An Infinity of Shadows and the Limits of a 'Shadow of Desire'

[Nihilistic Mind]

I was thinking about a possibility: if a player told you, the GM, that their character was looking for a place where he would witness the real Benedict (or Corwin or whoever) die in front of them, what would you do? What would happen to that PC?

The way I see it is that they could wander 'eternally' until they found such a Shadow (or place, maybe they'd be led back into Amber). Or they could witness every Shadow of that person become more real then killed. Or they could be trapped on a Shadow, unable to move, then eventually witness Benedict's death, only to die themselves? (I mean, who's to say that they'll outlive Benedict in the first place?)

Would this be the end of the game for that PC? Would you use this strange opportunity to create a new plot for your campaign?


Apart from varied GM ideas on the subject, I'm also curious about what you think the limits of ShadowWalking are in general. If someone has died, could a PC look for a Shadow that could bring their spirit back or where they could communicate with it. How far would you take these sort of odd requests?


Personally, I like to reward player creativity... To an extent that does not abuse of the system, of course.
At this point in time, I think I would run the shadow walk for three sessions or so and hinting that they have efficiently removed themselves from the main campaign due to how long the search might be. I would try to convince them to create a new character. I would then run things back to how they were going (with the appropriate changes to allow for the new character) and let the main campaign continue.
Eventually, I would bring back that character and let them witness Benedict's death and either the old or the new PC's death as well so that they can continue playing.
It's pretty much the way I see the Shadow of Desire actually working at all in a case like this.

Another (easier) way would be for that PC to witness some false prophecy or go to some DreamWorld or the Courts of Chaos and be done with it. This would limit what we GMs allow when it comes to Shadows of Desire...

Perhaps the limits of ShadowWalking are other people's ability to walk Shadows themselves? We know Bleys arranged for Corwin to meet him (in Avernus, was it?), but could he have arranged for Corwin to meet his doom, or to meet someone else than himself?

In the end, how much influence can one ShadowWalker have over other ShadowWalkers when it comes to destiny, etc...?

Also, is there such a thing as a plain 'dead end' when walking Shadows?


(If this has been discussed elsewhere, I apologize in advance. I'm planning my next story arc and I'm going to reveal more of the cosmology/metaphysics of Amber so I've been thinking about this sort of thing a lot.)

[Croaker]

Ouch.

IMHO, shadowalking works by manipulating Shadow (yes, I know, tough one), and thus has power over Shadow only.
When you arrange to meet someone in a given Shadow, you ain't acting on that  person, you're manipulating Shadow so that your place will be on his every paths.

Thus, while you could create a mortally dangerous Shadow and place it in front of Benedict, you've got no guarantee that it'll kill him.

Same thing goes if you're searching for someone's spirit. If the real thing still exists and is in Shadow, you'll find it. Otherwise, you'll just find shadowstuff.

[Uncle Twitchy]

Exactly.

Because Shadow isn't real. It's Shadow. It's only real if you're at the Courts or in Amber proper.

So what would I do if my player said, "I'm going to a shadow where I see the real Benedict get killed in front of me"?

I'd have him walk through Shadow until he saw a shadow of the real Benedict get killed in front of him. And then when he got back to Amber and saw Benedict at a family gathering, and he approached Benedict and said, with great puzzlement, "Uncle! How is it you are here? I saw you die! The real you!" Benedict would then shrug and say, "Nope."

And Julian, eavesdropping, would ask, "In what circumstances, dear nephew, did you see your Uncle Benedict die?" And when the player explained the whole "walking to a Shadow to see Benedict die", Julian would laugh uproariously and Benedict would grunt and walk away.

And then, depending on the player's Stuff, I would have either Llewella or Gérard (Good), Random or Flora (Zero) or Julian (Bad) explain that since Shadow isn't real, it doesn't work that way.

[Trevelyan]

I tend to play shadow walking a little tighter than the book suggests.

The examples of shadow walking that we see tend to be visual rather than matters of intent. For the most part, Amberites change the physical appearance of things rather than speculate on future events.

