Lloyd Allen

* Puppet
* Human
* Doll

Puppet created by Joni-Rae Carrack
Human art by CitrusCircus
Doll art by Fayz

**Lloyd Allen** is a major figure in the Shaperaverse, a Post-Human who has heavily impacted the history of New Albion. His first appearance was in The New Albion Radio Hour*,* and he would later appear (as a cameo, as a mention, and in person) in other albums, a podcast, and the collection of short stories Lost Fables From New Albion.

## Early Years

Lloyd Allen was born in the Coreswind Archipelago, to a psychology professor and his wife. Professor Allen was a cold and analytical man, while Mrs. Allen was more dramatically inclined. Mrs. Allen always bothered Professor Allen to spend time with their son, but little came of it, as Professor Allen didn't particularly like or care for the company of children, and lacked an ability to relate to them. When Lloyd was 5, though, Professor Allen taught the boy to play chess. However, when Lloyd was 6, his mother tearfully exited Lloyd's life permanently while Professor Allen was absent. Upon his return, the two were all each other had left: a son who knew his father didn't love him and a father who didn't want his son.

The only way Lloyd and his father really connected was over the game of chess, which Professor Allen never let Lloyd win. Eventually, though, Lloyd would beat him at the age of 7. Professor Allen attributed his loss to fatigue, but Lloyd would beat him more and more consistently; at 8 years old, Lloyd would never again lose to his father, and he was regarded as a chess prodigy.

Soon, Lloyd was sent to an academy renowned for its chess program, which would serve as a primer for Lloyd to enter the world of chess professionally. At this school, Lloyd became happy and comfortable among like-minded chess nerds, and he soon established himself as the best player they had. After arriving at the academy, Lloyd stopped corresponding with his father.

Eventually, after having won many tournaments, Lloyd grew bored, and began to lose intentionally, while playing puerile pranks on his opponents with the board and pieces. For this, he stopped being sent to tournaments. However, the club kept him anyway, as he was their best player. They had him mentor other players, but he soon grew bored with even that, and explored other games with his schoolmates, hoping to master *those*. Lloyd exited the game world upon meeting Matt, the star of the academy's theatre department, who would be his first boyfriend. Soon after, Lloyd left the chess club and became the stage manager for the drama department. Under him, what had previously been a chaotic program fell in line, and ran incredibly smoothly from then on.

As an adult, Lloyd would work at an advertisement agency for his city's theatre industry. It was around this time that he would become the subject of interest for a local death cult. Though Lloyd was initially in denial, he was savvy enough to understand that he was being hunted and stalked, wise enough to be prepared for a fight, and lucky enough to have an actual sword with him when he eventually *was* attacked. The death cult was being manipulated (perhaps *incredibly loosely*) by a group of posthumans stuck in the Crossroads. Though the posthumans' intent was merely to force Lloyd to flower, in hopes that he could help them escape, they inadvertently influenced the cultists to attempt to murder Lloyd. During the first attack, Lloyd killed one of the cultists, and in shock, ran off to Matt's house for comfort. He would be attacked by the cultists several more times, and each time he would be prepared with a sword to fend them off. Eventually, the cultists, knowing where Matt lived due to Lloyd running off to find him, decided to use him as bait to lure him into a trap. They sent a message to Lloyd detailing where to find them, and with it, one of Matt's pinkies.

After this, Lloyd gathered resources and holed up the theatre for a few days. He spent time turning the theatre into a death trap of his *own*, and made an effort to lure the cult into it. When they finally showed up, Lloyd trapped them in the theatre and would goad them into moving around it to try and get him. None of the cultists made it out alive.

An indeterminate amount of time after his flowering, Lloyd would enter his first radio correspondence with the other founding posthuman members of the August Sky Playhouse: Michael, Jill, and Asha. He would befriend them, and especially Asha, as they attempted to figure out how to travel through the metaverse to get to Lloyd's Narrative.

