Ygg

[RPGPundit]

What exactly is the tree of Ygg in your games?

Is it just a smart tree that is a boundary sign, or is it something that actually has the power to mark the boundary between chaos and order?
If so, where did it get this power from?

What could be done with it?

RPGPundit

[gabriel_ss4u]

YGG is the Neutral, it has grown into it's power, and it's power reaches as far as it's roots go, and as far as it's shade is felt.
In keeping with the Trump vein I've been on, many beings of power swear fealty to it and become Agents of Balance, carving their rune of power into it's bark, they thusly give it strength, and receive some level of it's. (Kinda like your basic construct)
"Ygg's agents are everywhere..... on the wind, feel the breeze? Hear it rustle the leaves, carrying your words to Ygg."
Prince Caspien, Son of Osric, Oracle of the Rune Stones.
:viking:

But what Ygg is NOT IMC if a stick of some spell-bound dead-as-a-walking stick, ex-liege of Oberon's.:duh:

[Otha]

IMC it's a "Monster", a class of creature of which the Unicorn is one of the more powerful.  They are sources of magic power in their own right.

[Uncle Twitchy]

In every campaign I've ever run, as told Corwin (so he says), Ygg marks the boundary between the Shadows of the Pattern and the Shadows of the Logrus -- the "halfway point" between Amber and Chaos (I put this in quotes because I don't believe it's an actual halfway point, just a boundary). If the "infinite" Shadows projected by the Pattern are represented as a sphere, and the "infinite" Shadows projected by the Logrus as another sphere, the point where those two spheres touch is the location of Ygg. Regardless of how you travel from Amber to Chaos or vice versa, you will always pass that foggy valley with that old, gnarled tree.

(Corwin's Pattern generates another sphere of "infinite" Shadow, though its contact point with the Logrus's Shadow sphere is itself, as well as the Branch of Ygg, and I've never had to decide what's at the other pole of that sphere yet since no one of Corwin's blood -- who are the only ones I'll allow to walk that Pattern per Fiona and Merlin's experiences in Knight of Shadows-- have ever bothered to try to find out. One thing I know is that it definitely does not go to the Courts of Chaos.)

I definitely picture the Amber shadow sphere as larger than the shadow sphere of Chaos -- though it's really relative. Of course, it's when players start describing really wacky, non-natural-laws-of-physics places that they're traveling to that I have them stumble upon old Ygg. You want to go to a cartoon shadow? Really? Okay, after about a week of shadow walking (assuming a steady pace and occasional spots along the way where you rest), you come upon Ygg...

[gabriel_ss4u]

:ditto:
Uncle Twitchy, our campaigns are so similar, we need to get Jibbajibba, RPGPundit,  and a few others in on a game... Uncle

[Nihilistic Mind]

In my long running campaign, Ygg has been a source of power of its own, and allowed PCs to travel Shadow to those Shadows it actually could lay roots into.

It has been a huge part of the past major story arc: with root systems running through several Shadows, offering the PCs passage to the realm of ancestors in exchange for planting an acorn or seed, etc. on such and such Shadow in order to grow stronger and into new realms, etc...
It actively sought Power to maintain the 'balance' between the Powers of Logrus and Pattern.
It eventually perished/was destroyed, along with most of the Courts of Chaos. I'm still working on the next chapter for that campaign. (By far one of my most succesful story arcs...)

In other campaigns I've ran it has been nothing more than a marker... It all depends on the flavor of the campaign, really, and what I want to emphasize. :cool:

[Uncle Twitchy]

One of my campaigns did feature a shadow-wide plague -- a green mist that transformed the inhabitants of the Shadows into which it spread into flesh-eating zombies/ghouls -- that was discovered to be leaking out of a wound inflicted into Ygg. The players finally found this out and someone got the bright idea to try to heal the wound from the inside, so they all climbed into this gaping wound into Ygg. They discovered, in a sequence much like the end of 2001, that they found themselves in the Abyss and willed themselves to a single point of light that became a nice, white drawing room where they found Brand, still with the arrows in him, drinking tea and asking if there was anything he could do to help them.

This, of course, set in motion events that would ultimately destroy the entire universe. Silly players.