"Now These Her Princes Are Come Home Again"

SESSION 3.13 : A Cure For God?

Session 3.12   Index   Session 3.14

Notes Taken by Samantha and Alastair Beadle.

We go up to the walls of Castle Amber. Etienne's approaching half-million strong army is visible just emerging from the edge of Forest Arden.

Gerard expresses concern over its size, suspecting that Amber, in its current weakened state, may be unable to stand against it. He requests any assistance we may be able to supply. It is clear that we would need thousands or tens of thousands of men to make a difference.

Whippoorwill says he doesn't have a personal army but could apply to the Senate of The Tunnel for use of one of its armies. He suggests he go to The Tunnel now to see if he can find an army to assist, even if he cannot quickly return with it to Amber.

However, no-one has a Trump of Whippoorwill, although Queen Moire has given Whippoorwill himself a Trump deck in the last few days (since the re-taking of Amber). This a Rebman Trump deck - the cards are drawn in an unfamiliar artist's style, and have a Rebman symbol - some form of mermaid-like creature in sky-blue on a deep sea blue-green background - on the back.

Out in shadow, Skyrie has been having a constructive time, finding out about the nature of God and shadow. There are some shadows where God exists, some where He could exist but doesn't, some where He could not exist, and some where He should not be able to exist but where He does anyway, apparently having been given some magical assistance (presumably by Etienne) so that He can exist there. Some degree of magic does appear necessary for God to exist. There are no non-magic or anti-magic shadows that have a God.

Also, all of the shadows where there is a God are linked by shadow paths that apparently allow God to combine His many single-shadow aspects into a single cross-shadow unit made up of many, many single-shadow Gods.

Skyrie thinks he is making progress, but this is taking rather a long time...

From Amber, Caitlin Trumps Skyrie and asks him to draw a sketch of Whippoorwill.

Skyrie agrees to do this, but does not want to return to Amber at the moment, so Whippoorwill is passed through to him instead. Before the link is dropped, he passes two Trump sketches of himself back to Caitlin, one for her, and one for Gerard.

Whippoorwill is surprised to discover that Skyrie is currently in a shadow made up of glass marbles of many different sizes, from tiny to huge, making a rolling landscape below the flying carpet upon which he is currently travelling.

Whippoorwill is also surprised to find himself sitting upon a flying thing!

Skyrie quickly draws a Trump sketch of Whippoorwill, and gives it to him. Whippoorwill then Trumps off to The Tunnel using the Trump of the place Llewella sent him. Upon arrival in Cut-throat Alley he begins shifting shadow so that he can find an army.

Jihx decides to infiltrate the approaching army to see if he can do some damage from the inside.

Arun leaves his body and goes into 'God watch mode', spreading out through and aware of the contents of the entirety of the 'shadow' of Amber.

However, before infiltrating the army, Jihx gets a horse from the stables and rides out of Amber, heading for a nearby shadow to get his horse and hawk.

Gerard suggests that he, Caitlin and the others infiltrate the army and do some damage.

Caitlin also suggests that Arun goes and gives the army a bad feeling about the shadow. He attempts to do this thing.

Skyrie continues to move through shadow.

Moving from The Tunnel, Whippoorwill experiments with moving through shadow. He shifts for a version of The Tunnel where he will be able to quickly obtain the forces he wants, one where they have just conquered the whole place, leaving a large standing army with nothing to do which the Senate will be happy to send off to fight elsewhere.

He moves towards the Senate building, shifting shadow through streets he has never seen before, finding that his clothing has changed as he goes so that he has become a Proconsul. He enters the Senate and is recognised by the Speaker of the House. He tells them that he has found a use for the standing army, new fields for conquest, and an area that needs assistance that could be a great ally to this world. The Senate briefly discusses this proposal, then the Speaker of the House takes a vote.

