden island in the sea of night? My meditations upon the abyss? The revelation of the Pattern in a jewel hung round the neck of a unicorn? My transcription of the design by lightning, blood and lyre while our fathers raged baffled, too late come to call me back while the poem of fire ran that first route in my brain, infecting me with the will to form? Too late! Too late... Possessed of the abominations born of the disease, beyond their aid, their power, I planned and built, captive of my new self.'
Dworkin, in The Hand Of Oberon, Chapter 5
As the Pattern was completed, it acted as a door between the realm of Chaos, and the 'mirror' realm of Order, allowing raw order and chaos to flood through in each direction, and mix. In the Chaos realm, the flood of Order rippled out from the Pattern, crystallising shadow everywhere, leaving only the Abyss as the last remnant of true primal chaos which the flood of Order thrust out to the rim.
As the stability brought by the Pattern spread, The Power, which worked best in raw chaos, was crippled to the point of near-uselessness. The Empire of Chaos was shattered as the links between their 'islands' were destroyed, and the islands themselves scattered and frozen in place by the wave of order spreading out from the Pattern. As a perhaps intentional side effect the new structure of the universe precluded the spontaneous creation of any new entities like the Unicorn.
In the Order universe, likewise, its unchanging nature was shattered and thawed, and true static order thrust to the rim, in the equivalent position to the Abyss of Chaos.
The Ordnung universe had been static and unchanging until the Pattern introduced disorder there, the Ordnung having been there as the spirit of the place for a very long time, but unthinking and unaware of anything else.
Stimulated into thought and action by the pain and injury the Pattern caused it, the Ordnung began to study its changed world.
At the centre of the new universe Dworkin and the Unicorn founded the realm of Amber. Not long after this, born of a mating between them, came the quadruplets who founded the Amber dynasty - Oberon (associated with Amber), Moins (associated with Rebma), Ossian (associated with Tir-Na Nog'th) and Morgana (associated with Ht'gon-An Rit). Their close blood ties with the creature responsible for the original creation of all human and demon life made the Amberite bloodline stronger than any other.
Because of Dworkin's (and Oberon's) rejection of Chaos and their desire to be a power separate from it, all the Amberites since then have been fully human, and generally not shapeshifters, though they do retain the potential for it.
After the creation of the Pattern and the stabilisation of shadow the forces of Chaos began to explore through the results of this, for them, cataclysmic event, using the crippled remnants of The Power as best they could to do so.
When Sandrine was some five years old the Chaosites encountered an exploring party from Amber, led by Finndo.
Things went badly as each side discovered who the other was, and after initial skirmishes, war was inevitable. The Chaosites found allies in a number of shadows close to Amber who disliked Amber for its high-handed ways.
Oberon himself led from the front, with his sons Benedict, Osric and Finndo at his side. The Jewel of Judgement and Oberon's powers held the day, but the war dragged on to the fringes of Amber itself, Chaos' superior numbers beating back the Amberites. Eventually even Dworkin became involved, and rampaged about the battlefield, killing many of the rank and file. He somehow made many Lords of Chaos burn, eternally and without killing them, then threw the up into the sky, where they have burned ever since as the stars of Amber, to look down eternally on their failure, and suffer.
This allowed Oberon to establish a truce with Chaos, and defeat the shadows which were supporting them. With new Amber-friendly governments installed these eventually became central shadows in the Golden Circle.
A cold war ensued.
Some years later, Chaos attacked again, led by the Amberite traitors Reanna, Joshua, Gareth and Meredith, and Oberon's wife Lora, who were all unhappy with Oberon's high-handed ways. They were also aided by two children of Moins, Iseult and Beron. After Oberon was nearly killed by back-stabbing in the initial treachery of Lora, the forces of Amber were pushed back and back.
After thousands of years of study the Ordnung, as a real power in its own right, eventually discovered how to use the Pattern to its own ends, and began planning to return its universe to its old form.
As the war with Chaos continued, the first probing of the Ordnung through the Patterns occurred. As Amber itself became threatened from within the heart of its power, the forces of Chaos pushed forward, assisted by several shadows which lay near to Amber, who were not happy with their treatment at the hands of Oberon and Amber.
