Age: 14
Trauma: 0
Bliss: 14
Relationships
Nick Carlson (fellow pilot): Intimacy 4, Trust 1
Emma Danforth (anchor): Intimacy 3, Trust 2
Maria Campbell (authority figure): Intimacy 2, Trust 4
William Steed (stepbrother): Intimacy 2, Trust 2
Jason Campbell (Maria's son): Intimacy 2, Trust 1
Calvin Welbern (nurse-of-sorts): Intimacy 1, Trust 4
Everyone else: Intimacy 1, Trust 2
And that's all you get. Seriously.
You're not even meant to get that. All those relationships? I had to make up those characters myself. You're meant to do that as a group. Even the pilots, really. That Trauma and Bliss total? You're not even meant to think about those until the game starts. (Bliss, by the way, is a bad thing. Get to 108 Bliss - 108 being a very important number - and you're out. Dead, permanently asleep, insane, joined the aliens, or in some other way out of play. Best case scenario: your pilot replaces the authority figure of the group, and you replace the GM. Yes, you can do that.)
It's all pretty cut-and-dried up there, isn't it? Intimacy relates to the intensity of a relationship, Trust to its endurance. You level up your Intimacy by becoming closer to the other person, you level up your Trust by not taking advantage of them. As you might have guessed, sometimes one kind of damages the other, as we can see with Catherine's relationship with Nick. Intimacy 5 is reserved for blood relatives or sexual partners (the game makes a point that if you have sex with your blood relatives, it still tops out at 5; you don't get Bonus Incest Points), so at 4 they're obviously deep inside one another's skin. Indeed, qualifying factors include kissing, sexual touching, and seeing one another naked; if you're currently thinking back to that "Age: 14" line and covering your ears while saying "la la la I can't hear you", there's also options for "exchange blood" and "physically fight for real".
If Nick and Catherine are in some proto-sexual relationship, which seems likely, it's balanced out by the fact that they obviously don't like each other that much. At Trust 1, one or both of them obviously thinks the other one will dissolve the relationship - or do something to deserve the dissolution of the relationship - at the drop of a hat. And that would be bad, because if that relationship breaks, Intimacy 4 means they both get 12 Bliss, and Bliss - again - is not a good thing.
Normally you'd want particularly high Intimacy with your anchor - Mission Control, who guides her pilot through the dream world. But that low Trust was a killer. Possibly literally. If your relationship with your Anchor breaks while you're on a mission, one of you is almost certainly going to die. So I gave Catherine Emma, at lower Intimacy but less likely to EXPLODE.
The Eager Young Soldier template allows the character to add 1 to either Intimacy or Trust with the authority figure. I picked safety (Trust) over power (Intimacy) because 1) no one wants their pilot to Bliss out after the first mission action, and 2) frankly the demonstration is probably squicky enough as it is. Catherine's high Trust with Maria and Calvin gives her two solid relationships that she can rely on in battle. From a tactical perspective, she should probably start shagging one or both of them.
Yes, you just read about a fourteen-year-old who is either having sex or soon to have sex with another fourteen-year-old who she doesn't actually like and who gains tactical benefits thereby. WELCOME TO BLISS STAGE. Is the Evangelion influence clear yet?
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