Whippoorwill's proposal is overwhelmingly approved in the vote, and the Senate gives him permission to lead half the army off. He leaves the Senate chamber and tells a steward to bring his horse and assistant and to send word to the 1st to 12th Legions (those with heavy cavalry) to prepare to move out.

His horse and assistant quickly arrive, and Whippoorwill rides off to the Field of Mars, where the Legions are camped out. As Whippoorwill reaches the Field of Mars he can see that the Legions are breaking camp and preparing to go.

And after a few hours they are all set, and the twelve Legions - some twenty thousand men - march off with Whippoorwill at their head.

Jihx rides off away from Amber, but in a different direction to the direction of the approaching army. After a while he feels that he can shift shadow, and does so until he can summon his horse and hawk. It does not take long to find them, his horse grazing peacefully in a glade with his white hawk perched on a nearby branch. He leaves the horse he is riding behind, mounts his horse, and gallops back towards Amber, approaching the far side of the army (that is, the side of the army away from Amber).

Back in Amber the rest of us are waiting for dusk before infiltrating the army.

As we wait we get more news of the approaching army and how it is moving. They are a mixture of infantry, cavalry and war elephants, all in an Indian style. All of the troops appear to be dark-skinned and dark-eyed. It looks like they will ford the River Oisen quite soon, but will probably camp overnight and reach the walls of the city tomorrow.

From the reports it appears that this fight is going to be something of a challenge.

In a version of The Tunnel, Whippoorwill leads his army off through shadow.

Jihx scouts the rear of the army. He quickly finds out that they do not have any supply columns and so do not seem cut out for a long drawn-out war. They are beginning to ford the River Oisen at intervals along its bank.

He attempts to ambush a group of mounted outriders who are scouting the fringes of the army. They seem to be set up in a competent manner, such that it will be very hard to get all three before at least one can get away and raise the alarm. Jihx cuts down one before he can react, but the second has time to make a noise, and the third shouts out an alarm, and rides off at speed.

Jihx charges after him and kills him, but the alarm has been raised. He quickly assembles the less blood-stained bits of their three uniforms to form one un-bloodied uniform, then disappears into the darkness as more troops begin to move in.

Back in Amber, Caitlin Trumps Jihx and when she gets through asks if he would like some assistance. Through the Trump link she can see the pursuing troops behind Jihx.

He says that he will lose the troops that are following him and call them back. The Trump link is dropped.

It does not take Jihx long to lose his pursuers, so he then Trumps Nemain, who is also in Amber.

In Amber, Gerard, Connor, Nemain and Caitlin have equipped themselves with as much weapons and armour as they want. Gerard has provided everyone with hooded clocks to hide the fact that no-one looks much like the people in the invading army (they are all dark-skinned and dark-eyed; all of us are pale-skinned and light haired).

At this point, Nemain gets a call from Jihx. She takes the call then passes everyone through to Jihx at the rear of the invading army.

Caitlin asks Arun (still one with all of Amber) if he has found anything of use. He forms some kind of psychic link to everyone else and tells us where the leader of the army is camped - in that large tent there, in the centre of the camp - as well as some other useful information on what is going on.

Jihx asks Arun to meet him in the Castle so that he can be changed to look like the leader of the army, a General Ranjit. Arun agrees to do this, so Jihx Trumps back to Castle Amber.

Arun goes back into his body and meets Jihx just outside the arrival courtyard. With Jihx's permission he changes Jihx so that he looks like General Ranjit - a tall, muscular dark-skinned, dark-eyed man with black hair streaked with silver, dressed in an ornate version of the uniform worn by the soldiers of the invading army.

That done, Arun goes off to become one with Amber again, and Jihx Trumps Nemain and, when she takes the call, rejoins the rest of the group at the rear of the army.

Jihx tells them that he will go and infiltrate the army's command structure and do damage that way, and leaves to do this.