Eventually, these four founded the August Sky Playhouse, where Lloyd would work out a way to try and break into the Crossroads. At some indeterminate point while Lloyd was still attempting this, David Adams would arrive in the Playhouse after flying through the Metaverse shortly after his flowering, and to help Lloyd in his goal, David would undergo a radical change and become Raven. Lloyd would find himself falling for Raven, and they began a relationship.

## The Second Playhouse & Second Posthuman War

Soon, Lloyd and Raven left the August Sky Playhouse to form a second playhouse. In the Narrative in which New Albion exists, the couple came across a Sentient Room from which they ran interactive theatrical productions, which, in reality, were experiments conducted to flower potential posthumans. One such production was called Caravan, and in it, 2 volunteers from the audience would be chosen to immerse themselves into the play while the audience looked on. Though the vast majority of these failed to flower anyone, it is known that at least one such show *did* flower a posthuman, Kate. Soon after, the Caravan run of shows was retired.

At some indeterminate point after this, Isabela, the widow of the Red-Haired Dwarf, flowered and met Lloyd and Raven while they were operating out of the second Playhouse. She and Lloyd got along incredibly well.

Sometime later, a new posthuman came onto the scene: Sarah McKiggan. At the time, Raven, Kate, and Lloyd were involving themselves with a new undertaking: they were in the process of producing a new play, the Dogs Project. Sarah quickly made herself an asset, and she, too, became involved in the production. This is reflected with the comparatively darker tone of this production than of other Playhouse productions. Meanwhile, Sarah was studying Lloyd's methodology for flowering posthumans while conducting her own experiments on her own time. She managed to devise a method of flowering that had a higher rate of success than Lloyd and Raven's, albeit at the cost of her test subjects' minds, with grotesque physical deformities as a second side effect. All the while, she manipulated Lloyd and tried to do the same to Raven, but for some reason this never worked, and only served to make him more suspicious. When he investigated her and discovered her experiments, he immediately reported to Lloyd and Kate. When Lloyd and Raven went to confront Sarah, she assaulted them with a barrage of abominations of her own creation. The couple made it out of the situation alive *solely* because they had an experience advantage over Sarah. Sarah, however, kept pursuing them, so Raven offered to act as a distraction for her to give Lloyd the space to devise a plan, and so Sarah's attention was diverted to Raven for months as he lured her away from Lloyd. The first step in Lloyd's plan was to call in reinforcements. Michael, Jill, Kate, and Isabela appeared to help, and in addition to the posthumans, Lloyd called in 3 people from the Akashic Monastery, as well as the Lost Ones, an abandoned faction of a devolving race of beings capable of metaversal travel. After they had devised their plan, Raven, too, joined them, and as Raven returned, so did Sarah. The ensuing battle lead to the death of Isabela, the (ostensible) death of Jill, and the loss of Michael's arm. Meanwhile, Lloyd was sewing together demiplanes of Sarah's creation, and upon finishing he placed them into a subreality. The plan was to trap Sarah and force her into the subreality with no way out. Kate and the Lost Ones didn't directly engage in combat, but their tasks in this plan were essential. The Lost Ones swarmed Sarah and brought her into the subreality, at which point Kate sealed off Sarah's only means of escape. After this task was complete, the trio from the monastery entered the subreality too, and would establish a center there for the Holy Sacred Order of the Bleeding Rose.

## Separation from Raven & Retrieval of Son Mi

After the war, Lloyd and Raven began spending more time living apart, with the former in his playhouse and the latter at his Carnival. At some point, Lloyd received a posthumous message from Isabela, though the message was meant for Raven, not him. In any case, in this message, Isabela revealed that Raven had unknowingly fathered a child with her, a daughter named Son Mi. Lloyd had also noticed that Raven was in a melancholy mood as of late, and took it upon himself to bring him Son Mi as a gift in order to cheer him up. Son Mi lived in security, in a far-off, hard to access Narrative. In spite of this, Lloyd did manage, with great difficulty, to retrieve her and bring her to the Narrative in which New Albion existed, and it was there that she would grow up and start a family. Unfortunately, before Lloyd could return to Raven, he was killed and eaten by a Scratch. Before his soul was able to reach its ultimate fate, however, it was pulled into a Doll in New Albion. His Doll body *severely* limited his powers, and for a time it limited his motion, too. Thus it was that Lloyd would be stuck in New Albion, with limited power, in close proximity to a death cult, and unable to return to Raven. All of these fact served to embitter Lloyd to a large degree.

