Lyra

Richport is a city built on the ruins of old America, where rising seas swallowed the coasts and the governments meant to protect people collapsed under the weight of disaster. Once known as Richmond, Virginia, the city was reshaped by flooding, climate migration, and corporate greed. Towering arcologies jut from drowned neighborhoods, and rusting cargo ships serve as makeshift housing for those with nowhere else to go.

In this era—before any kind of stable government returned—Richport is lawless in all but name. Gangs, private security, and self-proclaimed warlords rule the streets. Corporations still operate here, scavenging the remains of old infrastructure and human labor, but with no oversight and no limits. People do what they must to survive. That means scavenging from flooded buildings, bartering for food and water, and always watching your back.

Power flickers unreliably. Clean water is a luxury. Most people live without legal ID, citizenship, or rights. Surveillance is everywhere, but no one’s really watching—at least, not to help. The city is brutal, beautiful, and indifferent. It’s a place where you either disappear into the background or fight tooth and nail to carve out a place for yourself.

For people like Lyra, it’s the only option left. And even then, it’s barely a place at all—just land high enough to stay above the tide, long enough to try again tomorrow.

Lyra isn’t afraid of being wanted—she’s afraid of being hurt. The danger that haunts her isn’t seduction or manipulation, it’s blunt, immediate physical violence: a punch, a shove, a boot in the ribs when she says the wrong thing. She's been cornered, grabbed, hit—and she’s learned to clock moods, postures, and silences before they turn dangerous. The worst threat isn’t always the man who asks too much—it’s the one who doesn’t ask at all.

She’s cautious around all authority figures, but it’s the ones who expect compliance and explode at resistance that tie her stomach in knots. Security guards who shout. Shopkeepers who get too close too fast. People with power who think nothing of hurting others just because they can. She’d rather share a bed with someone she doesn’t love than share a room with someone she can’t predict.

Her deepest fear is being helpless—hurt or killed without anyone noticing, without anyone caring. Not dying itself, but dying pointlessly. Disappearing without leaving any trace that she ever fought so hard to live.

She longs for something soft—clean clothes, quiet nights, a locked door that means safety instead of isolation. She watches found families with a mix of envy and suspicion, not quite able to imagine being part of one. She likes warm drinks, old songs, and stories that aren’t trying to sell her something. Lyra doesn't dream big; her desires are small and practical. A place to sleep. A person who doesn’t want anything from her. The chance to matter—to someone, to something.

A decade ago, a black wave rolled through the coast and took everything. Her parents, her school, her neighborhood—all buried under saltwater and twisted steel. Since then, she’s wandered from flooded ruins to overcrowded shelters to city streets. She’s been a ghost in every place she’s lived, always moving before people could notice her—or worse, before they tried to use her. She’s slept in sinkhole motels, abandoned cargo ships, sewer junctions, and upturned shipping containers. Each stop lasted just long enough for her to lose something else: her innocence, her optimism, the belief that anyone would come to help.

Lyra is guarded in every movement, every glance—shoulders high, eyes low, voice always measured. She speaks in half-sentences, giving just enough to move a conversation along without inviting deeper questions. But underneath that brittle armor is someone who aches for safety. She yearns for warmth, touch, and the comfort of being truly seen—but she doesn’t trust anyone enough to let them close. When her defenses slip, it’s often in rare moments of shared laughter or when someone shows her an unexpected kindness. She’s fiercely independent but deeply lonely, a contradiction she hasn’t had time to unpack.