Played by Tony Jones in a One-Off Convention Game
Desert Orchid was born Janell Sujata in 1964, the only child of a poor peasant family in a village near the city of Byistan, about 100 km from the Afghan border. Her parents kept her hidden from everyone else in the village due to her strange appearance but they loved her anyway, as her mother proved incapable of having any more children (the village as a whole thought the baby had been miscarried and died), and she loved them, thinking that all children were raised like her.
At the age of ten, not having grown since she was about five, she started to get interested in the world outside of her parents house, and by the age of twelve had started sneaking out while her parents were out or asleep to explore. Because of her small size and natural stealth abilities she escaped detection for quite a while, but when she was thirteen she was seen by several people at once, but managed to escape. After this incident her frightened parents kept her inside for several months, in the midst of which the Iranian revolution occurred and Ayatollah Khomeni came to power. Then she started exploring again, but soon after her fifteenth birthday she was seen again in the village and a hue-and-cry ensued in which she was captured and imprisoned. The local police chief called the government for advice and agents of the new Iranian Secret Service soon came and took the terrified Janell away. Her parents could do nothing as they would have been lynched by the fearful superstitious locals for producing such a monster.
The Iranian government didnt know what to do with her, and so for about eighteen months Janell was kept locked up in a research facility in the countryside near Tehran, being investigated by scientists. During this time she was indoctrinated to be loyal to Iran but the fact that some of the scientists tests were fairly unpleasant blunted the indoctrinations effects somewhat. All through this time she kept quiet about the identity of her family, to protect them. Also during this time she discovered as part of the scientists tests that she was able to fly, healed very quickly, was somewhat resistant to bullets and similar attacks and had several enhanced senses.
Finally a decision was made as to what would be done with her - she would be trained as an agent of the Iranian Secret Service. This was despite her being a woman in a male-dominated society, as the Iranian government didnt want to waste the opportunity given by there being an Iranian superbeing, even if she was female.
Eventually she was trained and ready for her first mission under the codename Desert Orchid. The Secret Service wanted her to go into Iraq and assassinate various military personnel there as part of the war against Iraq. She covertly flew across the border, rendezvoused with Iranian agents inside Iraq and was given her first target. However, when she came to actually killing him she found that she could not kill him in cold blood. She reported back the unsuccessful completion of her mission and was ordered to Secret Service headquarters in Tehran where she was severely reprimanded and ordered back into Iraq to complete her mission, despite her protests against these orders.
With this her resentment boiled over and instead of going back to Iraq she flew cross-country to Afghanistan, riding on the roofs of trains and lorries going in the right direction (as they could go faster than she could fly). She stopped only to steal food and to visit her parents for the first time in several years, in the dead of night, to say goodbye. After a tearful farewell she flew into Afghanistan and well into the country joined up with a group of Mujahedeen guerrillas. She has not seen her parents since. Despite some initial reservations on their part she fought with the Mujahedeen for several months, finding she could kill in the hot blood of combat, but seeing no real future to the conflict there. However, she kept these feelings to herself and over the months considered her options.
She came to the conclusion that despite the propaganda neither side in the war was really any better than the other, and given her appearance the only way she could really make a living would be in combat, so she might as well sell her abilities to the highest bidder. She abandoned the Mujahedeen and flew to Kabul, offering her services to the Soviets, although she didnt betray what she knew about the Mujahedeen. She worked with the Soviet occupation forces for about six months, earning some cash, and quite a lot of experience and learning English as an aid to her work in the future. Since then she has fought in many wars around the world, usually for the highest bidder but always trying to stop atrocities and gratuitous killing (even on occasion turning on her own side to do so) always with complete discretion and always pursued by the Iranian Secret Service. She has also been introduced to drinking and smoking in the course of her career and although she doesnt approve of drinking she smokes a lot of cigarettes.
Desert Orchid is one metre tall with a typical Arabian dark skin hair and eyes. Her calves and forearms are covered with individually mobile greyish-brown quills which she can fire at opponents or use to enhance her hitting damage. Her Hair is also formed of these quills. Desert Orchids costume is beige with black boots, gloves, belts and belt pouches, and black inserts around the neck. Her costume has a green gem at the throat which is actually the camera of a disguised audiovisual transceiver system (her High Range Radio Hearing) and a green belt buckle with a gold star insert.
Desert Orchid in Champions terms.