First appearance: S7E8 — Private Bathrooms — Livid Lady Lin v Gandor Thalion Umbrae · watch it on YouTube
Gandor Thalion Umbrae was a pipe-smoking, orb-pondering transmutation wizard who insisted on all three of his names, every single time. He fought his long-time rival Livid Lady Lin in S7E8 — Private Bathrooms — Livid Lady Lin v Gandor Thalion Umbrae. The prize was the lease on a hundred-floor wizard’s tower with many pools for pondering. Along the way he turned into a portly cartoon dragon, burned his own mother to death, and was finally blasted into glittering pipe dust when he tried to counter Lin’s lightning bolt and lost, and the bolt rebounded onto him.
Story
Gandor came into the Void through a portal the Arbiter tore open in the Grandmaster’s private bathroom, while the Grandmaster was still in the stall pooping, with no toilet paper until the Arbiter kicked a roll under the door. He introduced himself with great ceremony: “My name is Gandor Thalion Umbrae, and you will address me as such using the entire thing every time.” When the Arbiter asked whether three names meant he was planning to shoot a president, Gandor replied that he had not yet “gazed into the orb of time” to see if that was his fate, “but it is not outside the realm of possibility.” He and Lin had history (“We know each other too, too well”), and the Grandmaster greeted him on her way out of the stall by telling him there was no smoking in the bathroom. In the snowy mountain arena, the Acolytes chanted the champions’ names, all except his, because it was too long. “I will remember this, all of you,” he promised.
He struck first. “Today, we settle this once and for all. Have at thee!” He conjured the Orb of Infinite Ponder, which caught Lin’s gaze so completely that she could not see him, and he slipped away into the mountaintop mists. Lin answered by swallowing a can of baked beans and farting a horrific wind that blew him fifteen feet back, while he tried to keep his pipe lit in the noxious haze. The Grandmaster declared that the expelled wind had solidified into a “60 foot long shit brick.” His next spell, Give Me Your Blood, shattered the orb into a trillion shards that cut her open. He snatched her blood out of midair and then realized, with dawning horror, what he was holding: “Why is it thick?… Do you need a doctor?” Lin started to explain that “once a month…”, and the Arbiter announced, “He moonlights as a gynecologist.” After a stampede of chinchillas trampled both wizards and then strolled off for their union-mandated lunch, Gandor gave his professional approval: “Hey, no overtime. A matter of regulation. I approve.”
The stakes then came out. Both wizards were finalists for the lease on a tower that, in Gandor’s words, “has reflecting pools, it has pondering pools, it has summoning pools.” When Lin asked, “Didn’t your mom ever tell you if you ponder too much, you’ll go blind?”, he sealed her mouth shut with a spell he called “Shut the Fuck Up” and took the chance to deliver a speech uninterrupted: “You have no business taking occupancy of a sage’s tower… You are not worthy of its orbs and its many pools.” He finished it with a staff swing that missed. Lin cut her own mouth open with a dagger to keep talking. Gandor then tried The Big Sad, grabbing her wrist to fill her with crippling doubt, though he was “weak as hell” and could not budge her. Buoyed by the Acolytes’ blue slushies, she shrugged the doubt off because, as Gandor’s player put it, “There’s just nothing going on up there.” Gandor was so furious that his orb exploded.
Lin’s answer was to call his mother. An old woman in a pink fluffy bathrobe and curlers stepped through a portal, cigarette in her lips, shouting, “I thought I told you to stop pondering them orbs!” She hurled a bunny-eared slipper at him. Gandor raised a shield he called “You Cannot Legally Hit Me Without My Consent,” which did nothing, then leaned back Matrix-style so the slipper only grazed his chest. With the crowd firmly behind Lin, even that glancing blow hurt badly. Reaching deep for a heroic surge, he polymorphed into an adult red dragon (“Ancient would be gauche”). He came out as a portly, unthreatening cartoon dragon with tiny arms, still wearing his beard and pipe, and he spoke by telepathy. “I’m unimpressed,” said the Arbiter. “I’ve seen a dragon before.” Lin summoned tentacles drawn from his embarrassing browsing history; he fought off their grip, but they turned the ground around him into difficult terrain, and his mother asked if he’d been looking up “that hint” she gave him. “Mother, this doesn’t concern you,” he said, turning a painfully brighter red. Then he breathed fire over both of them. His mother was roasted dead. Lin dodged the flames entirely with a natural 20.