Attacked on too many fronts, Oberon sent Osric through to the other side of the Pattern to destroy all of the Patterns there and so close off the Ordnung's line of attack. He told Osric that there was a way back which he would hold open so Osric could return. He lied.
In the Order universe, Osric fought to push back the Ordnung with the help of forces from the shadows there. They forced it from all but the Ht'gon-An Rit Pattern, where its hold was simply too strong. Using his own blood, Osric destroyed the other four Patterns, the reverses of the Primal, Amber, Rebma and Tir-Na Nog'th Patterns, relying on Oberon's 'way back' to return to Amber.
As the wars continued, Sandrine and Delwin found out that Oberon did not have a way back for Osric, that he was entirely willing to sacrifice their brother to save Amber. They disobeyed Oberon to go through and tell Osric this, forcing a path through the Ordnung and the Ht'gon-An Rit Pattern into the Order universe. Once there they tried to persuade Osric to escape. He would not, and the increasing strength of the Ordnung prevented a return anyway. The three of them fought on.
With the Ordnung continuing to grow through the Ht'gon-An Rit Pattern, and unable to send anyone through the other Patterns as Osric had sealed them, Oberon assumed that Osric had failed to complete his mission. So he sent Finndo to destroy the Ht'gon-An Rit Pattern with his blood.
Finndo, seeing the danger in this, used his shapechanging powers to send only a part of himself on this mission, in his demon form of a seven feet tall ape-creature with large hands and long, clawed fingers.
And rightly so. Morgana did not want her Pattern sealed.
She and Finndo fought. Although he eventually killed Morgana, Finndo too was mortally injured. Despite this he sealed the Ht'gon-An Rit Pattern in the only way he could, by destroying it with the blood of himself and Morgana. Then that part of him died.
On a battlefield near Amber, in the Vale of Garnath, the final battle occurred. Using the Jewel of Judgement, and with Benedict and Finndo at his side, Oberon routed Chaos. The Lords of Chaos were decimated, though the armies of Amber were too.
Lora, Reanna and Gareth were captured on the battlefield. Joshua and Meredith tried to flee, but did not get far, and were captured not too long after. The rebel Rebmans, Iseult and Beron were also captured.
The four of his children who had betrayed him, and Lora, were executed on the field of battle. Iseult and Beron were returned to Rebma for trial, where they were executed on the orders of Moins.
Another truce was drawn up with Chaos, and Ygg planted to mark the boundary between Amber and Chaos. Only Oberon knew that Ygg was really a sentient device made by him to spy on the use of Trump throughout shadow.
Again, Amber removed the governments of the shadows that fought against them, replacing them with more friendly regimes.
The cold war resumed.
In the Order universe, the three Amberites, Osric, Sandrine and Delwin, took advantage of the damage to the Ordnung the Finndo caused in destroying the Ht'gon-An Rit Pattern to force it back, carving out the realm that became known as Girasol and becoming fixed in a cold war with it.
To totally remove the danger to themselves and Amber, Osric used his blood to destroy their side of the Ht'gon-An Rit Pattern. The combined effects of destroying all of the Patterns in the order universe caused him to age greatly.
Although part of him had died at the Ht'gon-An Rit Pattern, most of Finndo had survived, and was eventually able to reconcile with Oberon.
He also arranged for the a wall to be built around the Ht'gon-An Rit Pattern, and for tombs to be built there for Morgana and the part of himself that died there.
Because they had angered him so, Oberon had all trace of his offending children removed from Amber, and their names purged from history. It was a long time before Oberon had any more children, and when he did he was much harsher in their upbringing, considering that part of the reason they had rebelled before was because he had been too lenient with his earlier brood. [This is partly why the younger children were raised unaware of Chaos - to stop them causing trouble by allying with them against Oberon.]
Finndo was expunged from history too, but for different reasons. Oberon had been highly impressed by his skills when he helped defeat the traitors, so Oberon made him his secret eyes and ears. He was taught much more than his siblings had been, and became Oberon's spy; he became the best anywhere at what he does...
