TBT: Misuhiro Yoko, a character for BESM

The following Big Eyes Small Mouth character was based on a minor background character from Revolutionary Girl Utena. She was originally posted to a RPG-related LiveJournal group (that I have since lost the name of) back in 2004. 

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Possible Utena Character: Misuhiro Yoko

This character was inspired by the shadow-puppet girls in Revolutionary Girl Utena, with the UFO/alien theme being played up in the latest episodes I've seen (I'm up to #29). I don't know how well she would fit into an Utena game, but if I end up playing in the game a friend of mine plans to run, this is the character I'll propose first.

Note: Because I don't own the BESM Utena book, Yoko was built with BESM 2E Revised, using Teen Romance costs for skills.

Misuhiro Yoko, Ohtomi Academy student, Grade 8 (25 CP)

Stats: Body 4, Mind 7, Soul 4 (15 CP)
Derived Values: ACV 5, DCV 3, HP 40, EP 55, SV 8

Attributes: Appearance 1 (1 CP), Art of Distraction 2 (2 CP), Highly Skilled 1 (1 CP), Own a Big Mecha 2 (Flying Saucer, 25 MP) (5 CP), Personal Gear 1 (1 CP), Shape Change 2 (Change gender only) (3 CP).

Defects: Nemesis (Kiryuu Nanami) (1 BP), Skeleton in the Closet (Alien posing as human) (1 BP), Special Requirement (Lay an egg once a month) (1 BP).

Skills: Biological Sciences 1 (Botany) (2 SP), Disguise 1 (Make-up) (2 SP), Linguistics 2 (Alien [native], English, Japanese) (4 SP), Mechanics 1 (Aeronautics) (3 SP), Melee Attack 1 (Sword) (5 SP), Melee Defend 1 (Sword) (5 SP), Performing Arts 1 (Comedy; Dance) (5 SP), Physical Sciences 1 (Astronomy) (2 SP), Piloting 1 (Spacecraft) (2 SP).

OBM: Flying Saucer (25 MP): HP 60.
Attributes: A.I. 1 (Basic Remote Control: Egg) (1 MP), Extra Capacity 1 (1 MP), Flight 4 (16 MP), Heavy Armor 1 (4 MP), Space Flight 1 (2 MP), Summonable 1 (4 MP), Toughness 1 (4 MP).
Defects: Awkward Size 1 (1 MBP), No Arms (2 MBP), Poor Maneuverability 2 (2 MBP), Restricted Ground Movement (None) (2 MBP), Summoning Object (Egg) (1 MBP).

Personal Gear: fencing sword and protective gear; alien "egg" amulet (summons and controls OBM).

Yoko is a human-like alien who came to Earth about a year ago. She has no training at navigation, and her old, hand-me-down saucer is notoriously clumsy, so she soon crash-landed. She decided that enrolling in the school would be the perfect cover while she repaired her spaceship. She has managed to be assigned to a mostly abandoned building, with space to summon and work on her saucer; she has fixed the crash damage, but has not solved the ship's shaky handling, so dares not leave the relative safety of her new home.

Yoko is an excellent student, who has joined the theater and fencing clubs. She is fairly well-liked, in spike of Nanami-san tormenting her for being "weird"--but Nanami has yet to guess just how weird she really is! As an adolescent member of her alien race, Yoko lays a boldly patterned egg once a month; she can usually hide this process (and the resulting day or two of reduced energy) under the cover of "the monthly miracle." In Episode #27: "Nanami's Egg," Yoko may be responsible for the egg Nanami found; she hoped it would mess with her rival's gullible mind. The eggs are not fertile unless Yoko mates with one of her own kind, and she is not aware of any others currently living on Earth. Her saucer's remote is modeled after one of her eggs, but is far less delicate.

Yoko has one other alien power that she rarely uses, and never where she could be seen: Her species is able to switch gender at will (except when laying eggs). Her male form looks like a nearly identical twin, and she will claim to be her brother "Ryo" if seen in that form. (However, no "Misuhiro Ryo" is enrolled at Ohtori Academy, so "he" must vanish quickly if questioned.) She usually carries a boy's uniform in her duffel if she foresees any need to use this ability.

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I never did get an opportunity to play Yoko in BESM. However, she did form the starting point for a NPC I created for "Grey Angels," the long-running Buffy/Angel series that I joined soon after that original post. In that game, she was an international student from Japan, who was shy and awkward but a genius with math and science. Her secret was that she was a half-Byblos demon (a knowledge-seeking race from the Angel RPG) who had been stranded in this dimension and was trying to reestablish contact with her people. At one point, she managed to rope the superscientist player character into helping her traipse all over campus (and beyond), taking readings with some weird sensory apparatus of her own design, but I don't recall her story ever getting much further than that. 

Since that game, I've read Neil Gaiman's surreal short story "How to Talk to Girls at Parties" (and more recently, the Dark Horse comic adaptation). If I ever use Yoko in another game, I expect that story to exert some influence on her, too.

The current "reunion arc" of "Grey Angels" has allowed me to revisit Yoko's story indirectly: I have introduced an NPC who is the daughter that Yoko left behind when she left for parts unknown 13 years ago. Sakura Masterson has been fun to play so far, and will likely be one of my main PCs for the "next gen" game we've been bantering about as a way to continue using the setting after the current crises are resolved.

