House of Cards: Shadows
A trading shadow in the middling realms, Abford was the early home of your cousins Meg and Ossian, both of whom spent part of their childhood in an orphanage connected to a Klybesian sect. Abford's profitable craft guilds, strong work ethic, and its population of young men searching for profit made it easy prey for Huon when he sought armed forces to throw against Amber and Rebma. Huon declared himself a protector, united the city-states into a military league, and forged an army, with a promise of riches to come. Huon's defeat left Abford without a Protector and with an armed and angry populace.
They're merchants, mostly, and only beginning to have the luxury of art. The religious organizations have some worship art, and wealth and leisure.
-- Huon
A heavily forested shadow on the edge of Arden, and home to the Arcadian dragon, which the family now suspects is a Lord of Chaos frozen into draconic form by the creation of the Pattern. Family lore suggests the deities of Arcadia, the five dragonsdaughters, were sired by Finndo. The familial descent has been reinforced at least twice by Julian, who sired Daeon and his twin Dione on one sister, and another pair of year-twins on one of her sisters. Since the time of the Black Road and the fall of the Amber Pattern, Arcadia's Deep Green has gone on the attack against Amber, most recently by means of an attack on Julian and his camp that was thwarted only by the Jewel of Judgement.
I don't know what, exactly, Arcadia is, but it's not just some Shadow forest. The guardianship of Arden is important enough that since Finndo's time it's been enough of a mark of favor that it was considered the second son's position. Oberon evidently thought the place was important, too.
-- Brennan
A shadow of gods, giants, strange creatures, and mortal men, Asgard's peoples included descendants of Finndo from whose line Brita sprang. It was off the beaten path for many years, and Reid found himself trapped there for many decades, which proved to be closer millennia in Amber. During Patternfall, Asgard suffered through its long-anticipated Ragnarok, and the survivors are rebuilding in a land wiped mostly clean of its previous history.
I have only found two Survivors of Ragnarok and all has been remade into back to the Beginning.
-- Brita
An island nation that was part of the old Amber Golden Circle, Asiria, also known as Asir Island, made the mistake of going to war with your Uncle Huon. While he was returning to Xanadu following his defeat at Rebma and his flight afterwards, Huon caused an avalanche that destroyed the capital city of Asir. Huon took refuge in the Bellum Embassy for a time, ultimately causing an attack on the embassy and bringing on a war with their former ally. The rest of the island is farmland and sheep grazing, leading down to swamps on the southern part of the island. The plantations that fed the city have turned to subsistence farming, including one now inhabited by the Paresh; other survivors of the collapse have joined a cult known as the Questioners of the Oracle. Meanwhile, a storm system whose cause is unknown forces most vessels that venture too near the island to seek shelter.
Asir is to be avoided, generally. The people are clumsy and selfish and they have scores of heathen religions that all contradict each other and make them hard to deal with.
-- Archivist Ekho of Rebma
Beveland is, or was, another shadow where the White Brothers, the forerunners of the Klybesians, lived: a waystop on their long migration from Clervaux to Paris. Though none of the family has yet visited Beveland, both Ossian and Reid have identified it as the Shadow to which the ancient Saint Ninian fled when Clervaux was sacked.
St. Ninian is the blessed abbot after whom our abbey in Paris is named. He was born in Clervaux, the last of our abbots to have come from that place. He left the holy library before it was destroyed, and went to Beveland, where he lived the rest of his life, establishing a strict rule there for the brothers at St. Wilibrord's. Our brothers from St. Wilibrord's lost their way on the road from Beveland and found themselves in Paris, the ancestral home of our faith, and here we are.
-- Brother Vigil, a Parisian monk
One of the old Golden Circle shadows, Bellum is known as a considerable supplier of troops, raw material and resources during the wars of Patternfall. During the Regency, your cousins regained contact with Bellum; it was heavily depleted for its efforts and its economy and its merchant houses have slumped. After his loss at the Battle of Rebma, your Uncle Huon accidentally got the Bellumese Ambassador to Asiria killed. Now Bellum is technically at war with Asir island, but has done little to prosecute the war other than a few raids.
Well, as they say in Bellum, 'Nothing is impossible, to a man with infinite wealth.'
-- Zerbino, Steward to Master Aymond, to Jerod
A highly Ordered shadow, Calusa was long known for its dragons, which were apparently specially bred to fight a damaging infestation of destructive lifeforms and protect the local inhabitants, their homes, and their agriculture. Your uncle Julian lived there for a time in hopes of creating a mount that would allow him to defeat the Arcadian dragon. Ultimately he failed, but he did leave a son, Jovian, behind him. The Calusan dragonriders were knighted into the Order of the Ruby at Patternfall and served under Random for a time, but when Jovian's dragon was killed and he ran mad, they returned to a much-changed Calusa: only the firelizards, predecessors to the dragons, existed, and there was no sign of the infestation that had driven their breeding.
