Amber Sorcery: IV. Pattern vs. Logrus
Mutant for Hire
manipulator and rearranger of what is. Additionally, it can act as
reinforcement of what already exists. With the Logrus, one is
capable of incredible acts of creation and destruction. In
contrast, Pattern powers work easiest when altering little as
possible. Shadow walking is one of the least draining uses of the
Pattern, because nothing is really changing in Shadow except the
location of the person doing the walking. Trumps also change
little, so they are easy to use. With Logrus powers, often the
trick is not to have a warping effect on the environment, or to
restrict the effect to only the desired result.
Both the Logrus and the Pattern have effects of altering what is,
but they take completely opposite approaches to how to accomplish
the result. While the results may appear similar, the causes are
quite different and have important consequences thereof. Where a
Logrus magician summons up a storm cloud out of nothing, a Pattern
magician would simply alter the weather step by step until a storm
cloud appeared. Or would find a storm cloud somewhere in Shadow
and bring it in to where it was desired. Pattern initiates can
alter the time streams of a Shadow and work subtle manipulations
on it as well. Note that they are not creating or destroying
anything, they are merely shifting around what is.
Logrus powers have a warping effect, but that is quite different
than what the Pattern does. The Logrus takes the natural pattern
of things and forces it into a new alignment. The Pattern alters
the natural pattern of things and lets the balancing forces
themselves shove everything into a new pattern, or takes the
specific effect looked for, and restructures everything so that
the desired effect is a natural consequence of the system. This
approach has advantages and disadvantages.
The disadvantage is that its a lot harder. The Logrus magician
merely has to create a storm cloud with lightning ready. The
Pattern magician has to restructure local weather conditions so
that a storm cloud with lightning forms. The Pattern magician has
a huge expenditure of forces to achieve the same effects as the
Logrus magician. This difficulty explains why Pattern magic isn't
all that popular.
On the other hand, the Logrus magician's cloud can be distrupted
easily once the supporting force for it is removed. Or the Pattern
magician can try to reimpose order which would demand that the
cloud not exist. The Logrus magician has to actually go and
suppress the Pattern cloud, and that suppression could be
disrupted. The Logrus magician could summon up a major disruption
which would mess up the cloud and most things in the area, but the
point is Pattern generated effects are a lot harder to destroy
than Logrus effects.
In general, given a Pattern effect versus a Logrus effect, the
Pattern effect will generally win, however the Pattern effect will
take a lot more energy to create. Unless one has something like
the Jewel of Judgement or a spikard for a power supply, effects
will be more subtle and less showy than their Logrus counterparts
in magic. Logrus magicians in the short term can do quite a bit,
but in the long term results, the Pattern magic will last. (unless
you've nuked an area with primal chaos....)
--
Martin Terman, Mutant for Hire, Mad Scientist, Priest of Shub-Internet
Disclaimer: Nobody else takes me seriously, why should you be the first?
mfte...@phoenix.princeton.edu mfte...@pucc.bitnet ter...@pupgga.princeton.edu
"Sig quotes are like bumper stickers, only without the same sense of relevance"