Chaosites and what to do with them

[Warder]

So, Shadow Knight gives a gallery of important and colourfull Chaos Lords and Ladies. But there's a whole lot more families, lines and courts than you could shake a stick at. Don't get my intent wrong here, I like that, but what about other possibilities for npc? And yes, I realise amber princes, chaos lords and their lovely female counterparts only regard themselves a equal, but I truly doubt they only mingle among themselves (corwin didn't). Forever.

And since Chaos society was not presented with so much detail as Amber's... What did you come up with?

Here are some possibilities that I got from the merlin books (so no claim to originality from me);

the Guild of shadow manipulators, they gave me the impression of the cable guys/engineers who regulate the synchronicities of the lanes using artifacts who gwet called after something minor yet annoying happens in the shadows not connected to Logrus users

the abyss bungee jumpers, it was a bit like playing russian rulette, they could just hit a patch of entropy or something, so maybe its russian rulette for immortal lifespan owners? (nicely illustrated in one of the amberzines, even if the jumper just fought a demon and got a serpents scale artifact)

the black guard, the secret service or the vatican guard analogue, maybe a court indipendent (during its origin only) counter-intelligence group that opposes caines, randoms or other spy networks? or just keeping an eye on oberons missing brood, they could be dealt with before they become important/problematic later. or rebuilding after dara's, pardon merlins rise to the throne.

the Serpent priesthood, a hotbed of conspiracy (yeah, this idea is not very new in this game, bear with me) that sees the enemy not as the amberytes, but the unicorn. To destroy it, they targeted dworkin and his progeny hoping to extract and match their blood to produce a silver bullet that could slay the damn beast. Shroudlings could be interested in finding the wine cellar that holds old red amber vintage (yeah, derivative again, went a little vampire there). Or the most used agenda ever, they just want power and to depose the damn aristocracy someday, if the serpent wills it.  

the amberytes cults of personality, a fanbase with ideas that could not be enjoyable for the amber royalty themselves, like sudden duels (Merlin vs Jurt during the hunting trip, maybe not to kill like that one), tailoring the shadows to test certain personality traits of their idols or trying to turn their kids into the exact copies of their parents (this could be the most irritating part of all)

[RPGPundit]

I've done a ton of campaigns where I had the chance to develop different Chaos lines. Here are a few notes from my last campaign:

There were 12 major clans and something like 50 much smaller clans (none of which I ever went into much detail about). The majors were:

Swavill/Thelbane: The Royal clan, its last surviving member was Swayvill.

Jesby: A political clan

Chanicut: A clan mostly comprised of mages.

Sawall: Duke Gramble's clan, tons of detail on these guys from the novels.

Hendrake: The warrior clan; also lots of canonical info.

Helgram: A clan of warrior-wizards, and also Suhuy's original clan; powerful logrus-users.

Amberash: The religious clan, priests of the dragon; Bances is their most famous member.

Minobee: Mainly merchants across shadow, control significant territory in the Black Zone (Chaos' equivalent of the Golden Circle).

Benesith: Bureaucrats, mostly, they run the day to day affairs of the court, lots of ambassadors.

Nighire: Shape-shifters focusing on healing arts.

Lungbarrow: A twisted clan that mostly keeps to itself; very powerful shapeshifters that have mostly taken twisted non-human forms; they have many secrets, including knowledge of prophecies of the end of time (involving the Shroudlings).  Have at least a couple of important members that look relatively human, the rest are the stuff of nightmares.

Malebranch: Assassins, but state-sponsored ones that follow all the correct protocols. They're the guys you call upon when you want to have someone killed in the honorable and traditional ways.

I made sure to have at least a half-dozen NPCs for each of these clans. Also, I detailed the holdings each clan had in the Black Zone; not every clan has territory there, only some have interest in the "colonies", while some clans have multiple territories (particularly Sawall, Hendrake, Minobee and Helgram).

Aside from that, I also had schools of dueling (using weapons that only work in the courts and Black Zone), the Grand Bazaar (a great trading post of things from shadow, run by the Minobees), and (in the time of Swayvill's final days) a great deal of civil unrest.  There were terrorist groups that resented the loss of the Patternfall war and sought a rematch with Amber, trying to violate the treaty and incite revolution.  There were numerous forbidden cults, most notably the Cult of Amberite Worship, and the Family of Blood. Both of these practiced outlawed "Forbidden Shape-shifting" techniques, but of very different sorts.

