kayangelus said:
Actually, how dangerous is Amber during Patternfall to a second/third jumper? Say you have Harry Potter magic at Dumbledore or Voldemort tier. How much would OCP like that let you stay safe?
See AlsoThe Young Master’s Bride - Chapter 1387: Sink into oblivion-if you yell at him, my heart will ache, so much so that I want to kill someone - iNovelFullStarting from One Piece: Multiverse Simulation Chapter 11 - Chapter 11: The Boy Favored by the Navy AdmiralGood night, Mr. Huo! Chapter 2Chapter 476: Law of Dreams - This Young Master is not Cannon Fodder
OK, the dangers of the Patternfall Era basically break down into:
a) The early intrigue era
At this point almost everybody in the Royal Family of Amber is unaware of the danger, and the few who know are keeping silent as f*ck about it because they are co-conspirators. Oberon's disappearance and apparent death has kicked the race for the throne into high gear, factions are coalescing around Eric and Bleys (the two main contestants), Corwin's return will upset that applecart, several failed attempts will be made to conquer Amber, several siblings will try to murder each other (remember that Oberon's disappearance has removed the main enforcement mechanism on the no-fratricide rule), and Brand is still around with vast powers most people don't know he has and is doing everything he can to confuse the situation and sow chaos until he can get a chance to ditch his watchers, steal the Jewel of Judgement, and finish destroying the Primal Pattern and redraw the universe in his psycho image.
Brand will towards the end of this period be taken and imprisoned by his former co-conspirators Bleys and Fiona, but they can't kill him because without access to Oberon or Dworkin he's the only person who can possibly tell them how to undo the damage he did to the Primal Pattern.
b) The plot of the early books
Corwin's return to the game board kicks the cold war off to hot, as all sides simultaneously attempt to manipulate the amnesiac Corwin into setting them up for victory. Corwin soon enough recovers most of his memories and starts playing his own game, muddling sh*t even worse. Chaos begins invading the Order side of reality through the Black Roads, the manifestations of the crack in reality that Brand's attack on the Primal Pattern left open. Corwin will be imprisoned, blinded, regrow his eyes, and eventually escape with the help of Dworkin, who is confined in the dungeons himself due to having gone insane for some mysterious reason.
Chaos forces, traveling down the Black Roads, also threaten multiple Shadows as the division and intrusion of chaos into the pole of Order is reflected all across Reality. The escaped Corwin almost dies intervening in one of these local conflicts, and there meets Ganelon, an old general of his from a Shadow kingdom that younger Corwin had once ruled and whom Corwin had exiled to another random Shadow for betraying him. Ganelon resumes his service with Corwin, they defeat the local incursion, and Corwin's urge to settle down and rule the Shadow that he'd saved (as Corwin was starting to have a distinct 'a pox on all their houses' mood) is scuttled by the woman he wanted to settle down with there to being raped and murdered by bandits. Thus Corwin a strong urge to get back to adventuring as a method of dealing with his grief and anger. (Corwin, being a classic moody sword hero type, tends to process his emotions by going out and finding sh*t to beat up.) So Ganelon comes with Corwin as he plots to conquer Amber.
Corwin gathers his resources, in the process meeting Benedict as he's set himself up as a local Lord Protector type figure and dealing with a Chaos incursion in Shadow Avalon, the kingdom that Corwin had once ruled in what (in local Shadow time) was generations ago. Corwin gets hospitality from him but not much else as Benedict declares himself strictly neutral in the ongoing Amberite throne war, and meets Dara, a charming young woman who presents herself as Benedict's daughter. Corwin, thinking he's finally figured out why Benedict settled down in this relatively obscure shadow (to raise his kid) does not question things much further.
Corwin finishes gathering resources and comes back and attacks Amber with his force of gunmen, and end up the temporary not-regent of the city due to Eric's death, his arrival saving Amber from a siege by Chaos' expeditionary force, and him basically assuming the rule of wartime crisis manager by sheer force of grabbing it. He also has to deal with Benedict's attempt to murder him, Benedict being under the impression that Corwin is the person who murdered all the servants of his that were supposed to be watching over the manor house where Corwin was staying (and that Corwin had never actually seen, thinking the house had come unstaffed).
In canon nobody in the family dies during this phase except Eric, at the hands of the Chaos attack force, but multiple people including Corwin almost die a lot, sometimes at the hands of each other.
c) The plot of the later books
Corwin muddles on as the not-ruler of Amber, slowly digging up the truth behind several of the various plots as well as tricking the now-insane and confined Dworkin into telling him about the Primal Pattern, what's wrong with it, and how it could possibly be fixed. He also helps Brand escape from the dimensional prison he was stuck in, not knowing that he's actually setting the real mastermind free. Fiona and Julian both attempt to assassinate Brand before he can f*ck sh*t up, but fail, and have to flee. Brand drops a very Littlefinger worthy mixture of lies and half-truths on Corwin to send him barking up the wrong tree, then bamfs the f*ck out to try and steal the Jewel of Judgement and destroy reality with it.