And yes, I did finish watching Revolutionary Girl Utena not long after I finished that original post above. It's a bizarre series that gradually builds up to one of the weirdest climaxes of any anime I've ever seen, but I recall enjoying it, even the inexplicable nonsense parts of it. My "Grey Angels" character Trick Tillinghast, a fencer with a pronounced romantic streak, was very much a fan, and even dressed up as Utena for her masquerade-themed high school prom. In retrospect, her strong affinity with that character should have been a clue--one of many!--that she was not quite as straight as both she and I originally thought. But, hey, it took Utena a while to get there, too, and both were happier once they did.

"Let Me Tell You About My Character..." (An Index)

Abe Sapien (used for my Buffy RPG character
Baz Olmstead when in Triton form)

The following pages are devoted to stories, artwork, and miniatures for my own player characters in various RPGs. They do not include the snippets of character info buried in my RPGaDay, Drawloween, and Inktober posts (except for those on Trick's personal index page), nor do they include PCs or NPCs from games I've GMed.

D&D 5E

Taphos (1/13/2016): Converted to 5E from a friend's homebrew RPG system.

Lendri (1/28/2016): Converted to 5E from a friend's homebrew RPG system.

A Brief History of Multiclassing (7/11/2024): How multiclassing changed across editions of D&D, Pathfinder, and Starfinder, with a few examples from my own PCs.

Grey Angels (Buffy/Angel/Fate)

Nightwatch Dossier: Patricia "Trick" Tillinghast (started 4/17/2020): This page is an index for columns about my PC, Trick Tillinghast, and the "Grey Angels" campaign in general.

Pathfinder Society

How do you go about creating a character for play? (8/30/2018): Uses some of my PFS PCs as examples.

Cassilda Tillinghast (11/13/2018): Art, stats, and bio for my first psychic caster PC.

Pathfinder Iconics Minis (12/5/2018): LEGO minis of the iconic characters for each core class.

A Baker's Dozen of Pathfinders (2/5/2019): Artwork and capsule bios of my PFS characters.

Pathfinder Society LEGO Minis (3/16/2020): Minis for my PFS characters (including new additions since 2019).

"Clever" Character Names Often...Aren't (2/9/2022): Origins of a few of my PFS & SFS PCs' names.

Pathfinder Society Minis and Artwork Update (2/23/2022): Some new artwork, plus my PFS 2E characters' minis.

A Brief History of Multiclassing (7/11/2024): How multiclassing changed across editions of D&D, Pathfinder, and Starfinder, with a few examples from my own PCs.

Let Me Tell You About My Character: Remastered Edition (9/15/2024): How the PF 2E Remaster affected my Society characters, plus a few updated LEGO minis.

Pathfinder (other campaigns)

The "Dungeon Interludes" Party (11/3/2016): LEGO minis for one of my wife's campaigns.

Starfinder Society

"Clever" Character Names Often...Aren't (2/9/2022): Origins of a few of my PFS & SFS PCs' names.

My Starfinder Society Minis and Artwork (3/3/2022): Bios and LEGO minis for my SFS PCs to date.

A Brief History of Multiclassing (7/11/2024): How multiclassing changed across editions of D&D, Pathfinder, and Starfinder, with a few examples from my own PCs.

"Clever" Character Names Often...Aren't

If you've been a gamer for very long, you've probably come across quite a few players who have named their heroes after characters from literature, TV, or film--and likely been guilty of it yourself at some point! Many players, both old and new, are prone to obsessively recreating their favorite heroes as faithfully as they can with any new RPG's rules set they try out. For a host of reasons (inexperience with the rules, strict power caps on starting characters, clashing opinions about the character within the player group, etc.) many end up frustrated when it doesn't work out to their satisfaction. And along the way, they often end up annoying their fellow players with their presumption. ("Oh, sure, you're Alannon. And what level are you again?"*)

One problem with trying to slavishly copy a fictional character is that you're not experiencing the full range of characters in the game. If you're hung up on the idea that your wizard has to be an old, mysterious know-it-all, just like Merlin, or Gandalf, or Elminster, then you'll miss out on all the other ways to play the class. And no matter how awesome those characters might be in their original settings, they might be a very poor fit for the campaign you've joined. Especially if you want to play the world's most powerful arch-mage, when you've joined a game that starts at 1st level! Instead, give some thought to playing the new kid on the block, who someday hopes to rub shoulders with those legends, and show us all how to do things differently than the predictable tropes of characters everyone knows.

There are times when it can be appropriate to use a name that copies that of an established fictional character, or that is a clever take-off of one. For example, players and GMs tend to be less strict about setting-appropriate names for one-shots or less serious games--and in deliberately silly games, anything goes, the punnier, the better. Less obvious homages can work in more serious games, particularly when the name or character are on the obscure side, and when the character is much more inspired by a fictional hero than based on one. 

