A Landscape in Red

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In Blood of Amber, the organising force of reality itself is corrupt, touched with death. Throughout the spectrum of reality, from the glorious Castle Amber through Infinite Shadow to the very Courts of Chaos, the influence of Dworkin's great and blasphemous work can be felt. The influence is more overt in some places than others, but nowhere more strongly felt than in the world of Amber and her attendant Shadows.

This page is divided up into the following sections:

• Amber
• The Church of the Slain Unicorn
• Amber City
• Castle Amber
  • The Throne Room
  • The Crypt
  • The Blood Pattern
• Forest Arden
• The Kingdom of Ash
  • The Ash Pattern
• The Kingdom of Bone
  • The Bone Pattern
• The Crimson Circle
• The Courts of Chaos
  • The Green King

Click on the section headings to return to the top of the page.

Amber

The glory of Oberon's empire, Amber is beautiful and varied, somewhat at odds with the permanent, all-pervading gloom. From the high crags of Mount Kolvir to the sprawling forest Arden, from the bustling metropolis that is Amber to the lonely lighthouse at Cabra that remains ever lit to direct Amber's many naval and merchant vessels into the harbour, Amber is as grand, haughty, rich, splendid and terrible as her masters.

Since the day Dworkin completed the Pattern and used the Gem of Law to halt the sun, the world of Amber has existed in permanent night, lit only by the full moon shining from the midpoint of the sky overhead. In spite of this, the climate is pleasant, even warm. Without natural sunlight the people of Amber cannot grow crops, but they are otherwise unaffected by the loss of the sun. Much of Amber appears austere, compensating for the lack of greenery with sculpture and fine architecture.

The permanent night, and the unmoving moon in the sky, gave Amber a surreal, timeless feel; people would frequently lose track of their sense of time, getting the impression that it is not truly passing. From a certain point of view, they may be right: certainly, in the year since Patternfall, as the moon has begun slowly to sink towards the Western horizon, the people of Amber have become revitalised, progress-minded, and more enthusiastic, but this may have to do with the death of Oberon and the change in the balance of power rather than the movement of the moon.

The Church of the Slain Unicorn

The state religion of Amber is a Gnostic sect that believes the material reality of Infinite Shadow to be a corruption inflicted upon spiritual beings by Chaos; Dworkin's act of creation is exalted as an attempt to impress stasis and order onto this chaotic world, and allow the mind and spirit to rise above physical existence. Vampires, being themselves changeless and immortal, are seen as an order of being closer to pure spirit than mortal men, who in turn are an order of being higher than Chaos' creatures.

The sect believes that in order to rise above the material world, one must as fully as possible understand it. To that end, adherents throw themselves into depravity and excess, professing the intent to exhaust their base impulses and to gain insight into the meaninglessness of physical indulgence. Their rites are blasphemous and corrupt, sometimes involving sacrifice or ritual desecration.

The symbol of this faith is the Slain Unicorn. Its significance is the power of the intellect, embodied by Dworkin, overthrowing superstition and ignorance, represented by the Unicorn. Several times over the years the Unicorn has been seen in Arden, always appearing as though recently killed, the body still warm and spattered with blood. The church believes these are signs sent by the Pattern to keep the faithful mindful of the need to exert spirit over body.

The minister of the Church of the Slain Unicorn is Oberon's second wife, Faiella.

Amber City

Amber. The true city of which all others are mere shadows. Tens of thousands of years old, a sprawling metropolis, Amber is a monument to Dworkin and Oberon's pride and power. It is called The City of Eternal Night, but it never sleeps; torches burn on every street, all day round, and people conduct their business when they please. A mish-mash of different architectural styles, it features the grand and the humble, the baroque and the simple, the elegant and the grotesque, the wealthy and the wretched. Built chiefly from white stone to make it easier to light, at times the city has an eerie, graveyard quality.

