#and i think cad has a big void in his memory from when he was alone and the lilies messed it up more and now he rly struggles

[c-kiddo]

i mean it so much when i say theyre all canon brainweird 2 me . like not in a cute quirky way i mean like actual holes in memories and struggling to remember things in a way that gets distressing and like weird little rituals and scrambled speech and weird sensations across skin of things that arent there (be it hallucinations or nerve damage or combinations) and things of th sorts... .. .. ..

molly 🤝 caduceus 🤝 ashton

stopped talking halfway through th sentence because the thought is just all the way fully gone and will never be recovered again except for maybe at a random point tomorrow afternoon for half a second

[gumbootillustrations]

laurance's ref sheet!! it only took me a month and two different versions to finish lol

but yeah. backstory, lore, closeups, etc under the cut :3

laurance is the adopted son of hayden zvahl, a blacksmith, and joh zvahl, a jeweller, and grew up in meteli alongside his adoptive sister cadenza. cad's the reason why his hair is bright red when aph meets him en route to scaleswind - he's been dyeing it this colour since he was young so that he and cadenza could match and look more like siblings. as such, much of his colour scheme is based around soft reds and oranges, with some golds thrown in. additionally, his earrings (although u can't really see them here) were made by joh, alongside most of his other jewellery, before joh passed away a couple of years prior to aph showing up outside of phoenix drop. his armour is also a lot lighter than garroth and katelyn's due to his fighting style prioritising speed and mobility over strength and endurance - that, and the fact that he works around water a lot and can't let metal weigh him down too much.

after ungrth drags him out of the nether, laurance's colour scheme undergoes a major change - instead of being based around reds and golds, it shifts to be focused around greens and browns. laurance also dyes his hair back to its natural colour (brown), and due to the trauma of being forced through the realm barrier (and having his eyes cut out multiple times by gene), his eyes fade to a pale, milky green. there are other physical changes that come with being turned as well - his nails turn into talons, his ears become pointed, and, due to his now-undead nature, his heart stops beating. he also loses the need to breathe, although he keeps doing so to keep up the facade of being human (he really doesn't want to acknowledge the fact that he's undead now). however, around the start of season three (right before the main cast makes the trip to tu'la), he decides to dye his hair red again and return to the reds and golds that he loves (something something "reclaiming his fire" something something). it also doesn't help that his hair has started growing in a bright copper ever since they returned from o'khasis and xavier's relic had gone missing. surely these events can't be connected

not too many comments about laurance's out-of-armour/casual/tu'la arc outfit. his eyesight's dogshit now (due to the aforementioned events surrounding his turning n escape from the nether) so he technically needs glasses, but he never wears them unless someone (usually garroth) tells him to.

with laurance's shadow knight form, i rlly wanted to showcase how unnatural it is to him. it's big, and bulky, and covered in spikes n shit - it's entirely antithetical to laurance and his fighting style. personally, i think that a shadow knight's armour adapts to their fighting style and personality over time, but because laurance like. never uses this form it doesn't get the chance to adapt to him, although i added in a doodle of what his form might've evolved to look like had he used it more often.

uhh shadow knight lore stuff. shad is a psychopomp - at least, the fragment of his soul/essence/whatever that didn't get totally fucked up by the void is. however, the shadow lord (aka the fragment of shads soul/essence/whatever that did) tends to snatch souls that either a) die in the nether (like laurance n sasha) or b) are deemed to be useful to his cause of destroying irene (like gene and vylad) to make into shadow knights. different things play into how powerful a shadow knight is - gene, being part-mer'ai, being a descendant of kul'zak, and having memory manipulation magicks, is pretty powerful already, but when he's made into a death knell (aka a general in the shadow lord's army) his power can pretty much rival a relic wielder. laurance mayyyybe could've become a death knell if he wanted to, but unfortunately he has a stupid strong sense of justice so uh. yeah.

all shadow knights do get a boon from the shadow lord - it usually reflects their personality, their soul, or their past, and it always centres around blood, fire, or shadows (or a mix of some or all of these - for example, zenix's boon is that his blood essentially acts like napalm). laurance's reflects his childhood in meteli, a town built in a saltmarsh/estuary - his blood is stupid acidic (like acidic enough to melt through flesh, bone, and metal if he's not careful). however, for a long time, he assumes that his boon is being able to alter the temperature of metal (as sasha has told him that all shadow knight's blood is poisonous on some level - he just doesn't know that his blood is particularly poisonous) until vylad tells him that it probably isn't metal related.

uhh more lore stuff - this time regarding xavier, his relic, and plot stuff.

zane absorbs xavier's relic (sort of unwillingly?? like he wants power, and he wants to try and push back against his father's influence, but if he's being honest he would've preferred to take on esmund's relic (which is missing. weird.) but beggars can't be choosers so eh it's whatever), but because not everyone can wield a relic and not every relic can be wielded by every relic-wielder it sort of starts to eat away at his soul and fuck him up. this leads to the climactic battle of s1 in irene's cathedral dimension, which ends when garroth (who gets possessed by esmund's relic) kills zane by ripping xavier's relic out of him. when they get back to the overworld and realise what exactly that weird fuckoff hunk of metal that garroth yanked out of zane's chest is, they decide to give it to garroth for safe keeping - only for the relic to go missing when the main cast breaks into an occupied o'khasis to rescue zianna, although they don't realise it until they return home to phoenix drop. it's around this time that laurance travels to new meteli to catch up with cadenza and get her to dye his hair orange again, only for cadenza to discover that his hair is growing in a bright copper. they... sort of brush this off as a weird shadow knight biology thing until laurance gets into a fistfight with gene and transforms for the first time. it's a bit of a mess but hey we got there in the end.

but yeah i decided to tweak his design a lil bit from my lineup of the second war of the magi's divine warriors because i wasn't suuper happy w how his chestplate turned out n i wanted to tutu w it a bit.

anyway. laurance's ref sheet is fucking finally done. the next ref sheet will probs be either katelyns or an updated ref sheet for garroth since ive tinkered w his protector form a Lot and i probs need to add in a cold weather outfit (laurance doesnt need one bc shadow knights r weird n basically space heaters anyway) and his juror form.

as always, let me know if u have any questions!! :D