As the Shadow Shifts

Episode V

The scene opens on an Imperial Starcruiser, a great big spaceship, which completely dwarfs the teeny little Rebel ship that it's about to over take and take over.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Tonto, cleverly disguised as Dalamar Skywalker's aunt and uncle, is telling him to finish his chores.

D: But Uncle Tonto, the second cousin-in-law of Lord Kerbaugh of House Chanicutt is fighting a duel with Lady Slousmeign Pfangbood's goldfish!

Uncle T: Dalamar, I've told you to stay out of Chaos politics! What those lords and ladies do is no concern of ours. Now go and milk the cows, and see if you can conjure a couple of decent droids.

D: Awww, Uncle Tonto...

Aunt T: Now then, dear, do as your uncle tells you.

Meanwhile, down in the BatCave (the Rebel ship), the lovely Princess Felicia Organa is huddled over a small ugly droid that looks like a mailbox. She seems to be installing a Trump trap of some kind. Laser shots are fired nearby. She quickly makes a final couple of scrawls on the trump, and then runs off.

Dressed from head to toe in black armor, Lord Phaedron Vader strides through the smoking hallways of the BatCave. He interrogates a couple of prisoners for fun, and then finds Felicia.

F: Yo Phaedron, this is a diplomatic mission. Get the hell off.

Ph: If this is a diplomatic mission, then where is the ambassador?

F: He's down on Tattoo, milking the cybercows.

Ph: Right. Take her away.

The mailbox, meanwhile, has snuck into an escape pod (Engine Speed) with Costello, a very confused looking Earth comedian exiled here by Corwin centuries ago when Corwin tired of ``Who's on first?'' jokes.

Pop! The escape pod flies away, and Phaedron takes Felicia back to Shadow Barred to Pattern and Trump #6352.

The Benalish Heroes make a brief appearance, knocking out Dalamar Skywalker, until they are scared off by Old Ben Nikrowd, a weird guy who lives all by himself in the middle of the desert. There's nothing to do out there, so he deals Trump scries all day. He figures out from one of his scries that either a)Phaedron is trying to destroy that which inspires Mikele, or b)the San Francisco 49ers are going to win the Super Bowl. He's a little unsure of the interpretation. Anyway, Nikrowd brings Dalamar back to his study, where he shows him a skull with a red candle in it.

N: This was your father's.

D: Wow, can I have it?

N: No.

Old Ben Nikrowd starts flying at Engine Speed, and slams his head into the wall of his cave, getting a really bad headache. Then they go outside and try again. Oh yeah, forgot to mention that the mailbox was there, too, and the Trump was trapped to start showing a movie when Nikrowd looked at it. The movie was the third set of Amber books, which gave Nikrowd a few hints about what to do next.

The Ghost of Christmas Past sneaks around watching Nikrowd and Dalamar as they go to bars and sing lots of karaoke. Then they meet up with Han Mikele and Keveribacca, who fly a ship that will take them to the next bit of plot.

Meanwhile, Phaedron has brought Felicia to his Secret Shadow, and puts her in a box. Then he has a meeting with a bunch of guys in uniforms, including Grand Moff Torquil, who says that Corwin-bar's Pattern sucks, Trump scries don't work, and furthermore that there is no such thing as Santa Claus. Katarina, in the shadow on separate matters, overhears Torquil's comment about Santa Claus, and is not happy. Phaedron chokes Torquil a lot, and Torquil is not happy.

Nikrowd, Dalamar, Mikele, and Keveribacca head for Shadow 6352, but meet up with some flying gargoyles from Thailand, which they have a lot of fun shooting at. Old Ben Nikrowd draws on an ancient power of good, which, although it pervades every living being and exists throughout the universe, happens to be at the bottom of the ocean right now. Dalamar Skywalker, unpracticed in the use of the strange sword left him by his father, gets zapped on the butt. Griffin's little bird friends spy on a penthouse apartment in New York City, and report that -- whoops, sorry, wrong little bird friends. Skywalker's little bird friends grab the Thai Fighters and drag them to Hell. And everyone has the feeling of being evaluated by Benedict.

