Burning Down the House Following the 'chat' with Julian, our heroes felt the need for some rest and relaxation. As a result, Ishmael decided that Rianna was going to throw a party. Invitations were sent out; Koa and Gilva of Hendrake, Jurt of Sawall, and Martin, Albert, Roderick, Otho, and Theresa were invited. Theresa was unable to make it, but the rest all agreed to show. Rianna made a quick stop back at her home in shadow. Two packages had arrived for her; one containing a trump, another a bunch of flowers from a co-worker. The mysterious trump showed a forested valley lined with pools, and had on the reverse side a crescent moon in a blue square. Rianna then tried to develop the ability to use the pattern as a lens to examine things with. She had some measure of success, embarking on a cross-shadow sail that led to her being attacked by a great white shark of disturbing reality. After several maritime adventures, she trumped out. Ishmael, meanwhile, was preparing the site of the party - a high gothic feasting hall in a castle out of a bad horror movie. Outside, an army was besieging the place, led by Bishop Heiligdeng and his Holy Happy Knights. Angry peasants, waving torches and pitchforks, formed an auxillary. Ishmael set things so that they would breach the walls around 11, and arrive in the main hall around 12. The guests arrived. There was much laughter, discussion, and drinking; Rianna chatted with Koa, Martin played electric guitar, and Ishmael mentioned the pirates that had attacked them near the Flaming Tower. Otho mentioned that these were the Shalomar Pirates, the same ones that had been troubling Amber. Ishmael smiled, seemingly a little drunk, and slipped something into Otho's wine. Catapult artillery began pummeling the castle, and breaches opened in the walls. Several members of the party joined in the fight; after a while, realizing that an entire army was outside, they decided to retreat. Falling back into the main hall (which by this time was merrily ablaze and collapsing) everyone trumped out to Rianna's apartment. The next morning, Ishmael trumped Dworkin. They had a long talk, and Ish learned the location of the four primary shadow copies of the Jewel of Judgement. One was in Tir Na Nog, another in the royal vaults beneath Castle Amber, another in Rebma, and still a fourth in a destroyed copy of Amber "that burned". Ish, Rose, and Rianna tried to get into the vaults; unfortunately, the best they could manage was to gain access to the outer vault. Undiscouraged; they set off through shadow, following the instructions Dworkin had given to reaching the location of the fourth demijewel - "Ride from Amber until all is fire, then turn and ride towards the Amber that burns." They arrived in a flaming Arden, neutralizing a Phoenix spy bird of a Julian-like guardian. A wall of pattern energy was detected via the aid of Rianna's pattern lens; Ishmael conjured a uberbadger to dig a tunnel under it. As they proceeded up Kolvir, a flaming giant appeared and threw a swordlike thing at them. Rianna hit it with a magic negation, destroying half of the missile; the remainder hit her and nearly knocked her off the stair. Ishmael blasted the giant through the head with a trumpgun burst; to his dismay, the head reformed. Realizing that the giant was using fire to regenerate itself, Ishmael began to conjure a blast of water above the creature. Battleaxe the Horse, shifting to human form, took Ish's spare crossbow and began laying down covering fire. Another sword was thrown. Magic negation took care of part of it; but Rianna was getting badly bruised. She hit the giant with a neural disrupt just as Ishmael unleashed a fountain of water. The giant screamed, losing much of its mass. Ishmael turned his sword to ice and dashed up the stair. Battleaxe shot the giant again, Rianna let loose another neural disrupt, and with this help Ish hacked the thing to pieces. Wary of more traps the group proceeded into the flaming castle, heading towards the Pattern chamber. They found the hallway down blocked by a knight in blue armor. Ishmael, thinking quickly, quickly drew a trump on the floor of the hallway with his dagger, depicting a lake in shadow. He then advanced. The knight informed him that none could pass, and Ish drew his sword and attacked. The knight turned out to be better than him, and Ishmael was slowly driven back. As the knight passed over the trump sketch, Ishmael activated it, send the knight plummeting through into the lake in shadow. Ishmael snapped shut the connection, and the three proceeded on. They finally came to the door of the pattern chamber. Rianna's pattern lens revealed that the key to it was just crawling with chaos energy. A duplicate key was made, and the door unlocked - when the real key began to explode into a demonic chaos creature. The three dashed into the pattern chamber and slammed and locked the door. There, on the broken, chipped pattern, lay a Jewel of Judgement. Rose turned into a hawk and flew to scoop it up, while the other dashed to the other end of the pattern and trained crossbows on the door. The chaos creature burst through, and was riddled by bolts. It kept coming. Rose grabbed the demijewel and flew to the others, and all of them trumped out to the Lighthouse of Cabra. From Cabra, they went to an island fortress out in shadow belonging to Ishmael. Rose and Rianna got some rest, and Ishmael attuned himself to the demijewel. The process of tuning himself accidentally enveloped the shadow in an inferno, started to sink the island, and almost killed Rose and Rianna. They escaped in time, trumping back in to find Ishamel, fast asleep, bobbing on a slab of basalt in the middle of a boiling ocean. Trumping out proved difficult, but via Rianna's pattern lens they finally made it. Ishmael went off to study the demijewel. Rianna enlisted Martin and Mandor to help teach her Pattern Disruption, figuring she might need it soon. Ish gained a good working knowledge of the Fire Jewel, and incorporated it as the focusing prism of a Patternlaser. He could do some serious damage with this, he happily thought... Quotes: "Did you get my package?" "Yes, but the neighbor's dog ate it." - Rianna and her suitor "Arr, we be after the great white whale that ate New York." "Oh dear, that's where I had been heading." - Nautical Loon and Rianna "Hi. Can I have some of your genetic material?" - Rianna to Koa "Kill the succubus!" "I'm not a succubus, I'm a hellmaid!" - The army and Gilva "Why are we defending this place anyway?" "That's a good question. Got me." - Martin and Ishmael "SAVE THE BEER!" - Ishmael "See, I took this branch of a tree from the border of reality, and I carved it into a really sharp wooden spoon, and I carved all 523 runes of the pre-Logrus civilization into it in a pattern that spelled out 'spoon', and then I imbued it with spoonness, and I used the Logrus to connect it to Spoons of Power throughout shadow, and then I told it that it was a spoon, and then... oh, wait... no, that's not what I did after all." - Dworkin, telling Ishmael about the item that scooped out the Eye of the Serpent "But how did you get the Serpent to hold still?" "I got it drunk. You can do anything to anyone if you get them drunk enough." - Ishmael and Dworkin, discussing the removal of the eye of the serpent "The Fire Jewel is being held in an incredibly dangerous place. It's certain death to even venture near it. We leave in three hours." "Uh...." "Don't worry, I have a cunning plan." - Ishmael and Rianna "Next time, TELL me before you try to do something like that!" "Sorry. Had no idea it would almost kill you like that." - Rianna and Ishmael