In my own games, I do put up with a certain amount of silliness in names, because my players are there primarily to have fun, and to blow off steam from their busy lives. Their jokes are part of the price, and the joy, of having a loyal group of friends to game with. So, for example, my Pathfinder games have  featured animal companions and familiars named for Pokemon or dirty puns. If I ever tried to tackle a more historical game, I'd probably put more effort into policing names, but I'm also not sure that's really this group's kind of game in the first place.

Organized play is very much a crap-shoot when it comes to character names. For every serious, fantastic name that helps build immersion in the world, you'll have a Barbarella, a Harley Davidson, or  a Herlock Sholmes.**

In all fairness, I'll admit that not all of my Pathfinder Society and Starfinder Society characters' names are entirely serious:

• I named my tengu cavalier "K'Chaw" as a joke, and only gave her a "real" birth name, and a story explaining the nickname, after playing her for a few levels. 
• My kitsune hunter/rogue is named Mumbly Peg, after the "game" played with knives. She usually just goes by "Peg," so her full name rarely, if ever, gets any comments.
• Nar-Lok, my creepy heavens shaman, gets his name from the Loc-Nar in the movie Heavy Metal.
• My kiirinta (a moth-like fey species) mystic is named Tekeli-li, after the sound that the shoggoth makes at the end of At the Mountains of Madness (which Lovecraft lifted from the giant albino penguins in Poe's The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym).
• My gnome envoy and musician is Toknomonicon, which was never meant to be anything more than a random mouthful of syllables. But once I had worked out that much, of course he had to be known for doing "Tokno remixes."

My mindblade magus, Cassilda Tillinghast, has a much more serious name, but it's still ultimately a pair of Cthulhu Mythos references. The surname comes from a past Buffy/Angel RPG character of mine, Patricia "Trick" Tillinghast, upon whom Cassilda was very loosely based. This surname was used by Lovecraft for the scientist in his short story, "From Beyond," because it was a historical New England family name. Because the game I played in was set in New England as well, I drew heavily on Lovecraft for my PCs' and their relatives' names (Trick's cousin is an Olmstead descended from Gilmans and Marshes, for example). The name Cassilda comes from Robert Chambers' "The King in Yellow" stories, where she is a central character in the cursed play that gives the cycle its name. I liked the sound of it, and it's obscure enough that you would need to have read Chambers or have played certain Yellow King-themed adventures (such as one of the later books of the Strange Aeons Adventure Path) to recognize it. Nobody who has seen me play my Cassilda has ever hinted at knowing anything about the other one yet. 

This is the kind of literary name that I like best: it alludes to a work of fiction, without copying any particular character too much (if at all). It's a cool name that stands on its own, with or without any explanation of its origin. And there's very little if any of that "Hey, see what I did there?" nudging and winking that the names that started me on this rant are shamelessly guilty of.

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* True story: One of the players in my college AD&D campaign named his wizard Alannon. I hadn't read any of the Shannara books at that point, but my roommate had, so he gave the the wizard's player serious side-eye for his choice of name. I let the player keep the name, but my roommate loved to rib him whenever "Alannon" spectacularly failed at an attempt to do something impressive.

** Real examples of character names I've encountered online, just in the past month or two!

James Marlowe and the Giant Peach

(See the full-sized scan at my Deviant gallery.)

My wife and I recently rewatched James and the Giant Peach. Partway through, it occurred to me that Miss Spider would be the sort of costume that one of my NPCs in the Grey Angels game would choose. Lilith Corman is a goth witch, largely inspired by Wednesday Addams (and cast as Christina Ricci), who works for Nightwatch. So I sketched her costume, and added her boyfriend dressed as Mr. Centipede. Lance Bogan (cast as George Eads) is a Nightwatch commando with an ever-cheerful personality. This pairing of opposites surprises everyone--not least the couple themselves--but they've made it work for a little over a decade now.

For this piece, I used photo references of both actors as well as stills from the movie to portray them in costume. Eads is approximately a foot taller than Ricci, so tall, lanky Centipede is a good fit for their relative sizes as well as their disparate personalities.

(Nightwatch is briefly explained at the end of this blog post. For more on the Grey Angels campaign, see my links on that page to my other blog posts about my PC, Trick Tillinghast. My title above references James Marlowe, a veteran Nightwatch agent who heads up a team that goes on missions to other parallel worlds.)

Trick's Picks (updated)

I first posted my "Trick's Picks" playlist last April, and have been adding to it in fits and starts ever since. It now has well over 100 tracks (120 at the time that I'm posting this), so I've taken the list and sorted it into some semblance of order. I will update this post as the playlist continues to evolve.

[Songs with dates are just a reminder to myself that the game hasn't caught up to the present day (we're in December 2020 as of December 2023), so Trick hasn't technically heard these tracks yet.]