Meanwhile, back in the Death Shadow, Tonto, cleverly disguised as Steadfast, leads Katarina to the cell where Felicia is being held. Felicia's not there. Actually, Phaedron has brought her to meet ur-Corwin-bar(2), who is currently cackling over his plans to conquer Amber. He also, without pausing for breath, cackles over his plans for Reynard, Rina, Finndo, James Bond, and the Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders. He's going to put them all in a DEATHTRAP!!!!

Whoops, sorry about that.

Instead, Katarina meets up with her age-old (well, since last week, anyway) enemy, Liesl the Hutt. Fortunately for her, Liesl has gained a bit of weight since the last time they met, to the tune of 45,000 pounds. This slows him down a bit in the ensuing duel, which is rudely interrupted when Liesl escapes by falling through the floor.

Grand Moff Torquil arrives, leading 6000 blue Ewoks, and completely destroying any semblance of continuity the plot once had. Of course, this is a roleplaying run, so we have to occasionally get all the people together. Conveniently enough, a tractor Logrus reaches out from the Death Shadow and grabs Mikele's ship and drags it forcibly into the plotline. They all meet at Bloody Fred's, which is now under new management. Lord Garrin, Shuffleboard Grandmaster, is now also the proprietor of the refurbished establishment, and has moved it to the bridge of the Death Shadow. Katarina parks Tonto outside, and goes inside. Mikele parks her ship outside, and goes inside, with her crew and passengers. Torquil parks his Picts outside, and goes inside. Keveribacca notices some suspicious looking people in the corner. They are dressed oddly, and are drinking drinks out of pineapples, and singing loudly. Occasionally they drink a toast to the Apocalypse.

Phaedron Vader enters, followed by Felicia, and then ur-pseudosemiquasiCorwin-bar-sub2(not). Liesl falls on the Picts. Squish.

Han Mikele, Obi-Wan Nikrowd, Keveribacca, Dalamar Skywalker, Grand Moff Torquil, Katarina, and Tonto, cleverly disguised as the Shuffleboard Master, notice that the Big Bad Guys are endowed with a great deal of the Dark Side, and that they are holding Felicia Organa prisoner. Instantly swinging into action, they decide to take a meeting.

First, a focus group is nominated to identify the problem, on a process level, a behavior level, a systems level, and a resources level. The process improvement team examines the current process from a client-oriented perspective, while the systems upgrade procedure is streamlined by the associate interface subcommittee. The root causes of ongoing patterns of behavior are studied in concert with account management development re-engineering, and the human resources liason group surveys prevailing underutilization of outsourced project priority practices. Then Keveribacca and Katarina smash Corwin's and Phaedron's skulls in and rescue Felicia.

Dalamar, Mikele, and Keveribacca escape with Felicia. Nikrowd provides a distraction, by using his trump of the bottom of an ocean to flood the room. Oh yeah, it's an ocean of Kraft Zesty Italian salad dressing. Katarina shifts shadow until it turns into Bleu Cheese dressing.

Felicia, Dalamar, Keveribacca, and Mikele hop into the BatCave. Torquil grabs a Thai Fighter, Nikrowd provides so much distraction that he himself gets distracted, and Katarina goes looking for Liesl. Liesl has now gained so much weight that he has fallen through three other shadows, including one in which his appearance formed the basis of mythology for the next three hundred years. She seeks him here, she seeks him there, that Katarina seeks him everywhere. Is he in Amber, is he in Chaosl? That damned elusive Liesl.

The final confrontation between Katarina and Liesl occurs on the north coast of France. The English spy in Brest mistakes Liesl for a new French fleet, and England prepares for war. Katarina hides out in a warehouse right by the water. Liesl sits in the water, since he is too big to fit inside a building. Katarina realizes that her plan will not work on someone who is too immobile to make it to her ambush, and goes to plan B, which involves setting off the thermonuclear device she has implanted in Liesl's brain. Plan B succeeds, mostly, although there is a big mess left behind. Oh, and England's spy gets killed.