## Astonishing Tales of the Highly Improbable

Effectively powerless, Lloyd was stuck in New Albion. While there, however, Lloyd started and hosted a radio show where he would detail the exploits of the August Sky posthumans and get into his own past as well. He would also occasionally talk about what he's been getting up to in the present day. Among the present-day developments he discussed were his attempts to contact the Akashic Monastery in hopes that they could help him return to Raven. To do this, he met with Jacqueline O'Brien, whom he had send 2 of her Voodoopunks to the mountains west of New Albion, where the Monastery lies. However, when those 2 Voodoopunks never returned, Jackie refused to offer further help to Lloyd, owing to her desire to conserve resources for the civil war. Lloyd, now deprived of his best chance of returning to Raven, went into a fit of explosive anger over his situation, then a morose depression, before finally resolving to see the city burn. While this isn't the *first* time Lloyd would express this desire, it *is* the first time he resolves to do it himself, and while he even admits that the rage filled person he’s become isn’t who he ever wanted to be, he begins his plans to bring the city down.

## The New Albion Radio Hour

In the final year of the decade-long New Albion civil war, Lloyd hosted an episode of the Radio Hour which was dedicated to Narrating the end of the war, with the conclusive Battle of Crier's Boulevard. Though he was mostly a passive narrator for most of the album, he *did* take initiative and directly interacted with the story at key moments in order to further his goals. The first was when Constance, flowering unbeknownst to anyone, "broke character", and he coaxed her back into her role. Later, he attempted to Narrate the death of Thomas, and would’ve succeeded if Jackie hadn’t argued with him. The third instance was where he put his plan into motion: Narrating that the entire population of the town was mesmerized by the Voodoopunk song- but Constance, now fully flowered, changed the Narrative he’d created and undid the effects of the song. Lloyd, unable to burn New Albion to the ground as he’d planned yet still craving a tragic ending, began to Narrate the death of Constance instead. Jackie, picking up on this, warned the others, which gave John O'Brien enough time to mount a defense. Thomas and Constance made it out alive, but at the cost of the elder O'Briens' lives. Lloyd, having failed yet again, appeared calm for the rest of the album, and promised that the New Albion Radio Hour would return, though the level of truth to this statement is unclear.

## Return to the Carnival & Reunion with Raven

Roughly 6 decades after this, Lloyd was approached by the AI currently occupying the Room Beneath New Albion. The AI had been attempting to create a place in the Collective Unconscious where they would gain bodies and thus avoid losing their empathy, the retention of which was key to averting a future catastrophe they had been warned of. Their first attempt had failed, and so for their second attempt, they would bring Lloyd onboard as a consultant, asking him specifically to add elements into the Cabaret that the AI would not expect to be present. Lloyd, then, wrote the backstories of the Cabaret's cast to incorporate elements designed to flower them. It failed to flower any of them until Han-Mi, the granddaughter of Son Mi and thus the great-granddaughter of Raven, unwittingly changed the Narrative in the Cabaret, leading to its termination by the AI. Lloyd met with Han shortly after her escape from the Collective Unconscious and defeat of Mary. He offered her a deal: in exchange for taking Lloyd to the Carnival, he would teach Han to use her powers. He also revealed to Han her relation to Raven. After an unknown period of time, they arrived at the Carnival. Raven, seeing Lloyd's doll body, questioned what he was. When Lloyd spoke, however, Raven recognized him, and the two men broke down sobbing, reuniting after so long. The moment was broken when Raven noticed Han, who prepared to explain their relation.

