The Courts of Chaos

Geography

The Courts of Chaos are never shown in full detail in the Corwin books, so I get to improvise some. The Shadows near the Courts are wild and strange. Time is rarely a constant in these places. The borders between Shadows are weak near the Courts; this is one of the reasons that a Pattern initiate can walk Shadow near Chaos, while a black channel initiate can't do the same near Amber. The environments of Chaos Shadows tend to be somewhat plastic; without a will or power to hold them, these Shadows will change, at varying rates. A world of water may catch fire, or freeze; and it may do so slowly, or in an instant. This is one of the reasons why shapeshifting is a favoured skill among those who travel these Shadows; you never really know for sure what will happen to the world you're in.

The Courts themselves are on an island in the Abyss, connected to the mainland by a thin causeway. From outside, the Courts appear to be a walled city with a large, many spired palace. Inside, though, the Courts are much larger. Shadows and folds in space have been pulled and arranged over millenia. Each of the major houses of Chaos have built thier own small cities, contained within the walls of great manor houses within the Courts.

The central feature of the Courts, visible from every window and every street, is the palace. The Palace of Chaos is, like the palace of Amber, a large building, with spires and arches. But where Amber's spires gleam and her arches glitter, those of Chaos writhe and shudder, pulsating malevolently. The interior of the palace is ever changing, and subject to the whim of the Emperor.

Inhabitants

Chaos is populated by demons. From the lowly beasts of burden and food animals, to the Lords of Chaos themselves, every living thing is, in its own way, monstrous. Shapeshifting is a common trait for creatures, and a mother cannot be certain that her child will resemble her at all. Hellmaids give birth to demon cats, serpents grow legs, and horses wield wicked fangs.

Dara states that she is the first of her line to be able to pass as human. What she means is, that she is the first to be born in a human shape. The Lords of Chaos and thier subjects may have horns, the heads of beasts, scales, fur, even tentacles or fins.

The Lords of Chaos are organized into half dozen nobles houses, all of them with varying blood ties to the Emperor. The Emperor himself is considered a divinity by his subjects, being the descendant of the First, who forged the Courts with the force of his own will. The current Emperor, Thandar of House Xarthaugg, is the fourth to hold the position since Xarthaugg, the First.

The inhabitants of Chaos are not immortal in the sense that Amberites are; the Lords of Chaos, longest lived of the Chaosians (save for a handful of ancient demons not really counted in the heirachy of the Courts), do still grow old and weaken with time. Those who remember Dworkin's flight from Chaos are, in general, old men and women at this point. Those Chaosians who learn the black channel and Abyss sorcery find thier lives shortened somewhat, as the entropic forces they wield grind against the Order of thier beings.

Chaos after the War

The Patternfall War came as something of a shock to Chaos. Since amber's founding, the Lords of Chaos have been plotting, trying to gain access to the Pattern and the rebel Dworkin, so that they could crush him and wipe his perversion from reality.

They hadn't realsed how powerful the Pattern and it's servants are. The patternfall war surpised them; the Amberites were stronger, faster, and wielded more power than any of the Lords of Chaos. The Courts have, for the first time in the millenia of thier existance, been humbled by a power greater than thier own. Before the war, the forces of Chaos assumed that the strength of Order lie simply in keeping out of reach of Chaos.

The Courst have spent the past hundred or so years in a state of disarray, living under the thumb of a foreign power. While Amber has no wish to rule Chaos, her children have no wish to see demons at the foot of Kolvir again. At the end of the War, the Emperor himself was forced to sign the Patternfall Accord in his own eldritch blood, binding him to the terms it outlined more strongly than even his ancient honour could.

Amber has maintained a small, but signinficant military presence in the Courts since the war. Typically, there is one of the Elders, with several companies of soldiers loyal to Amber. Even the prescence of a single Amberite in the Courts impacts thier way of life; such is the force of the Pattern that Chaos feels the bite of Order in the presence of its initiates. The striped sky Corwin described was a passing curiosity that has become a fixed feature in the heavens since the war, a streaming, flickering reminder that Chaos lost the war, that there is a foreign Prince in the palace. Even time, once so fluid and shifting, has become far more rigid.

Mystic scholars of the Courts, those who know of it, speculate that the second Pattern, drawn by Corwin, has made these effects more prominent, and that that power gave the forces of Order the strength to bind the blood of the First with a sheet of parchment.

It has been a long time, though, and the forces of Amber in Chaos are growing smaller, and the visits from the Elders are growing shorter. There are factions within the Courts that seek to regain some measure of thier former glory...