In 113 PPF, Ibrahim mounted an expedition, not into shadow but into Amber itself, travelling inland (due west) from Amber without shifting shadow, in order to find out more about the world of Amber itself. Being more horseman than sailor he decided on a land expedition. At the same time, inspired by this, Altair also began to sail along the coastline of Amber, going south from Amber.
This page describes what these expeditions found...
Straight inland from Amber, following the mountain range of which Kolvir is one end, one quickly goes out of the last of the farmland which surrounds Amber and enters forest which is identical to Forest Arden - vast soaring trees of all kinds, with a living-cathedral air to them. If it were not for the plentiful animal tracks the going would become much, much harder at this point. As it is, one has to slow down due to the animal tracks not following any exact route. This forest continues for tens of miles, the mountains becoming steadily lower the further from the coast one gets.
Roughly one hundred and sixty miles from the coast, the forest starts to become hotter and dryer, the trees becoming lower and more spread out, with grass between them. As one continues further it continues to get hotter, and the trees thin out further until they are growing in clumps dotting meadows of mostly dry grass in a savannah-like environment. Further yet and the clumps of trees thin out further, the grass gets dryer, it gets hotter and sunnier, and patches of black sand start to appear in the grass. The further one goes the more sand relative to grass there is.
At about two hundred and ten miles from the coast is the last tree. At this point the mountains which began at Kolvir have diminished to the point that they are basically low foothills.
Two hundred and thirty miles from the coast, the ground turns from being islands of sand among the grass to islands of grass in the sand; the mountains are now nothing but hummocks.
At two hundred and fifty miles from the coast one comes to the last island of grass under the hot, hot sun, and a withered and scrawny patch of grass it is, too. The end of the mountain range is a small rise to one side. And ahead of one is a basically flat expanse of black sand desert stretching away, rippling in the heat haze...
The Trumps, magic and so on all seem to work as well (or as little) here as they do in Amber.
If one carries on into the desert, the sand becomes a thinner and thinner layer over solid glassy black rock. It is very hot during the day, and very cold at night.
After about fifty miles the sand has thinned down to a very thin scattering of grains, then nothing at all, leaving flat featureless black glass underfoot stretching off to the horizon in front of one, glinting in the sun. This plain of black glass seems entirely uninhabited. It is utterly dark and silent at night, given the removal of the stars over Amber in 113 PPF, before the expedition took place.
After four hundred miles or so of black glass desert, black sand begins to appear again. One then travels through fifty miles of increasingly thick black sand, after which grass starts to appear, then trees at about forty miles from the edge of the black glass desert. Hills build up from a little rise to one side and the landscape becomes less and less arid. It cools down from desert heat to an Amber-normal temperature. The clumps of trees merge until there is a forest ahead. This looks quite a lot like Forest Arden.
In fact, the forest is basically identical to Forest Arden. As one travels further away from the desert the hills to one side rise up and up at about the same rate as they dropped going out from Amber, turning into mountains which rise higher and higher. And then one crests a rise and ahead is the deep-blue, almost textured-looking sea, very much like that of Amber. It appears that the sea coast is about one thousand miles from Amber.
In fact the sequence of changes of terrain as one goes out away from the desert is the reverse of that when one went out from Amber towards the desert, with the same distances between equivalent points.
There is a settlement, a small town or large village, on the west-facing coastline, at one side of the foot of the tallest mountain of the range which grows up opposite that which falls away inland from Amber. It is visible from quite some way away by the few thin threads of smoke from its chimneys (this is nowhere near enough smoke to be confused with that of Amber itself). Its position by the side of the mountain avoids the place being in shadow as much as possible. From its size, and the size of the fields which surround it, its population can be estimated at a couple of hundred people.
This is Clemenstown, a settlement founded by fleeing members of House Clemens, the Amber noble family from whom Tristan's mother, Justine, came and who were persecuted by Oberon after Tristan ... eloped ... with Oberon's wife Isobel. They have been here for hundreds of years (at least), but because the population is made up of natives of Amber (who are thus almost as infertile as the Royal Family) the population has not grown significantly from what it was when Clemenstown was founded, and most of the town's founders are still alive.
Clemenstown is made up of wood and stone buildings (mainly houses) inside a wooden palisade built on top of a low stone wall which surrounds the place on its land-ward side and runs a little into the sea on each side. There are several gatehouses in the palisade and on the sea-ward side of the town a few jetties jutting out into the sea where fishing boats moor. The place seems more primitive than Amber, but is by no means some savage frontier settlement. Most of the buildings give the impression of having been there for a while.
Outside the palisade is a patchwork of fields, enough to support the population of the town, growing a variety of crops. There are tracks through the fields and crops, so people can move about with no danger of anything being trampled.
The people are, unsurprisingly, normal Amber human types. They tend to dress in archaic clothing styles which are not worn by many people in Amber any more. The clothes are made of rough homespun-type cloth dyed in natural-type colours, but they look well-made and functional. There are very few children. The population has a definite civilian feel to it (i.e. the place does not seem to be an armed military camp), but they do all seem to go armed, with knives and spears at the least, the spear doubling as a walking staff. They also use bows when necessary. There are a few old-looking but well-maintained swords, daggers and suits of armour in evidence.
A signal flag flies over the place; it seems to use an old Amber Navy flag code and defaults to the 'All Well' signal. People - town guards - do keep a lookout around the town, and will, if necessary, signal back to the town using (for example) bird calls. In this case the signal flag will change to something such as 'Danger', and people outside the palisade will move quickly back towards the town.
There was some mistrust when Ibrahim first made contact with Clemenstown, and its Clemens family representatives Richard (who looks, in shadow earth terms, in his fifties, with a stocky build, greying hair and blue eyes) and Leander (who looks in his thirties shadow Earth-wise and bears a definite familial resemblance to the older man). So Tristan was Trumped through to confirm Ibrahim's story. Tristan recognised the two Clemens as people he knew before he fled Amber, and who disappeared when Oberon started persecuting the Clemen's family - it was widely thought Oberon had killed them. They also remembered Tristan.
Apparently the Clemens' sailed around the northern coast of Amber after Oberon started persecuting them, and made rough maps of the route as they did so.
Once Tristan convinced them that Oberon really was dead there was little problem re-establishing contact with Amber. And so friendly relations were established between Amber and Clemenstown...
When sailing around the coast of Amber in a southerly direction, Altair found nothing but forest lining the coast, broken every thirty degrees by a mountain range leading inland like the one of which Kolvir is the seaward end at Amber and by occasional rivers roughly the same size as the River Oisen running off the continent and into the sea.
There are no signs of human habitation anywhere, just virgin forest reaching down to the sea.
After rendezvousing with Ibrahim and Clemenstown she and Ibrahim conducted a full circumnavigation of the continent. Altair and Ibrahim were able to establish that Clemenstown is the only coastal settlement on the Amber continent other than the city of Amber itself. The continent seems to be like a target roundel a thousand miles in diameter, with a glassy desert in the centre and twelve evenly-spaced mountain ranges running perpendicular to the coast.
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In 120 PPF Altair conducted another expedition, this time sailing out to sea eastwards from Amber without shifting shadow. After roughly 5300 miles of sailing with no sight of land she reached the coastline of the Amber continent a little to the north of Clemenstown. Whether any other land masses lie in the as-yet-unexplored parts of the ocean which surround the Amber land mass remains a mystery...
Once he developed the ability to manipulate shadow veils Tristan, with a huge amount of effort, was able to create a single small shadow path leading out from Clemenstown to join with one of the existing shadow paths that lead into Amber. There has been considerably more travel to and from Clemenstown since this was done...