| Author: Rasgon "The Lady's Ward. Beautiful, ain't it? You'll find that the most beautiful places can be the most deadly." The Amber District is shaped according to the common fashion of the last century: tall, geometric blocks with large overhangs on the second stories, decorated with thick curved spikes like elephant tusks. The thing that makes this part of Sigil really stand out is what it's made of, amber, tons and tons of it, so that whole city blocks seem to glow in Sigil's gloomy light. That's not all, bashers. The Amber District's amber is special amber, mined from the all-but-forgotten demiplane of Stillpine. Stillpine was once green and living, at once demiplane and cosmic pine tree whose mighty roots burrowed through myriad worlds and times, feeding on the very substance of their natural laws and drawing disparate civilizations into its limbs. As the ages passed, the plane drifted further from the positive energy plane and slowly began to fossilize. Today the tree is imprisoned in a nearly limitless expanse of golden amber, inside which cities and empires of an age of past glory can still be seen. Two hundred cycles ago a door in Sigil opened to this place and that city's eager scavengers used pick and shovel to bring home golden translucent material for building. It wasn't too long 'till Cagers began to notice the amber's unusual side effects, however. The substance became unpopular and the district was abandoned. Today the door, if it still exists, is forgotten. The original pinesap is, remember, made from the natural laws of a thousand worlds. There are at least three kinds: gravity, magic, and time. Gravity Amber is made from gravity. Gravity is generated in different ways on different planes of existence. Some of the gravity amber will have imprisoned within it tiny pixy-like creatures, proxies of their original plane who pulled everything downwards by hand. This kind of amber is inert and harmless, unless one of the pixies gets free (then you better run before it crushes you). Some of it works by similarity, and visitors will see reflections of themselves within the amber block, mutely gesturing. This kind still works and passerby will be pulled towards it. Some gravity works by mysterious radiation. This will be dormant unless the block is damaged. Damaged blocks will spill out enough gravity to give anyone nearby a nasty shock. Finally, there's the relativistic kind of gravity. These amber blocks are compressed curves in the fabric of space; they are very powerful (if mass-based) or not powerful at all (if volume-based). Magic Amber is made from magic. The explanations for magic are many, and all are true. One type relies exclusively on interplanar connections; wandering around these will tend to teleport the hapless visitor hither and yon throughout Sigil. They also seem to attract Sigil's gates, which is even more dangerous. Another type of magic is a semi-sentient energetic force. In amberized form, the magic will be dormant and stupid, but if damaged it will release a form of directed wild magic at the trespasser. Truename amber is subtle; those who gaze into it see their own true names and no one else's. Other magical ambers are actually a variety of natural laws knitted together; Similarity Magic Amber contains a doppleganger like the one that you see in some Similarity Gravity Amber above, but with unlimited magical powers. The doppleganger, trapped as it is in amber, is willful and possibly insane. Contagion relies on pieces affecting the whole; it constantly changes to reflect the status of the plane of Stillpine, while Stillpine changes to reflect the status of the amber block. Contagion Amber cannot be destroyed (since there are many other forces affecting it besides just one adventurer) but it can be shaped in many interesting ways. Other magical ambers will be made of amberized positive and negative energy, shadow, and outer planar primal belief. These are dormant, and mostly stripped by thieves scavenging for magic. Time Amber has subvarieties too. Predestination Amber cannot be changed by any known force, and thus cannot be mined. Only one block of Predestination Amber exists in the entire Amber District, and it was always there. Records in the Hall of Records indicated that was why the site was chosen in the first place. A second kind of Time Amber is easy to cut, change and mold, but it must be handled very carefully for fear of changing it into Paradox Amber, which cannot exist. It exists anyway, but it's very unstable. Paradox Amber has the ability to rewrite vast sections of reality in order to justify itself. The worst thing about Paradox Amber is that no one remembers it after it finally stabilizes into Time Amber form again. The third known kind of Time Amber is Alternate Timeline Amber, which has the advantage of creating equal sized duplicates of itself when cut. The only disadvantage of Alternate Timeline Amber is the unpredictable variance of the duplicate. It can be of any size or shape, and it can be very dangerous if it falls or moves suddenly like a cannonball. The Amber District is shunned, but deaths result from it every cycle. |
