Some of you may know him by his online persona “stubarnes.” Others may know him as That Sentinel Guy from various tourneys around the country. Still more may recognize the name from the various insightful articles he writes for metagame.com. But what about the man behind the Purple Mask?

A recognizable Vs. System personality from the moment the game came out, Rian made a name for himself early by stubbornly clinging to the Sentinels despite their being universally panned. He was laughed at for his plans to play them at PC Indy, the inaugural Vs. System Pro Circuit event, but it was Rian who laughed last. His Purple Pity deck earned him a $3,000 payday.

But Rian is more than simply Wild Vomit and high-risk card-playing. What most people don’t know about him is that he teaches grades nine to twelve at the School for Applied Technology in downtown Miami. Even more surprising is that he uses the Vs. System game as a teaching tool. “I use Vs. to help teach critical thinking skills, math, and, as an art teacher, to critique the paintings on the cards. The department I work for is called Life Skills, and playing Vs. teaches decision-making as well as any other activity would.”

Rian’s history as an artist is a long one, although far from typical. He’s never had a "career" in art outside of his teaching, he's held a one-man show at University of Miami, and although he’s never created artwork to sell (“I do artwork for myself to exercise my soul”), he was instrumental in an extraordinary art-by-mail program. In the late 1980's, Rian created a worldwide network of artists who exchanged art through the post, calling the group Alterior Facial Mandala. They reached their peak when they were reviewed in the Whole Earth catalog and were solicited by Harper’s Bazaar for some of their work. Rian felt that he had reached the summit of that medium, however, and he walked away from it, seeking something else. Even still, he has never forgotten the importance of that experience. “It was a very spiritual thing because we were giving away valuable commodities just for the act of exchange. That was directly before the Internet and when the internet came along, there were different communities to build and different mountains to climb.”

Those mountains eventually led to the Vs. System, where Rian quickly ascended to great heights in terms of respect and stature – not to mention success at the game itself. Although he’s not a huge comic collector, he is a big fan of superheroes, though again not in the typical sense. He's doesn't care for them for their stories, “but in terms of the archetypes these conglomerations of human experience that are comic book characters. I believe that somewhere, on some level, every superhero truly exists. Say for example Rogue – she is the sum total of every human thought about her.” And so begins a long discussion on deification through worship, and how many ancient civilizations have thought that a deity existed through worship and that their strength derived from the number of those who believed in them. That theory even stretches to the comic book world in one of Rian’s favourite comics, Alan Moore’s Promethea.

Rian believes, as I do, that people create personae and that these personae are incorporated into entities that only some people see. For example, many of those who know Rian Fike know nothing about "stubarnes", and vice-versa. He says that “through the postal [art exchange] I created an 'entity’ which was AFM, and after [that entity] was ‘born,’ it was time to move on.” And that entity still exists – when you read this article, or when someone uses Google to search for Rian’s name and this article pops up, AFM is reborn. And even today, there are practicing mail artists.

The Vs. System led to another one of these personae. “When I put myself into this game, I knew that it was time for me to create another entity.” Rian’s favourite medium as an artist is to create what he calls "attention beings" that grow and change according to how they are seen by others. However, he never expected this persona to reach the summit that it did. “My art is always spontaneous and open, and not ego-driven. I allow things to happen on their own. And it just so happened that I became ‘famous’ (but not rich!)”

Rian wants to stay on the PC, and he will as long as the money holds out. “Even if my play skill is not at the level to keep me on the Circuit, I will always play the game and find outrageous card combos to share with the community.” If he doesn’t make Day 2, he’ll simply move on and play in the $10K tournament, reverting to his proud Sentinels. He took a gamble today, originally wanting to get a fourth turn win with Unus—until Ian Estrin convinced him to go even further and aim for a third turn win! Rian’s deck is a TNB blitz centered around Unus, because Rian wanted to redeem Unus in response to overwhelming complaints that he is a useless card. Rian called his deck "Little Death" because it has twenty 1- and 2-drops and four copies of A Death in the Family. The deck is being shared by fellow Team Realmworx Pros Dave Spears and Shane Wendel, in hopes that one (or more!) of them will take it all the way. More than anything, Rian believes in bringing the cards to life, something he tries to do in his articles for metagame.com. He likes to translate characters’ game effects into prose – for example, Ratcatcher biting ankles, or Satanus stealing souls. If he doesn’t end up an eternal Pro, he'll continue doing that much for the community.

Rian can be very emotional, in that he reacts with his heart more often than he does with logic. “I put my heart into everything I do – and sometimes it turns around and bites me.” I questioned whether he was serious, and he said, “Yeah, it bites me and yet I know to move on. I know that I want this experience to be as intense as possible so I wouldn’t have it any other way.” And Rian lives by intensity. When I asked him how he met his stunning wife, Nina, he told me, “We were both very powerful sorcerers and we met each other at midnight on Miami Beach. We were each alone and we recognized each other from twelve previous lifetimes . . . ” When I raised an eyebrow, he laughed and said, “but remember I am creating a personality as a piece of art! The damned thing about it is that it’s true—it really happened—but you throw that in at the end, and no one really knows.” Always an artist, to the end!