Hayli Lorin

Hayli Lorin - original artwork by J. Leigh Bralick

Hayli Lorin, the 16-year-old street rat and shape-shifter mage, is one of the main protagonists in the Madness Method series. She is the first Hole rat to meet Tarik after his debut on the streets as Taumir/Shade, and quickly finds herself swept into the whirlwind of his life.

## Description

Hayli is a girl of middling height, slim like all the Hole rats from their poor diets, but a bit stockier than some of the girls. She is a tomboy by nature and has a tomboyish figure. She tends to keep her brown hair short, just above shoulder-length, to keep it out of her way. Her eyes are brown, and like most Cavners she is fairly pale. She most often wears boy's clothes — waistcoat, breeks and boots — not feeling particularly comfortable or confident in more feminine dress.

She is a shape-shifter, and her animal nature is a common crow.

## Personality

Hayli is a spit-fire, with a tendency to be a bit tart and reclusive. It isn't so much that she doesn't care about other people — in fact, she cares about them deeply — but her lifelong self-doubt and lack of confidence have left her defensive and unwilling to trust. She has a strong moral code and sense of justice, and is also intuitive and sensitive to the motives, needs, and feelings of others to the point of being almost empathic.

Hayli is a turbulent INFP personality type, preferring to keep to herself but willing to step up when other people rely on her. Her leadership abilities are hampered, however, by her inability to acknowledge her own strengths — or believe that other people see strength in her at all.

## Background

At the beginning of TMP, not much is known of Hayli's background, but her early childhood memories hint that her family was once in a fairly elevated position in society. She lost her parents when she was a child, and the nanny who was supposed to continue to care for her abandoned her to the streets instead. She followed a few street kids to the Hole, where she met Kantian.

It is unclear if Kantian took her into the Hole out of pity, or because he knew something about her and her past. At some point, however, he learned that she was a mage. Hoping to develop her into a valuable asset to the Hole, Kantian largely kept her out of common jobs. She worked the factory jobs along with all the other Hole rats when it was her turn, of course, but was kept out of many of the riskier endeavors involving theft, espionage, and protection.

### Education

Hayli had been learning to read before the loss of her parents, but never received much education after that time. She is one of the few Hole rats who can read at all, however, and she does her best to teach others what she can. Kantian also left her without a mage mentor — possibly because he didn't want Rivano to find out that he had a mage on his crew that Rivano didn't know about — so her magical abilities went largely undeveloped for many years. She is tolerably skilled at lockpicking, poorly skilled at pickpocketing, and fairly adept at spying due to her ability to go unnoticed.

## Magical Abilities

Hayli is a Moth, a shape-shifter who can turn into a crow. In the beginning of TMP, she is not very skilled at Shifting, and cannot remember her crow life when she Shifts back into human form. As time goes on, however, she develops an awareness of the crow and of what happens to her while she is in that form. The crow, whom she later names Piper, has a distinct personality — snarky, blunt, and fierce.