Nikrowd's distraction begins to distract not only the enemy, innocent bystanders, and Nikrowd himself, but soon the laws of physics themselves begin to get distracted. It starts small; a few things falling too slowly, or perhaps not at all, but it quickly works up to dangerous levels. Planck's constant becomes enormous while no one is looking, and people start diffusing through doorways. Then things start tunnelling all over, and now no one knows what's going on. It's not long before the inevitable happens, and the entire shadow is destroyed. The only thing left is Nikrowd's trumps, since you can't destroy those. Nikrowd's personal trump goes spinning off through shadow, making a weird hurtling noise, but leaving open the possibility of Nikrowd's return in the high-grossing sequel.

Felicia, Mikele, Dalamar, and Keveribacca eventually wend their way back to Mikele's home shadow, where lots of guys in orange suits are running around pumping gas into rocks. The rocks then make a whining vroom sound, and start flying around the sky. Shaidarn appears briefly to Dalamar, and informs him that Finndo is approaching with a really big army. Like several hundred thousand at least. Shaidarn sulks a bit, and then vanishes.

Oh well, I guess it's time to save the universe again. Dalamar puts on his ultrafop garb (see his trump) and climbs on an X-rock. Felicia takes control of the command center, and is looking quite nice, thanks to our skipping over the trash compactor scene. I hope you're sufficiently grateful. Mikele puts on her disguise, and Keveribacca goes and gets a haircut. Those baby dreadlocks have gotten to be a bit shaggy.

Finndo's army arrives, waving multitudinous banners, blowing many trumpets, and all smoking cigars. All that smoke is actually quite effective at concealing their movements from the Forces of Good, but their well-drilled maneuver executes perfectly midst the haze of battle (not yet joined).

Various dramatic events happen, mostly represented by Mikee picking up dice off a table. Mikele arrives at an opportune moment to save a crucial position with surprise reinforcements, and Katarina arrives in the nick of time, destroying Finndo's command and control HQ by dropping what she could find of Liesl on it.

Dalamar has fought his way to direct personal combat with Finndo, with Keveribacca flanking the miscreant. Suddenly the surrounding melee pauses, as the combatants draw a collective gasp, at the incredible swordsmanship being displayed by the battle's leaders. Keveribacca lays about him with incredible power, one of his near misses vaporizing a luckless 832 carat diamond that happened to be lying around. Dalamar's blade is impossible to see, as it moves much faster than even the Amberite eyes can see. But Finndo is holding them off easily, deftly blocking Keveribacca's devastating smashes, and handling Dalamar's blistering ripostes with ease. A nick here, a scratch here, and Keveribacca is losing a bit of blood. A feint not taken three times is taken the fourth, and Dalamar loses an earlobe. The fight is close, but the day looks like Finndo's.

Then The Shuffleboard Master appears out of nowhere, and makes a brief soliloquy about what a great Olympic sport shuffleboard would be if only people would discard their preconceptions and biases. He offers to demonstrate evidence of his thesis that shuffleboard actually qualifies as a martial art. He pulls a telescoping shuffleboard stick out of his pocket, whips out a trump of one of those little puck things, and shoots Finndo in the head several times. Oh, did I forget to mention that the shuffleboard stick was also an AK-47?

The victorious heroes offer generous terms of surrender to the remaining foes, which are thankfully accepted, and the terrible bloodshed ends. A grateful King Random rewards each the brave warriors with one unconditional request. Nikrowd's trump flutters in, and Nikrowd pulls himself out by the bootstraps. He then asks Random for a Winnebago. Mikele wants a trip to Tahiti. Keveribacca asks for world peace. Random says ``We're Amberites. We don't do that sort of thing.'' Keveribacca reminds him of the unconditional nature of the reward, so Random says ``I'll see what I can do.'' Dalamar wants Flora's phone number. Katarina wants Liesl's head on a platter, but she's already got it, so she's happy. Felicia wants her arm healed. And everyone has the feeling of being evaluated by Benedict.

Gee, where did Torquil go?

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