Gandor deflated in a cloud of smoke and steam and was left a weeping human man on his knees: “It’s not fair! I was so close!” The table started a GoFundMe for the funeral. Lin pointed her dagger at him, his robes turned to static-crackling nylon, and lightning gathered around him. From the ground he cried, “No, no. I shall not lose!” and tried to counter the spell. The two wizards tied and bounced the electricity back and forth between them, then tried again, and Lin won. The full bolt rebounded onto Gandor. He reached out to her in a desperate plea for mercy, flipped her off, and exploded into glittering pipe dust. His particles drifted up among the Acolytes, who glimpsed his dreams of the tower: “so many orbs… Balls everywhere.” A small pink imp with a vacuum cleaner soon sucked them up. Lin got the lease, and moments later the Arbiter killed her too, because he wanted the tower for himself.
After the show, Thea took the vacuum bags back to her closet of a room, dumped them out and began trying to piece Gandor and Lin back together, one speck of dust at a time. “This is going to be my greatest puzzle.”
Personality and Abilities
Gandor was a self-described “Gandoff clone,” with a staff, a pipe, a crystalline orb and a gray beard the Grandmaster judged too short and too dark for the look. His defense was a classic: “It is not my fault that your pixel editor only had one color gray.” He was pompous, wordy and deeply wounded by anyone who shortened his name, and he lived for a good monologue. His obsessions were orbs, “orb related activity,” and pools of every kind. When the subject of computers came up, he drew a hard line: “I’M NOT THE COMPUTER GUY, MAN!”
As a transmutation wizard, he gave his spells grandiose or petulant names: the Orb of Infinite Ponder, Give Me Your Blood, Shut the Fuck Up, The Big Sad, and You Cannot Legally Hit Me Without My Consent. Physically he was frail. His crowning trick was polymorphing into a red dragon, though the dragon came out more Disney than doom. His player summed up the problem: “I’m the anti-Hulk. When I get angry enough, I turn into a frail old man.”
Relationships
- Livid Lady Lin: His old rival and fellow finalist for the tower lease. She called him “Gandalf,” he called her “Liv,” and she killed him when her lightning bolt rebounded onto him after his failed counter.
- His mother: Summoned by Lin, she berated him for pondering orbs and hit him with a slipper. He killed her with dragon fire.
- The Acolytes: They refused to chant his too-long name and favored Lin throughout the fight. They saw his dreams of orbs as he died.
- Grandmaster Elusia Skypiercer: She banned his smoking in her bathroom, earned his thanks for once getting his name right, and dubbed him “knockoff Gandar.”
- The Arbiter: Unimpressed by his dragon form. He took the tower for himself after both wizards were dead.
- Thea: Vacuumed up his dust and set out to reassemble him.
- Chinchillas: They trampled him, and he approved of their union rules anyway.
Memorable Quotes
“I have many names. These are the three that are the most expedient for the likes of you.” (Private Bathrooms)
“It’s a literal wizard’s tower and I will have it.” (Private Bathrooms)
- “You have no business taking occupancy of a sage’s tower. You have no right to inherit its tomes. You are not worthy of its orbs and its many pools.” (Private Bathrooms)
- “This is an illusion! You cannot hit me without my consent!” (Private Bathrooms)
- “Why did you take so many difficult terrain spells?” (Private Bathrooms)
- “Gandor Thalion Umbrae. I will remember every single one of you.” (Private Bathrooms, final words)