around those he's close to, he becomes an entirely different person. still a little prickly; he's snarky and sarcastic and seems to take great joy in pissing people off, but it's born of playful affection rather than malice, and is mostly reserved for those he know will take it in good humour- though he has an awful tendency to put his foot in it and take a joke too far. he's a lot more talkative around those he's close to (ralool ja would say too bloody talkative, and he's not entirely wrong) and generally far more pleasant to be around once he trusts you to some degree. though riddled with trust issues, he's unmoveably loyal to those who manage to earn his trust, an upside to his unmoveable stubbornness, and extremely protective of those he cares about. he also possesses a fierce mischeivous streak, usually reserved for his family.

he has warm, brown skin with the healthy glow of someone who eats well and generally takes care of himself. less healthy are the dramatic bags under his eyes, that serve to make his neutral expression even more sullen than it is by default. his hair is somewhere between curly and an unkempt, fluffy mess, that he's all but given up on ever truly taming. his eyes tend to be sharp and focused, giving him an intensity ill-fitting of his diminuitive stature. being the reckless sort, he's rarely not nursing some sort of injury, and has a fair few scars to show for it.

loren is mostly a physical fighter, and one whose strength and skill with the seemingly oversized greatswords he uses often catches his foes off guard. he also has a gift for thaumaturgy, though he's no traditional mage, instead using his magic to enhance his bladework. his skill in both disciplines is about equal, at this point in his life; magic comes as easy as breathing to him, whereas he's had to work to develop his swordsmanship, but he's a stubborn bastard who has poured hours upon hours of work into it. he can be quite aggressive and reckless in combat, to the point of being a little scary, and isn't above playing dirty, especially against a foe who also isn't playing fair.

an adept swordsman who has earned himself a reputation among his fellow sellswords and adventurers for being pretty fearless- or pretty stupid, depending on how you look at it. either way, there's little he won't do, for the right price. if it'll keep a roof over his family's head, he'll do anything.

desperation makes it easy to put aside one's personal morals- for loren, at least. and he knows his choice of partner rules out a lot of potential jobs. if it'll help keep the vulnerable people depending on him clothed and fed, he'll shrug off danger or a job's unsavourary nature. he might not be happy about it, but he'll do it.

though he speaks with a practiced ul'dahn accent, those native to the area might notice something... off about it. or really anyone paying enough attention with even baseline familarity with what an actual ul'dahn sounds like. he's not an especially good actor. someone who is or has spent time around ishgardians may notice the hints of his true accent underlying his faked one.

loren fought tooth and nail against her designs. he idolised his father and older brothers, and longed to follow in their footsteps, blade in hand. the horrors of war were lost on him, and he saw only the glory of fighting in halone's name against the dragon plague that sieged them. his mother, from whom his stubbornness was an inherited trait, held her ground. the battlefield was no place for a lady, and that was what her daughter would be. loren detested her for it, and instead of growing into the perfect lady she had envisioned, he grew into a sullen and angry teenager, who entertained his mother's delusions that "she" would one day give up on "her" childish dreams and fall in line with a scowl on his face. still, he felt powerless to fight it. she would never loosen her grip, and for years he felt helpless in the face of his fate. so he tolerated it, for what felt like an eternity, his distaste for his mother's treatment of him warping into a hatred for ishgard and everything she stood for with time.

there was no real moment where things changed, not that he can remember. there just came a time where he'd tolerated enough, sick of living under her rule. something deep inside him, telling him he was more than this, he had the power to leave, he simply had to reach out and take it. so he did. he took what little gil he could steal from his parents and the clothes on his back and fled ishgard- for good, or so he hoped. the gil he'd scrounged together was enough to take him to ul'dah via chocobo cart, and he never looked back.

ul'dah wasn't quite the paradise of freedom he'd envisioned. anything was better than ishgard, but the streets of ul'dah with nothing but the (unbearably unsuited to the climate) clothes on your back was no place for a teenager with little knowledge of the world outside of ishgard's walls. he quickly learned to steal to survive- but did not have the street smarts to do that with any intelligence. he quickly made an enemy of ul'dah's merchants and the brass blades, and probably would have traded a metaphorical gaol cell for a literal one rather swiftly, had he not chanced upon the woman who would change his life forever- adeline corwell.