I don't see any reference elsewhere to this... Though "Lord of Light" was suggested, which is a good idea!
Unless you feel an Amber light prevents you from considering this idea! [grin]
Doug arrives in Amber, which is admittedly another multiverse in it's own right. For a fun arrival he pops in in the Pattern chamber under Castle Amber, on his bike, and rides to the centre of the Pattern, while still unconscious. (How and Why obviously raise interesting questions! [grin]) Someone has to go in and move him to somewhere more convenient (having a bike parked in the middle of the Pattern _might_ cause trouble!), which happens before he becomes conscious.
Doug wakes up in a bed in Castle Amber, with _lots_ of people wanting to talk to him about who his Amber ancestor is, which faction he will align with, and how he learned such an _unusual_ method of Pattern Walking! And, he has his bike, parked on the carpet, in the bedroom, with him, just to bemuse him.
Note that Doug's bike, being a high tech item (with his helmet) that would not normally work in Amber, is going to come in for considerable interest; has Doug involuntarily enchanted his bike at some point so it doesn't care about what the local laws of reality are?
Does Doug's magic work in Amber? I think so!
What are the consequences of him having Walked the Pattern? Does this maybe give him another way home?
Whoes secret plans are advanced by Doug being there? Or, interfered with?
Do the Amberites think he is another lost child of Oberon? [grin] Or, given the chaos that swirls around him, Dworkin? [bigger grin]
This is a setting that could really test Doug's political skills, and where his magic will not give him the edge it might elsewhere?
And, if Doug gets put in the position of trying to Walk through Shadow to get home, will he create a Shadow which is Warriors World, and how long before he starts to doubt it's true reality?
He could stumble through all sorts of strange Step-lets on the way, even the odd anime cameo!
And, once he leaves the Amber multiverse (probably via the Primordial Pattern, or the Abyss), do any fragments left of his command of Pattern do him any good, anywhere else?
And, what will it do to Doug, knowing a place in Shadow exists somewhere, where he could be the god of his own reality?
Just a few suggestions...
--
"It is the business of the future to be dangerous" - Hawkwind

These aren't really teasers, at least not in the sense of the larger passages I've posted before. They're pretty much extended one-liners, intended as hints and suggestions. To be fair, let me tell you that many of them currently exist in isolation in my notes, attached to an as-yet unwritten scene; their appearance in the final product is not guaranteed. But they do give me something fun to share with you as I continue to wrestle with my writer's block.
-- Bob
----------------
"I'm older than I look, Misato-san. I'm probably old enough tobe your father." * * *I had a bird's-eye view of the action, provided the bird was on the ground. * * *"Violet Pattern confirmed on the man in the helmet," Mayaannounced. "Violet Pattern, sempai?""A Transcendant Human?" Ritsuko whispered. "Here? Now? Buthow...?" * * *"I've been training longer than you've been alive, Asuka.Fifteen years of intense training with experts in almost everyknown weapon, as part of my duty cycle, before I was ejectedfrom my home world. I normally fight hand-to-hand or with mymetagift, but if I have to I can pick up anything from a Daisy BBgun to a Bell and Howell L224 man-portable maser array and killwith it." * * *"You're a snarky little bitch, Asuka, but we like you anyway," Isaid.Rei looked predictably puzzled. "I do not understand," she saidin her near-whisper. "What is 'sunaruki'?" * * *Gendo watched impassively as Kaji frowned and ran a hand through his hair. "He's a pro," the agent said, shaking his head. "I saw it all in his eyes. He sized me up, specced me out and dismissed me as inconsequential. He knew I was carrying -- I saw his eyes tag *every* gun I had on me, and most of my knives. He was unarmed. I'm sure of it. And he *still* was certain he could take me down, and take me down *hard*. Dammit, who *is* he? Who is he working for?" * * *"Well, Lion, I could look in my wizard's bag for a medal, but Idon't think that would do the trick for you.""Huh?" said Shinji. * * *"Look," I said. "Do trust your father?""No," he admitted softly."Do you understand how he thinks?"Shinji hesitated, then nodded. "I think so. Some of the time."I sat back. "Well, then. Look at the situation and decide whatyour father would do. Then do the exact moral and ethicalopposite." * * *"This is something Father did *not* brief me on." * * *"I have never had a family before, Shinji-kun, and I... I want more. I have never wanted anything for myself before, but I want this." She blushed and returned her gaze to the floor. "Will you let me call you... brother? Please?""Rei...?""Because you *are*," she whispered with a fierce intensity thatstunned him as much as her words. "They showed me. I am half-Angel, Shinji, half a creature of the heavens... but the otherhalf came from your... *our* mother. I am as much the child ofYui Ikari as you, and knowing this gives me such joy that Icannot express it." * * *"Remember this! The fundamental force that gives shape to theuniverse is willpower. If your will is strong enough, theuniverse will do what you want. If that sounds like magic,that's only because it is." * * *"What *are* you, Doug?""I'm mortal, I'm human. I'm just not... local." * * *She tilted her head head, and her eyes grew distant. "It is a curious paradox. In trying to control me, Gendo Ikari freed me. He called me 'Zero', to make me think I was nothing, but the rest of you put the lie to that and showed me that I was instead 'Spirit', beyond his ability to hold." She smiled as if at a private joke. * * *
(And finally, a snippet not from the story, but from a "Bonus Theatre" segment that may or may not ever get written.)
"Man, we *done* this fuckin' shit once already, at that fuckin' church in fuckin' Red Bank! Why does She always call on *us* to deal with fuckin' angels throwin' fuckin' hissy fits?"
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