Once, thousands of years ago, Dworkin and Oberon fed chiefly on the citizens of their own land. In time they saw the folly of that, with all of Shadow to hunt in, and left the people of Amber alone. Instead, they used their people as soldiers, conquering the Shadows around them for food and wealth, and the yearly tributes of young men and women to feed the family of Amber's court. Even so, the people of Amber live in fear: perhaps the vampires don't emerge every night to hunt in the city anymore, but you never know when one of them might take a fancy to you, or those you love. In the city, a secretive personality cult has sprung up around Brand, adoring him as a martyr and plotting the end of vampire-kind. They have led several attempted coups and uprisings in the last year, but been brutally squashed each time; rumour has it they may be harbouring Random's mysterious half-vampire son, Martin.

Castle Amber

Where one might expect a brooding Gormenghast, Castle Amber is a simple and elegant, though large, construction. High stone walls, wide corridors and narrow windows speak of a building constructed more as a military fortress than a monument to the owner's wealth and power. There are no hidden passages or trapdoors; its builder could enter or leave any room of his choice, locked or otherwise, with or without being seen, so he saw little point in enabling more mundane people to do the same. In fact, the design of most rooms and corridors in the castle make it very difficult to sneak up on anyone without exceptional carelessness on their part; so much so that trying to catch each other by surprise has become something of an unspoken family game of one-upmanship, with equal prestige awarded someone who can approach another person unseen and unheard and to someone who, when surprised, manages not to show it.

There are several places of note in the Castle.

The Throne Room

The Throne Room is the largest room in the castle, built in the manner of such places to impress and intimidate visitors. A tapestry depicting one of Dworkin and Oberon's great victories covers the back wall, along with trophies from long-forgotten foes in the same battle. Lining the walls are portraits of each member of the "family" painted by Clarissa; these paintings are believed to have power like the Trumps, used to monitor the family.

The Throne, a gigantic seat carved from a single block of obsidian, faces the main entrance from a point about a third of the way from the end of the room. It is, at present, empty, the three people to have sat on it Dworkin, Oberon and Eric now apparently dead. Arrayed behind it in a broad curve are seven smaller seats, carved from dark wood, upon which sit the Brides of Sin, the oldest, Cymnea, in the leftmost seat as one stands in the entrance, and the youngest, Paulette, on the right. The fourth seat, directly behind the throne, is empty since Moins absconded to the Kingdom of Bone.

The Crypt

The deepest part of the castle, the Crypt is the haven and sanctuary of the Royal Court, and the source of its power. A steep round staircase leading down from the lowest cells in the castle dungeon ends in a small antechamber, which opens onto the edge of a circular room about two hundred feet in diameter, fashioned from large, smooth stones. Each member of the court has a tomb set in the walls, long enough for him or her to lie down flat with a little space to move, and the Blood Pattern (below) dominates the centre of the floor. In general, the vampires actually sleep in rooms in the castle aboveground, but resting in the Crypt helps to restore and strengthen wounded or weakened vampires. Eric's decapitated body rests inviolate in his tomb, although it is the only one; Brand and Deirdre fell in the Abyss, and no trace remains of Oberon, Dworkin, Osric or Finndo.

The Blood Pattern

Drawn by Dworkin in his own blood thousands of years ago, the Pattern covers almost two-thirds the surface area of the floor in the Crypt. It is the source of Amber's power, the cornerstone of Oberon's Empire and the primary organising principle in all of reality. Having only once walked it, a vampire becomes immensely strong, dazzlingly fast, and virtually unkillable; upon becoming more properly attuned to it, all of reality becomes his oyster, to travel and alter at his whim. An approximately circular device over one hundred and sixty feet across, the Pattern is an intricate line of blood and fire, spiralling from the outer edge of the circle into the centre. In spite of the thousands of years for which it has existed, the blood with which the Pattern is drawn is still liquid, although it holds its coherent shape. Reflecting the creature who made it and the relic the Gem of Law which was used to craft it, it is complex, magically powerful, and hungry.

