A BRIEF HISTORY OF AMBER

In the Beginning... | The First Dynasty | The Second Dynasty | Conquest of the Golden Circle

In the Beginning...

The beginnings of Amber are hazy, being over two thousand years in the past.  There are many variations told by mortals, but enough similarity can be found between them to draw a few educated guesses.  It is known that Ra was the first god in Amber, and most tales describe him as coming to Amber out of Shadow from somewhere else - the sky, the sun, and the Land of the Dead are all popular choices, though some say that he simply willed himself into existence.  While some myths tell of a scorched desert landscape, and others tell of a frigid plane below a dark sky, the desolation of Amber before Ra's coming is a popular theme.  Ra either found the Nile there or created it, and in any case turned it into the life-giving river that it has been throughout recorded history.  Many have since searched for the source of the Nile, which appears to now be located beyond Amber's borders; yet some scholars believe that the Nile as such only begins somewhere in Amber, and upstream of that point it is simply an ordinary river in Shadow.

Maat, the white Bird of Truth, factors into many creation myths.  Some say that Ra followed a white bird flying through Shadow to the spot where the Nile arose.  Other accounts hold that Maat has always been at the heart of Amber, and only by bargaining with (or in some tales, battling or seducing) Maat was Ra able claim Amber as his own.  Most accounts agree that Ra founded Amber with Maat's blessing and assistance, together infusing the land with a creative force and magic that radiated outwards through Shadow, creating countless echoes as it passed through the various tides and eddies of creation.  Many demons were driven out of Amber during that time, most of a reptilian, snake-like nature.  The greatest of these was called Apophis, a colossal serpent which Ra either killed or drove deep into the western desert with the help of Maat.

The human settlement of Amber is easier to track than the divine; between 1500 and 2000 years ago, humans began settling along the fertile Nile valley, with the largest gathering forming around Ra's temple at the site now called Memphis.  Most were farmers and fishers, and Ra helped them tame the land and protected them from disease, drought, and famine.  In return they worshipped him.  Over time Memphis overflowed and more settlements sprang up both upstream, closer to the ore-rich areas of the desert, and downstream, in the delta of the Lower Nile.  The wisest of the mortals became scribes, learning writing from Ra, and soon a simple government was established throughout Amber.

In what Ra declared the one-thousandth year of his reign, one of his mistresses (Ra took no mortal wife) bore him a son, Osiris.  While Osiris had the appearance of a mortal child, his strength and intellect were prodigious, vastly outpacing other children.  His skin darkened to its present hue sometime in his early adulthood, when he retreated from public life, first studying for many years under his father's watchful eye, then exploring the borders of Amber and perhaps even into Shadow.  Several mortal generations passed as the father and son safeguarded Amber and fostered its cultural and social development.

The First Dynasty

Then came the birth of Khepri, son of Ra by another mistress.  This event caused something of a stir, Khepri being born as a scarab beetle rather than a human infant.  Some speculated that a curse was upon the house of Ra, though the reactions of the father and elder brother of the insect child have been lost to time or stricken from the scrolls of history.  About a dozen years later, Sokar was born to the same mother, and the human infant was a great relief, celebrated by the populace.  Accounts of the following century have been largely purged, but records remain of one son born to Sokar, called Harmakhis, and a fourth son born to Ra, by the name of Anubis.

Though little historical record of it remains, Sokar and Khepri led a failed rebellion against Ra, which cost them their lives.  Osiris and Anubis stood with Ra, as did Harmakhis, though he went into exile at the war's conclusion.  The parts they played are unclear.  Sokar supposedly called up an army of the dead against Ra, though accounts are vague on whether these were spirits from the Land of the Dead or corpses reanimated through Sokar's sorcerous talents.  After the rebellion Anubis became the god of death, and the ritual of the weighing of the heart began.  His cult spread throughout Amber, raising the prominence of the afterlife to its current elevated position.

For many years, Amber recovered from the rebellion.  Cities were rebuilt, though the war had taken its toll on the population and many buildings were left ruined or empty.  A peace fell over the land, but the palaces and temples were largely silent.  Ra receded from public view, grieving for his lost children, and Osiris kept the government operating in the meantime, largely on his own.  Anubis left his temple in Thebes only rarely.  The glory of early Amber seemed lost.

The Second Dynasty

Five hundred years after the birth of Osiris, and over a hundred years after the rebellion, Ra emerged from his relative solitude apparently rejuvenated.  New constructions of temples and monuments were announced all over Amber, and Osiris began broadening communication throughout the kingdom by crafting Trumps, facilitating a more diverse economy and more effective government.  At about the same time, Ra's fifth son, Ptah, was born.  He spent his childhood learning art and architecture under Osiris' tutelage.

