NAME: Lorelai “Lori” Taylor
Origin: Coffee City, Texas
Skills: Archery, Sewing + Textiles, Self-defense
Lori was raised on a cattle farm in Coffee City, Texas. Despite the name of the town, it was mainly known for its distribution of alcohol: beer, wine and other spirits. That’s how Lori knew it best—her mother was a barmaid and an alcoholic. Her father was a man who made a mistake—an Archery teacher on tour through high schools in Texas, who’d stepped into a bar one day and never walked out. Their one-night-stand created Lori and years of unhappiness. Lori’s father grew up in a farm in Tennessee, and there were opportunities in Coffee City for such. His Archery gig couldn’t support a wife and a baby, so with the help of his retired father, the Taylors moved into an old farm on the edge of town and built their way up.
She was close with her father: he taught her everything he knew about archery, even gave her a bow by the time she hit puberty. They spent their Sundays tending to the farm and shooting arrows through the wild rabbits that tried to eat their crops. And on Sunday nights, they’d go to the bar Mrs. Taylor worked at and eat pub food.
Her relationship with her mother was… strained, to say the least. Some nights she came home from the bar reeking of vodka, swaying on her feet, before she got violent. When Lori was younger, it was harder to fight back. She’d scream and cry and try and hide from the malice in her mother’s eyes and the weight of her hits. A teacher noticed after weeks of Lori showing up to school with shadows under her eyes and bruises covering her arms and pulled her aside.
He urged her to take a self-defense class in the next town over. He assumed it was the work of her high school boyfriend, and told her that it was a dangerous world they lived in: she needed to know how to protect herself. God, how right he was.
The summer after high school, her father died. Lori was still deciding what to do with her life and had no plans for college. Her mother’s “encouragements” didn’t help in the matter, either. The grief over the loss of her father left her in a rut, a depressive state. She frequented the bar in town and even started working with her mother for a little bit before things got bad… really bad at home. One night, she decided to fight back. Slapped her mother, broke a beer bottle and held it up to her throat. She ran away that night, took refuge with a friend from high school, who worked as a hairdresser in the local salon in town. When her friend offered her a job in the salon to make some extra cash, she took it. It started off with sweeping the floors, making coffees for clients and manning the cash register and phones, but, ultimately, she started cutting hair and styling. It wasn’t something she particularly enjoyed doing – but she didn’t have a college education, or a clue as to what she wanted to do with her life. Her mother was a deadbeat, abusive, and her father was dead and gone. She didn’t really have anybody. Things couldn’t get worse, right?
Lori was in the salon when news of the infection broke out. There were rumors about it, about other towns around Texas being infected: but they all just thought it was propaganda. False. Lori nearly cut her client’s hair off straight from her scalp. It was insane after that—Coffee City was a small town, with a population of a little less than 200, and the streets were crazy. People running and screaming. Without even thinking, Lori ran – scissors still in her hand – to her childhood home, the Taylor farm.
Her mother was slowly stalking through the kitchen when she arrived. Her eyes weren’t… human. She’d been infected. Lori screamed. She’d never been so scared in her entire life – her mother, her abuser, had never been scarier. When her mother lunged at her, Lori cried so loud, didn’t even think as her arm swung out and pierced the scissors into her mother’s eye.
With adrenaline pumping through her veins, Lori ran back to the town square. They were loading people into buses and taking them to Austin in hopes of finding refuge. Lori, bloodied and panting, jumped on the bus. Oddly, she felt a sense of relief. Being free of her mother. She mulled this over until she arrived in Austin – an image of havoc and destruction.
A group of survivors opted to try to go to the coast, see what their chances were like there. Lori was trembling, still streaked with her own mother’s blood, when a man, Grayson, asked her to join them. She tagged along, guilt over killing her mother swirling around, until, after a few weeks, Grayson broke off from the group. After that, her only other friend, Sloan, slowly departed, too. The group made the decision to leave Lori, the weakest link, in the forest in the middle of the night. She survived for a few days by herself before she was found by a couple of members of Fall City, and was allowed safe haven into the town.
Her time in Fall City was equally as hectic. When Xavier Maverick stormed the town, a group of clickers circled Lori. She was bitten on the shoulder (above her left shoulder blade). She crawled into an alleyway with her best friend, Andy, and waited to die from the virus. When the fever broke, and she started to heal, her immunity to the infection was realized.
A fight with Corvo had her assigned room to be burnt to a crisp. His lover, Gwen, subsequently attacked her in the community centre. Bruised and broken, Lori found herself on the doorstep of the shed, where she asked the mechanic there for shelter. It didn’t take long for Lori to fall in love with him. For a little over two months they shared a bed, and so much more, before Owen was ripped from her clutches. As the bombs fell upon the city, they were separated. The time apart had Lori finding friendship in the most unlikely of places. She was nursing a broken arm at the hands of Corvo -- yet again -- and a new clicker bite to accommodate the other teeth marks that covered her shoulder blade.
A month in his sweater, holding out hope, found Lori and Owen reuniting at the hospital. The happiness was short-lived, as a few days later her best friend, Charlotte, was infected and shot straight through the skull. A time after that, and the hospital was being stormed by hordes of infected, where Lori witnessed the death of many of her friends and family. Now, it’s a struggle between surviving amongst the limited amount of friends she has left, and having the will to want such a life in the first place.
Face Claim: Candice Accola
Availability: Taken by Amanda
