The inspiration from this campaign came from a lot of different sources. The original one is without a doubt the whole Abyss oriented adventure to be found in the depths of the Amber Diceless. I'd planned on running it before in a PBEM, but things sort of aborted at one point. I'd toyed with the notion of having both Brand and Deirdre masters of the Abyss power, and waging a war down there in the murky depths, with Deirdre being the exalted master of the Abyss power.

Then, not too long ago, someone proposed on the Amber mailing list that it wasn't really the Unicorn that rose from the Abyss with the Jewel of Judgement, but rather Brand himself disguised as the Unicorn.

Things went sort of down hill from there.

I had a grand epiphany of the notion of brain chiggers, wee creatures that eat away your brains. After much thought as to who would be infected, I chose Brand, and made the brain chiggers a result of his bath in the Fount of Power.

Then came the problem of deciding why brain chiggers would be loitering in the Fount of Power, and I decided to make them natives of Undershadow. Then I decided I'd work in my old Deirdre, Mistress of the Abyss, and the Undershadow became a continuum, drawing loosely from Odekirk's Creation/Entropy view of Undershadow and Abyss.

Then, just because I felt like it, Finndo of De'alund came into the game with an Egyptian motif, and the Elder Gods began to awaken.

And that's about all there is to it.