Queen Lyra

The Crimson Promise The Age of Flight began when Hearthborne Reach invented the Sky Bicycle, ending millennia of isolation on the floating islands of Fluitō. One of the first islands contacted was Aethel-Mire, ruled by the charismatic Queen Lyra. She welcomed Hearthborne’s envoys, forging trade treaties to exchange her island’s unique gases for their advanced metallurgy. Hearthborne's windriders were easily deceived by her promise of collaboration. Lyra, however, had imperial ambitions. She saw the Sky Bicycle as a flimsy prototype. Under the guise of trade, she secretly absorbed Hearthborne's structural designs and combined them with her island’s indigenous resource: Aether-Breath, a highly buoyant gas from their crystalline geysers. Within a year, her engineers constructed the first Aerostats: enormous, stable, military-grade air balloons suspended by gas-filled envelopes. These floating fortresses, powered by cranks and rudders and armed with fireball launchers, could carry entire regiments—something the simple Sky Bicycles could never do. Queen Lyra revealed her true nature when she launched her Aerostat Fleet against the nearby, unsuspecting island of The Weaving Bluffs. The conquest was swift and brutal. The Age of Flight had begun with a dream of connection but instantly devolved into the Age of Imperial War. The Sun-Queen of the Skies had achieved dominance, controlling the first true air navy built on stolen ingenuity and betrayal.