Whippoorwill leads his forces through shadow. They go out of The Tunnel into a smaller tunnel then out through a cave mouth to under a dark open sky. He then leads the troops away from the cliff face they have emerged from through shadow into areas where the skies are lighter. Then the landscape starts to change to more and more closely resemble that of Amber. Whippoorwill is actually finding this somewhat tiring.

As they go, Whippoorwill has to explain the unusual scenery changes to the tunnel dwellers to placate their fears and keep them in line, but fortunately they seem willing to accept what he is saying.

And finally they come over a rise in some sand dunes and see the coast road to Amber in front of them, and the city of Amber partway up Mount Kolvir off in the distance. They turn along the road and head for the city, and as they advance on Amber City itself, Whippoorwill Trumps Gerard.

Jihx rides into the camp of the invading army in the form of their general, and through the camp towards the command tent. Much saluting and bowing greets him as he passes.

Some of the people in the camp appear to be slightly suspicious of his coming in from outside the camp like this, but everyone accepts him for who and what he appears to be.

He reaches the command tent, dismounts, and strides past the guards and into the tent.

Outside the camp, Gerard, Caitlin, Connor and Nemain give Jihx time to get into the camp, then go their separate ways, disappearing off into the darkness to cause havoc; Connor and Nemain go together, Caitlin and Gerard each go alone.

Caitlin reaches the camp, and scouts the area; the camp is very large and quite well guarded, but not to a level that has any chance of stopping her. She sneaks into the camp and sets about subtly sabotaging the various items of large siege weaponry so that not only will the siege engines go wrong, they will go wrong catastrophically and at the worst possible time.

Gerard accepts Whippoorwill's Trump call, and greets him as the link opens up.

Whippoorwill tells him what forces he has brought with him, and that they are much more of a hand-to-hand combat group than a ranged combat group. They discuss the situation and it is agreed that the main army will go into the city to reinforce the defences on the walls while the heavy cavalry attack the army now.

Gerard goes through the Trump link to where Whippoorwill is to assist with the cavalry charge. He quickly sizes up the forces Whippoorwill has brought, borrows a horse from one of the cavalrymen, and then he and Whippoorwill lead the heavy cavalry, several thousand men, off towards the army.

As they ride he asks Whippoorwill to detail the capabilities of his forces.

Whippoorwill thinks that they may take a little while to get used to Amber, as the environment and laws of nature here are rather different to that in The Tunnel. However, he thinks that a charge against infantry would be very effective.

Gerard peers at the camp through a telescope and picks out some likely targets for just such an attack.

Whippoorwill asks what other action is taking place.

Gerard explains that the others are in the army causing trouble at present.

Whippoorwill starts to organise his army, ready for the charge.

Jihx strides around the command tent looking for his look-alike. The tent is quite large, with a number of entrances and guards and servants moving about. In the very centre of the tent he finds a guarded area, a combined office and lounging area with, at a desk, his look-alike along with a small group of other people who look like officers.

"IMPOSTOR!" shouts Jihx, and charges at the men. It does not take Jihx long to kill them all, and they have very little chance to do anything against him other than cry our.

Then the guards appear, charging in through the door-flap of the tented room. Jihx shouts at the guards, ordering them to get out. They are very confused, but obey him.

Caitlin finishes her sabotage of the siege engines and then hears a commotion from over by the main command tent.

She ignores this and makes for the closest group of war-elephants.

Now alone in the central room of the command tent, Jihx concentrates and makes psychic contact with Arun (still all around within Amber's shadow). Arun tells him that Whippoorwill has arrived with an army.

Jihx then Trumps Gerard and explains the situation. He passes the body of the General through to Gerard, who, once they are done discussing things, tells Jihx that they will attack in fifteen minutes.

Whippoorwill explains to his army that this is the body of the opposing general; this makes them considerably more happy after seeing the size of the opposing army.

Gerard then Trump Caitlin and when she takes the call he tells her of the impending attack. In return, she explains what she has done to the siege weapons so that they are all now out of action, and that she is making for the war-elephants.

