Pattern Imprint:

The basis of this page was adopted from the Tony Jones Amber Page.

The Pattern is the primary and supreme power in the Amber multiverse. It is the power of Order, of shadow's creation, driven by sight and motion. No other power can match or beat it. Pattern is the only power which allows supremacy over the control or manipulation of shadow. No power, not even Logrus, can equal it in this regard.

All Amberites who are known to be Amberites will have walked the Pattern. It is unlikely that they will have had any choice in the matter; their parent or any other elder who is concerned for their well-being will not have let them avoid gaining the one power which makes them truly a part of the family of Amber, and which makes them much more able to take care of themselves when out in the shadowlands. All Amberite characters must purchase it from their starting points. Walking the Pattern is considered the coming of age for Amberites.

Corwin’s Pattern, Argent, has identical properties to the Pattern of Amber.  Unlike the Amber pattern, it does not (from experimentation) seem to have any weakness against the Blood of Amber being spilled on it, nor does it seem to have any reflections. It has been theorized by Fiona that it may be possible for anyone with enough physical power to negotiate the thing.

Basic Pattern Imprint:

Cost : 50 points; cannot be bought partially

Prerequisites: To survive the walk on the Pattern, one needs at least an Amber-Rank Fortitude. To be able to use the Powers that come with it, one needs at least an Amber-Rank Power and Finesse.

Notes:
Pattern is Superior: Because Pattern is the superior power, it will over-write a Logrus imprint and cannot itself be overwritten. Taking Logrus after having Pattern is something that both Dworkin and Suhuy have considered to be extremely detrimental.

Pattern is tiring: Walking the Pattern is very tiring; anyone, even Corwin, is too tired afterwards to fight at all effectively against anyone with Amber-Ranked Swordplay or Fisticuffs.

 

The importance of vision: While having an imprint of the Pattern inside you lends mystical senses (See below), one's normal sight is of prime importance in using Pattern to either Shift Shadow or Manipulate Shadow. Without proper visual cues, either of these two abilities are incapable of being used. Being blinded, near-total darkness, obscuring mists and other visual hazards can impair or even prevent their use.

 

Casting Shadows: Any Basic Pattern initiate will be casting shadows of themselves while they are out in shadow; this is not something which can be stopped. The effects of this depend heavily on the reality of the shadows one passes through, the time one spends there, and ones Stuff level. A shadow of oneself is not only a mere body double - they contain a measure of the power of the original Amberite. A shadow of Gerard will not have access to Pattern, as he isn't real, just a shadow, but he would likely have Chaos or Amber rank Brawn. Such things can make it initially hard to determine if someone is the real McCoy or a shadow...hence why Florimel had such a hard time figuring out if Corwin was himself or a shadow back in historical France on Shadow Earth.

 

Personal shadows of someone with Pattern (ie, shadows for which points have been paid, or in which one spends significant time - at least several years Amber time) will also cast shadows of themselves.

 

1. Sense Reality: Possession of Pattern imprint lets the Amberite feel roughly how Real things are; shadow stuff feels less substantial and more malleable than that of Argent; shadows that are more Real will feel more substantial and less malleable. However, while they can sense the overall Reality of shadow stuff, the Amberite will not be more than vaguely aware of the properties of any shadow they are in. They can walk to shadows of specific properties, and will know when they are there, but they will have essentially no idea if a shadow has a given property if the given property has not been specified before their arrival.

 

This sense allows the Amberite to make his way around shadow and sense disturbances in shadow through the passage of other travellers – one uses Finesse to Sense Reality. This ability is not sensitive enough to deterine the traits of individual objects within a shadow (ie, whether the Caine you are meeting is a shadow or not, or if a nice sword is actually Grayswandir in disguise or just another weapon).

Amberites can also sense the "taint of Chaos". Any use of the Logrus nearby (in the same shadow) will cause them to get a prickling sensation at the nape of their neck and they can see a rippling or distorting effect on Shadow, like a disturbance in a still pond, which heralds the use of Logrus manifestations.

