Ad Amber per Astra

Summary of Events in the First Ad Amber Per Astra

The Player Characters

The player characters, while travelling through shadow have bouts of queasiness and unease. All of them lose consciousness briefly and awaken on board space craft of some kind, bound for a casino space station. All of them, too, have a palimpest of memories of a person from this shadow, it does not dominate their thoughts, but with work, their memories were brought to the surface.

It seemed that the Casino was run by a magnate named Fergus MacReith,and he had apparently invited the "alternate" selves of the player characters to a meeting of some kind. The alternate selves were from a variety of backgrounds, ranging from a journalist to a mercenary captain.

The characters made their way onto the Station, for the most part exploring this world of their host before going to see him personally, and made a number of discoveries. The fact that they were not only physically trapped in this shadow but communication via Trump and other means seemed at best one-way out, for example. Some also determined quickly that the entire casino was bugged.

A few of the characters visited the casino, especially the hitherto unknown Calico, and a strange card game gave a vital clue that this shadow had something to do with Amber, and when they all converged to meet their host, his appearance made it certain and clear--he was the lost elder, Finndo.

Finndo denied knowledge of his identity, but instead offered the scions of Amber, whom he still addressed by their alternative selves' name, the opportunity to find an elusive, shifting place in this shadow called Amber. It was apparently an asteroid, a world of some kind with wealth and power, a legend, and Finndo wanted to find it.

He offered wealth, power and worlds to the person who would bring him the information on where it was. The characters smelled a set up but determined that this Amber might be their key to escape and agreed to the "contest"

On board various ships, the player characters split into groups to look for pieces to a key that would supposedly unlock the mysterious asteroid. As they proceeded through this space-themed shadow, they explored several worlds learning that the pieces led to subsequent ones, and a pattern emerged on where Amber would appear. The characters also came across what seemed to be a Pattern-ghost of Oberon, and learned that Finndo had been imprisoned here as a punishment. The characters realized that letting him loose would be dangerous in the extreme.

The characters quarreled and debated, with the pieces scattered across a few groups it took some doing for them to cooperate to work together, when they finally discovered the asteroid. As they did so, they noted the arrival of Finndo, who had apparently come to claim his prize.

With some good work from characters like Honor, the other characters got into position to get into the Asteroid. Preceeded by Calico, they learned and discovered a Pattern of some sort inside, apparently the way out of the shadow lay through the Patternwalk. The Amberites managed to do this, and disrupted the key in the process, Finndo was denied access for the foreseable future.

Returning to Amber, all had become clear as they talked with the King. Apparently Finndo had managed to use his abilities, even in that prison shadow, to draw the Amberites in. He had apparently been seeking help in an escape designed to thwart him doing it alone. Finndo also seemed to imply that he had two other siblings besides Benedict, Osric and someone named Asharia. Random bade his children, nieces and nephews not to go anywhere near that region of shadow in the near future, and with this knowledge of Oberon's old schemes were apparently still in force and had to be dealt with, the scenario ended.