ABBA - Dancing Queen
Adam Lambert - Better Than I Know Myself
Adele - Rolling in the Deep
Alicia Keys - Girl on Fire
Angel & The MamboKats - Black Mambo (Mambero Mix)
Anna Kendrick - Cups

Ava Max - Kings & Queens  

The B-52’s - Love Shack
Backstreet Boys - Larger Than Life
The Bangles - Eternal Flame

The Beatles - Blackbird

The Beatles - Can't Buy Me Love

The Beatles - Imagine

Beyonce - Run the World (Girls)  
Bjork - Hunter
The Black Eyed Peas - I Gotta Feeling

Blondie - One Way or Another  
Blue Man Group - Drumbone
Bruno Mars - Locked Out of Heaven

C&C Music Factory - Gonna Make You Sweat (Everybody Dance Now)  

Calvin Harris (feat. Rihanna) - This is What You Came For

Christina Aguilera - Genie in a Bottle
Christina Aguilera, Lil' Kim, Mya, Pink - Lady Marmalade
Clean Bandit (feat. Jess Glynne) - Rather Be
Colbie Caillat - Brighter Than the Sun
Colbie Caillat - Bubbly
Colbie Caillat - Fallin’ For You
Coldplay - Viva La Vida

The Corrs - Breathless

Daft Punk (feat. Pharrell Williams) - Get Lucky
David Guetta (feat. Sia) - Titanium
Des’ree - You Gotta Be
Donna Summer - Hot Stuff (12" Version)

Dua Lipa - Dance the Night [2023]

Dua Lipa - Levitating  

Ed Sheeran - Shape of You

Ed Sheeran - Shivers  
ES Posthumus - Unstoppable
Eurythmics (feat. Aretha Franklin) - Sisters Are Doin' It for Themselves
Evanescence - My Heart is Broken

Fall Out Boy - Uma Thurman
Fatboy Slim - Weapon of Choice
Fine Young Cannibals - Good Thing
Franka Potente - Believe

George Michael - Faith
The Greatest Showman Cast - This Is Me

Hadouken! - Levitate
HAIM - Little of Your Love

Halestorm - Freak Like Me

Halestorm - I am the Fire
Hayley Kiyoko - Girls Like Girls

Heart - Barracuda  
Heart - Crazy on You
The Hu (feat. Lzzy Hale) - Song of Women

INXS - Need You Tonight

Janelle Monae - Make Me Feel
Jason Mraz - I'm Yours
Jefferson Airplane - Somebody to Love
Jessie J - Domino
John Legend - All of Me
Journey - Any Way You Want It
Journey - Don't Stop Believin'

Katrina & The Waves - Walking on Sunshine
Katy Perry - Firework
Katy Perry - Rise
k.d. lang - Constant Craving
Kelly Clarkson - Stronger (What Doesn’t Kill You)

KISS - I Was Made For Lovin' You  

Lady Gaga - Edge of Glory
Lady Gaga - You and I

Led Zeppelin - Immigrant Song  
Lenny Kravitz - Fly Away
Lenny Kravitz- Are You Gonna Go My Way

Lindsey Stirling - Artemis  
Lizzo - About Damn Time [2022]

Madonna - Vogue
Major Lazer & DJ Snake (feat. M0) - Lean On
Mark Ronson (feat. Bruno Mars) - Uptown Funk
Marvin Gaye - Sexual Healing
Mary Lambert - She Keeps Me Warm
Meredith Brooks - Bitch

Michael Franti & Spearhead - Say Hey I Love You  

Michael Sambello - Maniac

Natalie Cole - Wild Women Do
Natasha Bedingfield - Unwritten

Peter Gabriel - In Your Eyes
Pharrell Williams - Happy
P!nk - F**king Perfect 

P!nk - Get the Party Started
P!nk - Just Like Fire 
P!nk - Raise Your Glass 
P!nk - Try 

The Police - Every Little Thing She Does is Magic

Portugal. The Man - Feel It Still
The Pussycat Dolls (feat. Snoop Dogg) - Buttons

Queen - Somebody to Love
Queen - We Are the Champions

Rachel Platten - Fight Song
Rachel Platten - Stand By You

Rare Earth - Get Ready  

Rick Astley - Together Forever
Ricky Martin - She Bangs
Roisin Murphy - Night of the Dancing Flame
Roisin Murphy - Ramalama (Bang Bang)

Salt-N-Pepa - Push It
Sara Bareilles - Brave
Sara Bareilles - I Choose You

Sara Bareilles - Orpheus  
Savage Garden - I Want You
Shania Twain - Forever and for Always

Shania Twain - Man! I Feel Like a Woman

Shania Twain - You're Still the One  
Sia - Alive
Sia - Cheap Thrills
Sia - Unstoppable
Sinead O'Connor - Nothing Compares 2U
Sixpence None the Richer - Kiss Me
Sixpence None the Richer - There She Goes

Skillet - Not Gonna Die  
Smash Mouth - All Star
Sophie P. Hawkins - Damn I Wish I Was Your Lover

Spice Girls - Wannabe  

Steppenwolf - Born to be Wild
Sting - If I Ever Lose My Faith in You
Survivor - Eye of the Tiger

Swedish House Mafia - Save the World  
The Sweet - Ballroom Blitz

Taylor Swift - Blank Space
Taylor Swift - Delicate
Taylor Swift - Shake It Off
Tegan and Sara - Closer
They Might Be Giants - S-E-X-X-Y
Trinket - Boom
The Troggs - Wild Thing

Vanessa Carlton - A Thousand Miles
The Veronicas - Take Me On the Floor

Walk the Moon - Shut Up and Dance
The Wallflowers - Heroes
WAR*HALL - All This Power [theme song for Grey Angels Season 4]
The White Stripes - Seven Nation Army

