The King Is Dead

 Crazy session of Amber tonight. Semi-accidentally killed off King Random. 

Over the past 15 sessions or so, a villain was using a network of special jewels to cast devastating attack spells at a distance, blasting anyone who had one of these gems. Two or three sessions previous, this had nearly killed 1 PC and her mother (Princess Sand), but the actions of 3 PCs working together had saved them both. One of them figured out how to use the Pattern Lens to seal the gems that Sand and the other PC had on them so they couldn't get blasted, and then rushed the injured Sand to a high-tech sci-fi hospital to save her.

These 3 PCs, it should be noted, all really liked King Random, and would genuinely want to save him.

Tonight, one of them was present when suddenly the King started getting blasted by the same methods, only through the Jewel of Judgment instead of these other Spikard-y stones. The first two shots incapacitate him, but since the one of those 3 PCs was nearby, and he knew the other 2 PCs were present at a high-tech hospital, they spring in to action. He Trumps his cousins, and passes the King's unconscious body through to the PC who had sealed the other gems. 

Who then doesn't seal the Jewel, and instead loads the KO'd King into medical scanner (kind of like an MRI tube) to diagnose his injuries, and leaves the King alone with just the NPC scanner technician while he steps out of the room to make a call.

This is a really bad idea, so before I pull the trigger, I subtly remind him that the King is wearing the Jewel and he could do something with it. 

This instead makes him consider running off with the Jewel for himself. Steal it, head to Amber to attune to it, draw his own Pattern, etc. He thinks about it a bit, and then ultimately decides to be better than that. He leaves it on the King, because there's a chance the Jewel might be all that's sustaining his lifeforce. 

(Which, to be fair, is a thing that does happen in the books, more or less. Corwin gets stabbed and says the Jewel may have saved him. But he's not really sure if it's saving him or dooming him, so Corwin stashes the Jewel in a compost heap.)

So, having resisted the temptation to steal the gem, the player instead leaves the KO'd king in the medical scanner, still wearing the Jewel that they know for certain was just used to blast him with sorcery twice. It was a great little moment of temptation and moral victory. Good stuff.

"Okay," I say to the players a few heartbeats later, "I feel I've given you enough warnings. About that, there's a series of explosions in the other room, centered on the Jewel." 

"Enough warnings -- oh, crap! You're right, I should have realized that!"

"Oh, it's okay," says one of the other players, "I'm sure the King has several centimeters of plot armor."

Nope. No he doesn't. No one does. Mistakes like this need to have consequences.

"Oh, no! He died in my hospital, on my watch. All his siblings are going to think I did this!"

Yep. Yes they will. And my game is suddenly pivoting in an entirely new direction.