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name: Sir Lucterius di Laurentius of Hindfold

age: 62 - and he's not, naturally, getting any younger.

appearance: Lucterius is a tall, reedy man, advanced enough in age that his well-trimmed goatee is not especially unfashionable. His hair could at kindest be called grey (though it was once a rich auburn), and it's rather stiff and coarse in nature - any hint that his hairline recedes, however, is quickly masked by a well-placed hat. A wealthy man, both by inheritance and by right, Lucterius does not hesitate to maintain an extensive wardrobe, although he is not of the sort that is particularly inclined to care for it: he disdains the dandy lifestyle, and wears waistcoats and smoking jackets and breeches because they are proper and decorous rather than because they make him attractive (though his wife says they do much of the latter thing, too). He typically frowns, but on closer inspection the crows' feet near his serious brown eyes belie his true nature: Lucterius is a family man first.

history: Stern, organized, and responsible, Lucterius had always known he'd inherit his father's baronetcy. He grew up micromanaging his siblings' needs, the very portrait of a model son: it was a pity that his siblings were a particularly, ah, mortal bunch. He received lessons in deportment and hunting and economics and all that sort, like any proper young nobleman, never mind that the Laurentius family was, well, not noble. It could never have been helped: the family had emigrated first as traders and settled when Queen Anne's predecessor awarded them a baronetcy for a favor. It helped that they were surprisingly good at managing their duties, despite the rather large tax required of the position: Lucterius, naturally, inherited the family knack for people-management, which was fortunate.

He'd always been charismatic, and had grown accustomed to acting in his parents' stead when they were away: many of his siblings were often sickly, and his parents needed to spend much of their sizeable fortune on drifting between doctors and hedgewitches who promised a cure. By the time Lucterius turned twenty-one and received his knighting (as customary), there were three children left: Lucterius himself, philanthropic Cecilia, six years younger, and young Leander, who at fourteen was as good as dead, having left home to join the Queen's Guard.

He hardly had time for thoughts of them, though, for he soon wedded Arina of Dunpool, the second daughter of an earl, after meeting her briefly at a social gathering. He was beneath her station by far, but his family's fortune and her own willful personality allowed the match to happen. He grew to love her quickly, and she returned that love soon enough, or at least when she found comfort in his arms and in his home. When they finally poked their heads up from their family raising (their first child was female, their second was a pair of twins with tousled blonde locks of hair), they found that Cecilia had joined the managing board of an orphanage with the help of her husband, and Leander was rising in ranks, ever the survivor. They had five children by the time Lucterius ascended from knight to baronet, and only then did they attend their first funeral as a couple: Lucterius' father's, naturally.

Lucterius' children were healthier on the whole than his siblings: he buried two stillborn and one more young. This fortune he attributed to his wholesale abandonment of the Old Ways, something he thought prudent (it worked, he says in defense to Arina now). Like his father before him he collaborated early and often with his wife on all matters of the estate, often discussing matters of business even in the privacy of their shared bed. His eldest sons turned twenty-one (and were knighted jointly) several years before they birthed their youngest, Fiordelisia: now fourteen. Raised in the shadow of her eldest brothers (who shared now their parents' burden), she had far more of her doting parents' attention upon her than any of her siblings before her.

Recently, Fiordelisia has fallen ill to some disease that keeps her bedridden day and night, a plight that worries the family still centered on the Hindfold estate...

personality: A stern, organized man, Lucterius seems to all his business partners rather savvy and profit-organized. He speaks curtly, though he seems to have a taste enough for sparse poetry, and tries his best to keep up with news. He and wife Arina wield each other like weapons, and they are really quite the picture of a responsible, upstanding, and (naturally) ambitious family of wealth. They run an efficient estate with a small, loyal staff, all of whom have proven themselves skilled in their own ways. Lucterius' priority seems at all time to be marketability and profitability; it seems to many that he does not have time for much recreation beyond the hunt.

Those that know them personally, however, know them differently: Lucterius is affectionate in private, especially toward his family (and especially toward his wife, with whom he enjoys many trysts despite their advanced ages) and quite family oriented. His brother Leander says, quite bitingly, that he clings to what he has left, but Lucterius is sure that this describes all of the members of his generation of the Laurentius clan: they've all coped in their own ways. Lucterius is rather henlike toward his own family, and regards them first in all things: they are the reason for his ambition.

All in all he's much worse suited to loss than the rest of his family. He clings and dotes on his private world, and is quite unsuited to making new friends: he knows how to make allies, but does not know how to get to know someone on a more friendly level without becoming rather attached to them. It's fortunate for him that Arina tends to make those sorts of connections, although it seems this characteristic has attracted him a far more persistent companion...