Broken Patterns

Just as Amber is reflected in Shadow, so is the Pattern. These reflections gradually become bent
and twisted, and eventually, ones appear with holes in them, holes which allow someone crazy
enough to walk through the hole then move to the center between the lines. While this requires a
strong will (Chaos or better Psyche), anyone can try to walk a Broken Pattern and gain power over
Shadow. Most of those who try belong to various societies of sorcerors who pass on the knowledge
and the opportunity of initiation to their disciples over the years.
There are, however, some problems with walking a Broken Pattern. For one thing, you end up with
a defective power. That hole you walked through to get into it keeps cropping up in everything you
do with it, introducing a flaw.
For example, if you try to walk through Shadow, you end up in all the least pleasant parts of the
shadows you go through. Bandits frequently show up, broken glass litters the road, you frequently
ride into war zones and nuclear test sites, it alternates between sandstorms, 120 degree heat,
snow, hail, and torrential downpours.
This flaw shows up in some way in just about everything you do with the Pattern. Basically, you get
fifteen points of Bad Stuff that only applies when using the Broken Pattern. This tends to make your
life fairly lousy. It also takes about twice as much movement to perform any power that requires
movement as the real Pattern does. (Thus, normal shadow travel is at half the speed)
Finally, the Break in the Pattern will show up as a flaw in the initiates mind, personality, or body as
well. This flaw is called the Pattern's Price. The Broken Pattern initiate will have one personality trait
or mental aspect (usually an undesirable one) which is magnified several times, or some physical
flaw which may never be healed or overcome (because the body will revert back to it's flawed state,
in order to conform to the Broken Pattern). Whenever a Broken Pattern initiate fails in the use of a
Broken Pattern power, the Pattern's Price will manifest itself more strongly for a time, as the Break
in the Pattern gains strength within the initiate.
There is only one way to cure the flaws caused by Broken Pattern Imprint--Walk the real thing. This
requires having the blood of Oberon, however, in which case you were likely better off walking the
real thing in the first place.
Most of the powers of a Broken Pattern initiate are just like those of regular Pattern, except flawed.
A few cases of either new or heavily affected powers are discussed below.

Broken Pattern Power Breakdown

Requires Chaos Psyche
● [0] Imprint
○ [3] Shadow Walk
■ [3] Hellride to Artifacts & Creatures
○ [3] Summon the Sign of the Broken Pattern
■ [1] Hang Spells on the Broken Pattern
■ [3] Broken Pattern Defense
■ [3] Broken Pattern Sight
■ [3] Mindwalk the Summoned Sign
■ [3] Broken Pattern Tendrils
■ [3] Scrying Lens
 ■ [3] Teleport
■ [3] Support multiple Scrying Lenses
■ [3] Manipulate Probability
■ [3] Dodge the Break
■ [2+] Mend the Break
■ [3] Manipulate Probability without the Sign
■ [3] Shadow Pockets
■ [3] Edit/Mold​?/​ Erase​?​/Gate​?​ Shadow

Differences from normal ​Pattern​ Powers

Blood Curses
Broken Pattern adepts are able to utter a blood curse, just like those with the blood of Amber.
However, the Broken Pattern adepts curse is more draining than that of an Amberite, costing the
Broken Pattern adept her life in all cases. However, this curse is weaker than that of an Amberite,
because no matter what the curse, the Break in the Pattern manifests itself in the curse as well,
providing some way for the target of the curse to break the curse. There will always be some action
which the target of the curse can perform to break the curse. How the target of the curse can find
out what action is required is up to the GM, who probably will have a pretty good idea for a quest
before the curse is even uttered.

Hellride to Artifacts & Creatures

Broken Pattern initiates tend to hit the worst of Hellriding routes. The Break in the Pattern also
prevents initiates of the Broken Pattern from ever being able to find the exact Shadow they want
unless they have been to the Shadow before, or they follow someone to the Shadow. They can
seek whatever Shadow they desire, but the Break will manifest itself as an imperfection in the
Shadow they finally arrive in, where the Shadow does not live up to their desires in some way. All
Hellriding to intangibles are affected this way, so seeking someone in Shadow also doesn't work,
instead leading to some flawed shadow of the subject.

