Amber Rules! The two Amber series by Roger Zelazny are
amongst my favourite books of all time. The Amber Diceless Roleplaying
system was my first exposure to diceless gaming and it has been a great
success with my friends and I.
This page is devoted to the character diaries of Harlequin, my first Amber character, who played in that first Amber game with Mikal, played by Jeff McNair, and Calvin, played by Erik Smith.
There were three segments to that campaign, Jeff reffed the first and last, I the second. Since then I have run a short pseudo Amber game set in my True Game shadow (based on the books by Sheri S Tepper).
It is equally dedicated to my second and third Amber characters, Gareth and Kaylem, who I played in several Amber campaigns with my friends Jeff, Bruce, Peggy, Diane and Beverly in Minneapolis.
Gareth was the character I had intended to play, indeed I played him as an NPC in a few aborted games with Jeff that eventually evolved in the the start of my campaign with a largely different group. Unfortunately Bruce's character Mathias had too many powers in common with Gareth. I didn't want to have two characters with the same specialities in the group. Gareth stayed around, but faded into the background while I made a bit of a mess trying to introduce Kaylem so that I would have a character to play when my campaign segment ended and Jeff took over the reins.
So they got Kaylem. A little hurredly thrown together. Initially (and probably still) distrusted and disliked by his peers, but none the less a character I came to love as I watched him grow, mature, fail, suffer and try yet again. Just like everybody else's Amber characters...
Harlequin, who often uses the name Alain, is a sorcerer from an Arabian shadow. He is small and slim with fair hair and blue eyes. His voice is not very deep and he is always clean shaven, making it easy to mistake him for a child. He always carries Pathfinder, his many shaped shadow shifting sword. Despite his preoccupation with magic Harlequin is also a skilled swordsman, musician and sculptor.
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It is a great pity that the final few volumes of Harlequin's diary were never typed, they are still written in my illegible hand on a few scruffy sheets of paper. Sheets of paper which although they are no longer several thousand miles away, having returned to New Zealand some time ago, are still waiting forlornly to be typed. I am sorry to leave you hanging.
Perhaps you will be mollified by the diaries of Kaylem, who having battled his way through intrigues of Amber and Chaos is now enjoying a well deserved retirement in Delazny. There is also a short story Gaijin which has some peripheral connection with Amber.
Unfortunately the Kaylem diaries are also unfinished. The last few pages are not yet typed and there are large portions for which no diaries are available as I was reffing at the time and did not have the liberty of lavishing so much attention on Kaylem alone.
I hope my friends who enjoyed many an Amber evening with me will likewise enjoy this insight into the man they knew as Kaylem. Uler, Mathias, Arvada, Meloche and Alaric, this is for you.
For those who don't know him, Kaylem is a swordsman. He never claimed to be more. A man out of shadow who eventually had his Amber heritage forced upon him. I like to see him as a somewhat reluctant hero. Happy to help, but only on his own terms. As for how others perceive him, well that will have to wait until the others publish their character diaries.
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] Copyright © 1996-1999 John Cleland. Last updated 26-June-1999