Lyra

Scope

The motivation behind building Lyra

The end goal of Lyra is to become a published setting This setting is the brainchild of both me and my beloved wife, Janet. I want us to work together with it and then have our names side by side on a beautiful hardcover tome.

The goal of the project

I want to create a wondrous world and a system that will explore willpower as a form of prime energy that can be used to alter the world based on how it is understood by those using it.

Lyra's Unique Selling point

Lyra is a world that your will can bend reality. Magi/Clock/Bio Punk, Age of Sail & Exploration in a world of flying ships, mecha knights, ancient robotic constructs & dragon. The players play the pirate, defenders of the unjustly enslaved and explorers of a new found land filled with ancient mysteries and mutated horrors.

Theme

Genre

Science Fantasy with Magi Punk, Clock Punk and Bio Punk influences.   The world is in the equivalent of proto/pre-industrialization era      

From wikipedia

 

The Age of Sail (usually dated as 1571–1862) was a period roughly corresponding to the early modern period in which international trade and naval warfare were dominated by sailing ships and gunpowder warfare, lasting from the mid-16th to the mid-19th centuries.[1]

The early modern period of modern history follows the late Middle Ages of the post-classical era. Although the chronological limits of the period are open to debate, the timeframe spans the period after the late portion of the post-classical age (c. 1400-1500), known as the Middle Ages, through the beginning of the Age of Revolutions (c. 1800) and is variously demarcated by historians as beginning with the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople in 1453, the Renaissance period in Europe and Timurid Central Asia, the Muslim conquests in the Indian subcontinent, and the end of the Reconquista and the Age of Discovery (especially the voyages of Christopher Columbus beginning in 1492 but also with Vasco da Gama's discovery of the sea route to India in 1498) and ending around the French Revolution in 1789.

Reader Experience

The world of Lyra is a wondrous world filled with the brightest and awe inspiring natural wonders and the darkest terryfying dehumanizing truths.   The players will journey to discover the undiscovered lands of the new world and the dark side of the planet while being threatened by their horrors and the forces of the old world that trying to exersize their will on them and the inhabitants of the new lands.

Reader Tone

The world as the players will experience it has has bright tendencies but an underlying ominus tone.   The people of the world live in tumultuous times. Climate Change and new threats are met by new scientifics discoveries and riches from far off lands.   As the world becomes a more interconnected/globalised community its people are forced into conflict and will have to fight for their livelyhood and lives.

Recurring Themes

  • Ancient Constructs and reanimated immortal creatures, remnants of an ancient global empire
  • Genetically enhanced Elven dragonriders
  • Mutated Creaturs and Plants in vast jungles filled with ancient temples
  • Fiercely territorial underwater Triton Lords controlling the seas
  • A crumbling clockpunk-themed empire hungry for new resources to fight against disastrous climate change
  • PIRATES & Freedom fighters trying to establish a better world without the shackles of their Empirial masters
  • Mutated Horrors from the dark side of Lyra
  • Character Agency

    By definition this setting is built to give the players the ultimate agency to create their characters and the world around them as they please.   The playerss should be seen as the beacon spreading light on the darkest corners of the world.   Although not the focus of the game, the players could also become the conquerors of the new world, bringing the old-world civilization to the wild lands.  

    Mechanics

  • Leveless / Classless/ Skill Based system
  • Shipbuilding
  • Air Vehicle Combat
  • Settlement/Kingdom building
  • Psionics (Willpower & Sanity)
  • Robot/Construct Building
  • Focus

    Climate Change

    Technology Influence

    Class Relations

    Gender Relations

    Not a major focus point but an underlying truth. In this world, as with Dragon Prince, species, gender and sexuality will be considered defacto equal.

    Drama

    droughts, floods and flash frosts

    The crumbling empire is hit by droughts, floods and flash frosts that decimate their food production. At the same time the threats from the dark side of the planet and becoming ever more dangerous.

    Conquest of the New World & the Ancient Ruins

    As the explorers of the empire reach for the new lands they come in conflict with the indigenous people of the new continents and flying islands, their journeys into the jungles uncover the mysteries and threats of the ancient civilization that once used to rule across the planet.

    New World Politics & Conflicts

    The nations of the new world fight for dominance over each other while also face threats from the dark side, the empire to the east and the raiders of the north

    Duskbelt inhabitants migration & Northern Tribes Raids

    The inhabitants of the duskbelt of the planet are trying to escape the dark devouring horrors pushing them further north from the Everdark and into the already inhabited lands of the empire and the new world.   The northern tribes that live at the shores of the deserted continent, in the dawn belt move ever southwards with their raids looking for new lands to plunter.

    The Seeding

    The Green moon is approaching another seeding season and the first occurances of "flowerings" are spreading all over the planet causing uncontrolled and wondrous mutations.

    Dangerous Seas

    The reason that no ship was ever able to cross the oceans is that the oceans are ruled by a fiercly territorial and isolationist intelligent aquatic race that commands the great beasts of the ocean and prompty destroys anyone who dares to cross their waters.   This is the reason that only the invention of flying ships allowed the people of the old world to cross to the new world.   This aquatic species are the closest and only survivors of the psychic cataclysm of the "Melding" that wiped out most living people of the first age.

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