Hiram Lorecroft
Baron | Professor | Inventor | Scholar | Enigma
Professor Hiram Alberstein Lorecroft, IV
Archivist's Excerpt from: A Chiming Town Indeed: A Painstaking History of Pendulum & its People, Vol. I, CVI 42.5
Current holder of the Barony of Willowbough Estate, and with it, current resident of the once-home of Cornelius Hickter himself, Willowbough Manor, Professor of Photonic Transmetrics, and known better as "Fancypants" by Hugo Esker of Harchester, Hiram Alberstein Lorecroft has been so influential in his field that he is believed to have neither equal, nor even peer. He is considered probably the brightest mind of Orphan Heights' great history, outside of Cornelius Hickterhimself. Actually, it's not "probably." Lorecroft is known across Orphan Heights as the man who "practically invented light," the developer of the lectral incandescent, among four hundred eighty-seven other patents to his name.
A lover of Milton's Paradise Lost and the works of Francis Thompson (despite Thompson's religiosity), Lorecroft's love of prose has often been seen at odds with his frank, scientific mind, but it has long been his attempt to reconcile the aesthetic with the epistemologica.
Show SpoilerPhysical Description
Physical quirks
He has a tendency to cock his eyebrow
Moves his head about to look at things, as a pigeon might
Apparel & Accessories
Specialized Equipment
Mental characteristics
Personal history
He submitted his first patent at eleven, published his first papers at sixteen, and perfected the bifocal lens at twenty. By the time of his marriage to Eglantine Lorecroft on the 24th of June, 1879, his renown was already well established; she is another matter entirely, and their marriage the stuff of gossip columns and tasteless prattle, though it is curious that the Baron hardly ever mentions her.
Alas.
The subsequent birth of their son, William Lorecroft cemented his legacy for coming generations, but that legacy was shattered when William succumbed to Scarlet Fever at the age of eight, and left the Lorecrofts without any other children. Questions of further children are met with avoidance and dismissal, usually with a hardy chuckle, and anyone who knows the Lorecrofts personally doesn't choose to argue.
Education
Lorecroft, like many among the Aristocracy, is an alumni of More Academy.
In his post-secondary career, the Professor holds advanced, terminal degrees in Applied Luminary Transmetrics, Biologic Induction, Universal Gravitics, and 17th Century Anglish Literature.
Employment
It is little surprise that Hiram Lorecroft is a leading Scholar at the Grand Colonial Academy of Science in the field of Photonic Transmetrics.
Accomplishments & Achievements
Three-time recipient of the:
Current record-holder for the shortest time on the one-hundred-meter dash
Intellectual Characteristics
Lorecroft has an uncanny intellect, unique and unparalleled even among other Scholars. When other young men were managing their fundamental exams, Lorecroft was earning his first degree. He has an eerie ability to picture and track patterns like watchwork, including the motion of Orphan's population, and his ability to quote literature is second to no one.
Morality & Philosophy
Lorecroft holds a philosophy not unlike that of John Locke, the belief in the mind of man as the Tabula Rasa or "Blank-Slate," meaning that man is born without any innate uniqueness, and instead is inscribed by his experiences, and it is these that make him who he is, affect his tastes and preferences and values. This, of course, is an oversimplification, but seeing as this Archivist is neither John Locke nor Hiram Lorecroft, this will have to do.
Personality Characteristics
Likes & Dislikes
He has a fondness for earl grey tea
Social
Religious Views
Lorecroft is famously secular, and lacks the capacity, in his own words, to believe in what he cannot observe as matter or energy. One could say that his true religion is Hickter's Law.
Social Aptitude
Lorecroft, for such a genius academic, is surprisingly urbane, even charming, when he wants to be, and though social events are not his forte, he is more than capable of navigating their waters with ease.
Relationships
Wealth & Financial state
Excessive
"It is a strange thing, to visit a grave. The dead cannot hear, yet we speak as if they listen. We visit as if dropping by for tea of a summer afternoon, and expect that, at any moment, the graven door of their earthy tenement will open, that they will greet us as before, invite us is, so if we might share a pipe and lark as once we did. And all the while, we pretend it might be so. What self-deluded creatures we are."
Wife, Eglantine Anne Lorecroft:
Professor of Physics
Professor of Particle Lectrics
Professor of Photonic Mediums
Published Works:
Favourites of the Professor
"All things by immortal power, near or far, hiddenly, to each other linked are, that thou canst not stir a flower without troubling of a star."
Paradise Lost:
"The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven."
"Whatever thing the scythe of time mows down, devour unspar’d; till I in man residing through the race, his thoughts, his looks, words, actions, all infect, and season by him thy last and sweetest prey."
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