Laurent DeFantome
Attributes
Abilities
Advantages
Merits & Flaws
Age: 24 Personality: Laurent is somewhat stand-offish and often seems cold or insensitive -- he just has difficulty relating to other human beings who aren't his twin. He has a biting, sarcastic sense of humor and often, very little patience for the ineptitudes of others. He relies on politeness to seem...nicer than he actually is a lot of the time. History: Laurent was born in a suburb of Montreal in the province of Quebec, Canada to Jonathan and Marie DeFantome. He remembers his early years being mostly happy but, other than his twin, often rather lonely. This is largely due to the fact that he has a lot of difficulty with relating to others and also because his parents were often busy with work, leaving he and his twin to be watched by an endless parade of different babysitters. Laurent's obsession with the paranormal was born when he was eleven years old while staying at his friend Alex's house with his twin and Alex's younger sister. The four pre-teens found a painted over door in the basement and, being incredibly curious, the four of them pried the door open and within it, found a Oujia board and several other pieces of occult paraphenilia. Being stupid kids, they immediately played with the board. Unbeknownst to them, an incredibly angry spirit was lingering in the basement of the house and through their meddling, they accidentally got its attenton and caused it to become attached to his twin. Shortly thereafter, Laurent's natural paranormal abilities (being a medium and precognitive) awoke. Things would change massively for Laurent at the age of twelve -- in addition to his family making plans to move to the United States, chasing a position at a prestigious hospital in Santa Marta, CA, Laurent would have his second-ever and arguably worst encounter with the paranormal at this time. On the day before his family was planning to leave, Laurent went to a local park to say goodbye to his best friend -- Alex. One of the only people other than his twin that Laurent had any strong, emotional connection to. To this day, Laurent doesn't know how or why the "thing" appeared in the park that day -- only that it took Alex, screaming and begging for his help...And that he ran away. Afterwards, it seemed Laurent was the only person who could even remember Alex existing. The trauma of this event and the fact that everyone else forgot Alex even existed along with his burgeoning psychic powers and spirit sight, triggered something of a mental breakdown for the twelve-year-old and lead to him being interred in a Psychiatric institution just outside of Santa Marta from June until October of that year. Since gossip travels suprisingly fast in Santa Marta, and both twins had gone prematurely gray within only a few months of Laurent's encounter with the "Thing" in the park and being a brand-new transfer from another country, Laurent was bullied pretty mercilessly in Middle School, with very little changing once he eventually made it to High School. Given the various difficulties in his life, Laurent dove headfirst into his classes and into doing his own private research on the occult and paranormal -- finding that Santa Marta was an ideal place to do this kind of research, having a myriad of strange paranormal happenings and locations of its own. In freshman year of highschool, Laurent would become friends with Martin Schwartzfeld, another "occult-obsessed nerd". By their second year, they'd become inseparable and ended up dating in secret. At least, until Martin went away to Massachussets for College (they stayed in touch, however) It was during this time that Laurent ended up learning most of his stealth and lock-picking skills, applying them to his explorations of abandoned buildings and "supernatural" locations with Martin. In Laurent's senior year of highschool, the pair of them had begun to make forrays into Santa Marta's underground with the intent of mapping it out and tracking down the sources of several rumors originating there... After Martin left, he continued this exploration of the strange tunnels under the city -- which were clearly more than just sewer access tunnles. By what seemed to be sheer coincidence during his second year of college (when Laurent was 22) he found his way into a secret magical laboratory attached to the tunnels via a locked hatch (which he managed to get open)... Unluckily for Laurent, this lab was very much not abandoned like most of the strange places he found in those tunnels and was, in fact, being actively used by a Tremere named Claudette Legerdemain. Who, impressed with Laurent's dedication to uncovering occult secrets and clearly somewhat intrigued by his connection to the very "things" she was researching, decided to make him her ghoul rather than kill him (Which she maintains she would have done had he not impressed her). For the last two years, Laurent has worked as Claudette's research assistant and materials procurer (i.e., go-fer), usually doing the most frustrating, manual labor behind her various rituals. In return, he's been taught a great deal about the occult and feels like he's well on the way to beginning to uncover the secrets of the world around him. |