Whitney Houston - I Want to Dance with Somebody (Who Loves Me)  
The Who - Who Are You
The Who - Won't Get Fooled Again

Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Burning [2022]

Zara Larsson, MNEK - Never Forget You

The State of the Blog (and the Tim)

In the process of looking up something that I had shared here a couple of years ago, I realized that I had not posted anything new since August. I've been meaning to post a few things during that time, but lacked the motivation to make it happen. So here's a very quick update of where things stand in the many lands of Studded Plate. (Warning: There's a bit about a friend I lost very recently at the end of this column. I'm still figuring out how to talk about it online...or in general) 

Freeport and 5E: The 5E and Fantasy AGE versions of Death in Freeport were released just as I was finishing up that last post in August. I intend to run one version or the other sometime this year. I also have a few items to compose "Freeport and..." articles about at some point: the latest Unearthed Arcana articles (only two since August), Ghosts of Saltmarsh, and possibly Kobold Press's Tome of Beasts (which I'm slowly making my way through). And whenever I acquire Tasha's Cauldron of Everything, I will almost certainly have something to say about using that book with Freeport.

Time of the Tarrasque: This Pathfinder campaign went on hiatus back in 2019, and to be very honest, I'm not sure if it will ever restart at this point. 

The Kynthiad: The solo Greek myth BESM game that I run for my wife Erika is still going, though the end of the campaign is finally approaching. In our last few sessions, Kynthia has been instrumental in definitively ending the Trojan War--with Troy emerging victorious, and many Greek going home without their kings. Now we just have to figure out how she's going to stop Typhon's return, which will make a fitting conclusion to the story--and free up some headspace for me to run other games. 

Building the Bestiary: I would almost certainly have added another installment or two of this series by now, except that the pandemic has forced us to go online for most of our gaming, which means I'm producing far fewer LEGO minis for games. (We do play occasional games in person within our "bubble," but I've been GMing far fewer of those than I used to.)

On a related note, I have not purchased any of the new Minifigures series that have been released since the pandemic started. If and when I do, I will post reviews, but I don't know if that will happen before the end of mandatory social distancing.

Pathfinder Society and Starfinder Society: Erika and I are still heavily involved in organized play for Pathfinder (1E & 2E) and Starfinder. All of these games have been strictly online since March or so, except for occasional games within our "bubble" (such as the Starfinder AP we started recently). I earned my third GM Star for Pathfinder Society 1E just before the end of 2020, but Erika has shot way ahead of me there, and is closing in on her fifth (and final!) GM Star. She became a Venture Officer for our local store about a year ago, so has been running a lot of games for that venue, as well as for several online conventions. We're both playing a lot more PFS 2E and Starfinder now than we have in the past, because it's easier to find games to play in now that we're online. Erika has GMed a couple of 2E scenarios so far, and her first Starfinder game this past month. I haven't tried GMing 2E yet, but have a few Starfinder games under my belt, and intend to run more as I get more familiar with the system. (I still have a ways to go before my first GM Nova, though.)

Grey Angels: I have been intending to write more about the (new and old) adventures of Trick Tillinghast, one of my characters in the long-running "Grey Angels" campaign (using Buffy/Angel Unisystem) that revived for a "reunion arc" at the end of 2019. Sadly, our main GM, Cassandra Lease, died rather suddenly at the beginning of this month. All of us in the game have been close friends with her for upwards of 15 years, so we're all still reeling from this loss. At some future date, we may try to find some way to continue playing in the world that she invited us to help her create, because it would be a damn shame to never again revisit those characters. But we're nowhere near ready to contemplate how to do that yet, apart from agreeing that some day, when we're ready, we very much want to have a long, involved discussion about it. Sharing stories about Cass among her circle of friends has been very helpful to us, and very necessary. When I'm ready to, I will probably share some more stories from the game here, in her memory. She would have liked that. 

I received this Abe Sapien figure as a gift from Cass early on in the Grey Angels game. She used the movie version of Abe as the visual reference for the Tritons, the sea demon race from which my very first GA character, the mage Baz Olmstead, was descended.

Grey Angels LEGO minis

I recently built some LEGO minis for my "Grey Angels" characters and some of their favorite NPCs. The notes and captions below are copied from my original posts on Facebook in mid-May.

(See Nightwatch Dossier: Patricia "Trick" Tillinghast for more details of that game from past blog posts here.) 

*****

Today I made some LEGO minis related to the Buffy/Angel RPG campaign that some old gaming buddies recently revived for a reunion arc.

Patricia "Trick" Tillinghast (redhead) training with her new girlfriend, Sophia Martin, who wants to become a Thyrian, too. (The Thyrians are essentially superpowered Amazons--like Slayers, but more so--though not exclusively female.)

Sophia and Trick, on a date.

Trick in (for now, completely hypothetical) armor based on the Minotaur, the symbol of her Thyrian Sword legacy.

Trick's ex, the witch Diana Bellefleur, who became Persephone's champion after her death several years ago. Trick is currently preparing for a quest to bring her back to life.

