The Adventures of Patricia "Trick" Tillinghast

Patricia "Trick" Tillinghast is one of the two main characters who I played in "Grey Angels," a Buffy/Angel RPG campaign that ran from 2005 to 2009, and that later resumed as a play-by-post game from 2012 to 2014. I have talked about Trick in a very piecemeal fashion in several past Studded Plate columns:

• The characters who become a part of you (3/19/2015): How Trick affected my tastes in music.
• #RPGaDay 2016: Days 1-6 (8/6/2016): How Trick got a sister.
• #RPGaDay 2016: Day 11 (8/11/2016): How Trick has influenced how I play other heroes.
• #RPGaDay 2017: Day 7 (8/6/2017): How Trick got free of Dionysus (and bonus portrait).
• TBT: #Drawlloween 2016 (8/17/2017): Trick's Animal costume.
• #RPGaDay2018: Days 13-16 (8/17/2018): How Trick got free of Dionysus (shorter version).
• #RPGaDay2018: Days 28-31 (8/29/2018): No longer the straightest girl in town.
• #Inktober2018: Days 27-31 (10/31/2018): Two portraits of Trick.
• Cassilda Tillinghast (11/13/2018): My Pathfinder Society character who was very loosely inspired by Trick.

Just before this past Christmas, GA's co-GMs announced their wish to run a reunion story arc to finally wrap up some of the major plot lines that were still unresolved when we last shelved the campaign. We did some discussion online about what had happened to our characters since we last saw them (in 2010, in game), bringing them up to the current day (2019-2020), then did some plot-light PBP roleplaying to get reacquainted with our old friends and the changes they underwent in the jump forward. We're hoping to start some real-time RPing this spring, though that will also need to be done online since we no longer all live in the same state. (The others still live in the Greater Boston area, but I moved to Kentucky during our last PBP-only period.)

I never expected to be able to play Trick again, and the jump ahead means that many of the changes we were planning for her have taken effect, so I am very excited about this reunion game!

A Brief History of the World

To explain some of the changes Trick has gone through, I first need to summarize a few of the basic premises of the campaign:

• The "Greyverse" is inherently connected to the "Buffyverse": Slayers, Watchers, vampires, and demons all exist, and all are more or less as portrayed in the Buffy and Angel TV shows. Several characters from those shows have made appearances in GA, but the GMs are deliberately not making any of them the focus of our campaign. It's the same world, but we're interested in different characters, locations, and adventures. 
• Most of the campaign takes place in the fictional city of Shadowgard, located in northeastern Massachusetts, a few years after the mass activation of Slayers during Buffy's last season. This part of New England is the heart of Lovecraft country, so versions of Arkham and Innsmouth exist here. In game, Lovecraft's works were based on some germ of truth, though he regularly changed the details to pass them off as fiction.
• One of the main plots of "Grey Angels" is the resurgence of the Thyrian nation: a lost ancient civilization of Amazon-like warrior women who predated the Slayers (and served as inspiration for the Shadowmen's creation of the First Slayer). Many of the PCs are reincarnated Thyrians, and they and their friends spent much of the original campaign delving into prophecies about the return of Thyria, and learning how to unlock that power for themselves.
• The three senior Thyrians (all sisters, and initially Slayers) can join their powers with that of certain ancient relics in order to grant supernatural powers to new Thyrians. This can either unlock the full potential of a reincarnated Thyrian, or empower a trusted ally with no previous mystical ties to that group. At the time that the game last ended, this process had recently been formalized into a probationary period for training new candidates in the history and combat skills needed by all Thyrians. 
• Over a dozen Thyrian "castes" or "legacies" exist, each with different powers, but all include enhanced physical traits and rapid healing similar to a Slayer's. Most, but far from all, Thyrians are women, and the organization as a whole is very outspoken about the rights of women and minorities of all kinds.
• The Thyrians also established a school for superpowered teens, the Phoenix Academy, in order to give those children a safer place to learn how to use and control their powers. 
• The existence of the supernatural was forcibly revealed to the world in 2008 during the Ragnarok, a war in which a new pantheon of evil gods attempted to seize power. Battles took place in Shadowgard, New York City, London, and elsewhere. An alliance of Thyrians, Watchers, Slayers, and other heroes defeated the Dark Pantheon, and then shouldered the responsibility of educating the world about the true nature of reality.

