Amber update

This is rather long-overdue as I’d promised it… a long time ago, but I decided to finally post something about the Amber game.

So my character is named Tristifer (another name shamelessly lifted from a GRRM ASOIAF book, of course), hailing from Rebma, being the son of Llewella and a nobleman named Stevron Estermont. He came to Amber shortly after the Patternfall War and has been living there since, serving as the Royal Physician. As such his duties are basically to take care of the King and his family. Which he takes very seriously. He spends most of his time around the castle, of course, but enjoys it when he gets to go on the occasional sea voyage such as when Random has visited the Golden Circle.

Tristifer is generally deferential towards those he considers his betters (his elders, particularly older members of the family) and unfailingly gracious towards those beneath him. His role in life is essentially that of a caretaker and he takes it very seriously. Rather unusually for one of the family, he is never armed with any kind of sword or dagger. One reason for this, of course, is that he doesn’t really need to. It’s not widely known, but Tristifer is in fact capable of changing his body into pretty much anything he needs to. He can survive most extreme conditions, elongate his arms, change his bones into razor-sharp knives and saws, turn himself into a bird or fish. He can even affect other people with his powers, thus allowing him to heal their bodies far more effectively than he would if he were to simply be stitching them together with needle and thread. However, it is generally felt that the fewer people that know about this, the better. Part of his job is actually to go around and fix things when Dworkin has escaped and turned people into… furniture, as he sometimes does.

So far we’ve just done some backstory which has been fun and we’re going to be picking things up with the start of the campaign tonight, I think. It’s just after the end of the Merlin Chronicles and thus Coral had the Jewel of Judgement in her head in place of an eye. But since she wanted to go to Chaos with Merlin, Random felt it would be good if it were removed. So I did that and made her a new eye. Now we’re a little concerned because the JoJ seems to have been growing some weird tendrils that were attaching themselves to different parts of her brain. I didn’t want to leave any of these things in her brain and so cut them away at the brain but we’re kind of worried about what the hell is going on. So Random’s sent me to see Rosarian, the great Pattern Smith, who may be able to understand what has happened. Dominick, son of Caine, is commander of the ship taking me and Martin to him, although he doesn’t know what’s in the package that we’re carrying.

So far it seems like fun. Being in service like this is a very different concept for a character for me, so I hope it works out ok. I guess it depends on how things work in terms of stuff going on in Amber. I do still have my own agenda that I want to pursue even though I’m bound to the Crown. And of course there’s that nagging question of why I have this weird power that I have in any case… I mean, it’s not like Amber is awash with Shapeshifters, after all. But I’ve given some thought to that as well and there are some interesting things that can come of that too, I think.