## Fairypunk

After arriving at the Carnival with Han and reuniting with Raven, the elder posthumans got to work training Han. Han attempted to Narrate a story with a happy ending for the cyborg Jane, who was the reincarnation of her lost love, Helen. Though Lloyd and Raven would not directly Narrate this story, they *did* occasionally insert themselves into it to help nudge the characters in the right direction. After the posthumans finished Narrating this story, Lloyd stated, matter-of-factly, that he'd always said he'd see the city burn, and then, in a shift of mood, declared that he was off to go receive a real body, and expressed excitement at the prospect.

## Personality

In Lloyd's initial appearance, as a narrator, he seems mostly innocuous. When his personality separate from the narration shows itself, he is shown to be willing to manipulate people for the sake of the Narrative, and when he doesn't get his way, depending on how major of a deviation from his will something is, he can be either grudgingly complicit or lethally vindictive.

Elsewhere, Lloyd is shown to be a person who cares at least for those close to him; he was close with Isabela and took notice of Raven's melancholy mood while they were living apart, going to great lengths to attempt to cheer him up. Though he is only seen at the end of the Ballad of Lost Hollow, the way he tailored each cast member's backstory in the Cabaret to flower them proves he has a good enough understanding of others to identify potential conditions under which they can flower. He also shows himself, in the lead-up to the Second Posthuman War, to be manipulable, though because the manipulator in question was Sarah McKiggan, the extent to which this applies outside of this specific situation is unknown.

In Astonishing Tales of the Highly Improbable, Lloyd shows much more of his personality than has been seen before. He demonstrates that his sense of morality lies in a very murky grey area, and moreover, that what standards he *does* have are not easily categorized as moral or immoral (for instance, in a war between humans and fairies, he states that he would unequivocally side with the fairies, and he has also expressed that he is willing to eat human meat, but only if it's cooked well). More than this, he has also shown himself to be fairly open-minded, but only in the sense that because everything is terrible, very little is off-limits. As with the New Albion Radio Hour, he is very vindictive when things don't go his way, though this manifests as explosive anger more than the subtlety he exhibited in Radio Hour.

Lloyd also provides a look into what he was like in his youth. Even as a child, he was very perceptive, understanding the dynamic between him and his father from a very young age, and also well-read and determined to the point where he could become a chess prodigy by the age of 8 for the sole purpose of pleasing his father. As a young adult, he proved resourceful enough to convert a theatre into a death trap, and Lloyd, looking back on it, notes that he appreciated the beauty of this carnage. However, in the August Sky Playhouse storyline, Lloyd is the polar opposite of his current self; he is caring and empathetic, even to those he has never met; additionally, he is an optimist who believes that failure is just learning opportunity (this statement of his younger self is juxtaposed with Lloyd's intro to the episode having him state the exact opposite). Though this could be a façade (since Lloyd seems mostly innocuous in The New Albion Radio Hour as well), it is also likely that this portrayal of Lloyd is genuine, making his younger self a very enigmatic individual.

## Trivia

* Lloyd can play the piano, although he doesn't exactly jam like Raven does. They both play piano and sometimes they sit and duet, although Lloyd likes sticking to the prewritten music and Raven does not.
* In a Q&A voice call, Paul has stated that Lloyd is canonically sexy.
* Lloyd and Raven make up the components of the Lovers archetype. No matter what, they are bound to one another in such a way that their separation for an extended period will cause bad things to happen. For Lloyd, this is exemplified in The New Albion Radio Hour, when Lloyd has abandoned all hope of reuniting with Raven and is hell-bent on destroying New Albion to quell his wrath at this notion.
* Lloyd's Doll body has several pop-out blades installed in various parts of it.
* During The End, Han Mi tells Michael "Lloyd was dead but... he got better", which may be a reference to *Monty Python and the Holy Grail*.