As it is only polite to introduce myself...
Science Fiction fan for forever, Anime fan since an accident at an SF con in the late 1980s.
Consumer of fanfic since the early '90s, when Megazone was god on what's now RAAC.
Occasional indulger in excessive RPGing, particularly superheroics, if available.
Long-term amateur tinkerer with RPG rules, mostly extending things.
High Tech fan, Programmer with strange ideas, and mostly British.
Is that enough to get started with? [grin]

Ah, and non-drinker! [grin]
--
"It is the business of the future to be dangerous" - Hawkwind

While I fight with my writer's block, here's a little something I wrote some months ago.
-- Bob
(edit: ezcode, not html!)
----------
In other news, I found out who the mysterious "KS", designer ofthe boomer brain, was. Despite my best efforts, I had to filterthrough a lot of Knight Saber drek to find him, but there he was,practically a footnote in the history of boomer development aspresented by GENOM: Katsuhito Stingray. (Talk about your goofynames... Or maybe not, considering pots, kettles and apparentreflectivity indices...)Something of a latter-day Renaissance man, he worked for anoutfit called Whiz Laboratories (which GENOM later took over,natch) until he died in what the official biographical paragraphdescribed as "an accidental explosion". Parsing *that* throughthe GENOM-to-Truth converter gets us "assassinated after hiscritical breakthrough so we could nick all the rights when webought the company."Except that GENOM *didn't* get *all* the rights to boomertech --according to certain other databases I consulted, Stingray hadfiled for and received a few key patents before his death, andthose were still in the hands of his two children, Sylia andMackinnison. (*Who* in their right mind names their kid"Mackinnison"? God only knows what damage that did to the poorboy's psyche growing up, especially combined with having his dadmurdered...)Anyway, out of a kind of paternal interest in these two probablevictims of GENOM's greed, I looked into their lives. It turnedout to be harder than I expected -- both kept a very low profile.However, I found enough. They were doing well for themselves --for some reason GENOM hadn't tried to cheat or lawyer them out ofthe remaining patents (probably because it would have been a PRdebacle even GENOM's spinmeisters couldn't have fixed), andthey'd been worth a lot. The girl -- well, woman, actually,since she was now in her middle 20s -- was a multimillionaire whoapparently split her time between running a lingerie shop anddabbling (rather successfully) in real estate. The boy was anengineering prodigy who was attending college in Germany, but hadpreviously lived with his sister in their penthouse home. Theycertainly weren't suffering, despite their father's probablemurder at GENOM's hands.(*"They killed your parents, didn't they?"*)The memory of my own voice whispered to me from the back of mymind, and I stopped for a moment to consider what it had to say.Then I pulled up what precious little there was on Sylia Stingrayin the public databases -- suspiciously little, come to think ofit. I supplemented it with material I had eased out of someGENOM files I really wasn't supposed to know about. I added invarious news shots of both the White Knight and Stingray. Istudied the combined results and thought.Allowing for those stupid heels and the general increase indimensions imposed by the nature of the armor, she'd be about theright height and build. Her brother had clearly inherited theirfather's genius, so why not her? But either one could be theKnights' technologist. She had more than enough money to start(if not continuously fund) a private mercenary force. Sheclearly had enough pull to ensure her online profile was smallenough to overlook easily. She had the free time. And she had amotive that tallied up nicely with Lady White's obsession withboomers.Add to that the fact that the name I'd overheard in their radiochatter as "Celia" could easily have been "Sylia" instead, and Iwas pretty sure that I had found the leader of the Knight Sabers.
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

