As a rule, James Vitner was stingy when it came to giving permission to players to run multiclass characters in one of his tabletop RPG campaigns. And he definitely didn’t allow players to run characters based on popular fictional characters.
Kathleen Naylor wasn’t the type to ask for exceptions. But when she did, they were Invariably given to her. Which is how Kathleen was running a character in James’ campaign named Katja, a barbarian/fighter/rogue female human variant who was an obvious imitation of Red Sonja.
James had to give it to Kathleen, though. She leveled Katja up legitimately. And Kathleen was his best player. She didn’t constantly argue his decisions. If she suggested something new, she had researched it thoroughly before hand. And when she did argue a point, she had the rules and facts to back her argument up.
Kathleen always showed up for the weekly Saturday night campaign sessions with a backpack full of her character sheet, all the gaming manuals, plus reams of notes. Kathleen was James’ most serious player, never engaging in even the most casual of banter with the other players. Kathleen was only there to play Katja, and that was all she focused on.
James sometimes wondered if Kathleen actually derived any enjoyment from their gaming sessions. But that was just one of the many things that was part of the enigma that was Kathleen Naylor.
Kathleen was the only child of a pair of hard working upper class professionals. Thanks to good genetics, a stable home life, good dietary regimen and an active lifestyle, eighteen year old Kathleen Naylor had blossomed into a gorgeous statuesque young woman with flawless fair skin, green eyes and copper red hair that flowed to the small of her back.
Considering her background, it was a given that eighteen year old Kathleen would naturally become part of the social elite at her high school. And to a certain extent, she had. Kathleen had been a cheerleader in every grade where cheerleading had been available. Even as a freshman, she had been a part of the yearly homecoming court, and she was consider a “lock” for Queen in her upcoming senior year. At lunch, when Kathleen wasn’t working on a project (which she often was), she sat at the “popular” table.
In short, outside of class, Kathleen was somebody that James Vitner should never have come into contact with. So at the beginning of his junior year, when James put out on a tweet that he was starting a two year long tabletop RPG campaign, surprise wouldn’t even begin to describe his reaction when Kathleen Naylor contacted him.
At first, James assumed the Kathleen Naylor who contacted him online wasn’t the real Kathleen Naylor. Since the first pre-campaign meeting was at a local restaurant, James naturally told ”Kathleen” she was more than welcome to attend. James expected either no one woukd show up in Kathleen’s place, or it was one if his friends trying to prank him.
Nobody expected the real Kathleen Naylor to show up, make a beeline for James’ table, and announce in a deadpan voice her desire to join James’ tabletop RPG campaign. If everyone else at the table hadn’t been floored by the school’s hottest girl sitting in public at the same table with the school’s biggest geeks, they would have thought this was an elaborate joke. Except Kathleen sat down with a book bag full of manuals and notebooks, and had a fully prepared character sheet for James’ consideration, including an AI generated image on the character sheet.
Kathleen had developed the background of Katja, her character, based on the notes of his campaign James had shared online. She outlined the way she wanted to develop her multi class character as the campaign progress.
The rest of the assembled potential players watched to see how this exchange between Kathleen and James was going to play out. Half thought that this was some very elaborate joke that Kathleen and her crowd were pulling on them. The other half were treating Kathleen’s character submission as legitimate. They were waiting to see what James’ reaction was going to be to a multitude character obviously based on a popular fictional character.
Mouths popped open and closed when James accepted Kathleen’s character as is.
Surprisingly, nobody tried to barge through the door that Kathleen had cracked opened.
Nobody expected Kathleen to actually show up for the first gaming session. But she showed up and participated. She contributed to each gaming session, coming up with interesting ideas and reasons why they might work. She would even produce everything from diagrams to YouTube videos to explain her ideas.
As a fellow adventurer, Katja was proving invaluable to the party. Kathleen didn’t insist that Katja was always in the spotlight. But she wasn’t shy about taking the lead when needed.
With the exception of Kathleen, the rest of the players in James’ RPG campaign had played together before, and fell into an easy rhythm with each other. Only Kathleen was the odd woman out. It wasn’t that she was standoffish, or rebuffed their attempts at friendship. Kathleen’s lack of acknowledgment at their attempts at friendship was something more akin to neural divergence.
Things changed at school too. Kathleen didn’t start sitting with the nerds. But she would say hello to them in the hall, and even stopped a couple of “confrontations” between her strata and that of the gamers.
The other players began noticing more things about Kathleen. She still sat at the elite table, and still partook in their conversations.
But the other tabletop RPG players noticed that Kathleen only participated in conversation about things like cheerleading routines and homecoming preparations. When it came to gossip and the like, she appeared to zone out. And she either didn’t notice or ignored any snarky remarks directed at her.
And thanks to their tangent association with Kathleen, the other RPG players found themselves suddenly tied into all the gossip about the students in the top social strata. For example, contrary to what a few of the male student athletes asserted, it was rumored Kathleen was still a virgin, and probably a closer lesbian.
Kathleen had other secrets. For example, the five and a half inch tall figurine of her character Katja that she brought to every game wasn’t a Red Sonja figure, like the rest of the players assumed. It was custom made, based on photos of Kathleen cosplaying Red Sonja.
Because Kathleen’s biggest secret was that she wanted to be Red Sonja.