 

2. Shifting Shadow: The term 'shifting' shadow always refers to the actual departure from one shadow to another. Simply put, this is the well-known method of moving and using your powers to 'edit' shadow, allowing you to slip from one shadow to the next until you arrive at a suitable destination.

 

Shadow Walking, The Royal Way and Hellriding are all three versions of the shifting shadow based off of how fast one decides to make these edits. Speed is not determined by your conveyance, so long as you can maintain a walk or better - Finesse determines true shifting speed. While motion is always necessary, the actual speed at which one shifts through Shadow is determined entirely by your Finesse (your ability to make the edits); Fortitude determines how long you can keep moving:

 

Shadow Walking: can also be done riding a horse, driving a car, swimming, sailing a boat, whatever. This pace implies you are shifting only minor details at a time: a greenjay instead of a bluejay singing in the next tree, for example.

   Purposeful Travel: Shadow walking from Amber to Ygg or from Ygg to the Courts would take about 24 days of travel.

   Shadow Seeking Artifact/Creature: 4 days per point of Quality, 24 days per point of Power.

   Shadow Seeking Shadow of Desire: X² in days (where X = point cost of shadow sought)

Hellriding: This pace implies you are shifting major details as you progress: the bluejay stays the same, but the entire world changes around it. Because you are often experiencing wildly changing and uncontrolled variations in shadow laws, using a car (or other technological device) or flying carpet (or other magical device) is not only unreliable, but possibly very dangerous. Hellriding in a plane could leave you shifting into a shadow where shadow laws won't support the plane's technology and you'll begin to plummet. For this reason living creatures work admirably as methods of Hellriding transportation - all shadows support life, and if they are well-trained they will be able to react to and negotiate sudden hazards or sensory confusion. Hellriding must be done fast – not because your physical speed makes you leap through shadow faster, but because it allows for a quicker succession of visual clues to use for making the rapid edits required for a sustained Hellride. For this reason, running on foot is not the best way to perform a Hellride. Trained horses are the favorite method of transport.

   Purposeful Travel:Hellriding from Amber to Ygg or from Ygg to the Courts would take about 24 hours of travel. Note, because of the odd and often dangerous shadow laws, properties and contents of shadow beyond Ygg, Hellriding is very perilous in the Chaos-side shadows. Be warned.

   Shadow Seeking Artifact/Creature: 1 day per point of Quality, 6 days per point of Power.

   Shadow Seeking Shadow of Desire: X² in hours (where X = point cost of shadow sought).

Royal Way: This pace implies you are making minor changes in details, and also making a rather "slow" and "convoluted" path through shadow in order to retain a certain desirable (and often comfortable) quality as a constant from one shadow to the next. Sometimes this is something as staying on a train through shadows that support train technology. Or it could be that you wish to retain throngs of adoring rose-tossing fans along your path, or that you wish to travel only along beautiful tropical beaches. Such a method of travel is pleasing and often very safe, but it has two problems: 1) it slows down progression to a destination because you refrain from passing through shadows that do not conform to whatever standard you require for your travel, and 2) the shadow you travel to (if it is not a Shadow of Desire) may not be able to accommodate your details, and so your way may not lead you all the way to the target. I.e., If one wishes to travel to Benedict's Avalon by train, and only by luxury train, eventually you will fail to come any closer to Avalon because the shadow laws of Avalon don't allow for trains to function...you'll have to end the Royal Way and begin Shadow Walking with less exacting standards.

   Purposeful Travel:Taking the Royal Way from Amber to Ygg or from Ygg to the Courts would take about 24 weeks of travel.

   Shadow Seeking Artifact/Creature: not possible – see Hellride above.