Looks like something's happening behind the scenes - Shapeshifters (specifically, and animation related to the cover art) made the daily illuminator today - www.sjgames.com/ill.
Offsides
Drunkard's Walk Forum Moderator and Prereader At Large

Many thanks to fellow MIB Erik Zane, who let me know this weekend that the book's page at the SJG website now shows the cover. Go there and click on the thumbnail; you'll get a nice, big image. There's also a wallpaper linked off the same page, and you know it's already on my machine at home.
The color scheme is a little monochromatic, but that's okay with me. However, after all the crap I took from the playtesters over the book being "werewolf-centric", the cover of course has a wolf on it. Someone in the art department doesn't pay attention to playtest groups, eh? Go fig.

-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

Hey, Bob? I saw that you just updated the DW page, but couldn't figure out what you added/changed...."I was an Otaku before those kids came along and changed the meaning of the word."
-- HM "Howling Mad" Wilson to more than one team-mate.
Hear that thunder rolling till it seems to split the sky?
That's every ship in Grayson's Navy taking up the cry-
NO QUARTER!!!
-- "No Quarter", by Echo's Children

Life is a mystery, everyone must stand alone
I hear you call my name
And it feels like home
When you call my name it's like a little prayer
I'm down on my knees, I wanna take you there
In the midnight hour I can feel your power
Just like a prayer you know I'll take you there
I hear your voice, it's like an angel sighing
I have no choice, I hear your voice
Feels like flying
I close my eyes, Oh God I think I'm falling
Out of the sky, I close my eyes
Heaven help me
When you call my name it's like a little prayer
I'm down on my knees, I wanna take you there
In the midnight hour I can feel your power
Just like a prayer you know I'll take you there
Like a child you whisper softly to me
You're in control just like a child
Now I'm dancing
It's like a dream, no end and no beginning
You're here with me, it's like a dream
Let the choir sing
When you call my name it's like a little prayer
I'm down on my knees, I wanna take you there
In the midnight hour I can feel your power
Just like a prayer you know I'll take you there
Just like a prayer, your voice can take me there
Just like a muse to me, you are a mystery
Just like a dream, you are not what you seem
Just like a prayer, no choice your voice can take me there
Just like a prayer, I'll take you there
It's like a dream to me
-- Madonna, Like A Prayer
(Written by Madonna and Patrick Leonard)


-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

The link to 'Vocal reader/fan Rob Kelk has included DW2 on his list of the dozen best fanfics on the Web.':
robkelk.tripod.com/links.html
is no longer valid.
try:
robkelk.ottawa-anime.org/links.html

In going over material relevant to a little bit of new text I was writing last night, I realized with a shock that I had, without intending to do so, inserted an in-joke when I initially wrote the book.
One of the sample races is a carnivorous morph lightly inspired by John Carpenter's The Thing. Only after rereading their description last night did I realize that I had made their unshifted form look just like the Vermicious Knids from Roald Dahl's Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator (that's the sequel to Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, aka "Willy Wonka", for those who don't know)...
I suppose I should have included a racial quirk which compels them to spell out "SCRAM" any time five or more of them see members of other races...

-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.