This done, Gerard then Trumps Connor and Nemain and tells then what is about to happen.

In the camp of the invading army, Jihx has fifteen minutes to cause as much trouble as possible.

He sends guards and messengers to clean up the mess, summons all of the second-in-command people here, and send all the army's cavalry to the far end of the camp, away from the direction in which Whippoorwill's cavalry will be coming in from.

After some ten minutes one of the second-in-command people turns up, and the rest also arrive over the next few minutes. When the twenty or so of them are all assembled, Jihx sets light to the all of the maps which are here with a handy oil lamp.

"FIRE!" he shouts. People start to run about, and in the confusion he sets about killing off the second-in-commands. He kills half of them, then gets out his Trump of the Amber castle arrival courtyard and concentrates hard on it. He attempts to kill the other half of the send-in-commands while he does this, but although he does do some damage to them, he also gets stabbed and cut rather a lot as they defend themselves.

But the Trump link to Amber opens up, and Jihx dives through.

"HALT! WHO GOES THERE?" shout the arrival courtyard guards as Jihx arrives, injured and bleeding; Jihx cannot see any of them, but there are definitely lots of weapons trained on him.

Then, as they appear to not recognise Jihx in the form of General Ranjit, they get a little more hostile. "STAND WHERE YOU ARE. DROP YOUR WEAPONS AND RAISE YOUR HANDS," they demand.

Jihx does this thing, says that he is Jihx, and calls for Arun, who can confirm his bona fides (he can feel the presence of Arun all around him).

Caitlin reaches the area of the camp where the closest group of war-elephants are corralled. She climbs up onto one and rides it, goading it to attack the other elephants while easily ignoring its attempts to unseat her, and killing as many of the elephant's mahouts as she can to further enrage the pachyderms.

Before long she has managed to enrage most of the elephants so that they start to fight each other, breaking out of the corral and rampaging about the camp. Just as Whippoorwill's cavalry attacks...

The command tent in the centre of the camp is very much alight by now, and the lack of leadership in the army appears to be a serious problem. For them, that is.

A flying wedge of heavily armed and armoured cavalry thunder down towards the encamped army, with Whippoorwill and Gerard at the point of the wedge. The defences of the camp seem to be tragically disorganised at the moment, and the cavalry crash through their lines and attack, quickly seeming to have the edge, being on horses and using heavy weapons. The cavalry do their best not to lose momentum and plough on through the camp. Gerard is going a great deal of damage with his sword, which appears to be called Gay Abandon; Whippoorwill is also doing a good deal of damage with his sword, Panache.

Gerard and Whippoorwill's plan is to attack key areas in the camp - supply tents, horses and elephants in particular. This seems to work quite well.

They plough through the camp once and back out through their lines, then repeat this in a second sweep of the camp, doing a good deal of damage both time. However, the defences are becoming organised by the time they charge out of the camp the second time, so the retreat/recall signal is sounded and the cavalry race off back towards Amber city; they have taken perhaps ten percent casualties by this point.

Having killed a number of mahouts and enraged most of the elephants, Caitlin leads her mount off out of the camp, pursued by the other elephants. This does not do the camp any good whatsoever.

The army try to use their siege weapons on the attacking forces but, tragically, they appear to have been sabotaged, and this attempt goes horribly, horribly wrong.

Caitlin disappears into Forest Arden riding one elephant and pursued by others...

As they ride back to Amber, Whippoorwill expresses concern at leaving the army to recover.

Jihx stands bleeding in the Arrival Courtyard with his hands up until Arun returns to his body and physically arrives there. He establishes Jihx's bona fides, heals all his wounds, and returns him to his normal appearance.

Caitlin ditches the elephants and dodges off into the forest before they can even try to kill her. This done, she Trumps Gerard, and when she gets through returns to him just at the harbour gate of Amber City.