When we got back to Calusa -- or as near as I could figure -- it had been... reset is the best word I can come up with. There were no Weyrs, no dragons, no large settlements. Just fishing villages and these little guys.
-- Robin
Chosan is one of a tight group of peninsular shadows where Benedict runs and re-runs various military campaigns over time, watching how advantages and disadvantages change as military technology advances. Under his guidance, Chosan developed artillery, internal combustion vehicles for land, sea, and air, and antibiotics and vaccines. The peninsular governments of Chosan have varied over time from warlords to authoritarian dictatorships to nominal multiparty capitalist democracies, though all of them remain focused on their militaries over time. Soldiers and units from Chosan served Benedict against the Black Road and have hired out to other forces when their governments needed the money, but most of interests of the major governments are in taking the limited land available on the peninsula from each other.
I was born in a Shadow known as Chosan.
-- Lilly
The legendary city of the Ifrit, from which your cousin Edan's mother's people came. Edan learned his fire magic from his grandfather, the Padishah of the city.
We're going to a shadow of a shadow, the City of Brass after Suleman trapped the greatest of the afriti but before they eventually escaped
-- Edan, to Martin
An ancient shadow where the Klybesians, or one of their ancestral orders, held sway, Clervaux was the home in retirement of your cousin Reid's mother, Pastoral. After her death, and Reid's departure, Clervaux was sacked by enemies of the White Brothers, its churches and abbeys burnt and left to fall into ruin. In recent times, Reid rediscovered the ruins of Clervaux; exploring it led to further Klybesian secrets and may have ultimately cost Reid his life.
I know that at some point after I left for my father's grave, the ties between Amber and Clervaux faded. The trade routes went into disuse as the Golden Circle rearranged itself. Like bubbles in a babbling brook, Clervaux broke away from the turbulence that is Amber and drifted downstream to lead a life less affected by Oberon's reign.
-- Reid
Oberon's queen Rilga came from the Isles of the Dannan and Gerard, whom the Islanders believed to be a god, later married one of the priestesses of the Shadow, siring Vere there. But Gerard's sister Ysabeau took the godhood she was offered in the Isles seriously, leading ultimately to her death and perhaps to the drowning of the islands, which were destroyed as your cousins tried to save them.
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One of the far ends of the old Golden Circle, Gateway is one of the few shadows with trade connections to both Amber and Rebma. Recent upheavals displaced the old government of sorcerers with one helped your uncle Huon in his assault on Rebma. The injury to your cousin Marius that resulted caused his father Weyland Smith to seek vengeance on the government of the day, and between Weyland and the efforts of your cousins, a new government allied with Amber replaced it. As part of reinstituting the Collegium's government, your cousin Conner raised the great fallen library tower of Gateway.
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Ghenesh, home of the Moonriders, is a captive shadow where the Moonriders imposed themselves over the local population after their departure from Tir. With the return of the Queen of Air and Darkness, the hold of the remaining Moonriders over the shadow is questionable; they may regroup elsewhere.
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In Golcondan history, after the collapse of the Mughal kingdoms, the city states of the western part of the subcontinent drove out the Albic, Gallic, and Nederlander East Indic Companies and formed the Federation of Golconda. A polyglot society, Golconda is theoretically tolerant, and effectively so for those who assimilate, but as a practical matter a highly ritualized society whose details strangers often have difficulty mastering. Albionese who have lived in the Foreigners' Quarter of Kolkata for generation are still outsiders to the Golcandan way of thinking. As masters of the Indic Seas, the Golcondan Navy is only rivalled by the Albionese Navy's mastery of the Atlantic. The uneasy detente between Albion and Golconda could turn messy at any time, and may over matters in Terra Australis and the South Pole.
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A martially oriented island shadow ruled by a sword-bearing noble class that wars constantly over land and resources. The martial arts of all sorts (sword, lance, bow, polearms) are highly valued as well as etiquette and social niceties, which are considered a different form of battlefield by the patricians and gentry of the Shadow. While they are short on timber and metal, Hamakaido smiths produce fantastic swords; Amber brought them into the old Golden Circle because of their consistent export of quality weapons.
Hamakaido, which, if I remember correctly, is a net exporter of violence and textiles.
-- Random
A shadow of beauty, grace, and precise manners, Hikariguni was explored by your cousin Lucas, who fathered a child, your cousin Misao, with the local ruler, Kimiko. Her domain runs from the sacred mountain, Reizan, along the sacred river, Tanigawa, into the sea, all of which she cultivates in alignment with the principles of the five elements and their energy. Hikariguni is filled with nature spirits: shapeshifters, many of whom take the form of animals, who possess the magics native to the shadow. Despite the apparent chaos of Hikariguni and its people to Amber's eyes, etiquette and hierarchy govern their interactions. Undoubtedly Lucas was attracted to the elegance of Hikariguni and the comeliness of its mistress, but he would also have seen the benefits of the powers of the shadow's inhabitants.