Hang Spells on the Broken Pattern

Having learned to call the Sign of the Broken Pattern to mind, the Adept can now hang spells on the
Broken Pattern.
You can find keeps of power to draw energy from (for every keep you intend to “keep” you have to
pay in merit points.) The Keep has the problem that if you aren't at it, you can't tap into the power
source. Its a great place to live, but you lose the advantages of the place when leaving it. There are
various magical sources in Shadow. Most of these places require some work or attunement in order
to tap into them, and the generic rule is that anyone can tap into them, so if you wander to a place to
recharge a lot, someone else can discover that place and use it too.
You can create artifacts that can hold energy for later use (artifact merit).
You can sacrifice creatures to gain energy from.
The system for spell creation works on the principle that given enough time, a magician can be able
to create lots of types of spells, as opposed to being limited to a known grimore of spells. Of course,
a magician can't create time travel spells because of a lack of power over time. .
In general, the less a spell alters what is going on, is better , since nothing is changed. It's easier to
alter something to a determined quality rather than to determine the innate quality.
You can turn magical energies into other forms of energies, transformation of raw magic power into
power of another type is a freebie in complexity.
Two more features of a spell are Range and Area. These affect, of course, the distance that a spell
works over. In theory, one could increase the area across all Shadow, but even the Pattern would
have a headache on that one. In practical terms even, only the area around the caster is doable in a
short period of time. If one cares to spend more time, it becomes easier.
Now some tradeoffs can be made. The power needed to generate the spell and the complexity of
the spell can be traded off. That is, one can increase spell efficiency at the price of being more
complex to cast, or one can waste power and get the spell castable. Similar results go for casting
time. The smarter you are, the sneakier your spells can get. Its also why having a source like the
Keep is handy, you can get sloppy and just burn power in wasteful magic.
Be warned that such spells may come out somewhat warped, or may slide into the Break at
inopportune times and vanish, though the latter is rare.
(Not including: defences, getting items/creatures from shadow, power words, blood curses, tendrils,
manipulate shadows including the one you're in, trump magic, magic resistance, pattern sight,
Scrying, gate opening, Teleportation).

Broken Pattern Defense

This works much like Pattern Defense for someone with Pattern Imprint, except that the Pattern has
a Break in it, making the initiate vulnerable to those who can sense the Break. Anyone who studies
the initiate with Logrus Sight or Pattern Lens can see the Break, and attack through the Broken
Pattern Defense with no resistance.

Broken Pattern Sight

The Break in the Pattern manifests itself in a blind spot in the adepts Sight. Certain things will
simply not be visible to the Broken Pattern adept through the Broken Pattern. There is usually no
rhyme or reason to what is left out, but the blind spot will sometimes manifest to miss things which
the adept subconsciously does not wish to see (such as things which would be frightening or which
would conflict with the adepts beliefs). Even worse, Broken Pattern Sight will occasionally show
things which are not true, such as showing a card to be a Trump, when it is really just a regular
playing card. The Broken Pattern also usually takes longer to employ than the true Pattern, as the
adept has to look at things for a few moments before the lens comes fully into focus.
Once the Pattern is summoned to your mind you can use it as a great lens, to peer into Shadow.
Anyone, anything can be observed in this way. And, having found them, you may reach through the
Pattern to touch mind to mind, or even physically. The Break in the Pattern might cause you to find
someone/something else instead or even someone that's been looking for you and he can use the
connection to hurt you.
Finding a particular item, or person, is, however, not as easy as it might be. Frankly, there's a lot of
ground to cover. For instance Just scanning all of Castle Amber could take hours, especially if you
include the myriad of dungeon tunnels. On the other hand, if your
Psyche is sharp, and if the object of your search is not disguised, then things can go much more
quickly.
The breaks in Shadow, caused by those who have the Power to move from one Shadow to another,
can also be detected through the Pattern Lens. The character looks for tiny disruptions in Shadow,
attempting to find their source locations in the Shadow being studied, which, other Shadows are
involved, and what Power was used in the disruption.
How long this takes depends on how old the trail and how major the disruption. If a single Hellrider
passed through the Shadow just
minutes before, the traces could be detected in just a minute or two.
If the passage had taken place the day before, it might take an hour to find the traces. However, if
the disturbance was major, as is the case if a vast army was led through, then the traces will be
obvious and easy to find even days later.