Having arrived back at Amber City, Whippoorwill makes his rounds to meet and greet the members of his army and congratulate them on their good work. He is now actually tired (something that does not happen to him very often).

Jihx, joined by Arun, makes for the office area of the Castle, where Gerard has re-established his office.

The others, at the gates of the city, all come together and also return to the Castle, and everyone assembles in Gerard's office.

Once everyone arrives we all discuss what to do.

Connor expresses concern about what to do about the rest of invading army. No immediate conclusions are reached, so everyone goes off to rest.

And come the next morning, it is clear from reports that we receive that we have managed to considerably disable the army. Their command structure appears to be in disarray and many of their essential supplies and so on are destroyed.

We continue to harry them, and keep them away from the walls of Amber without too much difficulty. After a few weeks the invading army has been starved out, and its surviving members scatter off into Forest Arden, where they can be hunted down, and are soon finished off.

And some months later Amber has assembled a large army and full control of the city and castle has been re-established. And with everyone's help Amber is largely back to normal, although still being rebuilt in places. The only real exception to this is in the area of trade links with the Golden Circle, which are still seriously affected by the presence of God in much of the Golden Circle. This has led to Gerard having everyone sailing out on occasional re-supply missions to keep Amber from starvation. Gerard has also had everyone who is qualified to do so assist in the rebuilding of the Amber government and military, recruiting new people and vetting the existing people to ensure their loyalty to the new regime; there have definitely been some imprisonments and reorganisations arising from this.

Arun goes into the Golden Circle and experiments in getting rid of God. Before long he figures out a way of 'budding' some sort of psychic thing when in 'God-space' which is able to seek and destroy any God forming there before it becomes a threat.

Two of the Golden Circle shadows close to Amber are freed of God, using a similar technique to that used the remove God from Amber in the first place. That is, a group Trumping of God to hold him in place while Jihx and Arun go through the link and Jihx uses the (psychic representation of) his sword to drain God to nothingness. In these places too Arun has left behind something to stop God from being able to re-establish Himself there.

Whippoorwill has been preaching to us about how to attack God. One idea is to use a sympathetic God to replace the hostile God in the shadows we want back.

There have been no signs of Etienne doing anything against us during this time.

Meanwhile, Skyrie continues on through shadow, entirely uncontactable by the others, the Trump sketches of himself that he gave to Caitlin and Gerard having long since lost their Trump power.

While he has been travelling he has exchanged a few letters with Etienne by way of creatures of desire, discussing the situation. The first letter, which is not magical or anything else out of the ordinary, is sent by a peasant of Skyrie's desire. And at some point after the letter is sent, a peasant approaches Etienne, and delivers the letter to her:

The peasant waits in order to carry Etienne's reply back to Skyrie, and when she written it wanders off, back through shadow. Some time later, Skyrie receives Etienne's reply to his letter:

A month or two passes, then Etienne receives another letter from Skyrie:

To which Etienne's response is:

By this point, after about four months of travelling, Skyrie has reached an area where things feel Real and old - not Amber, but somewhere of a similar general nature. The amount of magic drops and drops until there is none at all, and it is getting colder and colder (though it is not cold at all compared to the ninth circle of Hell!). Shifting through shadow becomes more and more difficult. However, Skyrie, dressed in furs, carrying a spear and travelling on a sledge pulled by huskies, carries on.

Then Skyrie gets the feeling that he has arrived. He is on a plain of flat ice with mountains just visible on the horizon in front of him. Between him and the mountains is a vast minaret-like tower, roughly two miles high. The sky is utterly black overhead, the only light coming from eight (roughly shadow Earth-sized) moons arranged in a perfect octagon directly overhead, and a great many stars arranged in intricate and complex geometric patterns. The whole place feels very real, but also very artificial; time here flows at exactly the same rate as it does in Amber. Other than the two-mile-tall tower there are no signs of any inhabitants.

