This is my version of Amber, based on the works of Roger Zelazny and the Amber Diceless Roleplaying Game, and further inspired by interpretations offered by many others.
SEE also Ambergris, a more fanciful version in my world of Megrim, a fairyland when neither the bright nor the dark shies from technology.
I have spent some time researching and dreaming to find some other substance to substitute for amber as the name and substance for my version of Amber. In the end, I have come back to amber because amber has certain unique qualities, as a material and symbolically. I continue to be surprised that more has not been made of these by others who dream of Amber.
Amber is fossilized tree resin. Red for blood, clear for tears, both are crystallized immortalizations of the tree's life-liquid. Amber may also have "inclusions;" some creature whose last moment is preserved for eternity. So amber relates to time and death and preservation. Amber is commonly treated as a mineral, yet is float, can be burned as an incense, and may hold an electric charge or be magnetized.
In short, amber is a mysterious substance of considerable symbolic weight.
This makes the Amberites basically a petty version of the Asgard. Perhaps.
What is Ygg? He is the Tree. What is the blood of the Tree? It is Amber.
There is another branch of The Great Tree of Life which has been cut and rooted elsewhere, growing distinctly yet transubstantially connected. This branch is Fig, Ygg's counterpart in Megrim.
SEE Fig, in Ambergris, in the world of Megrim.
Yggdrasill is The Great Tree of Life. He pre-dates time. As Yggdrasill's twigs penetrate the froth of possible realities, they bring the potential for life. Each of Yggdrasill's leaves is a world, each cluster a universe. Yggdrasill is the life it has grown within that universe. All life is ultimately rooted in Yggdrasill. It is Yggdrasill's touch that brings the possibility of the existence of life to any given world or universe.
As veins work through a leaf, so Yggdrasill's potential permeates onto those universes Yggdrasill's twigs clasp. As cells make up a leaf, so do the living beings, whatever their form or manner may be, embody the life Yggdrasill bring to each of the universes into which Yggraisil insinuates a tendril. Life, all life, is the florescence of the Great Tree.
One could say Yggdrasill infects universes with life, or its potential. (There other, non-Yggdraisil-rooted entities that find this, shall we say, distasteful. That life-without-life, those mechanical minds, intelligences of cold technology find us, and all other true, organic life, an infection as blasphemous as we are, to the cool logic of their manufactured minds, a disease.)
The branch of Yggdrasill centered upon the fruit that is Amber, the branch that is Ygg, is separated from the rest. But separated does not mean unconnected.
Yggdrasill has three great roots.The first Root extends to Niflheim where it drinks from the waters of the Well Hvergelmir. Here where dwell the dead the Great Wyrm Nidhogg, who is Time, gnaws upon the Root. Time will eventually consume the root, and Yggdrasill, who is life itself, with end. End, but can Life truly die? (Note: Nidhogge is more properly Darkness, but I take liberties.)
The second Root extends to Jotunnheim where it drinks from the Well Mimer, the source of Wisdom. ( This is the home of Ymir and his Giant decendents. Ymir the Frost Giant and his cow Audhumbla were the first living beings (oh, really?…). From Ymir's corpse Odin and his brothers Ville and Vil created the earth, seas, and heavens. (Or so they claimed.)
The third Root extends to Asgard where it drinks from the Well Urtharbrunn. Here in the home of the Asiri gods the Norns use the waters of Urtharbrunn to preserve Yggdrasill and protect it from decay. (The three Norns are Urdur, the Past, Verdandi, the Present, and Skuld, the Future.)
(Note that these three Realms are home to roughly balanced divinities, and more divinities dwell elsewhere. They are in communication with each other, not necessarily inimical. They may intermarry, at least for now. But come Ragnarok, and true allegiances will be revealed.
(Asgard is the home of the gods, a realm of golden and silver palaces, accessible only by Bifrost the Rainbow Bridge. The greatest hall in Asgard is Valhalla, Odin's hall. It is populated by warriors who have fallen valiantly in battle and been lifted to Asgard by the Valkyrie. Odin collects heros to guard against Ragnarok, the Twilight of the gods, when they are fated to be slain. Here, the warriors feast upon the flesh of the boar Schrimnir, and drink mead milked from the she-goat Heidrum. They then set out onto the plain before the hall and do battle, until all are hewn to bits. Then they - and Schrimnir - are re-constituted, to do another day. So are tempered the forces which strive to defend Asgard as long as possible.)
The Ulf, a race of radiant beings little less that gods themselves, dwell in Alfheim. Or at least so do these "Elves of Light." The Elves of Dark (or night), decedents of maggots generated from the flesh of Ymir, dwell in clefts and caverns. These shade into Dwarves and Trolls, yet they are different only in nature, not in substance, from their brighter brothers. And they are far the better craftsmen.
(Consult other sources of Norse mythology for further characters and plot lines.)
(Consult Norse mythology for further images for Yggdrasill, but also incorporate other symbolic backgrounds for greater universality. Amber should be no more Norse than Egyptian, Celtic than Chinese.)