The list of Amberites who conclusively utilise "speculative" shadow walking seems limited to Bleys (finding Avernus where a brother will arrive to assist him), Oberon (his work in Lorraine), maybe Fiona finding Brand's prison (although if she were able to create speculative features why not put him somewhere from where he would never be rescued?), perhaps Merlin finding somewhere where the physical laws allow for the construction of Ghostwheel (although this could have been accomplished by speculating on the likly physical appearance of such a world, or perhaps a Logrus trip rather than Pattern). In any event, all characters who manage anything like this are trained sorcerers with a better than average understanding of shadow, and I tend to include such things as a higher aspect of Pattern, noting to players that a very similar effect can be achieved with a detailed trip through shadow, noting relevant details.

It's worth considering some other shadow walks, such as Corwin's trip in search of diamonds. Here he engages in a difficult Hellride to a place which resembles the diamond coast of Africa pre development. He does not, and presumably cannot simply go to a place where a chest of diamonds is buried at a crossroads (for example), nor does he travel to a shadow where a diamond merchant is due to arrive in a coach with a poor escort so he can play highwayman. If Amberites could find anything they wanted just by wanting it then the books would have been a lot shorter.

Early in Nine Princes, Random comments of his pursuers "there exists the possibility that they will enter therefore they will enter" (possibly slightly paraphrased). This indicates that a shadow shifter cannot make the impossible possible. Searching for "the shadow where Benedict gets knifed" could easily be one such event. Either the character will witness the death of a shadow (based on the physical appearance of Benny) or else he may use advanced powers to find the place where Benedict will eventually meet his maker, but I hope he brings a good book or two to help him wait.

[jibbajibba]

Would have to agree. You could not control the fate of a real object.

You could create a shadow with a warrior capable , in theory of beating Benedict, and you could lay this shadow on his path with advanced pattern (in fact in my games a specific partial power inside advanced pattern you would need to purchase) and you coudl wait arround for him to turn up.

What actually happened at that point etc would be played out by the real Benedict facing off against this foe. A smart Benedict would of course shift shadow making the being less powerful (in my games again more powerful shadow creatures tend to be tied to very specific shadows and as you shadow shift they get less powerful. I use the same rule to reduce he effectivness of Hi tech stuff and Shadow magic.) or something similar.

[Nihilistic Mind]

It's worth considering some other shadow walks, such as Corwin's trip in search of diamonds. Here he engages in a difficult Hellride to a place which resembles the diamond coast of Africa pre development. He does not, and presumably cannot simply go to a place where a chest of diamonds is buried at a crossroads (for example), nor does he travel to a shadow where a diamond merchant is due to arrive in a coach with a poor escort so he can play highwayman. If Amberites could find anything they wanted just by wanting it then the books would have been a lot shorter.

I think that this ShadowWalk is very significant. According to the ADRP system, the Pattern allows you to change probability a bit too easily it seems, if we keep Corwin's fairly simple need for diamonds. We can assume from this that he cannot simply increase the probability to find a buried treasure at the next crossroad, or he would have no reason to take the trip he did... Unless, of course, someone follows the whole "Corwin was looking for more than just diamonds so that his gunpowder could work properly" thing, which I don't wanna get into...

In any case, I think it's safe to assume that the limit of using a Shadow Walk to find another Shadow Walker in a very specific situation (such as them getting killed) is simply the willpower of that Shadow Walker and their skill in manipulating Shadows.
Corwin may have walked into Avernus because he himself was looking for some sort of solution to his Eric problem, even subconsciously.
Fiona would have looked for a Shadow prison where Brand could be jailed indefinitely and where none would find him but herself, or whatever; the point being that with enough effort on the other end, they did get through and rescued Brand after all.

The reason why I used the 'witnessing Benedict get killed' thing is because to me it seems so improbable that it would be futile. I just don't necessarily want to be limited to the 'it was Benedict's Shadow' approach. In the end though, Shadow walking only leads to Shadows... It's just a bit too obvious I guess.

So, unless Benedict was searching Shadow for 'the ultimate opponent' without realizing that he would pay the 'ultimate price', wandering Shadow forever might be more plausible than anything else...

Has anyone used a Shadow walk's version of a dead end or impasse? I've used Arden as a dead end before and the players always blamed it on Julian himself... Go figure.

