Lloyd Henreid

Name: Lloyd Henreid
Door: Door Pass - Submissive

Canon: The Stand
Canon Point: End of Episode 8, he died just before Vegas was nuked

Age: 23
Appearance: Standing a lanky six feet even, Lloyd often reads as smaller (not just because he is constantly surrounded by taller people, somehow), as his manner is just very laid back and casual, and he can also tense up in a way where he naturally just seems to make himself smaller. It depends on the energy in the room and whether someone else is dominating it. His body language when relaxed and unjudged borders in the direction of softer and more feminine but becomes harder and more postured when he's less in control. On the lighter end of a warm/olive skin tone, it would be darker if he spent more time in the sun; he has a cascade of shoulder length, wavy dark brown hair that he tends to keep combed out of his face or under a bandanna (or hat), and round, warm brown eyes. He has something of a baby face, with rounded features and the last vestiges of baby fat that won't leave his cheeks, and facial hair does little to nothing to conceal this. He is bright and animated, generally in an unchecked way that is very suggestive of his age and inexperience, and he tends to scratch the back of his neck or tuck his hair back when he's nervous or self-conscious. He has a small scar on his cheek, a gold tooth from recent dental work, a "tribal" style barbed wire tattoo on his left bicep, as well as the number IX on his right forearm, and tends to dress pretty fancy when he's able.
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History: Lloyd E. Henreid was born to lower-middle income parents in rural America, quitting school around the sixth or seventh grade, and by and large regarded as not very intelligent. He had pets die on him as a kid, not because of maliciousness but because he forgot about them (one of several signs indicating undiagnosed ADHD). He would go on to live the life of a petty criminal through his teenage years, and in a stint in county jail somewhere in Flordia ran into the man who would name him his protege, Andrew "Poke" Freeman -- who in every possible way was the concept of "Florida Man" personified. Dangerously unstable but charismatic, Lloyd followed him across the country on multiple robberies and drug runs, all with some unspecified dream to make it big as "true desperados" -- until their last fateful robbery somewhere in Arizona.

The Superflu (or captain trips) had quietly begun its outbreak, and would in the following weeks kill 98% of the population. Poke was beginning to show signs of it when the two decided to hold up a gas station at gunpoint for money and food. When Poke's firearm accidentally went off, killing a bystander, he became gleefully crazed and decided everyone still alive in the store had to be killed -- and he tried to force Lloyd into being the one to do the killing, on threat of death himself.

A firefight broke out with local police before this could happen, killing Poke and sadly one of the only witnesses to the fact that Lloyd didn't kill anyone. He was arrested and charged with everything, including the murders and thrown in prison to await a trial that would likely end with the death penalty. He wore a confident face in prison, as he now had a high profile as a cop killer, which kept other prisoners from targeting him but made the guards less than friendly toward him.

But what began as a tense wait to see whether he would get life in prison or death by lethal injection became something else when people in the cell block started coming down with the flu. Lloyd was immune, but with everyone around him sick, including the guards who were now overloaded with prisoners they couldn't house or care for and still very unsympathetic to his plight, the walls started closing in.

Soon the last guards disappeared and left the remaining prisoners to starve, with the water soon turning off, and riots broke out that soon quelled to nothing. Trapped in his cell with a dead prisoner and soon the last remaining soul alive, Lloyd survived for weeks by preserving the water remaining in the cell's toilet, catching and killing a rat, and (at some point when the water ran out), eventually out of desperation taking a bite out of his cellmate's leg.

Delirious and certain he was going to meet his end soon, this is when a man wandered into the abandoned cell block. Randall Flagg made a deal with him, that in exchange for his loyalty, a promise to never question orders or fall asleep on the job, he would not only free him, but uplift him, put him in a position where he could punish the sort of people that would put him and leave him here in the first place. Desperate, terrified, and a little in love, Lloyd followed him from then on, and Flagg made good on his word.

Lloyd Henreid became the second most important person in New Vegas, the civilization that Flagg rose from the ashes of the plague. They had power, luxury, and access to anything they could want or wish to be, and Lloyd has his second in command kept his promise to be loyal and had to do a lot of learning, very fast, to manage his position well -- spurred by the sudden need to and a dogged need to prove himself. But he also found himself in a position of wealth and privilege he had never known, suddenly with the freedom to do what he wished and be the person he wanted to be. He had influence, women, respect, and like many who would come to Vegas after him, both a reverence and terror for the man that led it all, going beyond the borders of cult-like worship and tottering right into it. His place allowed him to keep a comfortable distance from a number of the unsavory parts of life there: slavery, for one, and draconic sentences for crimes ranging from matters like public, gladitorial executions for sport and even crucifixion.

