If Amberites Look Down on Shadow Dwellers...

[RPGPundit]

Then Chaos lords must absolutely see them as insignificant.  To the Chaosians, you have the Chaos lords at the top of the heap, then other members of the houses, then demons who are their serfs, servants, tools, and slaves.

As such, humans from shadow are somewhere below that. They would be, at best, ants to be toyed at with impunity. The average chaos lords considers anything outside of the Black Zone to be horrid backwaters anyways, and I don't think the average chaos lord would be likely to think twice about destroying an entire shadow if he had a half-way good reason to do so (maybe even if he didn't).

Discuss.

RPGPundit

[Corvus]

I think you've pretty much hit it exactly.  That's how I always unconsciously assumed Chaosian attitudes to be, though as Shadow shades toward Amber you've got "enemy territory" where things gain relevance simply because they're close to the Other Side.

[Sidrick]

Merlin says (while giving the low down to Bill Roth) that the shadows near either pole breed powerful sorcerers.  Just from that quote alone I've always assumed that the lords of Chaos have at least a degree of respect for the shadow dwellers whom abide near to them.  While most, if not all, of those sorcerers might live in the Black Zone, likely some do not.

I don't see Chaosians as being stupid enough to treat such an exploitable resource as 'ants to be toyed with' (that's imo an Amberite trait).  While a Chaosian might destroy a shadow for reasons of their own I can't see the oldest known powers in existence destroying such potential resources.  Case in point, was the attack on Amber.  With such a large army, is it really possible that ALL of the soldiers were lords of Chaos?  If they were, how could they have lost?  Most of the Amber fighting forces were citizens of the city and countryside (or recruits from shadows).  If the battle for Kolvir had been fought between Chaos Lords on one side and shadows on the other, I doubt even Benedict could have pulled off a win.  And Corwins few hundred riflemen couldn't have made enough of a difference.  Let alone the battle at the Abyss, which Benedict won handily.  So Chaos must have some degree of respect for shadow people.  At least enough to include in their armies.

[RPGPundit]

In my experience, generally people don't have very much respect for their cannon fodder... the fact that you would use shadow-dwellers does not really equate to respecting them.

RPGPundit

[Corvus]

I would say there's a difference between recognizing a useful tool and the genuine "respect" that Chaos folks would show to each other (perhaps especially to their enemies).  If I'm a Chaos lord in my prime, I certainly can't see myself caring about Shadow-dwellers except for their usefulness to me.  Merlin is an exceptional case in that he actually seems to care about people, yet somehow survives amid both Chaos and Amber.  Of course, we only have his word on that...

[SunBoy]

...and yet he fucks up a whole shadow because Vic Melman ticks him off. That's at best the same kind of respect of a little girl who pets his doggie and then goes out to rip the wings off a fly. She DOES love animals... in a way.

[Corvus]

...and yet he fucks up a whole shadow because Vic Melman ticks him off. That's at best the same kind of respect of a little girl who pets his doggie and then goes out to rip the wings off a fly. She DOES love animals... in a way.

I suppose I had always read in some kind of rationalization about that, but you're probably right, which only serves to point toward what Pundit was saying in the first place, really.

[SunBoy]

Yup. But in my own colorful way.

[Trevelyan]

IIRC Merlin also mentions that the Courts have a similar sort of trade relationship with some adjoining shadows that Amber has with the golden circle. Which is not to say that the Lords of Chaos have any great respect for shadow dewllers, but I don't think they have any less respect for shadow dwellers than Amberites have. Of course, for the typical Amberite, willing to kill a man over an insult, or to raise armies or cannon fodder, that's not a great deal of respect either.

[RPGPundit]

Yes, in my campaigns (and others I've seen) I've referred to this as the "Black Zone".  But I see these shadows as being not vassals the way that the GC essentially are, but being direct fiefdoms of different chaos clans, molded to their purposes (ie. the Hendrake shadow is a huge battlefield for training troops, the Minobee shadow is an enormous center of cross-shadow trade, etc).

RPGPundit

[weilide]

...and yet he fucks up a whole shadow because Vic Melman ticks him off. That's at best the same kind of respect of a little girl who pets his doggie and then goes out to rip the wings off a fly. She DOES love animals... in a way.

I've always read that section with the assumption that local order would kick in and neutralize the primal chaos before the entire shadow is destroyed, thus only messing up a seemingly-uninhabited region within the shadow. I believe this in part because elsewhere Merlin seems rather unwilling to take life except when it is necessary. That reading is by no means a slam-dunk, however.

[Trevelyan]

Yes, in my campaigns (and others I've seen) I've referred to this as the "Black Zone".  But I see these shadows as being not vassals the way that the GC essentially are, but being direct fiefdoms of different chaos clans, molded to their purposes.

The Black Zone is the official title, it had slipped my mind. In Blood of Amber, Merlin has this to say:

"We were together in a wood within the Black Zone, that area of shadow within which Chaos holds commerce."

AFAIK, that's the only reference to the Black Zone in the books, but it does suggest soe sort of trade relationship beyond simple fiefdoms. Of course, "holding commerce" could easily be a euphemism for just such a relationship if you prefer that interpretation.

I frequently get the impression, though, that society within the Courts and the surrounding area is far more orderly than that in Amber, almost as if the inhabitants of Chaos must butress their lives with a degree of order just as the inhabitants of Amber seem to crave an element of instability to counterbalance the order at their end of existence. In contrast to the often blunt and perversely openly-machiavellian politics of Amber, I see the Courts preferring all manner of legalease and elaborate backroom negotiation. The outcome of both is ultimately the same in that both powers dominate local shadows, but what Amber frequently achieves through the implied threat of force, Chaos manages through legal loopholes and small print. There is definitely something of Gormenghast about the Courts of Chaos.

[RPGPundit]

I've always read that section with the assumption that local order would kick in and neutralize the primal chaos before the entire shadow is destroyed, thus only messing up a seemingly-uninhabited region within the shadow. I believe this in part because elsewhere Merlin seems rather unwilling to take life except when it is necessary. That reading is by no means a slam-dunk, however.

It seemed pretty evident to me from my reading of that event, and subsequent ones where primal chaos is brought up, that the energy would indeed destroy that entire shadow.

RPGPundit

[RPGPundit]

Ah ok. The Black Zone is one of those things where, I've been using Amber for so long, and had so many recurring things that I borrowed from other sources than Zelazny or invented myself, that I often find myself forgetting if some minor detail is actually from the Novels or in fact only "canon" in my own 20 years of gaming Amber.

RPGPundit

[weilide]

It seemed pretty evident to me from my reading of that event, and subsequent ones where primal chaos is brought up, that the energy would indeed destroy that entire shadow.

RPGPundit

Well, that's fair enough. In any case, this is the passage I had in mind (from Blood of Amber):

Then he stood still, arresting it at that point. Moments later, he spoke. “I could simply release it,” he stated, “letting it run wild. Or I could give it a direction and then release it.”

As he did not continue,I asked, “What would happen then? Would it simply continue until it had devastated the entire shadow?”

“No,” he replied. “There are limiting factors. The resistance of Order to Chaos would build as it extended itself. There would come a point of containment.”

“And if you remained as you are, and kept summoning more?”

“One would do a great deal of damage.”

“And if we combined our efforts?”

“More extensive damage."

I suppose the question in part is how much oomph Merlin puts into the chaos when he nukes Melman.