Dworkin Barimen
What do you think you know? It should have been erased and started again. I should have been erased and started again. Now it is too late. Repairing Amber was a raindrop in the ocean, a band-aid on a gaping wound. This universe is sick. It is dying, preyed upon by the weak, the cruel and the inordinately stupid. The game is old and no longer worthy of being played. I wash my hands of this idiocy. I want no part of the mess that Oberon's children and children's children made of what we once cherished. Do not speak to me. Do not seek me. I will greet even a smile with a dagger. This universe has no room for me after She disappeared.
Name: Dworkin
Titles: Dworkin Barimen (the anagram is clearly 'in Amber'). Dworkin the Apostate.
Rules: Nothing.
Height: Varies (he is a shapeshifter). 5'2" with his generally hunchbacked form. Up to 6'0" if he so wishes. Weight: 181 lbs.
Hair color: Graying brown. Eye color: Brown.
Distinguishing marks: His humped back, when he cares to appear in that form. A lot of scars.
Appearance: As noted above, Dworkin is a shapeshifter, of a level of skill and finesse completely unheard of in Arcadia for over a thousand years. He can appear as anyone and anything, with the constraints of mass, inclination and his personal aesthetic. He prefers the innocuous shape of the wild-eyed bearded hunchback, but after his encounter at the Pattern, he switched to a straighter, skinnier, slightly taller form before he retreated into Shadow. Generally, in almost any incarnation, his hair will be a silvered brown and his eyes will be dark and deep.
Colors: None.
Symbol: None.
Personality: It is difficult to say what Dworkin is like, or what he was ever like. The only living people who might remember him from a sane day are Gerard and Random, and neither would attest to any particular closeness or fondness either to or from the old man. They could speak of sharpness, intelligence, wit, a fondness for art and artists, and a venom-tongued disdain for Oberon's preference for martial skills over magical ones. Those who met him only after his mind was broken, not just once but numerous times, saw either a wreck of a man, a confused and bitter madman, or a chess player whose only interest in the generations after was as living pieces.
Parentage: Unknown.
Age: Unknown. Ancient. Older than Amber. Millions of years is a good guess.
Known siblings: None.
Known children: Oberon, most likely.
Known agents: None.
Dworkin as Parent: Who knows? History and record, particularly in the Courts of Chaos, indicate that Oberon was the child of Dworkin, and also that he may have had another family before Oberon, a House in Chaos which was disbanded when he stole the Unicorn's eye. No one living could remember or attest. Oberon certainly seemed to regard Dworkin more as a peer than as a father, and told his own children that Dworkin was a sorcerer that he had rescued from a 'fate he had brought upon himself.' Despite a feeling of kinship and perhaps of love (he did imprison him after all, rather than killing him, even after he spoke of destroying Amber), is likely that Dworkin was at least as much of an absentee dad as Oberon would later become, taking little interest until such time as his son was old enough to be a power in his own right.
Dworkin as Employer: Employer may be a strong word for anything that Dworkin has ever been. He is a rebel, a loner, a teacher, an architect, any number of things, but he doesn't tend to be able to stomach anyone's company for very long, most particularly if that someone isn't self-motivated enough to form his own opinions and go after his own goals. Dworkin has pulled strings before, manipulated others and worked them into his game, but he never actually hired them or paid them. Even those students he once had, in the art of Trump or of sorcery, could better be called proteges than employees.
Dworkin as Friend: The closest things to friends he had were Oberon, Suhuy and Brand. One was his son, whose death rocked and shaked him, making him no longer see any reason to remain near to Amber at all. One was his successor and constant rival, and the other was his student, a combination of his greatest pride and his greatest disappointment. In no case could it be said that he was one way to his friends, it depended entirely on the person, on the nature of the relationship. The only consistencies to be found seem to be that he cares more about them than he lets on even to himself, and that they are the rare people to whom he speaks honestly and openly.