   Shadow Seeking Shadow of Desire: X² in weeks (where X = point cost of shadow sought)

Notes on shadow travel time: While the travel time from one pole of reality to the other may seem rather short in comparison to seeking something out in shadow (which can take days, weeks, or even months), try to think of it this way: It is quite easy to jump on an Interstate Highway in the United States and jet across the country from New York to Los Angeles...a trip of perhaps 3 days non-stop. But if you were hunting for a specific house or person, location mostly unknown ("The Mid-West"), it would take you much, much more time as you hunted along back roads and local neighborhoods. It is always faster to shadow travel if you know specifically where you are travelling than if you are seeking something out.

 

Shadow Seeking: The term 'seeking' means you don't know where the object or shadow is that you want but that you wish to find it. It is always quicker to find a place you already know of than one where you have never been before.

 

Shadow of Desire: A shadow of desire isn't just a generic shadow – you can pass through those all the time. Rather, when you state you are looking for a shadow of desire you are looking for a shadow with certain specifications, criteria that are important to you – standards. That is why it takes longer ("Well, this place does have pretty beachfront property, but I really hate the natives!"). It is possible to not know what these standards are, but in yourn "gut" you will know when you finally hit the right place ("Yes, this place is where I will find true love!").

 

What you Seek and what you can't: Pattern gives power over Shadow, not the Real. You can Shadow Seek for shadow places. You can shadow seek for shadow artifacts and for creatures. You can seek out shadow dwellers. You can seek out shadow equipment and circumstances. But you cannot directly shadow seek for Amberites or Chaos Lords, Trumps, or objects that contain the Pattern or Logrus. If you try, you may run into Shadows of the real thing instead of the desired person. Most people who rendezvous in shadow do so at a known location and time, or leave messages for others. Trumps are useful for this very purpose. Note this is not the same thing as Tracking someone's path through shadow, which is possible.

 

Personal Reality: Objects with which Real beings (ie, Lords of Chaos and Amberites) interact gain a measure of reality themselves over time. Sometimes these things become so intimately associated with the Lord or Princess that they can be found very quickly in shadow, despite circumstances, probability or explanation, because these things are a part of the Lord or Princess' personal reality (ie, items for which points have been paid). It is even possible to find Real objects to which one is attuned but which normally could not be found otherwise (like Corwin's Grayswandir).

 

The time it takes to shadow seek to these personal items, creatures or followers is X² minutes, where X is the number of points the items costs (irregardless of whether it has Qualities or Powers).

Leading others through shadow: It is possible to shift others who can see you through shadow along with you. This can be done in one of two ways; first, if the Pattern user concentrates they can carry along a number of people or things who are as protected in the same way as the Pattern user from problems with walking through shadow; however, this is quite tiring. Secondly, and more easily for the Pattern user, much larger numbers can be carried along simply by being able to see the Pattern user and move with them. This works at longer separations too - as long as someone can see the Pattern user, and others see that person, very large numbers can be move. However, they are much more vulnerable to hostile shadow effects than people actively being 'carried' by the Pattern user.

 

Follow Shadow Trail: While the Pattern cannot be used to walk towards people (specifically Real people), one can try to find Real people if there is a fairly recent trail which one can follow as the passage of a Logrus user or Pattern user through shadow leaves a disturbance that can be sensed. The higher ones Psyche, the older is the trail which can be followed; trails older than a day or so fade beyond the ability of a basic Pattern initiate to follow, regardless of Psyche. Obviously, if the trail is broken (for example, by use of Trump) then it is lost. The faster one moves through shadow, the more of a disruption one makes, and the easier the trail is to follow. A trail cannot be broken by movement within a single shadow (i.e. it is not possible to break ones trail by, for example, shifting to London on shadow Earth, flying across the Atlantic to New York and continuing to shift shadow from there).

 

3. Shadow Manipulation: The term 'manipulation' refers to altering things within a single particular shadow without 'shifting' physically from one shadow to another. Shadows are in essence, probabilities - and there is a certain 'fuzziness' between them which a Pattern lord can use to his advantage.

 

If something is unknown it is far easier to change or manipulate than something which is already defined.

 

Shadow Manipulation results are determined by your Finesse.