*****

More Grey Angels minis, this time of Baz Olmstead, my Atlantean sorcerer, and his wife Ariel.

Ariel is a mutant Atlantean, a literal mermaid. Baz spent a very long time searching for a spell to grant her legs, so she could visit the surface world (and also change back, at will).

Ariel as Baz first met her, tinkering in her father's workshop. He pretty much fell for her right then and there--tail, grease smudges, and all.

Baz has developed limited shapeshifting powers since meeting Ariel, so he frequently grows a tail to match hers when they are together at home in New Atlantis.

Nightwatch Dossier: 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. That game resumed in late 2019 for a "10 years later" reunion arc.

I talked about Trick in a very piecemeal fashion in several past Studded Plate columns prior to the current revival:

• 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 (with 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.

Now that the game has resumed, I've started talking a great deal more about her here, so decided to create this "Nightwatch Dossier*" index page to collect all those links in one place. (You can also follow the "Tillinghast" tag, but this page will curate that list a little more, as I did with the older links above.)

• The Adventures of Patricia "Trick" Tillinghast (3/20/2020): An attempt to give a snapshot of the campaign, and a summary of Trick's history up to this point.
• Trick's Picks (4/8/2020): A playlist of Trick's favorite songs.
• 30-Day Song Challenge: Tillinghast Edition (4/17/2020): A meme answered in character as Trick.
• Grey Angels LEGO minis (6/9/2020): Minis of Trick, her cousin Baz, and some of their favorite NPCs.
• The State of the Blog (and the Tim) (2/8/2021): This update on my various projects here includes a rather sad update about the GA game's main creator.
• Trick's Picks (Updated) (2/12/2021): An update to last year's much-expanded playlist. (Future edits will be made here.)
• James Marlowe and the Giant Peach (4/13/2021): This one's not about Trick, but is just a sketch of a couple GA NPCs in costumes. (I'm indexing it here since most of my other GA posts are tied to Trick.)

* A note on Nightwatch, since I didn't mention it in "The Adventures of..." post above: This multinational corporation investigates occult phenomena, hunts rogue demons, researches new magic and occult tech, and sends covert teams on missions to parallel Earths and other dimensions. It is headed by Joey and Rae Maddock-Trent. (As the twin sister of Taryn Maddock, General of the Thyrian Nation, Rae is also part of the senior leadership of that organization as well.) Trick has had dealings with Nightwatch's Shadowgard office since the very early days of her involvement with the supernatural, but has never sought employment with the organization.

30-Day Song Challenge: Tillinghast Edition

My wife has been posting answers to a 30-Day Song Challenge on her Facebook this month. It's been interesting seeing her answers, but it's not normally the kind of meme I join in on. However, after posting my "Trick's Picks" playlist earlier I this month, I thought it might be fun to try answering this challenge in character as Trick. To make it more interesting, I did not repeat any songs, and only repeated artists twice. With only a couple exceptions, these are all songs that would appear in regular rotation in Trick's own playlists. In fact, many appear on my "Trick's Picks," or have been added to it since that post.

[See Trick's Nightwatch Dossier for a complete list of past posts about her.]

30-Day Song Challenge

As answered by Patricia "Trick" Tillinghast

Day 1: A song you like with a color in the title: "Mr. Blue Sky," Electric Light Orchestra. Nobody's ever going to be able to hear this song again without seeing Baby Groot dancing to it, are they? The best part of Vol. 2!

Day 2: A song you like with a number in the title: "Seven Nation Army," The White Stripes. It's got a really fun drum line.

Day 3: A song that reminds you of summertime: "Love Shack," The B-52's. The video is sunny and bright, and the song is kind of all about about how hot it is around here...

Day 4: A song that reminds you of someone you'd rather forget: "Shut Up and Dance," Walk the Moon. The line "This woman is my destiny" always reminds me of one of my ex-girlfriends, who I was more crazy in love with than anyone else before or since. (And who I'm not going to name, in case she ever sees this.) We're still friendly, but we just couldn't make it work, and if I'm completely honest with myself, I've never really gotten over her. But I love this song too much to not listen to it.

Day 5: A song that needs to be played loud: "Thunderstruck," AC/DC. Because metal demands volume!

Day 6: A song that makes you want to dance: "Uptown Funk," Mark Ronson (ft. Bruno Mars). I can't hear this song without moving!

Day 7: A song to drive to: "Life is a Highway," Rascal Flatts. This has been on every driving mix I've made since Cars.

Day 8: A song about drugs or alcohol: "Tubthumping," Chumbawamba. I love the "you are never going to keep me down" chorus, but there's an awful lot of drinking in these lyrics.

Day 9: A song that makes you happy: "Happy," Pharrell Williams. OK, kind of an obvious answer, but I'm a naturally joyful person, and it's catchy. And the video is full of people who are dancing because it's just plain fun.

Day 10: A song that makes you sad: "She Used to be Mine," Sara Bareilles. This song is about a woman who is mourning how she lost touch with the person who she used to be.

Day 11: A song you never get tired of: "Shake It Off," Taylor Swift. It's fun, and catchy, and empowering all at the same time.