Trick Tillinghast,
by Tim Emrick (2006)

The Old Adventures of Trick Tillinghast

During the original campaign, Trick started as a normal human with no supernatural gifts whatsoever. She was, however, a highly trained fencer who had become familiar with many other weapons through her obsession with the martial arts, medieval reenactment, and similar activities. Around the start of her junior year of high school, she had her first encounter with the supernatural, and joined her friends--a Slayer, a Totem Warrior, a witch, and a Watcher's daughter--in fighting the forces of darkness. 

Partway through that year, she attracted the attention of the Greek god Dionysus, who gifted her with the powers of a Maenad to become his champion. At first, she was ecstatic about these gifts, because enhanced her skill and durability, making it far less likely that she would become a liability in a fight. However, her relationship with her patron soon soured, and she began to use her status as a Maenad as an excuse for increasingly wild behavior. By the end of a year as the wine god's champion, she wanted out--and mostly through sheer, bloody-minded stubbornness, she was released. She was fully human again, and now suffered from painful visions, but had her freedom again.

By then, however, Trick's bad behavior had alienated most of her friends, and as the time to apply for colleges approached, she felt an urgent need to get away and start over elsewhere. She matriculated at Columbia College in New York City, where she also worked with the local Watchers, Slayers, witches, and other champions. Though lacking any powers, she was easily the most experienced of the new class of student heroes, and found her niche in helping to train the others.

Trick's visions became an increasingly urgent problem for her, as her merely mortal body wasn't built to withstand them. (Think Cordelia after receiving Doyle's "gift.") She eventually found a solution when she was given the opportunity to become a Slayer--and after a horrifying vision of a monstrous attack on NYC, and her sorry fate if she refused this chance, she paid the price to become one. This gift was a godsend to her--she finally had the power she had always envied in her Slayer best friend, and could safely return to actively fighting against the forces of darkness.

A few months later, Trick's vision came true as the Ragnarok erupted in New York. That battle was the most harrowing of her life--she lost her girlfriend, ex-girlfriend, and ex-patron in one night, was forced to kill a human being for the first time, and dueled with fire giants as Central Park burned around them. The forces of good triumphed, but at a painful price.

Eva Amurri as Patricia Tillinghast,
by Tim Emrick (2018)

The New Adventures of Patricia Tillinghast

Just before "Grey Angels" was shelved last time, we had started discussion of jumping ahead a few years to a time when the brewing war with the Old Ones would come to a head. We had decided the following, as far as Trick was concerned: 

• Following the Ragnarok, Trick was given a second chance with her girlfriend Diana, who had died during that conflict but was returned to life as a champion of Persephone. However, Diana had to spend each winter as a ghost in the underworld with her patron, which made it nearly impossible to maintain any relationship with a living lover, and the couple parted amicably after two bittersweet summers. 
• Trick has a younger sister, Sheila, who was adopted after Trick rescued her from enslavement by the sidhe of Tir na n'Og. When Sheila turned 18, she finally spoke out publicly about her experiences in that world, which resulted in public pressure for the sidhe to change their society. 
• After college, Trick vowed to reconcile with old friends, and sought a teaching position at the Phoenix Academy. She was determined to prove to herself and the Thyrian leadership that she was no longer the spoiled, angry, wild child that she had been in the past. She eventually applied to become a Thyrian herself, and impressed her trainers with her persistence and discipline.
• She now defaults to using her given name, Patricia, because it sounds far more professional than "Trick" for the educator and public figure she has become--though family and other longtime acquaintances occasionally still use her old nickname in private.

The reunion arc picks up some six years or so after Patricia's empowerment as a Thyrian Sword (a legacy that seemed tailor-made for her mastery of weapons!). She has become one of that organization's most formidable warriors, a devoted teacher to her students, and a skilled musician who has achieved some minor renown despite the demands of her higher calling. 

The one part of her life that isn't on the track she hoped for is her love life. Patricia is an unapologetic hedonist who is disinclined to deny herself when she desires companionship. However, ever since losing Diana, she has yet to find another partner who she can fully connect with as a warrior, a teacher, and an artist. Almost all of her closest friends have ended up happily married over the past decade, so she's been feeling that lack in her own life more and more acutely.

As the campaign continues, I'll post some more updates on Patricia's continuing adventures--and introduce my other PC, Baz Olmstead. I've been playing Baz for a longer than I have Trick, but he achieved more closure last time around, and my larger-than-life lesbian knight-errant is by far the more fun to play of the two.

[UPDATE 4/17/2020: Trick's Nightwatch Dossier collects the links above as well as columns about her posted after this bio.]