Set was born two years later, to Tefnut, Ptah's mortal mother.  Tefnut also bore Ra his first daughter, Bast, three years after that, the same year that Isis was born to another of Ra's mistresses.  Set and Bast, troublemakers both, formed a close bond at an early age; Isis, on the other hand, spent most of her time with Ra, learning the sorcerous arts.

Geb, Tawaret, and Thoth were born over the next fifteen years, and the halls of the palace were filled with the laughter of children.  Geb and Thoth were full brothers of Isis, and while Thoth idolized his sister and followed in her footsteps towards the mystic arts, Geb was something of a loner as a young man.  

Tawaret was born to Mera, the Queen of Atlantis, conceived during one of Ra's explorations of Shadow.  It was not until she was a young woman that she was revealed to be Ra's daughter, being raised by her mother in Atlantis during the intervening period.

By the time Ptah and Set were twenty-five years old, another half-sister, Wadjet, and two half-brothers, Sobek and Khnum, had arrived.  Wadjet idolized young Set, while Ptah took the brothers Sobek and Khnum under his wing.

Finally, thirty-five years after Ptah's birth, Ra's eleventh son was born, named Horus.  The Amberite population had gone from three to fourteen.  As this new generation grew up, they began to explore the boundaries of Amber and make their first crossings into Shadow.  Their competence, both physical and magical, grew rapidly.

Yet even as their powers grew, Ra's power declined.  At first there were many jokes about Ra wearing himself out while producing so many children, but it soon became apparent that something more serious was at work.  Ra became physically weaker, less able to focus on the task of being the Pharaoh, and seemed to be losing his memory as well.  His last son, Min, was born some sixty years after Horus, but Ra never acknowledged Min as his child.  He sometimes referred to his second batch of children as the "Second Dynasty," but considered Horus to be the last in that generation.  Min took this in stride, spending more of his time as a youth with the palace servants than with his siblings.

When it became apparent that Ra's condition was only worsening, his children began an organized effort to find a cure.  Isis and Khnum remained in Amber to tend to their father; rumors of a relationship developing between them at that time persist.  Osiris also remained in Amber, coordinating his younger siblings, who delved deep into Shadow in search of a cure for the malady.  As Ra sank deeper into his own mind, Osiris began taking on the duties of the Pharaoh as well.  While all efforts were made to heal him, Ra's deterioration only accelerated.  Then one day, he simply vanished.

Fifty years later, Osiris officially took the throne.

Conquest of the Golden Circle

It was during the scouring of Shadow in search of a cure for Ra's madness - and later for Ra himself - that Amberites gradually became aware of the relative stability of the Shadows immediately surrounding Amber.  Some have even theorized that it was the near-constant journey of Ra's children back and forth between Shadow and Amber that stabilized the Shadows which became known as the Golden Circle.  Thoth, Isis, and Osiris had studied enough of distant Shadow growing more stable by continued Amberite presence to predict that unless Amber closed its borders completely, the Shadows of the Golden Circle would maintain their realities indefinitely.  Travel to these lands could be commonplace and free of much of the dangers found on more distant Shadow walks - one of which Thoth apparently fell prey to in his research.  What they did not predict was that their comings and goings would pave the way for travel into Amber by outside forces, through the creation of Shadowpaths.

It was thus something of a surprise when a ship full of Shadow-dwellers, led by an exceptionally strong, trident-wielding man named Poseidon, sacked a town in the Nile delta without warning.  Bast Trumped Geb and together they found and boarded the ship before it retreated back into the Great Green.  They questioned the captain and his crew, learning that Poseidon considered himself a god from a distant land greater than Amber.  Though Poseidon fought well, Geb taught him a lesson in manners.  After imprisoning the so-called god and his crew, interrogations revealed that they had come from Greece - a Shadow known to several family members - and that he was part of a family of gods not unlike the lords of Amber.  Min and Isis were able to determine that he's wasn't of Ra's bloodline, and Poseidon was executed shortly thereafter.  With information from his crew, the oversea Shadowpath to Greece was discovered, and expeditionary forces were sent out under the command of Ptah and Isis, who could better hide themselves than their animal-headed siblings.  They set up deep networks of agents in the Greek city-states, and compiled detailed accounts of the gods of Olympus, their strengths and weaknesses.  Twenty years later, Amber's armies invaded as most of the Olympians and mortal leaders were assassinated, and in the chaos Greece fell quickly to the order imposed by Amber.  Many Greeks were imported to Amber as slaves.  Hera, the one Olympian left alive by the end of the war, was installed as the Queen of Greece under Amber's watchful eye.