He cracks his whip and the huskies begin to pull him and the sledge towards the tower. The noise of his travelling is the only sound breaking the utter silence of the place. When he gets to within two miles of it he begins to get the feeling that something, some vast presence not entirely dissimilar to the presence of God, has become aware of him. A vast creaking and groaning sound is heard from the ice all around and a huge icy tentacle some four hundred yards wide grows from the ice between him and the tower. The huskies stop rather abruptly.

The tentacle looms over the ice towards him, growing to more than a mile long. It stops, looming over Skyrie, and its flat end shifts to form the face of the late King Oberon, four hundred yards across and all made of ice (Skyrie recognises the face from pictures and so on around Amber).

"WHO APPROACHES THE TOWER OF SILENCE?" booms the vast voice of the Oberon-thing.

Skyrie gets off the sledge and bows. He quickly and respectfully tells the ice-thing his name and asks whether he is talking to Oberon?

It replies that is an aspect of Oberon set here to guard the Tower. The huskies, taking the sled with them, flee off across the ice sheet.

Skyrie says that Amber is beset with a plague called God seeded by one of his kin, and that he has come here seeking a cure for this plague.

He tells the Oberon-thing the tale of recent events, and that Amber has fallen. This does not seem to make the Oberon-thing happy. Skyrie continues and tells him that many of the blood have been killed. Some have returned from death, but others are still lost.

'Oberon' asks what he wants, and what he wants to do with Etienne.

Skyrie says that he wants to destroy God, but he does not want to kill Etienne, if she will stop spreading God.

"YOUR QUEST IS A WORTHY ONE," booms 'Oberon'. The face disappears into the tentacle, which then shrinks back into the ice and vanishes, again with a great creaking and groaning. Then a human sized and shaped figure appears out of the ice close to Skyrie, in the form of Oberon, wearing a long, knee-length jacket over trousers and with the Royal Crown of Amber on his head. Again it all seems to be made out of ice. Skyrie can sense that 'Oberon' has a very powerful but somehow also limited mind. The human-shaped 'Oberon' is very striking and imposing.

"Yes, your quest is worthy," it says. "I think that I can help you."

He leads Skyrie off across the ice towards the Tower of Silence. The huskies and sledge have disappeared off into the distance by now.

As they approach the Tower, Skyrie can see a large number of door-sized openings around its base. 'Oberon' leads him towards one of these openings. Inside are stairs leading up. They climb. As they go up Skyrie can sense a number of very powerful, very Real things scattered around the tower, off through the walls. The entire place seems to be built of ice.

After a mile or so of climbing the stairs end at a small spherical chamber, perhaps four metres in diameter. Floating in the centre of the chamber is a multi-facetted transparent crystal thing, the centre of which appears to be about football-sized, with it surface divided into triangles from each of which grows a spike in the shape of a tetrahedral crystal pyramid, each one entirely filling its triangle. These spikes are lengthening and shortening as Skyrie watches, sometimes seemingly at random, at other times in waves which go across the whole thing. At their longest each spike is roughly a metre and a half long; at their shortest they are less than a centimetre long (and so very flat pyramids).

'Oberon' tells Skyrie that he thinks this device may be able to help, if Skyrie takes it to a place where this 'God' is and tells it what he wants it to do.

Before he gives him the device, 'Oberon' asks of Skyrie's cousins and the rest of the family. So Skyrie tells him. He tells 'Oberon' that:

• Etienne knows a great deal about the use of Pattern, and is quite nice, but was lead astray by God and is now slightly mad and needs help.
• Jihx is as solid and reliable as Gerard, and not very imaginative.
• Caitlin is a very powerful gun waiting to be pointed at something ('Oberon' comments that she sounds like a very useful member of the family).
• Arun is useful but also batty, and unlikely to realise the error of his ways before it is too late.
• Whippoorwill is a new arrival about whom he does not know much.
• Connor and Nemain are fresh-faced youth, the children of Moire and Jihx ("Ah, she finally managed it, then," comments 'Oberon' at this, in an obvious jibe at Moire).
• Godofos is strong, stupid and unlucky.
• Lillian is much like Skyrie himself; he also gives details about her role in Finndo's attack on Amber thirty years ago, and her working with the Moonriders, but says that as far as he knows she is now on the side of Amber.

