Fun With Findy Upon scrambling up the rope which Rose's grappling hook had secured, the Heroic Trio dashed up and into the room at the top of the tower. This contained, among other interesting things, Le Greenhaired Chick and a moving, talking trump tapestry of a guy with piercing eyes and black hair. Le Chick was debating whether or not to hightail it out of there. Deciding not to give her a choice in the matter, Rianna hit the tapestry with a trump disrupt. Ishmael whipped off a bandanna and threw it, giving her a nasty blow to the head. Rose, being in demonform, charged. Three statues, portraying Benedict, Julian, and Gerard, came to life and began advancing on Rianna. She promptly threw a Magic Negation at Ben, stopping him cold. Le Chick began fumbling with a nasty-looking orb on a stand. Rose kept charging. Ishmael leapt forward, sword converting to a crossbow, and yelled for Rose to duck. Rose did, diving forward in a tackle, and Ish put a bolt through Le Chick's shoulder. The statues kept up their advance. Rianna slung a magic negation at the orb. Much to her dismay, it bounced back, negating her spells of fire protection. Luckily for her, Ish's thermal suit was not negated, rendering her uncomfortable but un-charred. She threw yet another negation at Gerard, leaping onto a chair as she retreated. A thrown dagger by 'Julian' cut her in the shoulder, wounding her. Le Chick, annoyed about being shot, used the orb to blast a lightning bolt at Ish. He quickly converted the crossbow to a shield, which saved him from being flashfried. As it was, he was blown backwards across the room. Standing, he put a bolt through Le Chick's hand. She screamed in pain, and then Rose slammed into her like a ton of bricks. After a brief, thorough beating, she passed out. Ish converted the crossbow to a spear and threw it, punching a whole through the remaining statue. The statue turned to face him; converting a spare weapon into an axe, Ish cut it's sword arm off at the wrist, taking a light wound in return. Disarmed, the statue was quickly hacked to bits. The three carefully gathered up all the trumps, papers, and tapestries in the room. The orb was placed inside a specially shielded box built by Ishmael; Le Chick was stripped of all her clothing (cloth trumps, after all) and redressed in a straitjacket. A ring and two earings were removed from her. After boobytrapping the tower, the three trumped to Amber with their prisoner. After some misadventures with getting the keys, they led their prisoner down into a trump-shielded cell. A combination of drugs from Ishmael and psyche from Rianna broke down the unconsious prisoner's mental defenses, and her memories were reviewed. She was found to be Findy, daughter of Finndo - but the Finndo of an alternate universe! In her version of Amber, Osric reigned as king... this was the man she was speaking to on the tapestry. The two universes had somehow become connected by the drawing of Corwin's Pattern. She had set out to kill Rose after seeing an alarming vision in Tir Na Nog; that of Rose breaking into her bedroom with Ishmael's axe and cutting her into extra-chunky salsa. Findy knew nothing about the spiders; her presense in the mind of the ones in Rianna's workroom was simply the result of her sneaking in to plant a bug. In fact, she was unaware that our Amber was a real alternate version; both she and Osric thought that it was merely a flawed shadow of their Amber. Guessing that she might have more useful information, Ishmael downloaded her memories into an organic storage matrix with Rianna's help. After a short nap, they woke Findy up, explained the situation to her, and got her promise to knock off the attacks. Realizing that a rescue team would shortly attack Amber to free her, the three left her in the cell and trumped up to Random's breakfast hall. After explaining the situation, Random summoned all of the other Elders available. (Benedict was still uncontactable.) They trumped Osric, and after some discussion with him arranged to hold a summit to discuss relations. Findy remained in temporary custody. Caine, during all of this, was dressed in bandages - apparently he had been burned in his room by something. After the trump conversation, Random asked the three to do him a favor. A King John, lord of a nearby shadow, claimed to be descended from Eric and was making noises about being the rightful lord of Amber. Random wanted the three to quietly check up on him, and acertain if he really was of royal blood - and if someone was pulling his strings. Trumping to Ish's apartments in Chaos, the three went to a fasttime Way in Hendrake. There, the spent some time cataloguing the trumps, looking over the papers, and reviewing the items. The ring turned out to be a distress beacon, the earing trump accessories, and the orb a sopisticated construct known as a Palantir. Once attuned to it, the bearer could use it to draw upon massive psyche reserves. Via dint of a glove that masked psyche patterns, Ish and the others managed to make use of it, attuning Rianna to the Palantir. ------------------------ Quotes from the session: "Hello, your majesty. I believe we met during the Patternfall War; I was decapitating the Duke of Baylesport when you fought your way past,stabbing the Lord of Chanticut through the left venticle. It's a pleasure to meet you again, Sire." - Ishmael to Random "We thought he was just trying to fake his death again, but he lived. So I guess not." - Random, talking about Caine's mishap with fire // Dear Invaders - the prisoner you want is in this cell. Please don't do too much damage to it, it's very expensive. Have a nice day. // - Sign left by the three on the door to Findy's cell "Well excuse me, I was just trying to keep reality from being completely obliterated. I didn't have time to think about the metaphysical crap." - Corwin, reacting with irritation to people's glances after it was revealed that his Pattern was behind the alternate universe. "All the evidence points towards House Drider, which is why I'm inclined to think it's not them." - Ishmael, discussing the spider attacks "*nod*" - The rest of the Elder Amberites "I'm King Random of Amber." "Well, of course you are." "No, really, I am!" -Random and Osric