The Pattern

"For a moment I regarded the Pattern -- a shining mass of curved lines that tricked the eye as it tried to trace them -- imbedded there, huge, in the floor's slick blackness. It had given me power over Shadow, it had restored most of my memory. It would also destroy me in an instant if I were to essay it improperly. What gratitude the prospect did arouse in me was therefore not untinged with fear. It was a splendid and cryptic old family heirloom which belonged right where it was, in the cellar." Corwin - The Sign of the Unicorn

The Logrus

"As we came to know the Sinister Path, we raised up a Great Working in the Serpent's name, and that Spirit did come amongest us once again and saw this thing that we had made. And the Serpent spoke, 'Great Tools still require great minds to guide them. Remember this, and call this Tool your Logrus, so it does not become your folly.'"

-from the House of Helgram, attributed to the Lost Book of Great Workings, as recorded in the New Mentat Order of the Church of the Serpent-

Reality Check

First there is wind, then great sheets of rain. Suddenly, a terrible maelstrom has arisen. An abrupt change to such a powerful storm laughs in defiance at natural law. Directly before you, in the center of the storm, reality itself begins to twist and writhe. With a great heave it buckles, and then tears. Barely comprehending, you stand transfixed as it begins to fray like a seam. Intricate glowing lines of power appear, only to fall apart, giving way to great, swirling eddies of chaos. Again, reality folds and buckles, and the churning chaos gives way as the tear both widens and deepens. There, past the fraying pattern of lights, beyond the unfettered chaos, is nothing. A great abyss that grows with the twisting and bending of the real, only to itself, buckle, and tear before it gives way. And as it gives way, you see…What Lies Beneath …and a piece of you dies. Something so small you cannot explain; a few molecules perhaps, a bit of your sanity, the tiniest piece of your soul, something so insubstantial that you can’t pin a name to it, but it is gone.

The storm fades even more abruptly than it appeared. The tear, the folding and twisting have all vanished as well, leaving no sign of the break. The only proof that anything happened at all is the evidence left by the storm...and the hole in your being.

Mutt

*Sigh*

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Aimery, Vicomte de Thouars

By the Pattern, before whom this relic is holy, I will be to Pope Siobhan II faithful and true, and love all that she loves, and shun all that she shuns, according to Pattern's law, and according to Amber's principles, and never, by will nor by force, by word nor by work, do ought of what is loathful to her; on condition that she keep me as I am willing to deserve, and all that fulfil that our agreement was, when I to her submitted and chose her will.