Domo arigato

Unfortunately, the history of Roboto Pizzicato isn't nearly as interesting as the Biography of Ilen Gesh. Roboto was created as part of my assistantship. I work for the grad school doing Web maintenance, among other things, including fooling around in Second Life. So I created a character that was a pretty basic model. I didn't really tweak any of his features. I was just making a character to get it done; I was/am the guy with the half-fro, shorts, and glasses. But as I was running around orientation island, I got curious. I went exploring and began to find things in various locations that you could take to get started with your second life. Things like clothes, furniture, vehicles, textures, and yes, a DRAGON COSTUME!!

"Yes! A dragon costume!" I thought. It was hidden in a tower on orientation island, and I snagged it. Once I tried it out, I loved it. Especially the fact that he has a jet pack and leaves a trail of colored dust when he flies through the sky. So I kept the dragon skin for my own enjoyment, but decided to walk around in "human form" since I would be doing "official" Clemson stuff and I wanted to come across more professional.

I had been interacting in the Second Life environment for about a week when I realized that it wasn't as formal as I thought. I usually was dealing the the same few people, most of who I knew casually. So I made the switch. I donned the dragon skin and haven't gone back since, except one time when I was charged with taking a screen shot for the CU homepage regarding Clemson's partnership with App State in virtual world research (I figured it best to keep it as "serious" as possible, so I went into human form and put on my CU Tshirt). But for the most part, I'm known as the Full Metal Dragon that flies around the Clemson grad school island. Sometimes I like to log in for no other reason that to fly around the island leaving a trail of smoke, hoping someone new will see me and be surprised. Its fun to pretend to be lording about, surveying the land, and of course, burninating all the peasants.

Jesus saves, everyone else takes half

So I can't let the opportunity pass without commenting on my D&D experience. I've been involved in two campaigns in my brief history as a human being, both being in college. The first campaign, running from Freshman to Sophomore year saw me playing a dwarven Ranger. In the second campaign, I was a halfling Psion.

Both of our campaigns were story intensive, and I enjoyed the second campaign more that the first because the story was taken more seriously. In both cases, I spent quite a bit of time working on the backstory of my character. Each character's biography turned out being twenty or so typed pages. I was rather proud of myself, and my fellow players followed suit, each creating a detailed history of their own. What made things really cool was that we didn't know anything about our fellow party members. The only person familiar with every backstory was the games DM. Our DM did a great job with incorporating elements of our bios into the conflicts that our characters were going through, and each character's history had an element that would up being important to the world at large.

Two years later, when we were about to graduate, the campaign came to a close. I remember the excitement we all had as all of the pieces of the story were filled in. Some character's destinies were fulfilled, some became heroes, some became villains, some showed courage, some weakness. It was a truly epic event, and I still relate to those characters more than characters of most movies I see, books that I read, and games that I play.

The Biography of Ilen Gesh (excerpt)

I don’t know why I was swayed by what Lucious had to say. I knew he was lying. Looking back on it, I think that it was the excitement of it. It was different, one hundred eighty degrees from anything I had ever heard before. I must admit, all his talk about balance and equality, it enticed me. For a fleeting moment, I thought it would be possible, that we could achieve a world where order would rule the day. I also knew that if this were to come to be that I would again assume the role of outcast. I could never live in a world of balance and order. I have been marred by the world of chaos and chance. It has become a part of my being. However, that was a sacrifice I was willing to make. I have studied the Planes. I know there is somewhere where I could retreat to when it was all over, somewhere where I could be alone and die in peace. I was prepared to make that sacrifice for the greater good. I would have followed Lucious into the Infinite Layers of the Abyss to make that happen, but it was not to be.

Lucious the Deceiver used me. I was a pawn in his plan for power. I will not go into the details here, but suffice to say that he betrayed us all. We almost lost our lives that day. I remember Tovanus. The look of pain on his face when he found out the truth about his brother was absolutely devastating. It moved me to pity. I had forgotten what that feels like. He fought with all he had that day. He was prepared to give his life for his cause, for the Good. Despite the horror he was going through, I envied him in that moment. For he had something so passionate that he would give his life up for. I wanted that same passion, to break out of my miserable realm of existence and to truly live.