S., Lauryl

“	This one must be hers. It's still warm. Great....	”
	— Garrett, when finding her blood vial

Life

Gamall revealed 17 — I'm me again. She can't use it any more.

Lauryl had lived the entirety of her life as an orphan, and had met her gruesome fate at the Shalebridge Cradle, which alternated between being an orphanage and an asylum for the criminally insane residents of The City.

As a ward of the Shalebridge Cradle, back when it occupied the role of both an orphanage and insane asylum, the orphan Lauryl S. had undergone many frightening experiences. For instance, she managed to avoid the wrath of Patient no. 5, J. Nuvio, by holding still while he painted her portrait.^[1] The portrait would then be moved up stairs, inside the Cradle's attic.

Lauryl did not like the rules of the institution, believing that the doctors were just as scary as the patients.^[2]

Friendship with Drept

Despite the unpleasant, and quite frightening conditions of the Cradle, she was able to find comfort in making good friends with the young boy named Drept, who was also orphaned. If she was not playing with Drept, she would sneak chalk from the classrooms to make hopscotch.^[3] Both her and Drept would sneak to the kitchen in order to grab bread. There they saw M. Gunter, the cannibal,^[4] and felt shocked of the thought that the patient was permitted to use cutlery. When Lauryl moved to the Nursury tower, Drept told her not to cry too much, as that would make Miss Arthur mad.^[5]

It was during her short lived life that Lauryl had found the time to write down a diary, mostly dealing with the unsettling events that she had witnessed within the Cradle.

Death

One day, while playing a game of hide-and-seek alongside Drept in the attic of the asylum area, just above the White Ward, Lauryl was discovered by the legendary murderer known only as The Hag. The Hag then proceeded in killing the girl, robbing her of her own skin while the young Drept was watching, hidden and paralyzed with fear.^[6]^[7] Despite Drept being a witness and a puddle of blood located in the attic, the crime still lacked sufficient amount of evidence. As such, the murder was blamed on a patient, J. Nuvio^[8] ^[9]^[10]

Lauryl's body was then taken by the Hag^[11] and buried in a secret room in the catacombs underneath Fort Ironwood, with a spell marked on the tomb. Since her death, the ghost of Lauryl had been haunting the attic in the now abandoned Cradle, unable to escape, due to the Cradle 'remembering' her.

After Lauryl's death, the young Drept became obsessed with finding the "Gray Lady" and stopping her killing spree. He joined the Hammerites, becoming an inspector and had sought a reckoning for Lauryl up until he was an old man. Drept's working desk in St. Edgar's Church has a small monument plaque hanging on the wall above it, as a memorial for Lauryl. It reads, "LAURYL THERE SHALT BE A RECKONING."

Thief: Deadly Shadows

During the events of Thief: Deadly Shadows, Lauryl's ghost continued to haunt the abandoned orphanage. Garrett, overhears a conversation regarding Lauryl's ghost from a group of passersby at the South Quarter districts Black Alley. One of the people claims to have gone inside the Cradle, got as far as the door of the attic only to be warned by Lauryl's ghost about the danger of the Cradle. The ghost told him to leave the building before it also begins "remembering" him, shortly after the man ran for his life and informed his friends to never visit the Cradle.

After his own close encounter with The Hag's walking gargoyles, Garrett realizes that the myth about the murderer was true and enlists the aid of Drept, now a Hammerite inspector. Drept believes Garrett and advises him to explore the Cradle, in hopes of finding evidence that would lead him to the Hag's whereabouts. While inside the Cradle, Garrett stumbles upon the attic where he meets Lauryl's ghost after inspecting the latter's portrait, realizing that she resembles the young translator of the Keepers.

Garrett assists the ghost in leaving the haunted orphanage. He systematically incinerates Lauryl's sleeping gown and her diary, flushes a vial of the girl's blood down a drain and even removes the blood stain on the attic floor, alongside destroying the girl's portrait, thusly managing to liberate the spirit.^[12]^[13] Some of these tasks required Garrett traveling back in time in the 'Cradles memory', under the guise of one of the Cradles insane inmates. Whenever a cradle ghost would find Garrett they would expel him from the memory, forcing him to repeat the process with a different inmate's persona.

Unfortunately, after spending to much time within the confines of the buildings premises, the Cradle began "remembering" Garrett and refused to let him leave. Luckily for him, Lauryl has Garrett travel back in time once more, but this time as himself, and has him "committing suicide" so as the Cradle would believe that he had died.

Garrett then travels alongside Lauryl's ghost to Fort Ironwood catacombs, where he discovers the sealed grave. After unsealing the grave's spell by rubbing Lauryl's blood on the ward, the young Keeper translator is reverted to her true hideous form of Gamall, revealing her identity as Caduca's murderer to the Keepers. This also frees Lauryl's spirit from the mortal plane and she manages to finally pass on.

Trivia

Lauryl's role within the game mirrors the one played by Brother Murus within the the first Thief game. This also makes her the second ghost that Garrett has to eliberate in order to escape a haunted building.
Lauryl is voiced by Thief 3 co-writer Terri Brosius, who also provided the voice for SHODAN in the System Shock and Viktoria in Thief Gold & Thief II: The Metal Age.
Despite Terri Brosius being the only one to voice her, Nancy Taylor Voiced Gamall in her form in T2, so in theory, Nancy Taylor also voiced Lauryl

S., Lauryl

Contents

Life

Friendship with Drept

Death

Thief: Deadly Shadows

Trivia

References

See also

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