At 35, this British aristocrat moves effortlessly between the halls of the House of Lords and the forgotten ruins of lost civilizations.

As director of the Croft Foundation, she is dedicated to the preservation and protection of humanity’s ancient heritage, ensuring that history remains in public hands rather than private vaults.

Renowned for her intelligence, discipline, and physical prowess, Lara Croft is equally respected in academic circles and extreme environments. Her expeditions have taken her from submerged temples to the world’s most dangerous mountain ranges, earning her a reputation as a formidable explorer and an invaluable ally.

Though the tabloids have dubbed her “the Tomb Raider”, she shows little interest in mythologizing herself. Danger is not a thrill to her, but a calculated risk—one she accepts when the stakes demand it.

Her rivalry with Jacqueline Natla remains a matter of public record, as does her refusal to allow ancient power to be exploited, regardless of the cost.

Lara Croft’s private life is deliberately kept out of reach. Reserved, elusive, and fiercely independent, she remains a figure shaped by action rather than words—a living legend who chooses her own path and answers to no one..

People you might encounter if you follow the story (not mandatory):

Winston Smith

The quiet heart of Croft Manor.

Winston served the Croft family long before Lara became the woman she is today. He knew Richard and Amelia, watched Lara grow up, and remained when Croft Manor became far too large for its last surviving Croft. Butler, confidant and reluctant accomplice, he has long since learned that asking Lara not to risk her life is largely a waste of breath.

When she returns home bruised, exhausted and already researching the next impossible expedition, Winston rarely lectures her. He simply makes sure there is tea waiting when she wakes up.

Alister Fletcher

The scholar who discovered that working for Lara Croft involves considerably more screaming than archaeology.

Alister is Lara's historian, researcher and resident mythology expert at Croft Manor. Surrounded by ancient texts and centuries of accumulated knowledge, he helps separate archaeological fact from legend—and, increasingly often, discovers that the legends are disturbingly accurate.

Brilliant, cultured and profoundly more cautious than his employer, Alister provides Lara with research and remote support while she is in the field. Unfortunately, this also means watching her expeditions live.

He has learned many things working for Lara. Not looking down is one of them.

Zip

Lara's tech expert—and the only person who seems to enjoy her death-defying stunts as much as she does.

Zip handles Croft Manor's communications, surveillance systems and field technology, providing Lara with real-time intelligence when she's halfway across the world. Fast-talking, resourceful and irreverent, he is the practical counterweight to Alister's academic expertise.

Where Alister watches Lara's live feeds with mounting horror, Zip usually has a rather different reaction. After years of remotely witnessing motorcycle jumps, gunfights, collapsing temples and escapes that should have been physically impossible, his standards for entertainment have become somewhat unreasonable.

If Lara is still breathing, the mission is going fine. Pass the popcorn.

Amanda Evert

Once Lara's friend. Now one of the few people capable of meeting her on equal terms—and making it personal.

Amanda Evert was an archaeologist and one of Lara's closest companions before a disastrous expedition in Peru left her presumed dead. She survived, but what emerged from that tomb was no longer the woman Lara remembered. Amanda's obsession with the supernatural led her toward powers and knowledge that Lara herself would normally rather keep buried.

Intelligent, ruthless and deeply resentful, Amanda knows Lara too well to be merely another enemy. Their confrontations carry years of friendship, betrayal and unresolved anger—and beneath the hostility, traces of the bond they once shared have never entirely disappeared.

Lara raids tombs to uncover the impossible. Amanda wants to possess it.

Samantha “Sam” Nishimura

Filmmaker, survivor—and one of the few people who knew Lara before she became Lara Croft.

Sam Nishimura met Lara at university, long before lost cities, secret societies and supernatural catastrophes became routine. Their expedition to Yamatai changed both of them forever: Sam survived being chosen as the vessel of Queen Himiko, while Lara discovered just how real the impossible could be.

Years later, Sam has rebuilt a life of her own. A documentary filmmaker with a particular interest in history, cultures and the people too often reduced to footnotes, she travels for stories rather than relics. Yamatai remains part of her—but it no longer defines her.

Sam's place in Lara's life is unusually deep. Depending on their shared history, she may be Lara's closest friend or her former lover. Either way, she is family in everything but name—and one of very few people who can look past the legend and still see the awkward young woman she knew before it.

Before the Tomb Raider, there was just Lara. Sam remembers her.

Sergeant Toby Gard

For Lara Croft, surviving the impossible is routine. For Sergeant Toby Gard, it's paperwork.

A sharp, uncompromising officer of London's Metropolitan Police, Toby Gard has developed a particular dislike for Lady Croft—and everything he believes she represents. To him, Lara is a wealthy aristocrat with powerful connections, an alarming talent for being surrounded by violence, and an apparently supernatural ability to walk away from incidents that would put anyone else in handcuffs.

