Clever Constructs

[charis]

I've thought up a few construct ideas over the course of Amber campaigns, and wonder if anyone has found one so clever that it really stuck out. One example I had thought of is more or less taken from the Amber book, a kind of Trump spying construct, linked to a large computer database that records all Trump conversations that take place, and the user could go to it and do searches by name or places, and pull up Trump conversations. Obviously, it would require Advanced Trump Artistry to build etc, but it seemed like a clever idea.

So what are some of the more clever constructs you or your players have come up with in your Amber campaigns?

[Nihilistic Mind]

This group of three players concocted a Construct combining all of the Powers available to them.

The idea for the Construct was very vague and they worked on it constantly. They could accomplish a variety of things, but mostly used it as a universal spying device, but they used its potential for adaptability and versatility in other ways.

As is the DOOM that comes with all Constructs, its life had to be ended by its creators... Ambition, you see.

[jibbajibba]

We have had 3 major constructs of note
i) The Matrix - this was in '94 so long before the movie I hasten to add :-) The Matrix was a trump sorcery based construct that had the ability to control and manipulate Shadow Storms. Shadow Storms were a manifestation of Primal Chaos. Primal Chaos exists beyond the scope of the material world but manifests in the material plan , so to speak, as an entity called Maelstrom. Maelstrom has the ability to simply destroy shadows. The fringes of Maelstrom are shadow storms. The exact nature of Primal Chaos is suitably vague. It could be a demiurgical power of which both the Pattern and the Logrus are attempts to control (via trump as both Logrus and Pattern are essentially trumps of some force that may or may not be Primal Chaos), it could be the antithesis of this demiurgical force depnding on whether the universe is dichotomous or not. But that is an aside...
The Matrix was effectively a multi-shadow cage for Maelstrom that via trump allowed Maelstrom to manifest in certain shadows. Maelstrom was superior to Logrus and Pattern but could be controlled via Trump and only Trump imbued artifacts were immume to its destructuive force. The Matrix was controlled via a computer/sorcery/trump interface. the shadow it existed in wasn't a shadow at all as you can't contain Maelstrom in shadow it was a trump 'space' effectively a 3D Trump image that existed outside of shadow (an idea inspired by Seven No Trump). The whole thing appeared like a Huge 3D polygon frame from Elite etched out in blue light with the squalling mass of the Maelstrom trapped and contained within.
ii) The Loom - this was part of a very interesting character by the name of Prometheus/Roberto. Prometheus was an Amber/Chaos spawned black hearted moster. The Logrus had driven him totally insane and fractured his personality. Roberto ws the result. Roberto was kind of heart generous, physical but prone to lenghty black outs and whenever he awoke he found himself trapped in a new nightmare world and plagued by the demon Prometheus who ran each new hell and against whom Roberto was doomed to struggle. Promtheus after taking the logrus found he was prone to black outs and plagued by a nemesis named Roberto who would arrive from shadow and set about destroying Prometheus's most recent grand scheme, usually some form of totalitarian state where he was the god-ruler. (you have all worked out what is going on here so I won't embarass you by spelling it out)
So we built Roberto from the same number of points as Prometheus but we found ourselves a bit stuck as Roberto had had no exposure to pattern, logrus or trump. So we invented the Loom.
The Loom is a construct that uses threads of shadow reality. These are akin to the microspells of sorcery. And in effect the Loom is a conjuration tool except that the things it conjures are real and can have real manifest powers and the Loom itself is Sentient. Now we never really worked out where it came from the best we could come up with was that it was a sub-concious manifestation of Prometheuses' own conjuration, sorcery and Logrus powers imbued with his blood. It wasn't too important as Roberto only had one purpose in life which was to kill Prometheus.
So the Loom would assist Roberto in his battle against Prometheus (maybe it was a manifestation of Prometheus's own self loathing) by creating creatures, artifacts and the like. A steeed that could bear Roberto through shadow and most memorably a Giant vulture that could track Prometheus through Shadow and amusingly one day arrived in Amber smashing through the Rose window of the Sanctum and attacking all before it was nuetralised (this made Roberto an ememy of Amber as well as Prometheus).
Prometheus /Roberto was eventualy cured by walking the pattern and The Loom ceased to be.
iii) The Font - this was a trump scrying device that did a similar trick to the trump computer mentioned above except in an eldrich glade with a more watery based operating system. It ceased working when Elois, its controller, was eliminated by a posse of Ninja sent by a couple of her brothers who got fed up with other people knowing their business, and somewhat rashly talking openly about it....