In the
fantasy novels of
Rick Cook, a young
programmer who is
recruited to the team that
rewrites and
refines
Wiz Zumwalt's
magic compiler system, and who stays in the
magical World after
fathering a
child. Danny was about nineteen years old when he joined the team, almost a typical
teenage hacker and
software pirate.
Danny got his start playing video games, as a response to his difficult home environment. From there, he turned to cracking the copy protection on those games, which led to programming. His early computer experience included work in TOS, AmigaDOS, and ProDOS, as well as realtime programming in Forth on a TRS-80 Model I. He had attended Caltech but did not have a degree. When he was interviewed by Jerry Andrews at the SCA event, he gave his name as "Thorkil du Libre Dragonwatcher." He was included on the team at Moira's suggestion, somewhat against Jerry's better judgement.
Danny turned out to be a decent coder, not much for grunt work but possessing a lot of raw talent. He had a habit of climbing up onto the roof of the Wizard's Keep to enjoy the view, which is where he met June. Gradually, they developed a relationship, which was consummated the evening that the programming team first used the time expansion spell. He was late getting into the Bull Pen, but the chewing out he got from Jerry didn't hurt all that much, this time.
After their contract was completed and the programmers were set to return to Cupertino, Danny refused to go, as June was now pregnant. Their son, Ian, was born not long after. Danny played an important role in the campaign to save the World from the plans of Craig Scott and Mikey Baker, even though he had a hard time working with Aelric due to June's violent reaction to the sight of the elf duke. In the battle for control of the supercomputer in Caermort, however, he was grievously wounded, and rendered incapable of fathering more children.
Danny's knowledge of cracking and phreaking techniques came in handy for supplying the Wizard's Keep with telephone and Internet connections to the "real" world. He was also noted for his unique and inventive spells, such as one that took all the random molecular motion inside an enemy and aimed it all in the direction of the nearest gravitational potential, sending the adversary slamming into the ground with incredible force. It was his creation of an artificial life-based aquarium spell, as a gift for his son, that led E.T. Tajikawa to determine the origin of the mysterious force that had abducted Moira's body and raised havoc around the Wizard's Keep.
Sources: Rick Cook, The Wizardry Compiled, The Wizardry Cursed, The Wizardry Consulted, The Wizardry Quested