 

Manipulating shadow takes too long to be of use in combat in anything other than relatively trivial ways (for example, it can allow one to find a knife in a drawer during combat); it does not take much effort, just time. It also doesn't require much movement – a few steps or repeated gesture of the hand is often all that's needed.

 

Shadow manipulation is limited in that it will not allow near-impossible events to occur without shadow shifting (if something is not probable in a given shadow, you will shift to another similar shadow where it is probable) . Example: It is likely that on Shadow Earth you can find a parking spot, or even avoid getting wet in the rain. It is not likely that you will find a dragon in the freezer section of the local Piggly Wiggly.

There are two basic guidelines for whether you can manipulate shadow or if you will end up shifting to another shadow instead to fulfill the desired change:

 

If you want to change something you already know to be one thing to be something else ('The Cadillac I'm driving is now a Corvette'), then one must shift shadow.

If you are defining something which is currently unknown (for example, 'I open the drawer. Inside is...') then one does not need to shift shadow to get the result one desires (so long as said unknown is not impossible for said shadow).

 

Shadow Resources: To pull Corwin's trick of finding a bird which will bear a message, or something similar, one simply needs to shift shadow - such tricks are usually exhausting enough on probability that they won't work within a single shadow.

 

Pattern Assist/Obstruction: The Pattern can be used to put things to assist or obstruct in the path of other Pattern users; this is effectively a use of probability manipulation. However, to do this, the Pattern user must know either the destination or the route of the person whose path they are trying to affect. To use this power against an Amberite requires the person doing to have a Finesse advantage, or the person it is being used against to have no idea that it is being used against them.  It is also possible to use the Pattern to summon up forces to use against ones enemies as one goes.

 

4. Pattern Defense: Having taken the Pattern, one is charged with Pattern energy. Pattern energy is not measurable by technology or magic, only by Powers (usually advanced), and as it bleeds out of dead Amberites, so confirmation of a dead body can be quite perplexing. Having Pattern energy in your body makes you a tough target for certain Logrus attacks, makes you immune to invasive non-Power-based magics. Power-based Sorcery will still work on you, however, as it incorporates a major Power.

 

Pattern of Mind: By imagining the Pattern and keeping it in one's mind's eye, one can protect oneself even further. This type of defense takes too long for it to be an option in combat, and the concentration it requires makes keeping it up in combat something which will reduce one's effective Swordplay, Fisticuffs, and Finesse considerably. However, it totally protects someone from all invasive magic, Trump assaults, Logrus attacks, etc.

 

5. Pattern Walk Teleport: It is possible to teleport from the center of the Pattern to anywhere with which one is reasonably familiar - one cannot Pattern teleport to shadows of desire. People cannot be teleported to under any circumstances (as there is no justification whatever for this in the books - think how different they would have been if it had been possible to Pattern teleport to, for example, Corwin, Eric, Brand or Oberon).

 

6. Blood Curse: The Pattern can also be used to Blood Curse (or Blood Bless) one's enemies. This is generally done when the Amberites dies (or think they are about to die), and leads to very serious effects on its object. However, it also has equally serious (though not necessarily the same) effects on the person doing the cursing. Also, to carry out the Curse, the Pattern initiate must be able to formulate the curse in their own mind (so very fast attacks can kill an Amberite before they can frame a Curse in their minds, for example, as when Caine tried to assassinate Corwin); they do not have to speak it.

 

In order for a Blood Curse to truly have effect, the one uttering the curse (or blessing) must believe they are in danger of impending death or grievous harm. This cannot be self-inflicted. You cannot decide to kill yourself and utter a blood curse. You cannot cut your arm with a knife and utter a blood curse.  Blood curses are not easy to get off, and they must fit the drama of the story. They are not a cheap way to give others bad luck.

 

Even without a blood curse, those with the skills may well be aware of the death of an Amberite nearby (there is a rippling effect in nearby reality - more evident in shadow than in Amber).