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Lorin is a character in The Shannara Chronicles, named after the character Lauren in The Elfstones of Shannara. He served alongside Amberle Elessedil as a Chosen, and he was also Amberle's boyfriend.
Biography
Early Life
Amberle, who was a Princess of the Elves, and Lorin were childhood friends in the Elven capital of Arborlon. When he was nine years old and she was eight, they raced each other to the palace sanctuary where the sentient and magical tree called the Ellcrys resided. Amberle beat Lorin to the tree, and when she touched it, she received a vision from the tree for the first time, which was an image of her father's death. The two children were kicked out of the sanctuary; soon after, Amberle witnessed her father Aine Elessedil get murdered by the Gnome assassin Slanter.
Adulthood
Lorin competed in the Gauntlet, a full-contact race where the first seven Elves to finish would become one of the Chosen, a group of Elves tasked with protecting the sentient and magical tree called the Ellcrys. Only young men had ever competed to run the Gauntlet, so when Amberle, now his girlfriend, showed up to the starting line, he assumed she was there to wish him luck.
However, Amberle told Lorin that she was there to compete, shocking him. He warned her that he and the other competitors would be cutthroat and unconcerned for her safety, but when she didn't back down, he relented and wished her luck. Lorin ended up being the first to finish the race, while Amberle managed to be the seventh finisher despite being actively sabotaged by several of the men in the race.
At the ceremony welcoming the new Chosen, all seven winners pressed their palms against the Ellcrys to be accepted by her. However, when Amberle did so, she saw an awful vision of death and destruction, with the Ellcrys destroyed and burned to a black husk. Later, when Lorin visited Amberle in her quarters, she was still thinking about her vision, and she asked him if he thought that the stories about the Ellcrys were true and that the tree kept Demons safely away from the Four Lands. Lorin expressed his skepticism about the stories, pointing out that there hadn't been any magic in the Four Lands since the Druids died out.
On the evening of the same day, Amberle was beset by more visions from the Ellcrys, which caused her to leave abruptly from a party celebrating the new Chosen and to seek out the tree. Once there, she saw a vision of herself stabbing Lorin. Lorin had actually left the party himself to look for Amberle, and he found her at the tree. But when he tried to go to her and comfort her, she told him to stay away and revealed that she had been having terrible visions. When Lorin refused to listen and continued to get closer to Amberle, she knocked him out and fled Arborlon altogether.
When people began to realize that Amberle was missing, her uncle Ander Elessedil questioned Lorin, assuming he had been involved. But Lorin said Amberle left of her own accord and that she had claimed the Ellcrys was communicating with her, which was unheard of. Also unheard of was when Went, the caretaker of the Ellcrys, discovered that the tree was diseased; both Lorin and Ander were present for that discovery as well.
While investigating these happenings, Ander found a sketch of a Demon that Amberle had drawn from her visions. King Eventine Elessedil, realizing that the Chosen might be in danger, ordered them to remain inside the palace. Lorin was visiting the Ellcrys again when Amberle reappeared in front of him, asking where the other Chosen were. Ecstatic to see her again, Lorin told her what she wanted to know. However, she immediately stabbed him to death—it was not actually Amberle, but the Changeling in disguise. The Changeling used the information Lorin gave it to find and kill all the other Chosen except for Amberle, who was only saved because she had fled Arborlon.
After Lorin's death, Bandon used his powers to touch Lorin's body and to use that connection to see a vision of Lorin's final moments. When Bandon told Allanon that it was Amberle who killed Lorin, Allanon realized that it must have been the Changeling. Lorin was not seen again, apart from in one of Amberle's visions where he accused her of not loving him enough.
Changes made for the TV Adaptation
- Lorin and Amberle are in a romantic relationship until he is murdered at the hands of the Changeling. In The Elfstones of Shannara, the Chosen Lauren was probably the friendliest to Amberle out of all the other Chosen, but they were never in a relationship with each other, nor did they express any attraction to each other.
