Orlisse Vann - XERES LIVE!

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Basic Information

Full Name

Orlisse Vann

Nickname

The Mender

Race (Grade)

Android (E)

Class

Artificer

Height

5'8"

Birthday

Yearend 20, 1242

Age

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Birthsign

The Janus Owlbear

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Bloodline Ability

🔮 Unknown

This Bloodline ability has not yet been unveiled to you.

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Physical Description

Orlisse Vann among old stones, which she finds far less confusing than new ones

Appearance

Orlisse looks like a woman of about twenty-nine, with long, wavy copper-red hair, fair freckled skin, and startling violet eyes. Most people who meet her assume she is a human woman with extensive prosthetics, and she usually does not correct them unless it matters. She dresses for work: a high-collared coat of dark, well-worn leather reinforced with plates of etched metal, a heavy pauldron over her left shoulder, and a harness of straps and buckles hung with tools. Look closely and the rest becomes harder to explain. The segmented metal at her throat is not a collar. The cables running beneath the plating of her upper arm do not stop where the armor does. The metal arm is not a replacement; it is what is underneath.

Unique Characteristics

The flesh covering most of Orlisse's body is synthetic living tissue wrapped around an artificial internal structure, and damage sometimes exposes the metal, cables, and strange crystalline components beneath. The fine lines tracing across her temple and cheek are not tattoos; they are portions of her internal circuitry visible through the skin, and they glow faintly when she is concentrating. Her violet eyes dilate mechanically, with a very small and very precise adjustment that people tend to notice eventually. She was built for maintenance, and that original purpose survived whatever destroyed the people who made her: she has an almost compulsive need to fix broken things, and once she notices one, ignoring it becomes extremely difficult for her.

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Personality & Temperament

Positive Traits

Warmer and funnier than anyone expects of a construct
Endlessly patient with children and their questions
Can diagnose almost any machine by listening to it
Respects craftsmen's hands as much as scholars' books
Fixes what's broken without being asked or paid

Challenging Traits

Physically cannot ignore a squeaking hinge
Vanishes into her work for days at a time
Baffled, even offended, by clumsy modern solutions
Goes very still around scholars who want to study her
Rarely corrects anyone who assumes she's human

[Asked whether the loose chair was bothering her.] Yes. [How did you even notice?] It was wrong.

That's ridiculous. [The miller insists that it works.] That's the upsetting part.

[Asked whether she might be opened up so her mechanisms could be examined. Her expression goes very still.] You first.

Likes

Children, who ask the questions adults won't
Craftsmen who know things with their hands
A machine running exactly as it was meant to
The hum of something ancient waking up
Goodberry, which should not work, and does

Dislikes

Scholars who treat her like an artifact
A wagon wheel turning slightly incorrectly
Being asked to be opened up and examined
Waterwheels, on principle, despite their success
Broken things everyone has learned to live with

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Background & History

She Woke Up

Orlisse was not born. She woke up. Her first memory, on Yearend 20 of 1242 (the only birthday she has ever had), is of opening her eyes inside the ruins of an ancient underground complex with no idea who she was, why she existed, or why the people lying around her had been dead for centuries. The facility had belonged to a civilization capable of blending machinery and magic on a level modern scholars still struggle to reproduce. Orlisse was one of the things they left behind. She has never told anyone where it is.

Built for Maintenance

Her makers did not build her for war, for assassination, or for exploration. They built her for maintenance. She was designed to enter damaged sections of their facility, identify whatever had stopped working, and repair it. That purpose outlived them by thousands of years, and it shows. A squeaking door, a damaged clock, a cracked aqueduct, a malfunctioning magical lantern, a wagon wheel turning very slightly incorrectly: she will notice it, and once she has noticed it, she will fix it. Someone once watched her stop in the middle of a conversation, walk across an entire tavern, tighten a single screw on a chair, and come back. Asked how she had even noticed, she paused, and said only, "It was wrong."

A World of Waterwheels

When Orlisse finally left the ruins, she discovered that almost nobody understood the machines she considered completely ordinary. That was when her life became interesting. She spent decades traveling between cities, studying modern engineering, magical crafting, clockwork, alchemy, and architecture among Kristofferson's enchanters, Emberpeak's forges, and anyone else who would let her watch. Ironically, she understands ancient advanced technology far better than contemporary mundane technology. The first time someone showed her a waterwheel, she stared at it for ten minutes, not because she did not understand it, but because she could not believe anyone had solved the problem that way. "That's ridiculous," she said at last. The miller frowned and told her that it worked. Orlisse stared at it again. "That's the upsetting part."

Not a Specimen

Over sixty years she has become quietly well known among artificers and engineers as the person to send for when something old and incomprehensible stops working, or starts. She is much warmer than people expect of an android: curious, dryly funny, patient, and prone to becoming completely absorbed in whatever is in front of her. She likes children because they ask the questions adults are embarrassed to ask, and craftsmen because they understand that knowledge lives in the hands as much as in books. She does not enjoy scholars who treat her as an archaeological find. Ask about her technology and she will happily answer. Ask whether you might open her up and examine the mechanisms, and her expression goes very still. "You first."

The Town That Shouldn't Work

Orlisse came to Goodberry in the autumn of 1306 for the same reason anyone with her training eventually would: it defies every definition of how a city is supposed to function. It is barely five years old and built inside a magical bubble. Its ambient magic runs at levels that ought to be impossible outside a laboratory. An intelligent dungeon lies beneath it, portals open from it to distant cities, and a thousand-year-old dwarven fortress hangs anchored above it, tended by a ghostly custodian intelligence. Orlisse took one long look at all of it and has not stopped taking notes since. In her first weeks she has also quietly repaired a great many hinges, several lantern posts, and one very grateful baker's oven.

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Goals & Aspirations

What Keeps Goodberry Running

Every machine Orlisse has ever met is running on something, and somebody is supposed to maintain it. Goodberry is the largest and strangest machine she has ever encountered, and as far as she can tell nobody fully understands what powers it or what it needs to keep working. She intends to find out, and to keep it running, whether or not anyone thinks to ask her.

Another Like Her

Orlisse has heard that another android lives in Goodberry, an engineer working somewhere inside the fortress overhead. In sixty-three years she has never met one. She has not gone looking yet. She is not entirely sure which possibility frightens her more: that the two of them will turn out to be nothing alike, or that they will not.

"Oh."

Somewhere in Goodberry's dungeon, or in the old halls of the fortress above it, there may be technology as old as the people who made her. If anything like that ever turns up, Orlisse would very much like to be the first to look at it. She is, after all, one of the very few people alive who might turn it over in her hands and simply say, "Oh."

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Current Status & Relationships

Residence

Goodberry

Role

Artificer

ATTENTION!

Orlisse Vann is an E-grade android artificer, and most people who meet her take her for a human woman with an unusually fine prosthetic arm; she rarely corrects them unless it matters. She can absolutely fight. Her reflexes are enhanced, her body is far tougher than it looks, and she has modified portions of it herself over the years. Her real value, though, is in what she keeps running. If a construct, a magical device, a machine, or a piece of the city's infrastructure is about to fail, she has probably noticed before you did, and if anything truly ancient ever surfaces, she may be the only person in Haven who recognizes it. She is warm, curious, and patient, especially with children. Do not treat her as an archaeological specimen, and do not ask to open her up. And if you own something broken that you have simply learned to live with, either hide it or accept that she is going to fix it.