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A far shadow occupied by sentient horses, or perhaps horse-demons, who are kept in bondage by humans, or perhaps sorcerers. Found by your cousins Brennan and a party of Knights of the Ruby while they were en route to Ghenesh.
... a shadow off the trade routes called Lotharingia and that land traces its founding to a Prince Lothar that fled the Fall of Paris.
-- Conner
A cultured shadow of city states where your Aunt Florimel took a consort and bore a daughter. After her family there was slaughtered, she refused to return, though other forces have taken an interest in it. It is also the home to the Order of the Fates, where your cousin Theano was raised.
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Also called "the Blue Earth", this is the home shadow of your cousin Hannah and her father. The tribes of Mahkato are under pressure from colonizers who have taken much of their land, so many of them have joined Hannah in Xanadu.
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One of a group of shadows centered around archipelagos and volcanoes, New Hong Vegas is a cityscape full of neon and bright lights and tropical rains. Its bright overlay of gambling, entertainment, and business covers a seedier side, full of arms deals, trafficking in illicit substances, and other activities that are technically illegal under the righteous rulership of the Party. Those laws are hardly enforced on the wealthy and connected, and particularly not when the law and the Party gets its own taste of the action. But the residents of the lower city, subject to floods, tsunamis, and the whims of the wealthy, live under close control. Most of the city's poor let themselves be lulled by drugs and entertainment, but occasionally there's an uprising, which law enforcement puts down with enthusiastic vigor.
Perhaps New Hong Vegas. It's a glitz-tech shadow, so they're going to try to sell you a load of stuff you probably don't want... but they will sell anything they can make to anyone who can pay. They will think you're crazy, but they will happily take your money and can probably set up a print run for long guns, cannons and possibly even artillery, as long as you supply the designs.
-- Brennan
Your cousin Edan's home shadow is a desert full of wonders: djinn and ifriti and marids from out-shadow, and precious resources exploited by the strangers from the west with their steam-powered trains and devices. Edan and his warriors fought them off once before he arrived in Xanadu and Random dubbed his forces the Order of the Lamp.
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Home to your cousin Delta, the Pearl Islands is a chain of floating lands on a powerful ocean. The tiny pieces of land are controlled by violent warlords, who exploit the treasures of the sea. Most of the Islanders live on ships or floating platforms.
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Home to Weyland Smith and his daughter, your cousin Signy, the Plain of Towers is much as the name suggests: a flat land covered in sorcerous towers. The owners of those towers engage in battles using magic, mercenaries, and the local Dwarves in between magical projects of one sort or another.
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Sometimes called Themiskyra, Pontus is an island on the south coast of a large and populous sea that has been the home of the Amazons for five centuries or more. No man may live on the island, or even boy-children past their first year, though a few men have been granted dispensation to visit for trade and other purposes. Pontus is ruled by Queen Thalaestris and her Chadesian Council, who have led the nation through invasions, drought, the mad giant Enceladus. Most recently, they are facing the Green Sickness, brought on by the Dragon of Arcadia, which is making inroads into the area. Artemis and Athena are the patrons of the Shadow, and the Brauronia and the Panathenaic Festival are their great celebrations. The population of the island is currently between five and six hundred, its numbers occasionally augmented by the birth of new Amazons or refugee arrivals who become citizens. One such refugee was Myrina, whose daughter, Penthelisea, was born on the island and trained as an Amazon.
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A crossroads shadow on the landward routes, Reme is a military trading empire. Founded as a republic, the city grew past its original hilly townsite to possess most of the peninsula where it sits, and ultimately dominated its local continent and the shores of its nearby seas, defeating a number of other city-states, most importantly the Phoenegenians. As Reme grew too big to govern, its politicians turned ruthless, and one of them ultimately founded an imperial dynasty that maintained some of the republican forms while centralizing actual power in the imperial bureaucracy and army, and particularly in the Imperial Guard. Reme imports food, trade goods, slaves, and cultures, so it has become a polyglot nation with a veneer of enlightenment over its decadence and cruelty. But beneath this lies the steel grip of the moneyed and the military, so its exports often include the disobedient, the dissident, and the clever-tongued, who prefer departure to honorable suicide in the bath; in short, it exports violence.