Like many others, Lloyd bought into the belief that enemy camps were forming that needed to be rooted out and destroyed, fed to him in a way that suggested they were the sort of people that would other someone like him (or the other misfits in New Vegas) and led to the plague to begin with. What they eventually encountered was a group of people who saw Vegas and Flagg's stranglehold on it for what it was: fed into largely by fear. And though Flagg had shown he had power of a supernatural kind, it became clear that he could only maintain that power if the people gave it to him. Lloyd watched it crumble, but lost much of his faith when he was driven to kill for the first time by one of the outsiders, who openly and fearlessly questioned the order there.

When called to take part in the public execution of the remaining outsiders, Lloyd, already shaken in faith and in himself for what he had done (and felt awful about) at last defied Flagg and refused to follow him further. A storm descended upon Flagg's stronghold, and Lloyd died in the ensuing pandemonium, just before a nuke was set off there, destroying the city and all its remaining inhabitants.


CR AU (Optional): N/A

Personality:
Positive Trait: Loyal - For all his many faults, what Lloyd has going for him is that he is undyingly loyal, with few caveats. Everyone has a breaking point where they see that their loyalty is no longer being earned, and he has to be pushed pretty far and be failed pretty completely to hit that point with someone. He doesn't have the highest sense of self-worth so those that see worth in him get the biggest return; he will make it his mission to ensure that they never regret that decision. If he makes a promise, he keeps it, because they've proven they deserve that much from him. Even when things are going wrong, he is not the person to jump ship if there is still value in the attachment he has formed with them.


Negative Trait: Impressionable - Chief above all other issues that he has, his worst is how impressionable he is, which can largely be attributed to his age and lack of experience, combined with the (frankly) wild turns his life has taken. Lloyd is described in the original text as the sort where small crime would have been all he ever amounted to had he never met Poke, and this is very much how he is anytime he attaches himself to a leader who can direct him. He tends to follow the energy of the room around him -- if everyone is manic and boisterous, then so is he. If the leading energy is serious, or angry, forceful, etc, he follows suit. While pushing him to kill was a breaking point, before this he could be influenced to be party to it rather easily, overseeing terrible things because it's been normalized in his head. This creates problems for him because there is suddenly an added pressure to present more perfectly than he is capable; he fears rejection and that the people he aspires to be close to secretly resent him. This leads him into a cause and effect loop where he is constantly acting up to fit the atmosphere around him, euphoria when he succeeds and crippling anxiety when it becomes clear to him that he has come off awkward or ineffective or (gasp) cringey. His worst fear is never that he might be working for the antichrist, or that he is going to be killed by this person: it's that he's unimportant, annoying, and unwanted, and it causes him to double down harder on his behavior. Whether that's redoubling his efforts to perform as expected, trying to say something to be helpful and then being unable to shut up, etc.

Negative Trait: Overindulgent - A largely unstructured and unfulfilling life before the plague meant that a lot of the trouble Lloyd got into had to do with thrill and pleasure-seeking. Set free in Vegas to do whatever he wished (so long as his duties were seen to), Lloyd found himself in a place where any pleasure he sought he could have, with largely nothing to really moderate any of it. If he wanted to drink, he could. If he wanted to have sex, he could. If he wanted to get high, he could. And but for the fact that his boss didn't want him sleeping on the job and he was very careful about being sober for his work, everything else was fair game. If there is not someone cutting him off, Lloyd doesn't really know how to moderate himself, and due to issues like trauma, the opposite can often feel dangerous to him. He knows what it feels like to be starving to death, and dying of thirst. It creates an avenue through which it is easy to influence his actions.

Negative Trait: Scrappy - Despite all that is said above, it should not be assumed that Lloyd doesn't have any fight in him. In fact, he might have a little too much. Lloyd's upbringing, coupled with a nervous nature and a tendency to fall in with unstable but charismatic people, means he might be quicker to throw hands and step into a conflict. This is doubly true if he feels like he is being backed into a corner. And because of what he came from, being placed in a situation like this setting means he may be more primed to snap than usual.

Powers and Abilities: Lloyd has no special abilities save that everyone who survived the plague is a little more psychically sensitive than normal. Gut feelings might be a little stronger, the odd prophetic dream might hit these people. Beyond that, his abilities and intelligence range from average to below average, with bursts of capability and focus in moments of extreme necessity (heavy deadlines, life or death situations, etc). He doesn't like the idea of killing, personally, but that does not make him not dangerous -- and if he is focused he is very accurate with a gun.
Inventory: Other than the clothes on his back, Lloyd Henreid arrived with a deck of playing cards, a golden key that seemingly doesn't go to anything here, and an unloaded glock.

Samples: Lloyd's TDM, though presently short, provides examples of how he both thinks and speaks/writes. (He has a sixth grade reading level so the network can enjoy that when he posts in texts). Link