[Otha]

You can't search shadows for one of the Family.  If so, then the various attempts to find Corwin or Martin when they were hiding in Shadow would have succeeded.  End of story.

The closest you can get is to put a shadow of destiny in someone's path, and that won't work if they're not moving in shadow.  That's how Brand finds Corwin when he's on his way to Chaos.

[Croaker]

In any case, I think it's safe to assume that the limit of using a Shadow Walk to find another Shadow Walker in a very specific situation (such as them getting killed) is simply the willpower of that Shadow Walker and their skill in manipulating Shadows.

Hum... One could assume you can't find someone more skilled in warfare than you are in psyche.

Thus, a very skilled pattern user, like fiona, might maybe find a shadow opponent suitable for benedict, whereas your average PC could only find average opponents.

Another question, though. How do you handle superpowered shadows? Like, the "Marvel Universe" shadow. How would amberites fare in it? Would their speed, strength... increase, and they'd gain superpowers in that shadow, or would they  stay "normal"?

[jibbajibba]

Hum... One could assume you can't find someone more skilled in warfare than you are in psyche.

Thus, a very skilled pattern user, like fiona, might maybe find a shadow opponent suitable for benedict, whereas your average PC could only find average opponents.

Another question, though. How do you handle superpowered shadows? Like, the "Marvel Universe" shadow. How would amberites fare in it? Would their speed, strength... increase, and they'd gain superpowers in that shadow, or would they  stay "normal"?

I think you could find things more powerful than you and thus by extension other Amberites.
As for the Marvel universe well I stick to the idea that these powers are localised to a single specific shadow. The more powerful someone is the less well they travel. In the right shadow Spiderman would hose Corwin, but Corwin would just move the shadow and let Spidy follow him then laugh as he falls of the top of a 50 story building.
The same is true of Death Stars, Thermonuclear devices, the Devil, God, The Kraken and that Giant Kitten out of the Goodies.
Would be pretty nasty if your PC was killed because your evil cousin Shadow shifted a Death Star back from The Empire and vapourised the Shadow earth you happened to be living on.  Though I daresay some GMs might argue that to destroy a PC from deep space you would need superior Warfare as the character would be expecting to be attacked and have taken necessary precautions after all its no different to being shot with a high powered hunting rifle from a mile away.

[Uncle Twitchy]

Another question, though. How do you handle superpowered shadows? Like, the "Marvel Universe" shadow. How would amberites fare in it? Would their speed, strength... increase, and they'd gain superpowers in that shadow, or would they  stay "normal"?

Depends on what the Amberite who went there was looking for. If the Amberite went to that comic book super hero universe in order to be a superhero, then the physics of that world would allow that Amberite to be comparable to the supers of that world. If they want to be a normal guy in that world, then they're a normal guy. It's all on the onus of the GM to ask those questions. Since it's a Shadow of Desire, you as a GM need to ask the questions that will let you get a feel for how the player wants the character to interact with those characters.

I have a perfect example. I had a bunch of players scatter off into shadow to gather armies to deal with a threat. One of the players decided he wanted to go to my old Champions campaign world and enlist the aid of his old character there because that character was mystical based so he should be able to deal with the fantasy-world threat they wanted. So I immediately said, "Okay, what version of your character do you want? One that could actually kick your ass sorcerously, or one that you could easily dominate?"

And he replied, "Huh? The one from the old Champions campaign."

And I explained, "Yes, but since there are infinite versions of that campaign in Shadow, I need to know just what, specifically, you want."

"Oh, okay, I get it," he said. "So I want one who can help us in our situation, but I still want to be able to overpower him if he gets out of control."

So that's what he found and that's how that superhero ended up helping the players out.

In the same run, another player went to "Middle Earth. The one from the books. I want it just like the books." He did this because he was going to enlist the aid of the Lorien elves -- he wanted their archery skill. Well, he hadn't done one of his player contributions that week, so the Lorien elves weren't exactly willing to listen to his fanciful tale of coming with him to another universe to fight a threat they'd never heard of when Sauron's forces were massing to the south.

