Characters

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Co-Administrator 

Malik Station

Co-Administrator 

Malik Station

Lyra, 10 years old

This year is Lyra's twenty-second birthday. Little does she know, this year, everything will change.

Mari is the Senior Administrator at Malik Safehold. She is Lyra's Aunt and has raised her since birth. Jacks is Mari's work partner and they have worked together since before Lyra was born. 

They've had many adventures together and they trust each other without reservation. 

He is quite the ladies man, but here in this faraway refuge, he has little chance to charm the Fancy Ladies except when the Malik weavers take a cart haul to Dalta City. 

He is a father figure to Lyra and when he's not helping Mari manage the affairs of research station, he's experimenting in his herb garden or teaching the youngling's how to farm.

Lyra was raised at Malik and has lived in the refuge her entire life. Unlike the older residents, she has spent her youth outside and when she's not creating astonishing fabric masterpieces on Mari's loom, she's outside hunting and exploring her world. 

Her best friend is Hanzen Inuro, a classmate and her best friend since childhood. 

Osman is the resident Dark Dweller - He rarely ventures outside and spends his days taking care of the fish tanks deep in the basement underneath the refuge. Osman came to Malik from a failed refuge. He brought his daughter Oriel and his beloved fish.

He teaches the younglings about the fish and for a lucky few, he also teaches them how to fight. 

Malock is a research and remediation facility. Constructed next to the deepest lake in the North West District, it was established one thousand years before the start of our story.

The station's objective is to keep the valley soil intact and to remediate the lake with a goal of eventually establishing a farming and fishing community. 

There is very little rainfall, very few trees and the refuge is surrounded by sharped peaked mountains, marked by the scars of the great ice sheets that once covered these lands. 

  Tall and thin, Osman is the best stick fighter at Malock. He arrived around the same time as Mari and Jacks and took over the work in the lower caverns, taking care of the fish stock. He has no melanin in his skin so he and his family have always taken jobs inside and now, after many lifetimes of dwelling in the dark, he is much more comfortable inside than out.  Osman came from a failed refuge in a far off district, where for a century, his family took care of the fish tanks. When he arrived at Malik he brought his infant daughter Oriel and a container of fish eggs, a new more hardy breeding stock, perfect for Malock's cold water tanks. 

Deola and her brother Moke were rescued by Mari from a bad situation. 

She is wise beyond her years and has made it her job to take care of her little brother Moke, no matter what.

The refuge has been built in this place because there is water. Not much, but enough. There are small herds of camelids (similar to Alpaca) roaming the area and The People catch them and use their wool to make fabric, clothing, ribbons and more. The animals escaped from breeding stock years ago and are thriving in the lush upslope valleys but they have to be caught and sheared, twice yearly.

These remote facilities are designed to be self-sustaining, with heat and energy supplied by the thermal systems far below. Whole caverns are dedicated to growing mushrooms and some years there is little else to eat, except for shrooms and Osman's fish.