Gautham Ranganathan

* Real life
* Prologue
* Past

**Gautham Ranganathan** is one of the three people who directly work under Benedict Sidwell. He is the mind behind Designer.

## Appearance

Gautham is a dark-skinned man with short black hair that sticks up on top, a round face, a small mustache and goatee, bags under his grey eyes and spiky eyebrows. He wears a grey hoodie and a black shirt under it. His skin seems to be more pale than it used to in the past.

## Personality

He is a recluse. He seems to have lost touch with his surroundings and is really direct when he speaks. His face is set in a single expression, unable to manifest his emotions. His one true company is his cat, Leim, who ends up living in the M.S. Solar following the end of the game.

His love for his work is the one thing keeping him alive, specially what he refers to as “The Ultimate Experience”.

## Relationships

**Sidwell**: Gautham has been shown to fear Sidwell since, due to him, his dreams took a cruel turn now that he must dedicate his abilities to develop interrogation techniques. He looks extremely stressed during their talk after he lets Lea escape Vermillion Wasteland, with his eyes twitching as he speaks. However, Sidwell also gave him almost absolute power over that area, including access to the Vermillion Dungeon's environment server, and allowed him to physically live there.

**Satoshi**: Gautham strongly believed in Satoshi's genius. He got furious when he learned that Instatainment didn't want to support his research and was seemingly excited that there was someone who actually wanted to do so. He probably kept him away from Shizuka before he died to ensure he could preserve his brilliance through his Evotar.

**Shizuka**: Keeping Satoshi hostage, his reclusion and his roleplay as Designer led Shizuka to feel frustrated towards him. She still hoped that Gautham could escape along with her.

**Sergey**: They used to be friends. Sergey is horrified when Gautham is about to jump off the Vermillion Tower and will resent Sidwell forever for leading him down that path.

**Lea**: Neither Gautham nor Lea were acquainted with each other, however, she showed that she really cared about saving him.

**Designer**: His avatar and alter-ego. They are his way of immersing in the virtual world he has worked on for so long.

## Role in CrossCode

### Before the game

Gautham used to work in Instatainment together with Satoshi, Shizuka and Sergey until the company refused to support Satoshi's AI development project. That was the point where Sidwell introduced himself to become an investor for the project, an offer that everyone accepted except for Sergey, who stayed in his position at Instatainment.

Thanks to Sidwell's support, Gautham would end up physically living in the Playground, specifically in Vermillion Wasteland, where he got the chance to live among his creations. However, the businessman didn't allow this out of good faith. Instead, he desired to have full control over Gautham so he could force him to work on the Evotar interrogation program. This job was too much for him and it took most of his mental health and sleep.

At some point in between, he created his avatar "Designer", which he used to project himself as a god in CrossWorlds's universe.

### Main Story

During the Prologue, Satoshi works on his Evotar while Gautham keeps him hostage. He tries to stop Shizuka from putting a halt to his sick brother's efforts. While he fails to stop her, Satoshi still finishes his work and succumbs to his illness in front of her sister. He goes on to show up only in Lea's memories.

He returns once he brings Lea back to Vermillion Wasteland. All he does is check her memory and arrange her meetup with Luke. By the end of the chapter, he gets scolded by Sidwell for allowing Lea to escape. Some time later, he finished developing his Ultimate Experience and waited until Lea arrived again to begin.

In the end of the Vermillion Raid, Lea and company crashed the Evotar Server. Gautham takes this chance to replace the Vermillion Dungeon with his Vermillion Tower and, as Designer, challenges Lea to climb to the top while offering the Server as the prize. She then conquered the tower and met Gautham one last time, where he congratulated her for being the last piece of his Ultimate Experience right before plummeting to his death.