Susan Reilly is the name of a character I created on the spot when I began playing Darkzone competitions in July or so this year. I wasn't sure if there were some bad rumours still hanging around about Tiki from competition games in 1997, so signed up under a new name, and almost immediately was presented with a great opportunity for mischief. Susan being an unknown, there was no reason why she should know anything about anyone. But, Tiki being connected to the rumour mills in the area, I knew a lot of people by name. Suddenly, Susan was this new person who knew a few people way too well. This worked most excellently - or seemed to - on Marcel, a dramatis personae of the first order. With the assistance of Ryan, someone who knew me and knew the joke, I made things appear like I _knew_ about quite a few people that first night. In order to hide the fact that it was a complete game, I maintained the identity of Susan Reilly from then on at that competition, with the indulgent patience of my teammates who never seemed quite sure of what to yell across the arena. As people came and talked to me and got to know "me" over the weeks, I developed more of a character background for Susan. This is what follows.

Name: Susan Reilly (no middle name)
Age: same as mine, maybe a year or two younger
Lives: with a female share-friend in Carine

Education: Highschool, with TEE, the sort of ordinary subject mix where you do four or five TEE subjects like English, Maths 1 (which is what it was called then, sort of like Applicable Maths now), Geography, and Human Biology, and then did Media Studies and Business Studies so that you're not doing too many TEE subjects and getting too tired. After highschool she went out to work, being sick of school, and did secretarial/office junior and retail/junior type work for a couple of years, but really got to hate it so she enrolled at Curtin University doing English/Cultural Studies/Media/Communications. She finished this degree in the standard 3 1/2 years.

Employment History: As above, she worked for a couple of years but got tired of there being little avenue to make your way up the chain, and little challenge in the work. The money started out being great, but after a couple of years it didn't seem like very much anymore. She got a degree in English, having loved media and marketing at school, and managed to include some commerce-marketing units in her course. This enabled her to get another bunny-level job, but one in a more interesting industry. She currently works for an un-named marketing and advertising company in West Perth doing trend analysis and (when appropriate) prediction as well as assisting the senior team with campaign design and implementation. She enjoys her work: it's stimulating, it gives her an excuse to shop and socialise, and the people aren't too bad to work with. There's office politics, but it's manageable, and her boss is a great lady who really puts time into helping her develop skills and become a strong team member. You've got to keep bosses like that - they're really rare. In the eighteen-or-so months she's worked there, she's not yet managed to win the office lotto. Each week someone from the senior team poses a question about upcoming events and trends, and bets on answers are collected and filed. When the event occurs, results are checked and the closest answer wins the pool. She's come quite close a few times, though never cracking the money, and several of the senior team are aware that she can be a good source of lateral ideas/answers to such questions.

General personality: In general, she thinks like a reasonably average upper-middle-class mid-20's female of our society: appearance- and money-focused, some generalised concerns about the environment, not really bothered by religion or complex social issues - that was just something she had to study as context to pass a class or two -, and in many ways nothing special. She likes to dress with the trend in style and in colour. She picked up some future-problem-solving and lateral-thinking skills during her uni studies, which helps her be more than just average at her job. If you pressed her, she'd admit to believing there's someone special out there for her, but she's not too concerned with marriage or rugrats. She can be quite affectionate with close friends, a little cat-like, but tends to be stand-offish and aloof with strangers. Not terribly fond of weirdos. She doesn't use public transport at all, preferring to drive herself in her own car - her first purchase when she started in this job, a brand new Honda Prelude. She has started riding her bike places for exercise, though not too far, because she is worried about getting a fat behind. She loves icecream, chocolate, and Brad Pitt (the latter not so much anymore, depending on how much he's been in the tabloids).

How she knows her team-mates: When she was studying for her degree, one of the units she took was about science fiction. She found this a little strange, hard, and way-out, and wasn't sure about passing the unit. One of her classmates mentioned a social event they'd been to with the CIA, which turned out to be the university science fiction club, and how they'd spent ages talking to some nerdy guy about the book they were trying to read and had got lots of ideas for their assignment. She went along to a party to see if she could do the same thing. It sort of worked - most of the people there were a bit weird, and she found it hard to talk to them. There was one guy though who was quite nice - and very good-looking - by the name of Burke. He was quite sweet, and she thought maybe getting to know him better would be a good idea. This never really eventuated, but she did make a few friends amongst the older club members in the process. Some of these friends started the XCOM Darkzone team, and invited her to play too.