(image credit to NeonTapirGuts on Twitter/Bluesky, or GagMeWithASpoon on FA. I'm not sure they're over here, though.)
So every so often I try and write up a longer thing on the act of roleplaying in TTRPGs while also being a plural system, and how some characters link to some headmates, and some don't, and once one of those characters became a headmate after her campaign ended and I realized I was just having a conversation with her a few days later. It gets rambly as heck, though, and I always toss it before getting too far in. The short version is a lot of characters wind up being important to me or tagging along after their stories are over in some form or another.
I finally landed art of one of the most important ones the other day. Rhena, her name is. She took the surname/title "Peacebringer" because she's a mortuary student. A goblin death domain cleric, she started out as this sullen, withdrawn teen, yanked into the Feywild and away from her comfort zone. Gradually, between visions from her goddess, a desire to stick up for these new friends she'd made, and a few revelations about her actual birth location (she knew she was adopted, but she wasn't expecting to meet a younger sister she didn't know about in another plane), she settled into a more outgoing role.
By this, I mean she was a terror. See, I do not like 5E combat. There's a number of reasons, but the main reasons I dislike it are "it is all very bad" and "none of it is any good." So, at the first opportunity, Rhena went for an intimidation play, and it worked, and a fight stopped before it started. It defined the whole character: big theatric horror and combat deterrence became her game. Ultimately, I reworked her into a pacifist who would only throw down when strictly necessary.
As the campaign went, she would grab some flashier clothing from a theater and brush her hair out of her eyes. As it winded to a close and she returned home, she made a comment about trying the theater herself. As the DM mentioned a potential followup, I made a little note: "bard multiclass." The early pitch I offered was that her Horror Persona would don a mask and lean harder into it while rocking this new alter-ego, even as her day-to-day life focused less on her morbid instincts and more on her increasing love for performance.
I feel like, as a trans person who digs the mortuary and theater fields, there is a metaphor in there for her gradual coming out of her shell. And I genuinely tried not to, because, honestly? There's not a lotta metaphor here, really. There's not a lot of "character" here, even. Rhena is just me without my filters on, and I was never more honest as when I spoke in her voice.
Her campaign ran alongside another one, a Reign campaign where I played a clown, who would turn into a headmate. This clown, Emerencia, was her masks, she didn't want anything under her disguises or grease paint to matter, and I spent a lot of time thinking about identity with her. (It made her big late-campaign moment where she ripped off her mask in a fury hit harder, though I still maintain it was her, not me, who settled on doing that.) Two of 'em learned me quite a lot.