Olaf Willow

Olaf Willow was a Monotheist with ties to the Soldiers of the One who lived outside Caprica City with his group marriage partners. Despite his religious views against what he saw as the rampant immorality of online culture, he was known to have spent some five years as a hardcore New Cap City gamer before being banned. Within his marriage the operational work of the cell fell to Olaf and his husband Nestor, both taking orders from their wife, Sister Clarice Willow.

The Willow cell#

While the married partners as a whole were Monotheists with Soldiers of the One ties, the cell's operations were limited to Olaf and his husband Nestor, both taking orders from their wife Sister Clarice Willow, who was also in de jure command over all Soldiers of the One on Caprica. From either 1941 or 1942 the cell became dedicated to obtaining Zoe Graystone's avatar program following her death in an unsanctioned Soldiers of the One bombing.

Though Olaf and Nestor saw nothing in Clarice's vision of bringing Heaven to the real world by duplicating the conscious minds of the dead, both followed their wife in finding the program. Presuming it to be on a computer at the Graystone residence, Olaf provided Clarice with a swipe drive, a device able to interface with computers by touch and download their drives. When it became clear the data had been on the computer but was deleted during copying, Clarice continued her bonding with Amanda Graystone. This irritated Olaf as she risked slipping her cover, and he caught her stealing items from the family to give as presents.

Hunting the Greeley cell#

In the weeks following the bombing that killed Zoe, a number of other attacks occurred, which Olaf suspected were the work of Barnabas Greeley, a flagellant and zealous Soldiers of the One cell leader acting without sanction. When Olaf began finding pamphlets advertising a coming meeting, he realized Greeley had become a danger to himself and the rest of his family. Clarice and Nestor confirmed his suspicions and made plans to meet the Soldiers of the One leadership on Gemenon in person, but their car was bombed during the trip.

Soon after Clarice's return, Olaf joined her in hunting down members of Greeley's cell, a task made easier when three members were identified on CCTV in a failed bombing and turned out to be students at Clarice's school. While Clarice herself killed one, Pann, Olaf helped her corner Hippolyta in an alleyway and strangled her to death. Tracking Greeley to a building under construction, Olaf captured Lacy Rand as Clarice strapped Greeley to a bomb and activated its timer. Olaf took Rand back to the Willow residence and imprisoned her in the attic to be interrogated over the whereabouts of Zoe's backup data, and had to be kept from simply executing her. When Rand gave up the location of the backup, Olaf dragged her from the house and sent her to Gemenon as a conscript in the Soldiers of the One training program.

The killing of Mar-Beth#

Over the following days the Willows welcomed Amanda Graystone into the household after her estrangement from her husband Daniel. The household approved, but were unable to convince Clarice it was unwise. Amanda was soon informally recruited by the GDD to investigate the Willows, who were known Monotheists with the exception of Clarice and, through her, linked to several Soldiers of the One terrorists.

During her time there, Olaf obtained a box from the GDD director Gera Singh, a Soldiers of the One mole, containing one of Zoe's lockets confiscated in a search of her home. The locket was found to hold the data the Willows had been seeking, and development of the Heaven program began. This coincided with news that the GDD had placed a mole within the Willow residence. Though suspicion would naturally have fallen on Amanda, Agent Jordan Durham deliberately named Olaf's wife Mar-Beth as the informant. Clarice slit Mar-Beth's throat, while Olaf and Nestor wrapped the body in a black bag, cut it into pieces, and dumped it in a river two hundred kilometers away. Rather than grieve, Olaf and Nestor returned to play New Cap City, where their characters were killed by two avatars who, unknown to them, were creations of the very program the Willows had recovered. Banned from the game when their characters died, the two moved on to drawing concept art for Heaven.

Atlas Arena#

With Heaven and the avatar program completed, Olaf, Nestor, and Clarice began final rehearsals for their coup de grace, a massive suicide bombing at Atlas Arena that would kill thousands through hidden charges set to create a chain reaction. Nestor was repelled by a plan that would martyr the bombers rather than promote Monotheism, while the only thing Olaf found offensive was his doubt that they were worthy of Heaven. When Nestor refused to take part, Olaf took Clarice's side. Later the three patched up their dispute and tried to diagnose problems with Clarice's Holoband, only to discover it was not hers but one planted by the GDD, meaning Amanda was the real informant and that they had killed Mar-Beth for nothing.

The three raided the Graystone residence to recover the planted Holoband, which held data that could expose the operation. The raid fell apart when they could not find it, and an attempt to force Daniel and Amanda Graystone to talk ended in Nestor's death at the hands of a nearby U-87. Olaf and Clarice escaped, assured by Director Singh that he would turn police and GDD attention onto the Graystones with planted evidence. Returning home to prepare, Olaf placed a bomb in a backpack. There Clarice decided to opt out of the bombing and remain on her Holoband to welcome the digital recreations of the bombers into her Heaven program. Olaf finally dropped all pretense and dismissed her program, but continued to Atlas Arena, truly believing the One True God would save his real soul.

Entering the grounds proved easy, as Singh had the GDD take over the bomb threat investigation and then do nothing, while Soldiers of the One members already in the stadium workforce let fellow bombers through the gates. The bombing was set to begin at the close of the Caprican national anthem. Unexpectedly, four aircraft landed on the pitch carrying U-87 military robots, which on Daniel Graystone's orders conducted chemical scans, identified every suicide bomber, and opened fire. Realizing the plan was in tatters, Olaf tried to set off his bomb anyway but was stopped by a panicking pyramid fan. Though he got up and readied the trigger once more, a group of U-87s jumped on him and absorbed the blast, preventing the chain reaction. His mind was digitally scanned as he died, but Clarice's computers broke down, and so the avatar copy of him was never born.