Then 'Oberon' asks about Skyrie.

Skyrie says that he is a changed person after his travels and that many things no longer seem important.

'Oberon' tells him that anything that affects the family is important as ripples of it - shadows of it - will have effects across all of shadow.

Skyrie says that perhaps he will revisit this place in the future.

'Oberon' does not forbid this, but does ask not to be disturbed unless the matter bringing him here is very important. He implies that he will definitely frown on any 'tourists' who come here.

'Oberon' plucks the shifting crystal thing out of the air and gives it to Skyrie. As 'Oberon' does so all of its spikes shrink down into very flat pyramids over the surface of its football-sized centre. It is very light, weighing no more than an inflated balloon might, and Skyrie can tell that it contains a mind.

"It should be returned here when it has finished the task," 'Oberon' tells Skyrie. He then escorts Skyrie out of the tower back onto the ice field. He bids Skyrie goodbye, and sinks back into the ice, merging with it until he is lost to sight.

Skyrie says that he will not let 'Oberon' be forgotten. He then attempts to Trump Gerard, but however hard he tries he fails to make contact - it would seem that he is too far away.

He recovers his sledge and the huskies and camps out on the ice, where he spends over a week drawing a Super-Trump of Gerard, and also a Super-Trump of this place, the ice field outside the Tower of Silence. As he camps he notices that although there is no day or night, the star-field does rotate overhead, stars rising on one side of the horizon and setting on the other. However, the eight moons remain locked in their octagonal formation directly overhead.

He uses up all of his supplies as he camps out, and also has to eat one of the huskies, but eventually he is done, and concentrates on the Super-Trump of Gerard...

Back in Amber, four months and a week have passed since Amber was re-taken and Skyrie left.

And then Gerard receives a Trump call from Skyrie, who returns through the link to Amber, dressed in furs and carrying a spear. He relays his story about the 'Oberon Avatar', and hands the crystal thing over to Gerard.

Gerard looks at it for a moment, then hands it back to Skyrie. "You and your cousins should probably do what you can to use this thing," he tells Skyrie.

Skyrie attempts to 'use' the crystal, concentrating on it. Nothing happens.

It does not seem to respond to verbal contact, so Skyrie quickly draws a Trump sketch of it, which turns out to be an imagine of a swirling red, yellow and black thing. He concentrates on it and makes Trump contact. The thing does respond to this.

"Hello. Who are you? What do you want?" it asks Skyrie over the Trump link.

Skyrie introduces himself and gives a brief description of the situation.

Ten of the flat tetrahedral pyramids extend out from the crystal sphere, growing to a metre and a half long, before folding in the middle to form crystal legs. Another spike extends out, growing to the same length, though with more joints, and grows a tennis ball-sized crystal sphere on the end, which itself grows ten long, thin crystal antennae. "Hello" it says, seeming to look around at the room and us.

Introductions are made. The crystal thing introduces itself as 'The Eater'. However, when asked, it says that it does not eat physical things but ghosts, souls, spirits and so on which are not attached to a physical body. It comforts us by saying that it has not eaten the soul of an Amberite for several tens of thousands of years, and that one was a Prince Darius (who we have never heard of), who apparently threatened Amber with his 'Ghost Shadows', the ghosts of entire shadows, with people and so on, but existing entirely on a non-physical level.

Our problem is described to our new found, spherical friend. The Eater wants to have a look at God, to assess Him in its own way. It says that it ate Darius and his ghost shadows that he was carrying around with him.

