Medore in Tir-Na Nog'th

The sky city Tir-Na Nog'th is one of the strangest places in the Amber canon, being dreamlike and arcane. In Session 14 of my current Amber campaign, one of the PCs (Medore, played by Gavin) ascended the silver stair to seek a trio of visions, and I put a lot of thought into how that was likely to play out. The sky city dispenses wisdom and doesn't really respect your input. Despite Medore's attempts to ask questions and make decisions, the moon-dream just insisted on following its own course.  There were critical points where Gavin did get to make decisions that mattered, but there was a lot of mystical railroading between them. I wanted to make sure I caught the informationally-dense heavy-hand-of-fate feel of the place, as faithful to the novels as I could get. As such, this was easily the most scripted scene in the campaign so far. More scripted than a Corwin monologue, and that's saying something. Which means, I have very good notes on what transpired. I'm putting those notes below, they aren't a perfect match for how things played out exactly, but hopefully those differences just add to the dreamlike quality. Here goes:


Umbra is Medore's Greyswandir

Corwin had said: You'll have visions there. I used to think they were bunk, but then I learned otherwise. Traditional thinking is this will render up three visions, though I imagine you might not be one who holds much to traditional thinking. There'll be a lot of motion, colorless shades milling about in moonlight, but three times in the night things will suddenly come in to clarity, and you'll be able to see each other, but never touch. You are as ghost to them as they are to you.

But it turns out they see Umbra, and if Umbra is on Medore's shoulder, they'll see Medore and be able to touch each other.


The Three Visions
One: Boiling Rock

In the park, there's an old Vardo and a campfire, with a wrinkled older woman with an eyepatch, some sort of fortune-teller. She sees Umbra and gets excited.

"Oh, aren't you a beauty? Would you like a bit of tasty corn? There's some still on the cobb there, my old teeth aren't so good."

Umbra lands on Medore's shoulder, and from her expression, only then does the woman see Medore.

"You too. Sit by my fire and warm yourself. I've food and tea. Come, dear child, have a tea, and let me read your leaves."

She puts on a kettle to boil, and the cobblestones begins to vibrate, small pebbles rise from beneath them to the surface.

"You'll want a good black tea," she says, "like your mother used to drink. You'll have to wait for it to boil properly, though. Deirdre never did learn to wait for a proper boil, nor to let things cook. She was all action, that girl. Right into the oven. Right onto the burner. Into the boil."

A cobblestone pops like a bubble, leaving emptiness beneath it.

"Oh look at that, the sea and stones are nearly done."  More stones pop, the west half of the city churning away to nothing.
"Someone's boiling away the walk between the cities. Like steam rises from water, it will float up into the clouds and storm away. Two cities drifting far apart on the wind. Strife and violence and chaos rushing in to fill the gap between them. So sorry. No time to read your leaves then, when the boiling is over there won't be an Amber left. You'd best be going before this little island boils away. I'll stay here, but I won't stir the pot. The stirring's being done by sons of Kings and sons of dead men. You'd best get moving before the melee on the beach destroys this place."


Two: For Queens and Castle

Three women in beautiful gowns and jeweled tiaras. Queens they are. Again, they don't see Medore, but they see Umbra.

One looks like your mother minus the tomboy, in a fancy dress. You know her from the cards as your Grandmother, Queen Faiella.

The second is a one-eyed tomboy, and you realize she's somehow a much younger version of the fortune-teller. You think maybe you've seen her card as well in a deck somewhere, too. Queen Rilga.

The third queen is tall and thin, but wears enormous shoulder pads, and a scowl. Overall has the bearing of a fairytale's wicked stepmother. You've seen her on a card as well. Queen Cymnea. It's Cymnea that sees Umbra first.

Once Umbra is on Medore's shoulder:

All three curtsy to you. As she stands back up, Faiella is suddenly pregnant, 8 or 9 months along. "It's almost time," she says, "for my child to come in to the world."

"Then I should prepare," says Rilga, who produces a crossbow from nowhere and starts cranking it.

"Finally," says Cymnea, "You'll be undone, Faiella! Dead, like me! I've waited for this since the day I died."

Faiella breathes deeply and rhythmically, and times her contractions. She ignores Cymnea's taunting.

Cymnea again: "What's the problem, unicorn got your tongue? Serves you right. You always had to win. Had to make him prove he loved you more than the moon itself. Weren't content to let the Tritons and the Anglers play with the light beneath the waves. Had to have it all. He had to carve you a staircase, build a reflection just for you. It hurt too much, didn't it, to know that he thought of me whenever my moon shown full and bright in the autumn sky? You thought the still waters would make him yours forever. Just as any fool with a fire can burn the land, so too the smallest child can boil your sea. But Faiella, my rival, you can't take the sky from me."

In the background, Rilga has the crossbow ready. A spotlight beams against the furthest wall of the great hall, and lands upon a wheel. On the wheel is female figure, bound, and gagged, and blindfolded. The wheel turns, and Rilga takes a shot at her. A near miss, not accounting enough for the rate of spin. She begins the crank the bow again.

Cymnea: "He conquered the seas for you, but when your water broke you went with it. Deirdre the Dreaded. Her birth into this world avenged my dismisal.

Or did she? So many of his queens he murdered himself, but not you. So many, but why not you? So many. Shouldn't there be more Queens here? Who's the hussy with the crossbow? What's she doing here, anyway?

Where's the one after you? Has anyone seen the Red Queen in the graveyard?