Dworkin Romantically: Unfathomable. Generally disinterested. So far from the standard sense of humanoid coupling and romance that the very thought bores him. Dworkin could be said to be pansexual in a very literal sense, as attracted to non-human creatures, animals, even trees as he is to a good looking man or woman. What captivates him is a spirit or a soul, particularly purity of soul, though he finds the act of coupling in itself less interesting than the pursuit and tends to lose about half his interest afterwards. He can remain friendly with a past paramour, but he rarely seeks a repeat encounter.
Name: Dworkin
Titles: Dworkin Barimen (the anagram is clearly 'in Amber'). Dworkin the Apostate.
Rules: Nothing.
Height: Varies (he is a shapeshifter). 5'2" with his generally hunchbacked form. Up to 6'0" if he so wishes. Weight: 181 lbs.
Hair color: Graying brown. Eye color: Brown.
Distinguishing marks: His humped back, when he cares to appear in that form. A lot of scars.
Appearance: As noted above, Dworkin is a shapeshifter, of a level of skill and finesse completely unheard of in Arcadia for over a thousand years. He can appear as anyone and anything, with the constraints of mass, inclination and his personal aesthetic. He prefers the innocuous shape of the wild-eyed bearded hunchback, but after his encounter at the Pattern, he switched to a straighter, skinnier, slightly taller form before he retreated into Shadow. Generally, in almost any incarnation, his hair will be a silvered brown and his eyes will be dark and deep.
Colors: None.
Symbol: None.
Personality: It is difficult to say what Dworkin is like, or what he was ever like. The only living people who might remember him from a sane day are Gerard and Random, and neither would attest to any particular closeness or fondness either to or from the old man. They could speak of sharpness, intelligence, wit, a fondness for art and artists, and a venom-tongued disdain for Oberon's preference for martial skills over magical ones. Those who met him only after his mind was broken, not just once but numerous times, saw either a wreck of a man, a confused and bitter madman, or a chess player whose only interest in the generations after was as living pieces.
Parentage: Unknown.
Age: Unknown. Ancient. Older than Amber. Millions of years is a good guess.
Known siblings: None.
Known children: Oberon, most likely.
Known agents: None.
Dworkin as Parent: Who knows? History and record, particularly in the Courts of Chaos, indicate that Oberon was the child of Dworkin, and also that he may have had another family before Oberon, a House in Chaos which was disbanded when he stole the Unicorn's eye. No one living could remember or attest. Oberon certainly seemed to regard Dworkin more as a peer than as a father, and told his own children that Dworkin was a sorcerer that he had rescued from a 'fate he had brought upon himself.' Despite a feeling of kinship and perhaps of love (he did imprison him after all, rather than killing him, even after he spoke of destroying Amber), is likely that Dworkin was at least as much of an absentee dad as Oberon would later become, taking little interest until such time as his son was old enough to be a power in his own right.
Dworkin as Employer: Employer may be a strong word for anything that Dworkin has ever been. He is a rebel, a loner, a teacher, an architect, any number of things, but he doesn't tend to be able to stomach anyone's company for very long, most particularly if that someone isn't self-motivated enough to form his own opinions and go after his own goals. Dworkin has pulled strings before, manipulated others and worked them into his game, but he never actually hired them or paid them. Even those students he once had, in the art of Trump or of sorcery, could better be called proteges than employees.
Dworkin as Friend: The closest things to friends he had were Oberon, Suhuy and Brand. One was his son, whose death rocked and shaked him, making him no longer see any reason to remain near to Amber at all. One was his successor and constant rival, and the other was his student, a combination of his greatest pride and his greatest disappointment. In no case could it be said that he was one way to his friends, it depended entirely on the person, on the nature of the relationship. The only consistencies to be found seem to be that he cares more about them than he lets on even to himself, and that they are the rare people to whom he speaks honestly and openly.
Dworkin Romantically: Unfathomable. Generally disinterested. So far from the standard sense of humanoid coupling and romance that the very thought bores him. Dworkin could be said to be pansexual in a very literal sense, as attracted to non-human creatures, animals, even trees as he is to a good looking man or woman. What captivates him is a spirit or a soul, particularly purity of soul, though he finds the act of coupling in itself less interesting than the pursuit and tends to lose about half his interest afterwards. He can remain friendly with a past paramour, but he rarely seeks a repeat encounter.