We agree to do what the Eater wants, so Skyrie draws a Trump of one of the shadows just outside the Fourteen Empires (i.e. a non-Trump barred one), makes contact and all of us (without Connor and Nemain) step through.

We can all feel that God is present here. Clouds start to gather menacingly overhead.

"Oooh, yes!" says the Eater. "I can feel it. What an interesting thing! Very tasty!"

After a moment it says that it thinks that it can eat this spirit. It also asks if it can eat the afterlife here. We agree that it can, but only if it also agrees to release any Amberite souls that it comes across at the time. It says it is not sure it can do that; it can discriminate Amberite souls from those of non-Amberites, but given the speed at which it eats when it gets going, it is not sure that it could sense them in time to save them.

We consider this, then release The Eater anyway.

It stands still, but we all feel a psychic effect, as if some kind of psychic vortex is forming. The psychic vortex gets stronger and stronger, and we can feel it having a definite effect on the presence of God. There is a sense of alarm around us all as the Eater swirls the psychic presences of this shadow around and into itself.

The clouds overhead start to behave in a normal-seeming way, and after about ten minutes or so we can all feel that the presence of God has vanished, along with all the psychic presences in this shadow. God, plus the spirit world and afterlife of this shadow have completely disappeared.

The Eater says it is still hungry. It wanders off through shadow (moving under its own power) sucking in the presence of God as it goes. Arun stays behind in the shadow we started in, to observe the effects of what the Eater has done.

The Eater tells us that it can stop if we want it to, but it doesn't want to. We do not have it stop. For now.

As The Eater proceeds through shadow the time it takes to eat God gets shorter and shorter.

We proceed to the 'Well of Shadow' in the Fourteen Empires to see whether the removal of God restores the magic there to its original form. We reach the Well, and God is sucked out. Unfortunately, once this is done no magic at all remains - magic here seems to have been changed to be entirely derived from God, with no other forms allowed.

Whippoorwill asks The Eater if it can be physically harmed. It says that it cannot, so Whippoorwill tests it, hitting it with his full strength using his battle-spoon (which in the tunnel would carry burning magnesium). He is unable to damage it.

It tells us that it is an ultimate weapon that cannot be stopped. Although it has no actual face we get the impression that it is grinning maniacally.

We move off towards the Golden Circle, leading The Eater.

The time it is taking to consume Gods is getting shorter and shorter, from ten minutes to five minutes, to a minute, to thirty seconds, to ten seconds, to seconds, to a second or less, until it is consuming Gods as quickly as we can drag it through shadow.

We reach the Golden Circle and proceed through its shadows, removing God from them all, then go off into other shadows.

When we ask it the Eater says that no psychic being can exist in a shadow it has cleaned out, and that any afterlife that may have been there is utterly destroyed.

We follow the Eater as it continues to move through shadow.

Skyrie suggests we contact Etienne. We try this, but get no response.

It is suggested that we negotiate with her after we have cleaned out some more areas of shadow. This we proceed to do.

However, as we go Skyrie begins to sense that some areas of shadow have been sealed off in such a way that we cannot shift shadow into them, and additionally seem to be surrounded by a ring of extremely unReal shadows, the unReality of which feels, to Skyrie, as if it has been artificially created. Not a good sign. At about this point we decide that The Eater has eaten enough - done enough damage - for now, and have it stop. It is disappointed, but does so.

It is suggested that a letter is sent off from Gerard asking Etienne to release Vialle, Lillian and Godofos from Hell; if she does that, and if God does not expand any further, we will leave Etienne well alone and let bygones be bygones. Oh, and we will not hunt her down across shadow for the rest of time.

Gerard agrees that this is a good plan, and a letter is written and sent off attached to a creature of desire...

Session 3.12   Index   Session 3.14

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The original version of the Trump image of The Eater which is on this page is derived from a piece of art by Dave McKean. As such it is used here without permission, for personal game use only and not for profit or commercial gain.