Pictures
A nice shot of his back on (v4, p50).
The following were notes while the character was evolving. They do not necessarily represent the way it came out.
According to the Cast List:
The advance-man for the circus. Lars is a Great Big Chicken, which makes him sensitive to danger and resourceful in avoiding it. He's the perfect person to send ahead to check out the next town on the route. In the Heterodyne Shows, Lars plays Bill Heterodyne.Lars introduces and describes himself on (v4, p75).
Note that Lars has an acute sense of cliche, and knows how things work in stories. For instance, he [knows that there is a secret passage into Sturmhalten], simply because there's always one in a Heterodyne Story. Indeed, he even understands roughly [where he is in the story] at any given time. This gives him a powerful intuition about what's really going on; that should become some sort of special ability. Indeed, he has an almost Spider-Man-esque sixth sense for trouble -- he can tell subconsciously when things are out of the ordinary, well before we knows what is wrong (v5, p20). This is shown in action on (v5, p93), where he knows quite well how deeply dangerous the situation is, more than anyone else.
Lars is basically a professional worrier, and quite honest about it (v4, p73). He is one of the few members of the Circus who isn't a Spark (v4, p89), but he's reasonably quick-witted when things go bad (v4, p84). He's prone to panic attacks after-the-fact (v4, p89).
For all his professed worrying, Lars is a halfway-decent fighter (v5, p15), and he does put others ahead of himself.
He was a former cheesemaker's apprentice who ran away to join the circus, and has been there for ten years now (v4, p75-76).
By (v5, p27), it's pretty clear that Lars is falling for Agatha, with fine reason. On (v5, p29) he realizes that this is so. He doesn't do so lightly -- as we see on that same page, he prides himself as something of a rake, and the idea of really falling in love is pretty traumatic. He also gets over-the-top protective of Agatha (v5, p35), which is more than slightly silly: she can protect herself far better than he can.
We might well play him up as an Oratio type: once he falls in love, he falls goofy in love, and goes rather over the top. He is well-placed to have a hard time with the Infinite Agathas plot.
Lars and Abner are apparently roommates (v5, p28).
Lars wears a ring when he needs to appear to be married in town (v5, p60) -- this actually unfolds into a lockpick.
When Agatha is captured by Aaronev and company, Lars is the one who argues to go back for her (v5, p72).
As of game time, Lars is still [pretty clueless] about who Agatha really is.
(12/12/06): Oh, bloody hell -- it looks like they've [killed off Lars].
Lars was still with the Circus when Agatha arrived (v4, p50); he hadn't hadn't yet moved on to the advance gig that led into v5.
Amount of Character Potential: Good (Need to take his current state of deadness into account. If the game is set before his death, probably include him. If after, we need to think about it carefully.)