- Lorin and the other Chosen are killed by the Changeling. In The Elfstones of Shannara, Lauren and the other Chosen are killed by the Reaper.
- Lorin is dark-haired and comes across as a full-grown adult, while Lauren is described in Elfstones as being red-haired and the youngest of the Chosen.
- Lorin is the first out of his group of competitors to finish the Gauntlet, a race where competitors run blindfolded through the woods to determine who will be the next Chosen. In Elfstones, the Chosen are personally selected by the Ellcrys: Elves who have reached maturity within the past year simply present themselves to the tree, and from the Ellcrys chooses her caretakers herself out of these candidates.
Gallery
Lauren is a character in The Elfstones of Shannara. He was the youngest of the Chosen and the first to discover that the Ellcrys, the magical tree that maintained the Forbidding, was sick and dying.
Biography
Lauren came from a small village north of Arborlon, where people placed much more faith in the old stories of the Ellcrys that described how it was a powerful, magical talisman that protected the Elves and the world itself from Demons. In Arborlon, the city folks were more likely to view the same stories as outdated fictions and the tree as just a symbol of the Elven nation's resilience.
After Amberle Elessedil, the first woman in over 500 years to be selected as a Chosen, abandoned her duties and disappeared from the Westland, the rest of the Chosen were directed to never speak of her again. However, Lauren had always liked Amberle and gotten along with her.
One evening around sunset, about eleven months into the Chosen's twelve months of service and well after Amberle had disappeared, Lauren noticed what looked like wilt on the Ellcrys' leaves. Disturbed, he confided in Jase, the oldest of the Chosen, the next morning as they were heading to the tree to greet it and start their day. Jase, to cheer him up, offered to have Lauren perform the Chosen's morning greeting to the Ellcrys.
But when Lauren got close to the tree, he noticed the damage was worse than he had thought the day before. The tree then spoke to Lauren, asking him to call all the Chosen to her. They gathered around her and heard from her for the first time that not only were the stories of the tree were real, but also that she was dying and unless she was saved, all the Demons would break free from the Forbidding and destroy the Elves and the Four Lands.
Lauren went to find King Eventine Elessedil to tell him about the tree's plight. He ran into Ander, the king's second son and Amberle's uncle, and Ander arranged for the king to meet with Lauren in private. After learning that Eventine had been a Chosen in his youth and was familiar with how the tree communicated to its caretakers, Lauren told the king everything:
The Ellcrys would deliver her seed to one of the Chosen, and no one else but a Chosen would be able to be the bearer of the seed. Whoever was selected would have to carry the seed to the Bloodfire, the life source of the earth, and immerse the seed in the fire. Once returned to the site of the old tree, the seed would take root and a new tree would spring forth to replace the old.
To find the Bloodfire, one would have to search within a wilderness with mountains, swamp, and a deep mist. Within the wilderness would be a lone peak, and beneath the peak a maze of tunnels called Safehold. Somewhere within Safehold would be a door made of glass that could not break, and the Bloodfire would be found behind the door.
After Lauren finished speaking to the king, he sought out Ander again later in the day to speak to him privately. Lauren told Ander that even though Amberle was no longer considered a Chosen and looked down upon by the Elves, she might be able to help the tree in ways the other Chosen could not. The tree only spoke to members of the Chosen once, at the time of their choosing, but Amberle and the Ellcrys communicated regularly, having long conversations with each other until Amberle fled Arborlon. Lauren argued that the Ellcrys might communicate more with Amberle, or that she would understand the tree's communication better then the other Chosen and be able to learn something the rest of them couldn't.
However, Ander was resistant to discussing the subject of Amberle and pointed out that not even her own mother knew where she was, so Lauren let the matter drop.
That night, Lauren and the rest of the Chosen were killed by the Reaper, on the orders of the Dagda Mor. Ander Elessedil, who had gone to the Ellcrys the next morning and found her unattended, found their bodies strewn about the home the Chosen shared. Ultimately, there was no Chosen left to save the Ellcrys aside from Amberle, who was only still alive because she had been far away from Arborlon.