Orlando Gardiner (try_tobe_good) is from Tad William's Otherland. He's smart, snarky, geeky, and at heart very well-meaning. He is also, at this point, dead.

Character Name is played by Elspeth Vimes.

Official canon

Orlando was born with progeria, and always had major health issues. When he was very young, his parents made sure to give him some normal experiences, visiting the zoo, having relatives over. But as he got older and sicker, this became much harder, and all the Gardiners became pretty cut off from the world. He never attended regular school, but went to netschool online. He was greatly respected for his intelligence by teachers and students, but never really had any friends there. Since at 14 he had already recieved numerous offers from companies willing to put him through college if he'd work for them, it's probably safe to say that he was at least a grade ahead (he never accepted the offers, because he knew he'd die before graduating college, if not sooner). His mother read him fantasy books, and he read more on his own, they mean a lot to him. From reading fanatsy and his interest in virtual reality, he got into gaming. In the Middle Country simworld, he spent years as the top-ranked character, Thargor. In the game he teamed up with the character Pithlit, and became friends with the player, Sam Fredericks, out of the game. They lived across the country from each other, and so never met offline. It was years before Orlando found out Sam was a girl (and she found out that he was terminally ill). Now, he doesn't care, what matters is that she's Sam (in fact, he's in love with her. he's just also very firmly in denial about that).

One day, while in the Middle Country, Orlando saw the most completely convincing bit of VR ever appear as a sort of window in one of the dungeons. Determined to find out what it was, he eventually got to the source, taking Sam along. Once in the Otherland system, he and a number of others were directed by Mr. Sellers to help undermine the Grail Brotherhood, who had created Otherland, from inside their network, hopefully freeing the children who had gone into comas as a result of contact with the network and stoping evil people from ruling the net as well as the real world. Orlando and Sam got split from the others for a while, found out important things and met important people, and met up again at the Troy simulation (where Orlando was Achilles and Sam was Patroclus). Shortly after that, there was a big fight to stop the Brotherhood from making the virtual copies of themselves, and Orlando died keeping the others safe. 

(Actually, the telepath at the heart of the system copied Orlando, and at a later crucial point, resurrected him so that he could fend off more bad guys. However, as this did occur after he died, Orlando won't know this.)

In coming to Moksa, he has been granted a new body by Yuuko, on which resembles a sim he had. There will be a price to pay for this, of course.

Head canon (personality notes and stuff I made up)

Orlando is likely to first come across as withdrawn and cynical, by means of his mix of polite distance and sarcastic comments. He's very aware of things around him, whether it's programming or class inequality. As mentioned above, he's extremely smart, and he is also good at thinking on his feet. He likes to think he has few illusions about the world, and in some ways he's right. He does, however, also genuinely believe people can and should change things for the better, that humanity in general does have a hope. And he's got some skills with denial. He has a great difficulty opening up to people, it's difficult for him to trust people. But at the same time, he wants to help, if he's able. He's especially fond and protective of kids, just because he never had much of a childhood himself doesn't mean others shouldn't.

Game canon (stuff that has happened in the game)

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Character's Logs