Lynn Lawrence's Questionnaire

lynn's lived in georgia for as long as he can remember, and he's living in athens right now. it's a nice city, and he's got a few friends there, but the only thing that really keeps him tied down these days is his job at the pawn shop. it was his uncle's when he first started working there, but he practically runs the place now, and he'd feel guilty letting it all go to waste. the money's good, the hours are fine, and the work has been pretty alright, even after the whole demon thing. honestly, things have probably been better since then. made life a little more interesting, even if it was an overwhelming first few weeks.

lynn makes basically all his money from working at the pawn shop. he's got an eye for value, and is pretty damn good at fixing stuff up too. it was his uncle's shop, and still technically is, but he's more or less running the place now. he makes a solid bit of money for it too. as far as what he spends it on, it's mostly extra stuff he thinks he can fix up and resell. his place isn't very large, and he doesn't really buy new things often, so he winds up with a lot in savings. definitely helpful on contracts.

lynn would go pretty damn far for his goals. he hasn't really had the means to work towards them up until he started taking on contracts, but that changed recently. he knows how alone he felt, even with a fairly minor supernatural issue, so he can't imagine the stuff that other people dealing with stronger things might have to put up with. most of the time, their options are suck it up and stay quiet, or go big and sell out. both options carry a pretty alarming mortality rate. so, lynn's dream is really just doing away with the social stigma behind that sort of thing. i mean, in the grand scheme of things, would something like lycanthropy be more manageable if you weren't at risk of getting killed for warning people about it? he probably wouldn't kill for it unless someone had already proven to be a terrible person who was directly opposed to him and would never change their opinion. as far as dying for it, he's not sure. as selfish as it is, if he had to choose the certainty of a quiet life over the chance of persecution for making public progress towards his goal, he'd be conflicted. lately, he's been feeling less and less conflicted about it.

without a doubt, the most defining event of lynn's life was his first contact with (and binding to) the demon-adjacent entity he's taken to calling ol' vineman. he was barely 19 when it happened, and had been taking inventory around the pawn shop when an old-looking pressed kudzu blossom fell from the pages of some nondescript book. it looked pretty nice, so lynn was thinking he'd take it home to try to frame it. unfortunately, at the slightest touch, the dry blossom crumbled to bits, leaving a few faint purple stains on lynn's fingertips that he just couldn't seem to scrub off. largely unfazed, lynn simply swept up what was left of the particles and went to bed. 

unfortunately, that was a terrible, terrible decision on his part. when he woke up, where there once were faint stains, there were now long, gray vines snaking out from his right hand and covering most of his room. it was a jarring few hours of cleanup, though the vines thankfully snapped cleanly off of his hand with just a little effort. it was a few days later when he started hearing the thing's voice. it didn't have a name, or if it did, it didn't remember it. so, lynn went for the first thing he came up with. it didn't talk much, but it definitely made its goals known. it didn't really care what lynn did, so long as he gave it an opportunity to get up and stretch every once in a while, so to speak. it wasn't hard to learn to accept what little of its power it could currently draw upon.

needless to say, it was a scary few months when he was first getting a grasp on things. it was like living with a new roommate, if said roommate also kept speaking directly into your brain trying to nag you to take over the city, even when you keep telling it that cops carry guns now. he'd be lying if he said the whole ordeal didn't stress him out far more than would be healthy. but, vineman's chilling out now. still kind of intense, but at least it's willing to put that energy towards helping lynn with actually productive things, like contracts.

lynn's uncle, michael lawrence, practically raised him, with his dad almost always being too wrapped up in work to be present in his life. he's a 50-something year old white guy with short, graying hair and a stocky build. more or less exactly what you'd imagine when you picture a successful pawn shop owner. he's a good, upstanding guy, and has been a big help in lynn's life. lynn tries to keep in contact with him, but with the way life's been lately, it's not easy.

next are lynn's closest friends from high school, terry and john mullins. they're twins, both blonde, tall, and lanky. the three of them got up to a whole lot of mischief back in the day, but when lynn decided against going to college in favor of running the pawn shop, the friend group got distant. they still talk, but they don't hang out very often anymore, especially not since lynn signed the contract.

lynn's childhood wasn't horribly abnormal. his mom, marie lawrence, was always helpful, even if his dad (mason lawrence) was rarely around. his mom worked a few different jobs over the course of his childhood, and his dad was a commercial airline pilot. lynn was bothered by his dad's absence for most of his childhood, but he's more or less over it, especially with how well his uncle stepped up to the job.

he attended public school, doing extremely well. he was a bright kid, and learned fast without much effort. even then, he never really fit in. most of the people that knew him as a kid would describe him as offputting, and that's one of the more polite descriptors used. it's not that he wasn't a nice kid, just that something about him was always off. but, he made some good friends, and managed to graduate high school with a pretty solid GPA. he never did end up going to college, partially for the sake of maintaining his uncle's shop, but mainly just because he didn't really know what he would've done if he did. he never really saw himself succeeding or being happy at any desk job, or even doing any one thing for too long.

lynn only ever had one serious relationship in high school, with a girl named lucille. they were a good couple, and they got along pretty well, even if she didn't really appreciate his lack of direction. it lasted for about a year going steady, but it'd be disingenuous to call that second year a real relationship. they argued often, rarely talked, broke up and got back together more times than he can remember, the whole nine yards. they finally cut things off for real around senior year, when she left the state for college. lynn didn't really have enough time to re-enter the dating pool, with the whole demon-possession thing happening just six or seven months after the breakup. he doubts he'd want to, with contracts and preparations taking up so much of his life these days.