I haven't been there in a long time, so I have no specific contacts, but Reme is a land empire, and an old one at that. They have an imperial backbone for their military, but supplemented it with a vigorous policy of private, punitive expeditions when they felt the circumstances warranted it. It was a good way to move up from the moneyed class to the political class, and those content to remain the former did so by selling to the latter. The Remans might just be the most cynical people I've ever met.
-- Brennan
The carnival shadow of San Lucien was a bit off the beaten tracks of Amber's trade routes but close enough to the center of things that family members could kick back their heels there. Your cousin Martin used one of the plantations there as a hidden base for a number of years, letting the residents use him as a cover for their own activities just as he used them to cover his. His last visit to San Lucien, though, saw an island covered in zombies, and San Lucien is under quarantine lest the zombie plague spread.
It's a sugar plantation, farmed by slaves. I give them cover and let them do what they want, and they hide my boat from outsiders. There are manumission documents, but slaves have more freedom with an absent and complicit master than they would if they were freedmen. And they make me look good for the Duke's men and the Bishop's. In some ways it's a lot more regimented than Amber, and a lot nastier.
-- Martin
Sarn is a harsh volcanic shadow that was cut off from the mainline shadow routes during Oberon's reign. Some time after it was cut off, Bleys imprisoned Huon there for his crimes on Oberon's instructions, sparking Huon's vendetta against Bleys. Bleys described the shadow as poor in resources and trading goods and populated by warring tribes with xenophobic instincts, and presumed that the exile was a kind of death sentence. Oberon had used it as a place of exile before, though few knew of it. Sarn has many secrets, and had Huon desired, he could have set up a kingdom there. Perhaps he did, at first.
Huon got on Oberon's bad side. I think that meant Bleys was sent to deal with him and that was how Huon got exiled into a shadow he could not escape.
-- Celina
A lost shadow of the old Golden Circle, Saturnia was once a colony of Reme until its women overthrew their colonial masters and took Saturnia into their own hands.
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Tyrell is a shadow with highly advanced industrial technology, the most advanced of which is biotech, including cloning and the creation of replicants, superhumans who are enslaved for labor. Unfortunately the planet is heavily polluted and the wealthy and powerful are either isolated in glass towers or leaving to go offworld (either to other planets, where most of the replicants who are held as slaves work, or other shadows altogether), while the poor remain on the lower levels of the city in polluted slums or abandoned buildings. Tyrell was formerly a favorite shadow of some family members, like Martin, for healing serious injuries, but he and Folly found Klybesian agents there and destroyed their databanks. Since then, the family has largely avoided Tyrell.
A place of glass towers, called Tyrell. I've never been there, but I know of it. They say it is so covered with smoke from their engines that you cannot tell day from night there.
-- Regenlief
A tropical shadow full of magical, bloodthirsty godlings, Uxmal was the chosen home of Brand, who fathered at least three children there: Brennan, Chantico, and Ambrose. Worshipped as the Smoking Mirror, Brand accepted blood sacrifices as part of his research into the Pattern. His notes were recorded in the Uxmali tongue, carved and painted in complex glyphs that require magical code wheels to decipher. After his death, Ambrose and Chantico warred against each other until the family brought power to bear on Ambrose's side, ultimately resulting in the destruction of the Magician's Pyramid and the exile of many of Brand's people. None of the family has returned since that time, nor do they know what has become of the ruins of Brand's former home.
My father frequently had the history of Uxmal edited to his taste, particularly where matters he disliked were concerned.
-- Ambrose
A traveling island shadow that meanders through the realms, Vanderyahr trades for exotic materials and tech in the lands it visits. Its civilization is adapted to its mobile state: full of merchant traders, open to newcomers (who may find themselves new citizens of the shadow when it moves without warning), and resoundingly nonjudgemental of their trading partners. For many years much of their trade was in exotic substances, art, and knowledge. But once the Black Road started wending its way toward Amber, Vanderyahr turned its trade to weapons and arms, which has proved more lucrative. Some members of the family, including Huon and Silhouette, have lived in and traded with Vanderyahr over the decades, but it holds no official status with Amber and Xanadu.
A naval captain, then? You would not, by chance, have heard word from Vanderyahr? Its ships tend to cross many paths.
-- Silhouette
Weirmonken is a vast, forested land; the part known to Amber is the home-in-exile of the Weir, the shapeshifters legendarily cursed by the Queen of Tir before the fall of her city for refusing to bend to her rule. From Weirmonken they battle with the remnants of the empire of Reme, the church, the wizards, and themselves. The uncursed peasants of Weirmonken dread the full moon as a time of terror. Their lords thrive on the conflict and enjoy a long-time alliance with Amber through the late King Eric and his daughter Cambina.
There is no seat in all of the Lands of the Monk that are older than this County. There have been Weir here since we were abandoned by our Queen. If I or any of my people can assist, the aid is yours for the asking.
-- Count Vadis, to Jerod