Laurence 🌿

Laurence • he/any

🎵 Touch-Tone Telephone - Lemon Demon 🎵

Laurence is an antagonist in Amongst the Oleanders, and i love him very much. He’s cocky, charming and charismatic and grew up 150 years before the events of the main story. As a child, his family moved from the bustling city of Liatoile to a mansion on the outskirts of a town called Dreigenstadt that serves as the main setting. Unbeknownst to the family, the house was being haunted by an eldritch ghost dragon named Armillaria, who is centuries old and can make herself visible to whomever it wants. One day Laurence comes across her and she decides to give this random child some powers just for fun. Laurence is ecstatic, desperately wanting to be powerful and revered. As Laurence tries to practice his new abilities, he ends up accidentally killing his family and Armillaria  becomes something of a parental figure to him until her hibernation period came, and both of them assume they will never meet again. After a few years of living in isolation and practising his powers, Laurence decides to interact with the townspeople more regularly and make a name for himself by charming the people with his powers and personality. He helps the townspeople with their problems, particularly with the various illnesses individuals would contract, along with injuries. Helping the townspeople is how Laurence comes into contact with his childhood friend who is now a vampire, Elina, who ends up living with him and helping out as well. However through his aid, Laurence realizes that wow, people are really fragile and can actually die super easily! He starts becoming more paranoid about his own mortality, because he finds out that his powers don’t actually affect himself. If he were to get sick or mortally wounded, he couldn’t do a thing about it. Laurence decides he needs to make sure he would be able to recover from events like those so he becomes apprenticed to the town’s apothecary, Selene, to learn practical ways of healing. Laurence is fantastic at it due to his powers giving him advanced knowledge of physiology and how things work. He ends up moving on and applies this knowledge by developing medicines and antibiotics in case he needs them. Though he makes great scientific advances for his time, this doesn’t ease his fear of death and the fact that he’s 20 years old doesn’t help (this would be like upper middle aged because of the time period). Laurence becomes so desperate that he ends up using townspeople in experiments to try and achieve immortality by seeing if he can find a way to bring people back from the dead. Eventually he goes too far and Elina uses a spell to seal him away in a mirror for nearly 170 years until he was released again by Loretta. Laurence used his charm to seem friendly and unassuming, making Loretta want to help him. He seemed more sinister once he had been released and it is revealed over time that Laurence has gone back to his quest for immortality. Loretta and Adrik hatch a plan to seal Laurence again using the spells they found. Laurence was sealed away once more, but this time Loretta was too, much to Adrik’s dismay and Loretta's frustration. Loretta did manage to stab Laurence while holding him down in the mirror, so Laurence is in quite a bit of pain. Nothing heals or dies in the mirror dimension he explains. During the next few weeks, Laurence and Loretta start to get closer despite all odds. There's not much else to do when you're stuck doing nothing together, and they begin to get along. After growing tired of just sitting around for days on end, Loretta decides to venture off into the mirror dimension away from the window into the real world. Laurence heavily advises against this and he almost seems distraught at the mere thought of it. Loretta sneaks off anyways and Laurence makes the tough choice to go after her. It is revealed that going into the dark void of the mirror dimension induces horrific nightmares of past trauma and fears, and that Laurence had gotten stuck in there once before. Fighting to not lose himself, Laurence manages to find Loretta and insists they go back, but Loretta refuses. She thinks there's something out there, she knows they're close. After making it a few more meters, the two end up in a stark white void, completely different from the nightmarish domain they were just in. After wandering for a bit, Loretta and Laurence discover the new void is showing them events from Laurence's past. Loretta figures they should follow it's lead, it might take them somewhere. They go through the darkest parts of Laurence's past, and through it Laurence realizes just how terrible he had been. He begins to feel some remorse for it, watching his actions replayed from an outside perspective gives him a new view. This is also where Loretta learns his backstory. Eventually they reach the moment where Laurence was sealed away and the visions end. But then another one begins. This time, it's for Loretta. This is a vision of Loretta killing Elina. Laurence is pained by having to witness Elina's death despite his resentment of her. Loretta feels guilty all over again but once the vision ends, they come across a new mirror. Loretta touches it and discovers she is able to go through it. This mirror leads to a quaint cottage where she finds the ancient spell book Laurence and Elina had created in their youth. Laurence is still in the mirror, hesitant to get out. He tells Loretta he wants her to use the spell book on him to take away his power to manipulate organic matter. Laurence doesn't trust himself to not repeat his past actions and will only leave if Loretta ensures he won't be able to. She obliges and the spell is cast. After patching up Laurence's knife wound, the two head off into the wilderness to go home.

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Due to the overuse of his powers, Laurence gets headaches and nosebleeds quite frequently. Laurence's powers are sustained by him eating raw flesh, typically rabbit or mice that he kills with his powers. During his fixation on becoming immortal, Laurence refused to make time to eat, resulting in his powers using up his own flesh instead, making him even skinnier. He also eats bugs too but not centipedes cause he likes them too much. Laurence has chronic pain and is unable to keep up with strenuous activities but that’s due to contracting tuberculosis as a young child. If you have questions about Laurence please ask he’s my absolute favourite oc right now!!!!!!!!

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