'Ganelon' reveals himself to actually have been Oberon in shapeshifted disguise, him having finally escaped the trap that Brand had led him into and that had apparently killed him, and that he set up the escaped Corwin to 'randomly' run into him as he fled into Shadow, deal with the Chaos incursion there as a learning experience and a test, and then unknowingly take Oberon along with him back to Amber so that he could start getting a read on the situation and whipping sh*t back into shape as the unseen manipulator in their midst. This is also where Oberon's ruthlessness is really underlined as it's revealed that he not only was the person who arranged for Lorraine (Corwin's gf in that one shadow) to be murdered so as to get Corwin back on the road, he's also the person who murdered Benedict's servants so that Dara would have an opening to show up and seduce Corwin in the guise of Benedict's daughter (as Benedict's household staff would of course be aware that he hadn't actually had one).
Oberon reveals himself in the midst of the crisis and takes command, setting up a trap for Brand that almost works. The Jewel is recovered but Brand escapes to f*ck sh*t up another day. Oberon calls the banners and orders the full muster of all the forces of Amber for war, saying that it's time to take the battle front down the Black Road instead of waiting for them to besiege Amber again. He also gets ready to repair the Primal Pattern with the Jewel of Judgement, a job that will require him to sacrifice his life, and attempts to name Corwin as his acknowledged successor. Corwin, despite having spent most of his life willing to murder family members to get that job, refuses because he is now starting to dawn to an awareness of just how epically Oberon has been playing him the whole time and he's really not happy with that sh*t.
d) The Battle of Patternfall
Every Royal Amberite not yet dead or in hiding musters up with every soldier they can raise from across Shadow, save Gerard who is ordered to stay in the city and command the home guard. They march up the Black Road to hit the next Chaos army coming the other way, all in a huge scrum. Meanwhile Corwin and Brand are pursuing each other across Shadow to get to the Jewel of Judgement first. Reality starts to collapse as Oberon makes an apparently failed attempt to destroy the Primal Pattern, so Corwin in desperation draws a new one right where he's standing. This effort exhausts him enough that Brand can steal the Jewel from him and teleport off to the Battle of Patternfall, intending to use the Jewel's power to take out enough of his remaining family members to give him room to work, at which point he intends to destroy Corwin's pattern and redraw it with his own, thus remaking the universe according to his will. (As opposed to Oberon, who simply wanted to restore the original Primal Pattern as it was, and Corwin, who was acting in desperation without even fully knowing what he was doing and thus leaving the new shape of creation entirely up to chance.)
Everybody finds out that Oberon managed to successfully repair the Pattern after all, as his last will and testament arrives via magic messenger. Brand laughs madly, fully intending to destroy as many Patterns as need be until he can recreate the universe as Brandtown. Corwin arrives just in time to use his own attunement to the Jewel to stop Brand from wasting his family. Brand is then sniped in his vulnerable moment by a mysterious archer who turns out to be Caine (remember him?), but manages to take his hostage Deirdre (one of Corwin's sisters) with him as he falls into the abyss.
The Primal Pattern restored, Chaos no longer has an invasion route capable of supporting Chaos armies on the Order side of reality. The newly-appointed King Random of Amber signs a peace treaty with Chaos that is basically 'we restore the status quo ante and we each stay on our f*cking side of the line, WE MEAN IT'. The Corwin Saga ends.
The main dangers of this era are a fatal excess of family politics that you really can't avoid as things heat up to where none of the sides are allowing neutrals anymore, the fact that Chaos will be showing up as various flavors of demon army, societal collapse, war, etc., all over reality as the Black Road widens - meaning that there will be no peaceful Shadows to hide in - and then the middle and endgames where you have Brand, Oberon, and Dara all sneaking the f*ck around with exotic mightypowers and/or shapeshifted disguises, all gleefully manipulating and murdering and backstabbing whoever they need to murder to get what they want. And one of them is Joker level insane but hides it really well, one of them is the most ruthless motherf*cker in the multiverse, and the last one is the scheming bitca who is not only the character the 400cp level of the schemer perk was based on but actually played both sides against the middle with Brand and Oberon and f*cking outlived them both. Granted, she failed to achieve her ultimate objective(*), but the simple fact that she survived is a miracle under the circ*mstances.
(*) And even then that wasn't because she actually made a mistake, but because her ultimate objective was to end up Queen of Amber alongside Corwin as her puppet king... a plan that utterly failed when Corwin decided at fourth and last he simply didn't want the f*cking job, was tired of being played for a chump by both his father and Dara, and was just completely done with the whole damn thing. And seeing as how Corwin is the guy the willpower perk in the jump was based on, changing his mind once he's really made it up is basically not possible.
Note also that Corwin's relationship with Dara is what the +100cp 'You are entirely in love with the wrong person but you just can't quit them' Drawback in the jump was based on.
Oh, btw, reread the "Living Trump" level of Trump artist in the jump... and then recall that Brand is the guy that power was based on. He can literally teleport into a room, magically paralyze you, and then stab you to death before you get a chance to respond... and he almost did this to Benedict in canon. Benedict, by far the deadliest warrior in the entire universe. The only reason Benedict survived is because Oberon saw this coming in advance and set Benedict up with just the magic item he'd need to survive the trap.
You ain't beating this sh*t with killing curses.