Even so, trouble came, later.
Joshua had in fact escaped at the end of earlier uprising against Oberon, leaving a shadow to die in his place. In shadow he expanded their forces slowly, recruiting two dissatisfied young nobles of Rebma who commanded a large following there, Clive and Vivienne, as he did so. He also found and recruited the race of shapechangers who called themselves the Weirmonken to fight on his side.
And when they were ready they marched on Amber, intending to take over both it and Rebma.
Fortunately, thanks to Finndo, Amber was aware of roughly what was going on, and was ready for them. After many battles, most of them very bloody, the Weirmonken and Joshua were defeated. Joshua was captured, and the Weirmonken decimated. Only Finndo's pointing out they were mostly innocent dupes of Joshua, and that their powers made them potentially useful, prevented their extermination.
Joshua was executed by Oberon personally, while Moins executed Clive and Vivienne.
Much later, Corwin brought his son Owen, the first grandchild of Oberon, to Amber. Owen walked the Pattern and vanished. He was never heard from again and, at Corwin's insistence, all records of him were erased when he next returned to Amber, some time later. Oberon reluctantly conceded to the wishes of his (then) favourite son.
Again, all was relatively quiet for a time. Then Mirelle, a teenager at the time like her twin brother Random, was killed in the first attack of the Moonriders of Ghenesh. Another war began, which Benedict ended at the pass above Arden with the defeat of the Moonriders, followed by their being hunted through shadow, exterminated to the last one, and the shadow of Ghenesh utterly destroyed.
Oberon married Justine after the death of Pauletta, and Tristan was born. As he was the least of the Amberites, it came as something of a surprise when, some years later, Tristan ran off with Isobel, Oberon's wife of the time while Oberon was away.
Although a major hunt was carried out, no trace of Tristan was ever found. He too was erased from all the Amber histories.
Then Oberon vanished, lured away into captivity by Brand, Bleys and Fiona.
Eric took the throne, supported by Caine and Gerard.
As a reflection of this Moins also disappeared in Rebma, and Moire, one of her highest nobles, with the support of most of the other nobles of Rebma, including Llewella, took the throne. In reality Moins was overthrown in a coup, crippled, and imprisoned in a dungeon under Castle Rebma, where she lies to this day. Perhaps Corwin's blinding was a reflection of this maiming.
Moin's Pattern blade, Vigilant, was taken by Llewella (as she was the only one who could use it effectively) but only used by her when there was no chance of its existence being noted by anyone else.
Acting behind the scenes, Finndo made sure that Eric learned how to attune to the Jewel of Judgement, an essential for the defence of the realm. He also took advantage of this opportunity to attune himself to it as well.
The Patternfall War with Chaos occurred, a last try by the old order in Chaos, with assistance of the Brand, Fiona and Bleys, to restore things to the way they were. But despite the unwitting assistance of Corwin, they lost, and were blood-cursed by Eric.
With the defeat of Chaos in the battle by the Abyss, the Unicorn, seeking the most entertaining - for it - solution, selected Random, the youngest and presumably weakest and least likely to succeed of the Amberites as King. It looked forward to a period of civil strife in Amber with possibly interesting results.
The old order in Chaos was utterly discredited by their defeat, and a coup in the Royal House led to the death of the ancient King Typhon and his replacement by the new King, Merodach.
In Amber, events moved on as the new regime was installed.
In the Order universe, the Ordnung, although hurt by its creation, began planning to use Corwin's Pattern - a new gateway between the universes of order and chaos - to its advantage.
Chaos realised that The Power had been crippled by the Pattern. After failing to restore the way things were before the Pattern was drawn, they settled on a different plan inspired by King Merodach himself. They wished to introduce Amberite blood into the Royal House of Chaos, so as to allow them to take the power of the Pattern for themselves. Dara and her relatives, descended from Lintra and Benedict, were the first steps along this road. Martin, a prisoner in Chaos, also helped in this, being used for breeding purposes.
However, King Merodach decreed that a peaceful solution will be tried first, just to see if such is possible, while preparing for the worst.
And so an Ambassador was sent to Amber...