The principle of imprinting the Pattern, called Communion, is simple enough; the vampire walks along the line from the edge to the centre. However, not only does the Pattern assail the would-be acolyte of its power with psychic assaults and terrible energy and physical barriers, but it also attempts to drain his life-blood, drawing his life and soul into itself to feed its constant hunger. Only a vampire can undergo this experience with any chance of survival; the mastery is not to try and resist being absorbed, which is impossible, but to reciprocate, to draw the Pattern-Blood into yourself while allowing it to draw out your own. By the end of the process, the shape and principle of the Blood Pattern has been burned into the vampire's soul, while his blood is now mingled with that of the Pattern, and by extension, every other vampire who has walked it.

Forest Arden

No plants grow in Amber proper. Where another city might have parks or wildlife preserves, the City of Eternal Night provides sculpture and courtyards; where another state might farm for food, the Kingdom of the Damned must needs turn to conquest. Arden, however, is a different matter. The sun does not shine there, any more than in Amber, yet a huge, primordial forest, rich in wildlife and hunting, covers the land as far as the eye can see. Dark speculation mounts as to how this is achieved. Some suggest that the plants are preserved by black magic or evil gods; or that they are fed on blood, making them as vampiric as their self-appointed guardian; most prosaically, that Julian found a breed of plants out in Shadow that don't require photosynthesis to survive and planted the forest long ago.

It matters little. Twisted, gnarled, ancient trees, heavy undergrowth and sporadic areas of treacherous swamp serve to make the forest itself a dour, dangerous place; its population of large predators, magical beasts and poisonous creatures serve to finish off those who survive the terrain. Occasionally, Julian's horn presages one of his Hunts, riding his Nightmare Morgenstern ahead of the Hellhounds into the trees to bring down the chosen prey of the evening. Sometimes, that prey is human.

The Kingdom of Ash

The creation of Amber created two close shadows, or "reflections," of the kingdom, physical copies of the city whose traits or populace teach obscure lessons about the real world. The Kingdom of Ash rests in the sky over Mount Kolvir, and is known as Amber's "Reflection in the Moonlight," as it can only exist if moonlight strikes the steps of Kolvir. It has remained in the sky over Amber for the thousands of years of Amber's endless night, only rarely and briefly taken away by the King obscuring the moon with clouds, using his weather-controlling Gem of Law. As the moon has gradually descended towards the Western horizon over the past year, the Kingdom has become paler and less substantial.

The Kingdom of Ash apparently reveals the past. An eerily glowing, silver and grey world, it is populated entirely by spirits of the dead, all still showing tokens of what killed them. Some are stuck in repeating enactments of their deaths, while some seem to notice and respond to visitors, voicelessly pleading with them. The visions shown, and people seen, are felt by some to be true spirits of the dead, true visions of the past. Some people go mad, wandering the city, trying to speak to lost friends and loved ones or to unravel the meaning behind the images.

The Ash Pattern

In the Kingdom of Ash's parallel of the Crypt, far beneath the Castle, lies a parallel of the Pattern, usually called the Ash or Soul Pattern. Similar to Dworkin's Pattern, but formed of odd, quicksilver liquid, it burns with cold rather than heat. Oberon forbade his "children" from trying to walk the Ash Pattern, saying that only madness and death await those who assay it. Some mutter that true power awaits he who walks this Pattern, and Oberon sought to keep this to himself. Others ask how he knew the danger of the Soul Pattern. Rumours suggest that Moins' and Llewella's madness comes from there. Regardless, no one has been brave or foolhardy enough to try, at least publicly.

The Kingdom of Bone

The Kingdom of Ash's opposite number is Amber's "Reflection in the Waves," and lies under the sea, at the bottom of Amber Bay. The water is such that a mortal can breathe and move comfortably within it, although this is scarcely relevant to a vampire. A desolate ruin, it appears to show the future, of a sort. The Kingdom of Bone is always identical to Amber as it currently stands; anytime a new building is erected or changed in the city, the city under the sea changes to match. However, the Kingdom of Bone is in ruins. Evidence abounds of a recent disaster that destroyed the city and castle and killed all their inhabitants; pinned beneath stones or between collapsed walls may be seen the swollen bodies of the visitor's friends and loved ones even himself dead at most a day or two before.

