Riley Jones

Riley is one of the main characters of the Awaken Online series, being Jason Rhodes's right hand in the game world (as he is the regent of an undead city, that he named the Twilight Throne after having conquered it) and being a close friend to him in the real world too - and later on, his girlfriend. In AO, her strongest affinity is the dark, and she is a lawful-evil archer.

She is an eighteen years-old attractive blonde, and often faces problems similar or linked to Jason's - for instance, she hates the private school that she attends, and it is also mostly because of Alex Lane, the spoilt, detestable, rich bully who gets away with a lot of misdeeds, some of them severe. Alex is particularly handsome, with an athletic look, and knows how to keep up good appearances - thus Riley did not realize what kind of person he really was until she saw him attack Jason in the school cafeteria for no reason. She was actually dating Alex until that point - then she decided to break up with him, but couldn't - because he blackmailed her into staying with him. He had obtained a video of her doing embarrassing things while drunk, and likely before her eighteenth birthday, and threatened to post it on social media; that scared Riley into going along with him and his lies, because her father makes a living thanks to the sales of the self-help books - she therefore fears the possible repercussions a video like that getting out might have on her father's job. (The extent of what exactly Alex forced Riley to do is unclear, but from what we know he did not go as far as committing sexual assault.)

However, in part thanks to the virtual reality game Awaken Online, she is able to stand up for herself - and does so in a very memorable way in-game: as Alex and the troops with him seem to have won a decisive battle against Jason and his undead army, as Alex is loudly proclaiming victory, Riley comes up behind him and beheads him. Of course, since it is in the game world, Alex is not truly physically injured - but his ego sure is. Indeed, the footage of his head getting destroyed by the young woman, and Jason's subsequent triumph, goes viral - and Alex (called Alexion in-game) becomes a massive joke in the entirety of AO's world.

Riley hence refuses to bend to Alex's appalling blackmail, and re-gains confidence in herself; from that point, she also becomes friends with Jason, and later Jason's own friend Frank Cross, as they together face increasingly difficult challenges in both the virtual and real world.

Unfortunately, she does suffer after that victory over Alex; in the real-world, he is rich and thus powerful, and Riley gets bullied at school by many students, especially by a gang of particularly despicable girls that Alex has precisely tasked with tormenting Riley.

This said, once again she shows a strength that overconfident Alex did not expect: when the four girls are about to beat her up, ganging up on her, she uses her recently acquired physical strength against them and wins, leaving the four of them astonished and too scared of her to continue bullying her.

Sadly, what Alex has done to her has a big impact on her ability to trust people  - she is much more wary of others, and objectively small breaches of trust feel much more hurtful than they should.

Like Jason, Riley gains confidence partly thanks to the game world, as both become increasingly powerful and important figures in AO; she also has moments of intense anger in-game against some NPC enemies which frequently give her the strength necessary to use new spells or powers or to make a very bold move; and, again like Jason, those sudden feelings of deep hatred and anger against some NPCs are often partly fueled by some kind of similarity to her real-world problems. She also sometimes struggles with the consequences of those fits of anger; even if the game world isn't real, it is very realistic and the sight of dead bodies and gore can be quite troubling.

During the entire series, she is a formidable fighter at least as powerful as Jason; AO therefore becomes very important for her (however, not as important as it is to Jason, since his real life is much more closely connected to the game world than hers; also, her parents, unlike Jason's, are often there to help her).

In the fourth book, Dominion, after having encountered some difficult moments in their relationship, Riley and Jason finally become an official couple; they will fight the problems thrown at them together.

**Retribution**

There is also a (shorter) book in which Riley is the protagonist: Retribution, which happens during the period of time between Precipice and Evolution - when Jason is arrested.

In that novel, she is tasked with avenging the death of Lily, the former owner of the bow Riley is now using, who was apparently killed by cultists; Riley end up in the city of Vaerwald, following Jerry's advice to investigate some weird magical plague that could be linked to the cultists, accompanied by three other players: Emma, Ethan and Lucas (the latter has nothing to do with the guy named Lucas who died in real life at the end of Precipice). Vaerwald is a city of mages, where five out of the six affinities have a guild (the dark being excluded because of past troubles). It has a very particular structure: it is divided in twelve parts - but vertically, not horizontally, meaning that it has twelve levels, as if it was a gigantic building with twelve floors. It is closely connected to the strict social hierarchy of Vaerwald: the higher the floor is, the richer its inhabitants are. And in that place, mana (sort of energy used a lot by players and NPCs reflecting their main affinity, basically) is very important; they pay for many services, or entrances, with mana instead of money; the dark mana is however not accepted as a form of payment.

It is in Vaerwald that Riley meets Cecil, a talented enchanter who later wisely leaves that city, as it has become dangerous for him, and joins Jason's side.

Both Ethan and Lucas are pretty good companions for Riley's quest, and they provide great help - but definitely not Emma (the light mage) - at least not during the first part of their trip; she is Lucas' real-world girlfriend and gets jealous and thus aggressive very easily; she seems angry whenever Lucas speaks to Riley, even though they've just met her and he hasn't shown any romantic interest in her. It isn't until Emma screws up and almost gets the four of them killed in-game that she changes her behavior towards Riley.

Like in the main series, we get to see Riley grow stronger, both in-game and in the real world; it is at the end of Retribution that she is able to defend herself - and is remarkably victorious - against the four girls Alex sent after her.