What Precedded the creation Pattern?

[Eclectic-wave]

I am starting an Amber game, and one the items that I am trying to classify are what items/places existed before Dworkin created the Pattern (reasons why at the end of the post).

Chaos lords for one, the courts, the abyss, and those shadows associated with the courts.

Intriguingly, we have small chunk of land "floating alone in the abyss" on which Dworkin inscribed the pattern, creating the primal plane of the pattern, Amber and the associated shadows to Amber. This implies that there could be other "lost chunks" of land floating in the abyss, or have been incorporated into the shadows that are created around Amber (Source of the "Primal Plane" quality that a shadow can have perhaps?).

We have the spikards, items that preceded the pattern (which means that those places in shadow that the spikards 'tap' for power, must all be in shadows of the courts, and not shadows of Amber).

I have heard it mentioned that the Pattern Swords preceded the pattern, but that doesn't make sense to me, because since it's been implied in the passage which Corwin inscribes his pattern, that each person inscribing a pattern, inscribes his own version of it. So how could a pattern have been inscribed on the pattern swords if it hasn't already be inscribed somewhere else? Although if the swords are actually spikards, then everything makes sense, the swords did exist as spikards before the pattern and were turned into pattern swords after.

Have I missed anything? (Aside from some of the early Ambarites being Chaos lords?)

The reason for my asking, is that I am toying with the idea that Dworkin's pattern, might not have been the 'first' pattern. That one had existed previously and have been destroyed. Which might mean that Dworkin, could have done exactly what Brand was trying to do. Maybe Brand got the idea, from finding out what Dworkin had done.  I am looking at what items or things could have survived the destruction of the old pattern. Pattern swords with totally different patterns maybe.  Those with advanced pattern of the old pattern, might have survived by keeping the image of the old pattern in the thoughts maybe.

Thoughts? Criticisms?

[Panjumanju]

Thoughts: I don't see any holes in what you're suggesting. There are two things in question here, what is cannon and what you want for your world.

Canonically, only the Courts of Chaos and the denizens of the same preceded the inscription of the Pattern. The floating bit of rock where Dworkin drew the Pattern was just one more bit of chaos. There were spikards then, but no Pattern swords - whoever told you that misunderstood.

However, what's great about running Amber Diceless is that anything consistent with this is fair game. To say there may have been a Pattern before and Dworkin "branded" it, is entirely legitimate and very interesting. (Maybe there remains a Pattern Sword from an earlier Pattern?)

Also - who is to say spikards aren't still being created?

Your game sounds great.

//Panjumanju

[belabor]

Jewel of Judgement preceded Dworkin's inscription of the Pattern, obviously, and it does contain the Pattern.

[Croaker]

Interestingly, the Unicorn also preceded the creation of the pattern.

[RPGPundit]

Welcome, Eclectic-Wave and Belabor!

I think your list is pretty complete for the most part; one thing that I think is important is that Zelazny was very actively involved in eastern religion at the time he was really developing the backstory of the Amber universe (which was happening AS he wrote the novels, note), and there's a great deal of influence in there.

So the original chaos was not the same as the Chaos we see today.  You could say that what was there before the pattern existed was in essence something totally different, primal, and it had its own reality but it was a reality that barely resembles what we know after the Pattern is formed.    Hence some Chaos Lords wanting to "undo the wrong of the Beginning" and return to that primal state or pure form.

[finarvyn]

I like to think that the Amberverse started out sort of like the surface of a swimming pool, with waves sloshing and undulating. Then the Pattern was created like a rock dropped into the pool, with a bulls-eye pattern of waves going outward. Structure in the midst of Chaos. Places near the Pattern (the impact point) are dominated by the waves of the impact, but places far from the Pattern (the other side of the pool, or the Courts of Chaos) feeling minimal effect as the disturbance spreads over a larger area.

Maybe something like this:


If not a "wavelike" Amberverse, my other concept would be one more like electric field and potential lines. The charges could represent Amber and the Courts, the red lines could be shadow roads of easier travel, and the green dotted lines could be lines of similar time flow rate.


Anyway, those are a couple of models I like for the Amberverse.

[belabor]

I used to have this theory that Courts as a place didn't exist before Dworkin inscribed the Pattern, coming into actual existence at the same time as Amber, as a sort of its extremely distant shadow or an opposite pole of reality. However, that was before I've put my hands on Merlin saga, which complicates the cosmology.

[RPGPundit]

Well, imagine a kind of pseudo-universe...like it was something totally different than the courts AFTER the pattern.
It would be a cause of division in the courts itself: to those who existed (in some different kind of form) before the pattern, there may be a wish to return to the 'freedom' of that earlier purer chaos; while some of the newer generation of Chaos lords who know of nothing but their present existence would see this kind of apocalypse as undesirable.

[Croaker]

My cosmogony was heavily influenced by Greg Egan's Isolation.

In short, before the creation of the pattern, Shadow as such didn't exist, all was one, with every possibility simultaneously existing.
How to put it? You see Schroedinger's cat? Everything was like that cat when it's in the box. Every possibility about everyone was real at the same time.

When dworkin created the pattern, it "observed" creation, so all those possibilities were split through shadow. Instead of being both alive and dead, the cat was alive in a shadow, dead in another.

The effect was somewhat lessened in the courts, which were the farthest point from the Pattern's creation, but, to the chaos lords ancestors, it still felt like being dismembered and put in a sensory deprivation tank at the same time, which is why they hate amber and want to return creation to its previous state.

[Eclectic-wave]

I appreciate hearing from everyone's replies;  they are interesting and have given me some things to think about.

My reason for asking and my own thoughts on the matter is that I have always had a great dissatisfaction for how the Courts of Chaos is presented in the second set of books.  They just are not ... chaotic, strange, and different enough.  They seem like Amberites with shape changing and instead of passing through shadow, shape change shadow around them.  But still basically Amberites, with the same goals and motivations. Star Trek aliens with prosthetics glued on.

So my thought was, maybe they are a type of "Amberite" after all, just not the current type.  That there was a previous Pattern, that went to war against the Courts of Chaos, bested them but had their Pattern destroyed (the jewel of Judgement lost) but were able to take over the abandoned Courts after wiping the previous occupants out...   or so they thought.

Dworkin comes along creates the pattern, blah blah blah.  But now after the events of the Patternfall war, the original inhabitants of the Courts, with items and objects that survived the destruction of the old Pattern, are now making their prescence known.  And they have their own way of moving between shadow... involving stair ways and corridors... and thus I insert the Dwimmerlaik, the forgotten broken original inhabitants of the Courts of Chaos, and I slip the Lords of Gossamer and Shadow stuff into my Amber game (With some Neil Gamin Neverwhere stuff thrown in too).

Comments? Thoughts? Critical reviews?

[Panjumanju]

Comments? Thoughts? Critical reviews?

Seems solid to me. Go with it.

//Panjumanju