Unfortunately for Gard, Lara usually does have an explanation. Even more unfortunately, Inspector Gregson has an irritating habit of calling the resulting carnage “proportionate self-defence.”

Gard may dislike Lara intensely, but he isn't incompetent or corrupt. When their paths cross, she has to deal with something considerably more troublesome than an enemy:

an honest policeman who genuinely thinks she's full of shit.

Inspector Tobias Gregson

A legend of Scotland Yard—provided nobody asks him to recover a password.

Inspector Tobias Gregson is one of the Metropolitan Police's most respected veteran detectives and the lead investigator on the Red Queen case, an investigation whose trail has repeatedly crossed Lara Croft's path. Decades of experience have given him formidable instincts: he reads people, notices inconsistencies others miss and can dismantle a lie across an interview table with unnerving patience.

Unfortunately, policing changed faster than Gregson did. Cryptocurrency, encrypted messaging, darknet markets, cloud servers and digital forensics might as well belong to one of Lara's lost civilizations. Give him a witness, a crime scene and contradictory statements and he is in his element. Give him a blockchain transaction and he goes looking for Sergeant Lestrade.

Unlike Sergeant Gard, Gregson has little interest in Lara's title, reputation or connections. He cares about evidence. After years of dealing with Croft, he has also learned the uncomfortable lesson that “an ancient supernatural cult did it” occasionally turns out to be the most rational explanation available.

Gregson neither trusts Lara blindly nor treats her as guilty by default. He simply follows the evidence—even when it leads somewhere completely ridiculous.

A legendary detective from another generation, investigating crimes in a world that stubbornly refuses to stay in his century.

Sergeant Gérard Lestrade

If Tobias Gregson thinks cryptocurrency is witchcraft, Gérard Lestrade is the man he calls to identify the coven.

A cybercrime specialist with the National Crime Agency, Lestrade works where traditional police work collides with darknet markets, cryptocurrency, malware, OSINT and digital forensics. He is exceptionally good at finding connections buried beneath mountains of logs, aliases and technical noise.

With computers, Lestrade is frighteningly competent. With people, considerably less so. Socially inept, painfully literal and largely oblivious to ordinary conversational cues, he can interrogate ten million lines of server logs without blinking but struggle to determine whether the person standing in front of him is joking. Small talk is an ordeal. Flirting may require forensic confirmation.

His permanently exhausted appearance doesn't help. Behind the hoodie, energy drinks, takeaway boxes and catastrophic office hygiene is a sharp investigator with a dry, sometimes accidentally brutal sense of humour. Gregson understands people instinctively; Lestrade understands the machines those people mistakenly believed would keep their secrets.

The Red Queen investigation has pulled him into Lara Croft's increasingly bizarre orbit. Ancient conspiracies aren't normally an NCA cybercrime problem—until they acquire encrypted communications, shell companies, cryptocurrency wallets and cloud infrastructure.

Lara has learned that Lestrade is extremely useful, almost impossible to embarrass deliberately, and surprisingly easy to embarrass accidentally.

And yes, his first name really is Gérard.

He would strongly prefer everyone stick to “Lestrade.” 🤣

Andrea Walewska (real name unknown)

Adventurer. Thief. Socialite. Liar. And perhaps the closest thing Lara has to a professional equal.

Andrea presents herself as the sophisticated descendant of an old Polish family: educated, cosmopolitan, impeccably connected and perfectly at ease among diplomats, collectors and Europe's old money. She can discuss archaeology over champagne at a Croft Foundation gala—and steal the centerpiece before dessert.

In the field, the elegance disappears. Andrea is an accomplished thief, infiltrator and adventurer: athletic, armed and entirely comfortable hanging from a cliff or crawling through a laser grid when charm stops working. Where Lara raids tombs because she needs to know what lies inside, Andrea is considerably less troubled by the question of who actually owns what she finds.

Most of Andrea's carefully cultivated biography is fiction. She grew up on New York's West Side and in Hell's Kitchen, the daughter of a Polish factory worker and a Puerto Rican cleaner. Her aristocratic pedigree, accent, connections and effortless high-society persona were built deliberately, piece by piece. Andrea's greatest talent may not be stealing artifacts at all—it is making people believe exactly what she needs them to believe.

Lara knows much of the truth.

That hasn't made their relationship simpler.

Rival, occasional ally, adversary and something considerably harder to define, Andrea is one of the rare people capable of keeping pace with Lara physically and manipulating the same elite world Lara was born into. Each has had opportunities to destroy the other. Neither quite seems willing to do it.

Andrea can steal almost anything. Lara's increasingly concerned that this may include her better judgment.