Leaving everyone a way out
In the most deadlocked meeting she can find the sentence that lets both sides stop. It is a talent and it is a habit — so much a habit that she has largely stopped asking for anything for herself.
Crown Regent of the Moonshadow Conclave · Coordinator between the Memory and Crown Seats
Lyra Eridan
Lyra Vane Eridan
“Let me read my sister’s edict out for you first — she starts getting angry halfway down the second page, and after that even I can’t make out the letters.”
- Moonshadow Conclave
- Crown Regent
- Inner Court Scribe
- Called
- Lyra
- People / Age
- Elf / 287
- Affiliation
- The Moonshadow Conclave
- Office
- Aethelind’s twin sister, Inner Court scribe, coordinator between the Memory and Crown Seats
- Inherent class
- Ward scribe / strategic support
- First appears
- Chapter 2 — The Conclave’s inner court
- Role
- Not a standing party member. Base management, intelligence and regional buffs
- Fond of
- Making scent bookmarks for different regions, human printing, tea steeped exactly right
- Not good at
- Making a request with “I” as the subject of the sentence
- Art status
- No approved portrait yet
Spoiler-free
The elders like to discuss century-long plans. Lyra’s job is translating them into tasks someone can carry out tomorrow morning: which day this group of spirits migrates, which route the outside caravans take, how the gathering quota is split, and what exactly her sister’s very short order from abroad is supposed to mean.
She knows ordinary grove-hold granaries and grove-hold disputes better than her sister does, which means she also knows best who is working late to fill in the hole behind every “the Queen went herself”.
She speaks gently and decides quickly, and her jokes usually hide in the second half of a perfectly straight sentence. What she is best at is making sure everyone in the room has a way to back down. Whether she has one herself is a question very few people have asked.
How she got here
She and her sister Aethelind were born on the same day in a grove-hold on the forest’s edge, and were adopted into the royal main line together as children.
In 859 ST the previous queen died and the Three Seats raised her sister to the throne. Lyra stayed, starting as Inner Court scribe, and spent year after year straightening out the entire administrative apparatus. A great deal of the reason the Moonshadow forest still functions is her work — signed, mostly, in someone else’s name.
When her sister leaves the forest, she puts on the crown and governs in her place. The core members of the Three Seats know. Ordinary people only know the Queen has been seen less lately. The sisters look alike, but she has never deceived anyone with magic — she simply put her own handwriting, her own stance and her own habits away, a little at a time.
The arrangement worked for a long time. Until the day she made a decision that was different from her sister’s, and better.
Traits
Scent bookmarks
She makes scent bookmarks for different regions. For an elf who lives centuries, a sprig of heather or a handful of flour brings a season back faster than any index.
A serious interest in printing
She is fascinated by human printing, because it means records no longer depend on a handful of Memory Seats copying by hand — knowledge can belong to more people.
Timeline
- 700 ST Born with her twin sister Aethelind in a border grove-hold
- 712 ST Both sisters are adopted into the royal main line
- c. 730 ST Studies under Sylvarine alongside her sister
- 859 ST Her sister becomes Elf Queen. She takes the post of Inner Court scribe
- 903 ST Establishes the current gathering-quota and dispute-mediation process
- 951 ST Actually drafts the gathering-permit reform, signed in the Queen’s name
- 974 ST Handles public affairs as Crown Regent for the first time
- 987 ST Mounts a rescue against orders while her sister is abroad. The regency arrangement risks becoming public
Ties
- Aethelind
- A sister she loves deeply, a co-ruler, and the person whose shadow falls across her name without meaning to.
- The Stranger (you)
- The first outsider to call her “Lady Lyra” in public rather than “the one standing in for the Queen”.
- Sylvarine
- Her old teacher. Her anger is quieter than her sister’s, because she worked out long ago that the woman might not be coming back.
- The Three Seats
- Some support her because she is easier to negotiate with. Some genuinely respect her administration.
Voice
- First meeting
“Let me read my sister’s edict out for you first — she starts getting angry halfway down the second page, and after that even I can’t make out the letters.”
- Paperwork
“Sign here, please. It only confirms the letter arrived. It does not put you in the Conclave’s debt for a century — that is a different form.”
- Small talk
“This one is heather after rain, that one is the granary. Don’t file them the wrong way round, or next autumn all I’ll be able to think about is flour.”
- Base support
“I’ve already spoken to the rangers about the route. Go on, it’s watched all the way through.”
- Angry in public
“I wrote that resolution. The credit may go to the Queen, but when something goes wrong you come to me — have you all been mistaking convenience for procedure for rather too long?”
- Receiving a gift
“For me? …Thank you. Then I’ll have to find somewhere proper for it — not the document cabinet. The cabinet would be an insult.”
- Late at night
“No edicts today, and nothing to pass along. …The tea has been sitting since morning; it’s stone cold. I’ll make a fresh pot — this one goes on my own account.”
Drawn from the KTM2 WorldDict. Only the public layer of each entry is published here.