Day 12: A song from your preteen years: "A Thousand Miles," Vanessa Carlton. A new hit love ballad when I was in middle school? And by a woman? Yes, please.

Day 13: A song you like from the 70s: "Dancing Queen," ABBA. This is a lovely mellow classic to groove to in between the more energetic tracks that let me really show off my dancing chops.

Day 14: A song you'd love to be played at your wedding: "Eternal Flame," The Bangles. It's a sappy, romantic song...and I love it. Plus, between my visions and becoming a Thyrian, I've kind of acquired a thing about fire imagery.

Day 15: A song you like that's a cover by another artist: "Lady Marmalade," Christina Aguilera, Lil' Kim, Mya, Pink. I almost used it for Day 6 because I recently competed in a dance battle to this track. But I put it here because the Moulin Rouge cover took a good song and turned it into one of my all-time faves.

Day 16: A song that's a classic favorite: "Imagine," John Lennon. My parents grew up listening to the Beatles and other classic bands of the 60's and '70s, so I was exposed to many of them as a kid as well. This is one of Mom's favorites, because it challenges us to imagine a better, more loving world.

Day 17: A song you'd sing a duet with on karaoke: "I Got You," Sonny & Cher. It's corny as hell, but I want to sing this with someone who will look at me in the same worshipful, sappy way that Sonny and Cher looked at each other whenever they performed this song back in the '60s.

Day 18: A song from the year you were born: "Simply Irresistible," Robert Palmer (1988). It's too bad that the video is so cheesy, and objectifying AF. It was the '80s, so I can't tell if that was meant ironically or not...but I doubt it.

Day 19: A song that makes you think about life: "Stronger (What Doesn't Kill You)," Kelly Clarkson. You'll have to pardon me for getting philosophic for a moment. Pain is the great teacher. If we forget the painful events in our life, then we forget the lessons they taught us. Those things don't have to define us, but they do inform who we become. To put it another way, I am the sum of all my choices and my experiences, both the good ones and the bad ones. Who I am today is a precious gift, and I must acknowledge the path I took to get here.

Day 20: A song that has many meanings to you: "We Are the Champions," Queen. At first, this song reads as a victory anthem by a weary hero. (And, in fact, my cousin Baz claims to have led a chorus of it at a victory party after the Ragnarok.) But sometimes the borderline-plaintive tone of the song leads me to wonder if it's merely the daydreaming wish of someone who feels like an underappreciated loser. I wouldn't put it past Freddie & co. to have intended both messages.

Day 21: A song you like with a person's name in the title: "Elvis is Everywhere," Mojo Nixon & Skid Roper. This song is ridiculous, and I only listen to it very occasionally, but still amuses me after all this time.

Day 22: A song that moves you forward: "Fight Song," Rachel Platten. This song was pretty much my personal anthem when I moved back to Shadowgard to teach in my hometown and reconcile with the Maddocks, and again a few years later when I applied to become a Thyrian initiate. Too many people in this town remembered me as the angry, self-absorbed brat that I had been in high school, so I had a lot to prove to them, and to myself.

Day 23: A song you think everyone should listen to: "Brave," Sara Bareilles. Be brave enough to speak up, and to show people who the authentic, amazing you really is! 

Day 24: A song by a band that you wish were still together: "Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)," The Eurythmics. I think Annie Lennox is a big part of the reason why I think tall chicks in suits are classy--and sexy. I've been known to rock the look myself from time to time.

Day 25: A song you like by an artist no longer living: "Ballroom Blitz," The Sweet. Two of the four original band members are dead, that's close enough.

Day 26: A song that makes you want to fall in love: "Somebody to Love," Queen. This song has been a prayer of mine far too many times...

Day 27: A song that breaks your heart: "Try," P!nk. I've had my heart broken more times than I can count, but I keep trying again.

Day 28: A song by an artist whose voice you love: "Bubbly," Colbie Caillat. I'm pretty sure this song is really just all about sex, and I could listen to that gentle, caressing voice sing about that all day long.

Day 29: A song you remember from your childhood: "The Little Drummer Boy." This is the one song on this list that I actively don't like. Mostly because I remember being horribly offended that the Rankin-Bass movie didn't use drums for the title song!

Day 30: A song that reminds you of yourself: "Bitch," Meredith Brooks. I'm a passionate woman with a complicated history, who boldly wears her heart on her sleeve. I'm very aware that that can make me a right handful to deal with at times, even to--especially to?--my best friends. But those messy parts are part of who I am, too, for better or worse.

Trick's Picks

I have recreated my old "Trick's Picks" playlist on YouTube, and updated it for the 2020 reunion arc. This is a list of the favorite songs of Patricia "Trick" Tillinghast, my drummer/dancer/fencer/champion character from "Grey Angels," a Buffy/Angel RPG campaign. It's still very much a work in progress. (For additional context, see my past blog posts about Trick--particularly here and here.)