Encouraged by the ease of the Greek conquest and the prosperity it brought to Amber, Osiris surveyed the other Golden Circle Shadows, settling upon Libya, across the Western Desert, as the next target.  Horus, Set, and Sobek were sent in first, to pick off leaders when they could and to study the Libyan terrain and tactics.  They were successful in establishing a foothold on the outskirts of the Libyan empire, but were unprepared for the organized resistance of Libya's leaders.  They had sought to remove a few key leaders and move in during the resulting chaos, but found that Libya shared leadership among a council of very capable generals who kept themselves locked away in the fortress capital of Carthage. Though the Amberites were able to pick off field commanders with ease, and struck down those Libyan gods who dared face them in hand-to-hand combat, the Libyans quickly caught on and kept their leaders hidden and moving.  Not only that, but they also struck back - Horus was badly wounded in an assassination attempt, and returned to Amber, while Set and Sobek suffered assorted minor injuries.  Osiris brought in Khnum to lead Amber's armies across the desert to reinforce the beachhead held by Set and Sobek, and a protracted war began in earnest.  Amber faced problems with maintaining their supply lines, harried by Libyan guerrillas at every turn. Only by sending most of the family into Libya was Osiris able to press the front forward, and even then the going was slow against the better-supplied Libyans, whose generals were nearly as capable as Amber's.  For nearly twenty years the Libyans held Amber at bay, until a surprise raid led by Horus infiltrated the keep at Carthage and slaughtered the Libyan pantheon, destroying most of the keep in the process.  Their brilliant leaders destroyed, the Libyan resistance soon crumbled, and the war ended within the year.  Horus was hailed as the hero of the Libyan war, and Osiris named him heir to the throne of Amber.  The victory was bittersweet, though - Amber had learned that it was not unstoppable, and that even its strongest children were vulnerable.  The war also kept Tawaret from Atlantis when it sank beneath the waves, and her self-imposed exile further fractured the family.

Osiris learned the lessons of Libya well, and before the war was over, he had already sent Geb, Amber's most outstanding general, to scout the eastern frontier.  On the outskirts of Assyria Geb began laying fortifications, building up forces and a base both to guard Amber's border and to facilitate an assault of Assyria.  Once the preparations were complete, Geb was reinforced by Set and Bast, who began infiltrating the Assyrian cities weakening them for a surprise attack.  Assyria was prepared, however - Amber's first incursions found themselves walking into ambushes, and only through Geb's prowess were the troops able to withdraw.  The spy networks of Bast and Set had been compromised, and a purge of their agents commenced.  During one of these purges, Geb unexpectedly came across a lioness-headed goddess, later identified as Sekhmet.  Confident he had found the Assyrian responsible for Amber's embarrassing failed attacks, Geb engaged her in combat.  The details of that battle have been lost, but the unthinkable result was that the ferocious Sekhmet mauled and devoured her opponent.  Though fragments of his body were recovered and interned at his temple, Geb's heart was lost, presumably eaten by his opponent.  Geb never appeared at Anubis's gate.

The brutal destruction of an Amberite at the hands of a foreign opponent sent shockwaves through the Amber pantheon.  Bast deserted the Assyrian outpost, returning to Bubastis to mourn for many years.  Osiris sent Horus to replace her, which in turn drove Set from Assyria.  With his siblings questioning his leadership and mourning Geb, Osiris found himself without much support for the war which had just begun.  Ptah was busy building memorials to his brother; Sobek and Set had taken the opportunity to do some traveling through more distant Shadows, and of the remaining siblings only Khnum had the skills to take on the role of Amber's field-marshal.  Though there were murmurs that Osiris should start leading his war on the Golden Circle from the front, the Pharaoh actually retreated from public life, leaving more and more of the strategic decisions in the hands of Khnum and Horus.  The war ground to a standstill, with Assyria unable to drive out the fortified Amberites and Amber unable to make much headway against Assyria.

For fifty years there was a stalemate on the frontier, while those in Amber settled back into their old lives, and many of Ra's children had children of their own.  Khnum's forays into Assyria grew less frequent, and word spread of how the Amberite fortress there - named Fort Geb after the god who built it - was becoming more of an expatriate palace than a military installation.  The peace was broken quickly, though.  Khnum, after discovering a supposed weakness in Assyria's defenses, led a charge deep into Assyria, to the city of Arbela.  His forces were surrounded, though, and by the time Horus arrived with reinforcements, they had been wiped out.  Horus, facing superior numbers, was forced to withdraw, and Khnum's body was never recovered, nor did he appear in the Land of the Dead.  It is assumed he shared his brother Geb's fate.  Set and Horus dueled soon after, the conflict between them having simmered since Horus was named heir to the throne, and finally boiling over as Set accused Horus of incompetence in his failed rescue.  While accounts of their battle vary, Horus was victorious, and Anubis took Set's broken body from the scene.

For the time being, Amber's foreign wars have fizzled.  Now, nearly sixty years after Set's defeat, Osiris is turning once again to conquest, and his focus seems to be towards Nubia to the south.  Whether he can muster support for this war from the younger generation remains to be seen.