Society in the Courts was very highly stratified and had tons of very byzantine social rituals.  There's right FORMAL ways to do everything; like I mentioned above, this even extends to things like assassination. The courts have a much more complex social structure than Amber does.  On the other hand, there are things that they are much less "human" about; Demon Form is considered the correct shape to take when at the royal court (its a faux pas to look like a human).
Chaosians will also have sex with just about anything that moves, and there are social rules about that (not taboos though); this is a consequence of shapeshifting making things like gender mostly irrelevant, Chaos Lords actually find sex with non-shapeshifters to be extremely boring.
The currency of the court is "units of life energy", which are drawn out from crystal rods. In game terms, this is literally points, but even one point of life energy is a vast sum of money, so that most Chaos Lords are insanely wealthy, and the more personally powerful you are, the richer you are.

That's all I remember offhand, but I'm sure there's more.

RPGPundit

[gabriel_ss4u]

So, Shadow Knight gives a gallery of important and colourfull Chaos Lords and Ladies. But there's a whole lot more families, lines and courts than you could shake a stick at. Don't get my intent wrong here, I like that, but what about other possibilities for npc? And yes, I realise amber princes, chaos lords and their lovely female counterparts only regard themselves a equal, but I truly doubt they only mingle among themselves (corwin didn't). Forever.

And since Chaos society was not presented with so much detail as Amber's... What did you come up with?

Here are some possibilities that I got from the merlin books (so no claim to originality from me);

the Guild of shadow manipulators, they gave me the impression of the cable guys/engineers who regulate the synchronicities of the lanes using artifacts who gwet called after something minor yet annoying happens in the shadows not connected to Logrus users

the abyss bungee jumpers, it was a bit like playing russian rulette, they could just hit a patch of entropy or something, so maybe its russian rulette for immortal lifespan owners? (nicely illustrated in one of the amberzines, even if the jumper just fought a demon and got a serpents scale artifact)

the black guard, the secret service or the vatican guard analogue, maybe a court indipendent (during its origin only) counter-intelligence group that opposes caines, randoms or other spy networks? or just keeping an eye on oberons missing brood, they could be dealt with before they become important/problematic later. or rebuilding after dara's, pardon merlins rise to the throne.

the Serpent priesthood, a hotbed of conspiracy (yeah, this idea is not very new in this game, bear with me) that sees the enemy not as the amberytes, but the unicorn. To destroy it, they targeted dworkin and his progeny hoping to extract and match their blood to produce a silver bullet that could slay the damn beast. Shroudlings could be interested in finding the wine cellar that holds old red amber vintage (yeah, derivative again, went a little vampire there). Or the most used agenda ever, they just want power and to depose the damn aristocracy someday, if the serpent wills it.  

the amberytes cults of personality, a fanbase with ideas that could not be enjoyable for the amber royalty themselves, like sudden duels (Merlin vs Jurt during the hunting trip, maybe not to kill like that one), tailoring the shadows to test certain personality traits of their idols or trying to turn their kids into the exact copies of their parents (this could be the most irritating part of all)

I like all of this!
Good posting

[weilide]

A good reference novel is War and Peace, which is great for Byzantine high culture goings-on.

[gabriel_ss4u]

A good reference novel is War and Peace, which is great for Byzantine high culture goings-on.

ya know, you'd be a great archivist fer an Amber campaign.

e-mail me yer # and I'll try to get my Amber GM to give you a call before he may ship out to Afg.
he lives in St. Louis

[weilide]

ya know, you'd be a great archivist fer an Amber campaign.

e-mail me yer # and I'll try to get my Amber GM to give you a call before he may ship out to Afg.
he lives in St. Louis

I'm actually going to be in Taiwan for several months, unfortunately.

[gabriel_ss4u]

Well, my GM may be going from St. LOuis to Afgan, so lemme know be4 it's too late.

[weilide]

Well, my GM may be going from St. LOuis to Afgan, so lemme know be4 it's too late.

Sorry, I should have specified. I'm in Taipei right now. Have been for about a week.