So he decided that he needed a way to persuade them, and since he was the Rank 1 Psyche player, he figured that, since they were just Shadow creatures, he would find the One Ring and use that to control their minds. And one of the other players said, "So, you're going to go after a version of the One Ring that you can use and won't corrupt you?"

"No," he said, "I'm going after the One Ring from the books."

And since he hadn't turned in his contribution for the week and had some Bad Stuff accumulated, I got to play... the corruption of the One Ring resulted in him being seduced by and actually helping the threat they were gathering armies to fight in the first place, walking the Pattern before he had paid for it with points, and thus accumulating over 40 points of Bad Stuff for a good long time.

And he kept onto the Ring... and never paid for it in his wish lists...

[Uncle Twitchy]

Double post for some inexplicable reason.

[Trevelyan]

I think you could find things more powerful than you and thus by extension other Amberites.
As for the Marvel universe well I stick to the idea that these powers are localised to a single specific shadow. The more powerful someone is the less well they travel. In the right shadow Spiderman would hose Corwin, but Corwin would just move the shadow and let Spidy follow him then laugh as he falls of the top of a 50 story building.
The same is true of Death Stars, Thermonuclear devices, the Devil, God, The Kraken and that Giant Kitten out of the Goodies.

I concur, with the caveat that a sufficiently skilled Amberite might be able to follow a path through shadows where some of these things would retain their power. Doing so would not leave the character free to shift through shadow as they wish, however, so they'd have to take a very long way around in most cases and probably never reach their destination.

Take the Death Star as an example. It's easy to move that from Star Wars to Star Trek if you want to blast the Enterprise as the tech levels are broadly similar (FTL travel, computers, etc). Moving back to a 20th century setting is tougher, but some shadows along the Independence Day axis might allow it. Taking the Death Star to a fundamentally fantasy/magic setting is almost impossible (but not quite - see Krull). But for every 2th centuray setting where the Death Star might function, there are hundreds where it certainly won't, and studies show that 99.99% of Cimerian's are safe from planetary destruction.

Generally, the more powerful a thing is, the more limited it is. Taking Cthulhu shadow walking to drop him on Benedict is a no go. Taking Spider-man to wrestle Gerard is considerably easier.

[jibbajibba]

I concur, with the caveat that a sufficiently skilled Amberite might be able to follow a path through shadows where some of these things would retain their power. Doing so would not leave the character free to shift through shadow as they wish, however, so they'd have to take a very long way around in most cases and probably never reach their destination.

Take the Death Star as an example. It's easy to move that from Star Wars to Star Trek if you want to blast the Enterprise as the tech levels are broadly similar (FTL travel, computers, etc). Moving back to a 20th century setting is tougher, but some shadows along the Independence Day axis might allow it. Taking the Death Star to a fundamentally fantasy/magic setting is almost impossible (but not quite - see Krull). But for every 2th centuray setting where the Death Star might function, there are hundreds where it certainly won't, and studies show that 99.99% of Cimerian's are safe from planetary destruction.

Generally, the more powerful a thing is, the more limited it is. Taking Cthulhu shadow walking to drop him on Benedict is a no go. Taking Spider-man to wrestle Gerard is considerably easier.

Yes with another caveat :-) unless a player specifically stated that the shadow earth he lived on allowed Star Wars technology I would say your death star would not work there.  

I would also say that you would have to take Gerard to wrestle Spiderman and not the other way round. For some reason i don't have a problem with taking Conan to wrestle Gerrard but i just think Spidy's powers relying as they are on a radioactive spider bite as opposed to pushing that bloody big wheel round for 20 years have a shorter range in shadow.

Of course you get into that who nasty areas of advanced shadow masters manipulating the local shadow to allow these things to work but I still wouldn't let a pc kill another by destroying the planet from space unless they had moved to tatooine or somethign

[Uncle Twitchy]

"Who would win in a fight? Superman, Thor, or Gérard"?



Feel like I'm talking to a brick wall here.

[jibbajibba]

"Who would win in a fight? Superman, Thor, or Gérard"?



Feel like I'm talking to a brick wall here.

Your post was most eloquent and I liked the idea of the One Ring dominating a PC. however still say it would loose its power if moved to another shadow, unless its really a spirkard hidden there by Sand ...