And the wet one? The wet one seems more relevant than the third we have here instead. A one-eyed archer is doomed to failure. Short-sighted, missing the mark, it's not just simple physics, it also fate."

As Cymnea gets agitated, and Faiella goes into labor, the castle stones begin to boil and bubble like the city cobbles did earlier.

"Promise me, Med," Faiella chokes out between breaths. "Take her to the Pattern. And while you're at it, take Cym to her cage in the dungeon. Find the trap that Oberon made for Cymnea's blood. Blue blood must flow beyond the door to bind the turquoise lattice. If it has come undone, only blood may seal it again. The son must die to seal the door."

The rocks boil and pop, and pieces of the castle fall away. "Hurry, Med. Run to the dungeon stairs, like you did when you were chasing a unicorn. Run like your mother's life depends on it, for it does."

Cymnea is gone. Faiella is gone. Rilga remains, aiming into the darkness, but her target is vanished in the shadows. The castle walls boil and pop.


Three: Vǫlsa þáttr

There's a unicorn waiting at the top of the stairs for you. It's the size of the little white, but it's bi-colored like a heavy-handed metaphor from an old episode of Trek. Right side Black, Left side White.  The unicorn turns and heads calmly down the stairs, leading the way.

At the bottom, The Unicorn rears, and comes apart into two halves. Two halves that each become a woman. An unfamiliar alabaster lady in a grecian dress, and your mother in gleaming ebony enameled plate.

Your mother smiles. "I never thought this day would come, but it is here at last. The villains have been defeated. The coronation is just an hour away, and my wedding just after that. I wouldn't have thought that Random would abdicate, but in the end even he bowed to the logic. He was regent only because the unicorn chose him..."

The woman in white bows deeply, and then somehow gallops down the hall on all fours, her back contorting to support the four-legged gait in ways that look quite painful.

"...but all now agree that since I was the better Unicorn, now I must be Queen. A peaceful transition of power is a beautiful thing. Thank you, my little Zephyr. Without you, I would still be trapped in the Abyss. Without you, Corwin and I would still be miserable. Without you, I would never have known which brother to blame for my ordeal. You saved me, in more ways than one. Shall we see the solution that you found inside the moon?"

A door opens, and beyond it is the Pattern chamber.  Out there in the design, a creature is nearing the final veil. It's form contorts and twists, one moment a unicorn, another a 12-foot-tall beast with broad antlers, then a faceless woman, a wyvern, a werewolf, a dryad, a tentacular pillar of eldritch flesh, and then, as it reaches the center, it resolves into a woman you've never seen before.
"You told Corwin that you saw his memory of this."

In the middle of the Pattern, the unknown woman looks to you and raises a sword. "Amber," the woman shouts "will be destroyed!" And then she's gone.

"Don't worry, my little Zephyr," your mother tells you, "That's just Dara. She does that sometimes. We all have our quirks. Dara was an enemy, but she walked the Pattern and it made her Amber's friend.

But as I said, you told Corwin that you saw this memory, and you knew at once that both Unicorns are shapeshifters locked by metaphysical chains only the opposite Pattern can destroy. You were so clever to figure it out, Zephyr. That's my darling Medore.

As you deduced and told Corwin: when I walked Dworkin's Pattern, I was made myself again, Dierdre, Queen of Amber. When Dworkin's wife Margo walked Corwin's Pattern, she too became what once was locked away. Each Pattern is the other's key.

And why would this be? Whenever a Pattern is made, there is a Vǫlsa þáttr, the ritual sacrifice of the stallion's prick.

That's men for you: They hear they have to sacrifice their penis, and they reflexively choose to interpret it as just a metaphor for fridging their wives."

"Oh, speaking of emasculating men, I can't help but notice that the castle is boiling away again. You're going to have to bring my unicorn body to one of these Patterns before Random and Martin finish tearing the universe apart. If you don't act quickly, my timeline will boil and pop just like these walls."

And with that, your feet start to fall through the floor.


The Big Differences:

The above was my notes in planning the scene, but this is a role-playing game, not a movie or novel, so even with something that's the over hand of fate, you have to let the players have some agency and input. As they say, the best laid plans...

1. Medore took a more direct hand in bringing the unicorn into play, by unmasking the woman on the wheel, and finding she was a unicorn. That was way cooler that way, anyhow. Good job, Gavin!

2. Medore gave silver coins to the woman in the vardo. I feel like I need to make that pay off somehow, at least in some later thematic riff. I'm a thinkin' about it.

3. There was an improvised bit about a cage, based on something Gavin said, and I was kind of like "duh, why didn't I have a cage in my notes?" That sounds great. Then Gavin asked what was in the cage, and I needed something weird and dreamlike that would fit some of the other apocalyptic metaphors: and that's how we got a ghostly mushroom cloud. Medore took a key from that cage, which will absolutely matter later.

4. Dalziel (watching via card) tried to talk Medore out of letting the Unicorn walk the Pattern, because Dalz kinda worried that maybe we're all falling into a trap laid by a fake Deirdre who was just created out of nothing when Corwin made his Pattern, and wants to conquer us all. Medore was having nothing of that, and was just like "The Unicorn is my MOM, and she's walking the Pattern NOW!" It was a cool moment, and seemed worth letting the player get what they wanted. You'll note my original plan was to make her have to Trump out instead, and try a different Pattern later. Given the intensity of emotion in play, it seemed more fun to make it succeed.