Lor13 - From the Grotto to Ghera

OOC: Not yet! Broken Pattern is slow going.

OOC: and it is hard to reach Dio when we don't know where she is going!

Upon realizing that the path in curving back towards Amber, Lorelei decides it is time to change tactics.

She changes course toward the nearest abandon castle. Upon arrival she is... less than enthusiastic about the find. Atop a hill overlooking the junction of two small and shallow rivers, it is less a castle and more an unfinished stone tower with a charred and rotting wooden palisade instead of proper walls. Still, it would do for what she had in mind. The door had been dismantled with axes. Everything of any value had long ago been looted. Carefully advancing up the stone stairway, she enters the 'Grand Hall', really just a room taking half the space of the second floor. Sitting upon a 'throne' of rough-cut wooden slabs is the last would-be ruler of this place, a crossbow bolt pinning him there.

Crossing the floor, Lorelei takes out the travel mirror she had collected from her room and braces it against the back of the 'throne'. Laying her power upon it she steps through the mirror's surface. By not connecting to another mirror, this one had connected to itself. Lorelei is now in the seemingly empty [of people] 'reverse world' behind the mirrors. Just beyond the visible reflection other rules applied. Exerting her power in this place she moves vast distances across Shadow in the blink of an eye. Travel in this fashion is safer and a great deal more pleasant than by Broken Pattern, but slightly less useful because cross-over can only occur at reflections. Lorelei stops a few times at such points and uses the BP tendrils to test the normal world, testing to determine by how much she has closed the gap between herself and Dio. Lorelei grows concerned as she realizes how close to Amber this trip toward Dio is taking her. Will this trip take her all the way to the "Corridor of Mirrors" in Castle Amber?

With this final check, at a pool in Arden, Lorelei finds that she has just barely overtaken Dio; that she is ~very~ near.  Exerting her power again, Lorelei passes through the crystal-clear smooth surface of the pool with a large splash. She is now back in 'normal reality'... and refreshingly wet...
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[OOC: The pouches at her belt mold shadow and among other things allows her to carry items in them that shouldn't otherwise fit... like her sword... A three-foot by two-foot mirror is more than sufficient to allow passage (exception possibly for someone Brian's size). Orienting one's self to make such use of a mirror that size might not be the most comfortable of experiences. The example in the Rebma book has Moire and Llewella in Rebma pulling the PC through a vanity mirror in the Courts, to escape his paramour, banging his shins on the frame in the process... so, size and shape don't matter as long as the body fits - walking need not be involved...

If in your reasoning the travel-mirror won't fit in the pouch, she can have it in a rigid travel-case across her back. Lorelei does not normally carry mirrors larger than her compacts, but on this trip (in addition to the embassy's replacement mirror - already delivered) she did (as detailed in previous posts)... ]
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A hard no on this. That ability would make mirror writing the greatest power in the game. Even advanced Trump doesn't allow that. Instantaneous travel between known mirrors is fine; in mirror world things are the same as real world, so normal movement through shadow. From the book: It is possible for a Mirrorwright with Pattern Imprint to enter the reflected world
of their mirror and use Pattern to Shadow Shift away from it, in effect entering a parallel
universe which exists only within the mirror entered.
The reflection of the mirror entered would be one primary source of this universe,
such as Amber is to Shadow, and moving further away from the original mirror world
would effectively allow a Mirrorwright to travel as far as the reflected version of the
Courts of Chaos, if that place is what lies at the other end.

[I was basing the speed travel on references from Zelazney's short story "The Shroudling and the Guisel" (Oct 1994), Specifically:

(In Chaos:)
She rose, dressed quickly in a blood-red garment, and followed me (Merlin)
through a wall to a room that was actually several miles distant. Like most
of the nobles of Chaos, brother Mandor believes in keeping a residence
scattered. A long mirror hung on the far wall between the desk and a large
Chaos clock. The clock, I saw, was about to chime a nonlinear for the
observer. Great. I drew my blade.

"I didn't even know this one was here," she said.

"We're some distance away from the room where I slept. Forget space.
Take me through."

... (dialog chopped) ...


She did not reply but took my hand and stepped into the mirror. As I
followed her, the antique Chaos clock began to chime an irregular beat. The
inside of the mirror seemed the same as the room without, but turned around.
Rhanda led me to the farthest point of the reflection, to the left, then
stepped around a corner.

We came into a twisted, twilit place of towers and great residences,
none of them familiar to me. The air bore clusters of wavy, crooked lines
here and there. She approached one, inserted her free hand, and stepped
through it, taking me with her. We emerged on a crooked street lined with
twisted buildings.

... (dialog chopped) ...

We moved ahead, and she counted doors, halting at the seventh. "That
one," she said, "leads through the curves to the place behind the locked
mirror in your room."

... (dialog chopped) ...

She hesitated too, then nodded. "Let us finish the night as we began it," she said.

We walked through the seventh door and she unlocked my mirror. I knew
that she would be gone when I awoke.
]

If Lorelei's actions need redefined, they proceeds thus: Reaching out and finding any mirror with her power she jumps ahead, from mirror to mirror, from reflection to reflection - physically traversing that which the lesser version of this power traversed only visually - knowing only that that each jump is closer and closer to Amber; not travelling by Pattern, Broken or otherwise, but analogist to a series of Trump-jumps... She finds it ironic that she can look out into the normal world, but anyone on that side of the mirror would see only their own reflection... This mirror power has parallels with Trump (connection through image/reflections, as a means of gathers information/forewarning, etc), but also differences (Trump can put one in contact with the depicted person almost anywhere in existence or take them to the the depicted place, but the mirror power must function through an easily blocked reflection wherever it may be found). The last jump ends as describe above...
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So you're saying a long trudging journey through Shadow using Pattern or Logrus is faster than a direct point-to-point instantaneous Trump teleport or Mirror jump...?  (You are trying to apply a rowboat to starship comparison when the case is more apples to grapes...)  Yes, Pattern or Logrus would be faster if the user were going through EVERY SINGLE SHADOW of that journey, which is not the case here.

Lorelei was not travelling by Broken Pattern. She is using Advanced Mirror Wrighting to located ANY mirror of sufficient size across Shadow (and closer to Amber) and stepping through to the unoccupied reflection-side... If they are not "hidden", she can sense the presence, size, and nature of anything that casts a reflection (i.e. mirrors, etc) across Shadow, and connect with it, as well as locate/track those she is familiar with. She has spent YEARS (roughly a decade) honing the basic levels of the mirror power (learning to identify specific mirrors instead of just detecting them). At the Advanced level, she is capable of going ALL THE WAY back to Rebma, even from the Courts if needs be, in a single jump if she so chooses... something that would take Dworkin's level of skill to do with Pattern....

You're right... with mirror-travel Lorelei currently has limited navigational experience far away from the Amber end of reality... analogist to being able to find just the cardinal points (toward/away from Amber, The Courts, or any mirror-related Power) when not seeking a mirror she has prepared or is familiar with - like her compacts or Wormwoods...

And forget the tendrils, between each massive jump Lorelei is using the same thing that told her the path leads back toward Amber to determine the direction (and possibly the vague distance) of Dio relative to herself.
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