Broken Pattern Tendrils

Non-physical tendrils may be manifested. though they cannot manipulate physical objects they may
be used to direct magical effects, or a conduit for a psychic contact. With effort the tendrils can be
used to reach into adjacent shadows.

Scrying Tendrils

The initiate can now extend a Broken Pattern Tendril through shadow to spy into other shadows.
It's a slow and clumsy process, especially since you tend to end up passing it through the worst
parts of Shadow. The further you extend the tendril, the greater the chance the Break manifests
and snaps the tendril.

Broken Pattern Web

One can now do either of two tricks (You need a LOT of psyche to do both at once). First, you can
call up the sign of the Broken Pattern and infuse it into shadow around you. The shadow becomes
somewhat resistant to molding via the Primal Powers and very resistant to things like
Shadow-molding item properities (though as always, BP ultimately will get beaten down with Logrus
and Pattern proper). This also grants you a high degree of awareness of what is going on in the
area, as you remain linked into the 'web'. You can also choose to make the area either more or less
amenable to sorcery.

Alternately, you can call up the Broken Pattern as a glowing shield against Sorcery, Logrus Tendrils,
etc. Unlike BP Defense, this will shield everything you can fit behind it; the more Psyche you have,
the bigger it gets. Unfortunately, people may be able to exploit the Break…

Drawing energy from the Pattern

By focusing on the Pattern you can draw Willpower from it once a day. Every critically failed dice is
energy wasted through the break subtracted from the successes.

Dodge the Break

Through practice and familiarity with the Break in their Imprint, the adept has learned a bit about
how and where it manifests. Shadow travel can now be done at near-normal speeds, and the
danger of Hellrides is greatly reduced. The blurriness and inaccuracy of Sight and Scrying is mostly
cleared up.

Mend the Break

The adept has even more control over the Break, and is learning how to compensate for it. The
cost is [2] points for every point of Bad Stuff manifested by the Break the adept is able to avoid. The
Break can never be completely avoided (minimum 1 Bad stuff), and this power does not do anything
to lessen the Price of the Pattern for the adept in any way.

Edit/Mold​?​/Erase​?​/Gate​?​ Shadow
As Pattern, with the Break adversely affecting the outcome of the characters desires. The adept can
also Manifest the Break, forcing their imprint of the Broken Pattern upon a Shadow. This has the
effect of introducing the adepts Break in the Pattern into the Shadow in some form. The Broken
Pattern adept can never choose how the Break manifests itself; she can only force the Break to
manifest, causing the Shadow to manifest some flaw. The Shadow will not take on the flaw
immediately, but will change to conform over the course of one week Amber time (so if the time
stream is different, the break will take more or less time than a week to manifest).
This Breaking of a Shadow is tenuous, though, and anyone with Advanced Pattern Imprint will
notice the flaw as soon as the Shadow is entered or viewed with the Pattern Lens, and may change
the Shadow back to normal. Any influence of Pattern on the Shadow for 24 hours or more (such as
the presence of someone with Pattern Imprint) will cause the Shadow to revert to normal, though
the change may take some time, as the original warping did.
If a Broken Pattern Adept makes a mistake while imposing the break, the Shadow will be
permanently damaged, but so will the adept. The Shadow will have a hole ripped in it, which can
only be mended by someone with Advanced Pattern Imprint, and the Broken Pattern adept will be
physically wounded and the Pattern's Price will permanently grow stronger. The adept can choose
to cause this permanent rift if desired, and suffer the consequences.