And a big, powerful man regarded me from the next card. He resembled me quite strongly, save that his jaw was heavier, and I knew that he was bigger than I, though slower. His strength was a thing out of legend. He wore a dressing gown of blue and grey clasped around the middle with a wide, black belt, and he stood laughing. About his neck, on a heavy cord, there hung a silver hunting horn. He wore a fringe beard and a light moustache. In his right hand he held a goblet of wine.
Nine Princes In Amber
The strongest guy in the universe.
The average Amberite, with not much work, is pretty strong. Listen to Corwin: ''Suddenly, and without thinking, I picked up a huge overstuffed chair and hurled it perhaps thirty feet across the room. It broke the back of the man it struck.''
Or how about after Corwin gets free of his dungeon cell, still not completely recovered, and starts hefting rocks, big rocks: ''One of them must have weighed around four hundred pounds, and I did not roll it, I hefted it and set it in place.''
So here's Corwin, the guy who lifts cars (yeah, he can do that too), throws chairs, and carries boulders. Gérard is so strong Corwin is scared of him.
It's not just that Gérard can lift heavier things, although he can certainly handle double the load of his weaker siblings. It's that, in hand-to-hand combat, he's unbeatable. Imagine a muscular world-class fighter, boxer or wrestler, your choice. They're built for dishing out damage, yeah, but they can also take it. How many punches will it take for a weaker fighter to do any real damage to that kind of guy?
Against Corwin, Gérard took half a dozen punches to the face, neck and body, and, at least one solid kick to the stomach, all blows that would have killed a normal man. And Corwin did not win that fight.
Aside from his great strength, Gérard is also known for his dogged loyalty to Amber. His instant, unthinking response will be to rescue, or defend, any relatives he sees in danger. And woe be to anyone who gets in the way of Gérard when he's on a mission of mercy! He, alone among his siblings, is willing to protect an innocent, to give the benefit of the doubt.
The flip side of this is that he'll give you absolute hell if he thinks you're up to no good. A ''lesson'' from Gérard usually means having to engage in a little friendly wrestling. If you're an Amberite with no particular weaknesses, you'll be out of traction within the week.
Gérard acted as Amber's Regent while most of his siblings went to fight Chaos at the edge of the Abyss. During this period Sand and Yvonne returned to Amber, Llewellyn helped out a lot, and several of Oberon's grandchildren were revealed. Nowadays Gérard spends most of his time out with the fleet, or in the Golden Circle. He's rarely seen in Amber.
Gérard is the second child of Rilga, Oberon's fifth wife. His elder brother is Julian, and his younger sister Marion died on a Pattern walk many years ago.
Tuesday, August 19, 1997 Suhuy |
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Adapted from Erick Wujcik |