Moins and her demented creation live here, apparently as a sort of death wish. Having failed to end her life, Moins wanders the ruin, hopefully looking for some hint as to how she may bring about her death, or an end to Amber.

The Bone Pattern

Presumably, somewhere deep under the Kingdom of Bone is a copy of the Crypt, complete with the Pattern. Whenever people have looked for it, however, the stairwell has been collapsed, the corridors blocked with wreckage. It's possible Moins or Llewella knows, but they're not telling. Rumours about what might be down there include a blackened, decaying version of the Pattern that corrupts those who walk it; a bare stone floor, the Pattern erased; a broken Pattern with treacherous gaps; a chasm joined directly to Primal Chaos, and a hundred other stories. Whether the Bone Pattern can be safely walked, should it even exist, and what powers might accrue from walking it, are the stuff of speculation.

The Crimson Circle

A land without sun cannot grow crops; a king who preys upon his people quickly loses them. Early in their rule, Dworkin and Oberon turned the people of Amber to conquest. Over the years, the armies and navies of Amber have rolled over her neighbouring shadows and conquered, bringing back food, wealth, and a tribute of young men and women, fodder for the Royal Court of Amber. Defeated nations are bound into vassalage and treaty, creating a network alliance, joined by mutual agreement and naked fear, early nicknamed "the Crimson Circle."

This close to Amber, the malign influence of the Pattern is palpable. While the sun shines in all of them, it may be wan and distant in one shadow, close to the horizon in the next, permanently overcast in the other. The people may be cold and forbidding, violent and unpredictable, or cruel and malign. Werewolves, witches, madmen and killers make their homes here, as well as opulent and luxurious courts, their corrupt and self-serving rulers reflections of the lords of Amber. Some of these rulers have even been gifted with the Becoming, although never the Communion; that is Amber's preserve.

The Courts of Chaos

It has been suggested that Amber, a manifestation of stasis and order, came into being less because of Dworkin's actions than because of a cosmological need for balance, as previously the Courts, a manifestation of chaos and change, had been the only substantial power in reality. If that is the case, then Amber's strong association with death and decay may, in turn, have changed the Courts. Amidst the shifting fragments of shadow that make up the Courts, life is abundant. Verdant forests, seas teeming with fish, and wild, rich plains can be found all around; in fact, the excess of life is itself a danger, and someone wandering certain parts of Chaos without shapeshifting ability or some other form of protection will likely fall victim to disease or parasites. Or carnivorous plants or stranger things...

The Green King

Chaos has, since shortly after Dworkin's disappearance, been ruled by Swayville. Among other things, the King introduced the ritual and spiritual responsibilities of the Green King. The King ascends to the Living Throne as a young boy and rules for a time, growing to a man and, in time, to old age. When it is time for the King to die and be reborn, the one-eyed Serpent will manifest in the temple as a terrible, raging monster, spitting venom and thrashing about. The King will enter the temple, armed only with a spear, and be killed. That night, the Court burns the King out in Shadow with great pomp and ceremony; invariably, that is the night one boy of a noble House of Chaos will come of age and qualify for assaying the Logrus. The boy, again armed with a spear, enters the temple, slays the Serpent and eats his flesh. With the blood of the Serpent still on his lips and painted on his face, he assays the Logrus for the first time. The boy emerges as the new Green King and takes the name Swayville, and the corpse of the Serpent disappears until the next time the Chaosian God chooses to manifest. There have been hundreds of such Green Kings in Chaos, yet they are all one in form and nature, Swayville forever reborn.

For all their association with nature and chaos, the Courts are orderly, stylised and steeped in tradition; a much older community than Amber. The Houses, nominally dutiful to the Serpent and loyal to the Green King, vie and struggle for power and influence, behind a façade of civility and genteel manners. Fine etiquette, myriad rules of conduct for every endeavour, elaborate courtly dress, all rest uneasily amidst the living walls of ivy and vine and the wild animals that have the free run of Chaos.

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Copyright © David Moore, 2003. This work is licenced under a Creative Commons Licence.