Kalifriki of the Thread as an NPC for Amber Diceless Roleplay

This post is part of an ongoing series about characters from other Zelazny fiction which I have used in a crossover Amber Diceless campaign.  In previous posts I've discussed using characters from Zelazny's Dilvish the Damned stories, characters from his novel Eye of Cat, and the modern-day human sorcerers from his short story Mana From Heaven.  I had great success using these characters together in one of my campaigns, which I described in more detail in the post about Dilvish.

Today I'm sharing my write-up of Kalifriki, a cosmic bounty hunter and assassin who appeared in two Zelazny short stories, "Kalifriki of the Thread" (1989) and "Come Back to the Killing Ground, Alice, My Love" (1992), which were both collected in 2003's Manna From Heaven.

If you haven't read either story, there are spoilers ahead!

In "Kalifriki of the Thread," we first meet the titular hero as he embarks upon a mission to assassinate a Kife, a shapeshifting alien being with the ability to possess other creatures.  Each Kife must be slain several times within a single year in order to be truly killed, and so this story follows Kalifriki across multiple dimensions (shadows) as he chases the Kife through various realities, each filled with fantasy creatures and technological wonders.  At one point Kalifriki is gravely wounded and seeks refuge in the Castle of Toymakers, tended to by automatons belonging to the master toymaker himself, only to discover that the one of the toymaker's lieutentants was in fact possessed by the Kife and that the Castle had become a deadly trap.

We learn much more about Kalifriki in "Come Back to the Killing Ground, Alice, My Love."  In this story, much longer than the original, we get the following delicious exchange between Kalifriki and Alice, who is in need of an assassin, taking place on a Greek island:

     "I can afford you," she told him, reaching for a soft leather bag on the flagging beside her chair.
     "You precede yourself," he responded. "First I must understand what it is that you want of me."
     She fixed him with her blue gaze and he felt the familiar chill of the nearness of death.
     "You kill," she said simply, "Anything, if the price is right. That is what I was told."
     He finished his tea, refilled their cups.
     "I choose the jobs I will accept," he said.  "I do not take on everything that is thrust at me."
     "What considerations govern your choices?" she asked.
     "I seldom slay the innocent," he replied, "by my definitions of innocence. Certain political situations might repel me---"
     "An assassin with a conscience," she remarked.
     "In a broad sense, yes."
     "Anything else?"
     "Madam, I am something of a last resort," he responded, "which is why my services are dear. Any simple cutthroat will suffice for much of what people want done in this area. I can recommend several competent individuals."
     "In other words, you prefer the complicated ones, those offering a challenge to your skills?"
     "'Prefer' is perhaps the wrong word. I am not certain what is the right one-- at least in the Greek language. I do tend to find myself in such situations, though, as the higher-priced jobs seem to fall into that category, and those are normally the only ones that I accept"
     She smiled for the first time that morning, a small bleak thing.
     "It falls into that category," she said, "in that no one ever succeeded in such an undertaking as I require. As for innocence you will find none here. And the politics need be of no concern, for they are not of this world."
     She nibbled on a piece of melon.
     "You have interested me," he said.

To make a long story short, Alice hires Kalifriki to destroy an intelligent artificial black hole... or, as she initially described the target:

     "Aidon," she said. "He is Aidon."
     "The one you seek?" Kalifriki asked. "The one you would have me kill?"
     "Yes," she said. Then, "No. We must go to a special place," she finished.
     "I don't understand," he said. "What place?"
     "Aidon."
     "Is Aidon the name of a man or the name of a place?"
     "Both," she said. "Neither."
     "I have studied with Zen masters and Sufi sages," he said, "but I can make no sense of what you are saying. What is Aidon?"
     "Aidon is an intelligent being. Aidon is also a place. Aidon is not entirely a man. Aidon is not such a place as places are in this world."
     "Ah," he said. "Aidon is an artificial intelligence, a construct."
     "Yes," she said. "No."

Anyway, Kalifriki is an immensely powerful being with potentially dozens of cosmic-powered enemies, making him perfect for use as a player character's "ally with baggage" in the campaign that I had set out to run.  Here is how I wrote his statistics up for Amber Diceless:

Kalifriki of the Thread          [100 Points]
PSYCHE [35 Points]
STRENGTH [15 Points]
ENDURANCE [Chaos Rank]
WARFARE [15 Minutes]

Thread of Cosmic String [10 Points]
     * Valley of Frozen Time shadow [6 Points]
          - Primal Shadow [4 Points]
          - Access Barriers [2 Points]
     * Red Thread Bracelet manifestation
          - Able to "Mold" Shadow Reality [4 Points]
          - No Psyche [0 Points]
          - Innate Connection [*1 Points]

Cosmic String Conjuration and Shadow Travel [35 Points]

Kalifriki bears a thread of cosmic string upon his forearm-- an infinite strand which loops imperceptibly throughout all of time and space, across every dimension, and which touches every possible reality.  He is able to travel along the length of its fibers to any place which he desires, to alter reality, to conjure or create or destroy at will.