As of the time of this posting, the playlist includes (in no particular order):

Meredith Brooks - Bitch
P!nk - F**king Perfect
P!nk - Try
P!nk - Just Like Fire
P!nk - Raise Your Glass
Queen - Somebody to Love
Queen - We Are the Champions
The Bangles - Eternal Flame
Kelly Clarkson - Stronger (What Doesn’t Kill You)
Sara Bareilles - Brave
Colbie Caillat - Bubbly
Colbie Caillat - Fallin’ For You
Taylor Swift- Shake It Off
Taylor Swift - Delicate
Rachel Platten - Fight Song
The Sweet - Ballroom Blitz
Christina Aguilera, Lil' Kim, Mya, Pink - Lady Marmalade
Mark Ronson (feat. Bruno Mars) - Uptown Funk
The White Stripes - Seven Nation Army
Des’ree - You Gotta Be
Adele - Rolling in the Deep
Natasha Bedingfield - Unwritten
Walk the Moon - Shut Up and Dance
Lady Gaga - The Edge of Glory
Rush [Neil Peart solo] - Der Trommler

And yes, that's a lot of P!nk tracks! Patricia's romantic history has been a soap opera roller coaster, so P!nk's repertoire strikes a very deep chord with her, but I've strictly limited myself to a few of her more positive songs for this list. Trick is a hopeless romantic, but she's becoming more careful and deliberate about her relationships. What worked during her high school and college years is no longer cutting it now that she's hit her 30's and has a much better sense of who she is and what she actually wants out of life. Of course, her list of favorites still heavily features tracks chosen simply because they're fun.

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UPDATE 4/30/2020: The following tracks have been added to the playlist since the original list above was created:

Fatboy Slim - Weapon of Choice
The B-52’s - Love Shack
Portugal. The Man - Feel It Still
Sia - Cheap Thrills
Sia - Unstoppable
David Guetta, ft. Sia - Titanium
Pharrell Williams - Happy
The Black Eyed Peas - I Gotta Feeling
Lenny Kravitz - Fly Away
Vanessa Carlton - A Thousand Miles
Shania Twain - Man! I Feel Like a Woman
WAR*HALL - All This Power [theme song for Grey Angels Season 4]
Rachel Platten - Stand By You
HAIM - Little of Your Love

Smash Mouth - All Star

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UPDATE 6/9/2020: More new tracks since the last update:

Alicia Keys - Girl on Fire
k.d. lang - Constant Craving
Coldplay - Viva La Vida
ABBA - Dancing Queen
Jason Mraz - I'm Yours
Lenny Kravitz- Are You Gonna Go My Way
Colbie Caillat - Brighter Than the Sun
Journey - Don't Stop Believin'
Daft Punk - Get Lucky
Hayley Kiyoko - Girls Like Girls
The Greatest Showman Cast - This Is Me
Mary Lambert - She Keeps Me Warm
The Veronicas - Take Me On the Floor
Tegan and Sara - Closer
Savage Garden - I Want You
The Hu (feat. Lzzy Hale) - Song of Women
Sixpence None the Richer - There She Goes

Sixpence None the Richer - Kiss Me

Sara Bareilles - I Choose You

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UPDATE 8/11/2020: More new tracks since the last update (which brings the total to 70):

Sia - Alive

Journey - Any Way You Want It

Heart - Crazy on You

Janelle Monae - Make Me Feel

Clean Bandit (feat. Jess Glynne) - Rather Be

Ed Sheeran - Shape of You

Calvin Harris (feat. Rihanna) - This is What You Came For

Zara Larsson, MNEK - Never Forget You

Bruno Mars - Locked Out of Heaven

Lady Gaga - You and I

Evanescence - My Heart is Broken

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UPDATE 8/20/2020: This is a much longer update than most, because I found an older version of my "Trick's Picks" playlist, so have now added most of those songs here. Now up to 106!

Backstreet Boys - Larger Than Life

Taylor Swift - Blank Space

Adam Lambert - Better Than I Know Myself

Angel & The MamboKats - Black Mambo (Mambero Mix)

Blue Man Group - Drumbone

Christina Aguilera - Genie in a Bottle

Donna Summer - Hot Stuff (12" Version)

ES Posthumus - Unstoppable

Fine Young Cannibals - Good Thing

Franka Potente - Believe

George Michael - Faith

Hadouken! - Levitate

INXS - Need You Tonight

Jefferson Airplane - Somebody to Love

Jessie J - Domino

John Legend - All of Me

Marvin Gaye - Sexual Healing

Peter Gabriel - In Your Eyes

The Pussycat Dolls (feat. Snoop Dogg) - Buttons

Ricky Martin - She Bangs

Roisin Murphy - Ramalama (Bang Bang)

Roisin Murphy - Night of the Dancing Flame

Sinead O'Connor - Nothing Compares 2U

Sting - If I Ever Lose My Faith in You

They Might Be Giants - S-E-X-X-Y

Trinket - Boom

The Troggs - Wild Thing

Anna Kendrick - Cups

Survivor - Eye of the Tiger

The Wallflowers - Heroes

Eurythmics (feat. Aretha Franklin) - Sisters Are Doin' It for Themselves

The Who - Who Are You

The Who - Won't Get Fooled Again

Natalie Cole - Wild Women Do

Bjork - Hunter

Sophie P. Hawkins - Damn I Wish I Was Your Lover

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UPDATE 2/12/2021: A new version of the playlist has been posted here, and will be updated there going forward.

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.]