Amber. Shadows and Nobilis
Dec. 30th, 2025 08:39 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
fictitiouswhimsigotI've been reading a lot of Amber Diceless lately - the gamebooks, people's homebrew and netbooks and general discussion. It's been really interesting and I feel like has some of the bones of concepts that are explored in more depth in Jenna's work.
Today I'm going to talk about how the idea of Shadows in Amber can be used to understand both the metaphysics of Ninuan and that of the Border Mythic.
In Amber, there is only one real place - the city of Amber, and everything else is just a reflection, echo or shadow of it and its environs. There are countless worlds that radiate outwards from Amber, except, they are all, much like the Deep Mythic, ambiguously one churning mass of idea and shape.
This is reflected in that you can travel into a new world, a new Shadow, with even the most minor changes - someone with power looking for a bus-stop that isn't there could push themselves over into a subtly different world. This is, in fact, how all inter-world travel works!
It resembles Ninuan the most when travel is directed towards a idea or situation. A character thinks about what they want to see or find and then begins to travel. When they reach a bend, twist or new vista they describe some small element that's incrementally closer to what they want - if they're looking for a beach, then perhaps a seagull or a river, and they gradually add elements until the world becomes what they are describing. This parallels well with how travel in Ninuan works, where someone looking for a dragon to slay will inevitably find one after venturing through places that a dragon might be.
In terms of the Border Mythic, the Shadows resemble them when they're used for small and subtle changes, or when someone attempts a dramatic change or leap by picking something and focusing on it to the exclusion of all else, literally attempting to reshape the world into something with that as a the new cornerstone of a reality. It would be like seeing a sea gull and imagining it as the axis mundi of an entire place and world, drawing those elements from the background, since if you can see a sea gull then you can surely hear the waves, see the sand, smell the salt in the air. In Amber this can be a very dangerous way to travel, since you may shift rapidly through many gradients of dangerous potential worlds before things settle.
I think that, over all, travel in Amber could be represented well with Wanderer/Called Away - Amberites are Called to Amber, the Principle-Realm of the Pattern; and, the Courts of Chaos are Called away to the Logrus and Chaos. They have similar general properties, though the specifics mechanics for the Logrus are more Primordial in shape.
Generally, Amberites are lucky because they make their own luck - they imagine something they need in an ambiguous place or situation, then discover it. They travel through countless worlds and call down the power of primal order to reshape things or protect themselves. If they are dedicated, they can even seek a 'Shadow of Desire' that reflects something they deeply need, paralleling well with the Wanderer power of 'World of Endless Wonders.' They can even build new worlds to their needs, slowly reshaping it and crossing it with other places while imbuing it with the cosmic stability to become a more real and persistent place.
I think that's pretty neat!
Today I'm going to talk about how the idea of Shadows in Amber can be used to understand both the metaphysics of Ninuan and that of the Border Mythic.
In Amber, there is only one real place - the city of Amber, and everything else is just a reflection, echo or shadow of it and its environs. There are countless worlds that radiate outwards from Amber, except, they are all, much like the Deep Mythic, ambiguously one churning mass of idea and shape.
This is reflected in that you can travel into a new world, a new Shadow, with even the most minor changes - someone with power looking for a bus-stop that isn't there could push themselves over into a subtly different world. This is, in fact, how all inter-world travel works!
It resembles Ninuan the most when travel is directed towards a idea or situation. A character thinks about what they want to see or find and then begins to travel. When they reach a bend, twist or new vista they describe some small element that's incrementally closer to what they want - if they're looking for a beach, then perhaps a seagull or a river, and they gradually add elements until the world becomes what they are describing. This parallels well with how travel in Ninuan works, where someone looking for a dragon to slay will inevitably find one after venturing through places that a dragon might be.
In terms of the Border Mythic, the Shadows resemble them when they're used for small and subtle changes, or when someone attempts a dramatic change or leap by picking something and focusing on it to the exclusion of all else, literally attempting to reshape the world into something with that as a the new cornerstone of a reality. It would be like seeing a sea gull and imagining it as the axis mundi of an entire place and world, drawing those elements from the background, since if you can see a sea gull then you can surely hear the waves, see the sand, smell the salt in the air. In Amber this can be a very dangerous way to travel, since you may shift rapidly through many gradients of dangerous potential worlds before things settle.
I think that, over all, travel in Amber could be represented well with Wanderer/Called Away - Amberites are Called to Amber, the Principle-Realm of the Pattern; and, the Courts of Chaos are Called away to the Logrus and Chaos. They have similar general properties, though the specifics mechanics for the Logrus are more Primordial in shape.
Generally, Amberites are lucky because they make their own luck - they imagine something they need in an ambiguous place or situation, then discover it. They travel through countless worlds and call down the power of primal order to reshape things or protect themselves. If they are dedicated, they can even seek a 'Shadow of Desire' that reflects something they deeply need, paralleling well with the Wanderer power of 'World of Endless Wonders.' They can even build new worlds to their needs, slowly reshaping it and crossing it with other places while imbuing it with the cosmic stability to become a more real and persistent place.
I think that's pretty neat!
