Lyrica : The Basics The Basics & Population Located in the Pisces Cloud galaxy, Lyrica is the mother of all things artistic, especially in forms of poetry, paintings, and of course, the founder of all musical genres brought to Earth. Most Lyricans tend to be more creative than the average being on Earth, with natural talent in painting and color sense that can be discovered by a glance at their wardrobes. A place of arts and entertainment, travelers from all over the universe come to enjoy the aesthetic love of the Lyricans and appreciate it. Some never even leave because of the overwhelming beauty the land holds with its people. Most often, Lyrica does not like to grant citizenship to outsiders in order to filter out the non-artistic beings. Thus, an art test of sorts is given to anyone who desires to become part of Lyrica to determine their citizenship. From the map, anyone could determine Lyrica is obviously smaller than Earth. In fact, it is about the size of Earth’s moon at 1,469,000 square miles, holding about 30 million Lyricans. This may seem like a lot of people, but Lyrica’s living is quite comfortable with only a few of the most significant cities suffering from overcrowdedness and poverty. The most populous cities in descending order are: Aquilias, Kato Megali, Basilia, and Leocadia. Lyrica is broken down into two kingdoms, some civilians call the two kingdoms factions. Before Queen Pericleia deceased, she divided the land into even realms for her daughters to share, realizing that there was no way they could rule side-by-side with their loathing for each other. The two daughters have had feuds ever since they could speak and they have shared it with the rest of Lyrica too. Both queens Euterpe and Calliope have made their kingdoms fight their battles for them in the war upon the Black Curtain lands. The two kingdoms, the Boreios Kingdom also known as “The North” and the Notios Kingdom, “The South,” seem like total opposites in physical appearances due to their location’s climate differences and simply their ways of life. The Northerners who are utterly nationalistic no matter what their rank is in Euterpe’s altered feudal system, enjoy a good brawl against the pallid Southerners any day, attempting to prove their style is better than their’s by far. In speaking of style, Northerners and Southerners have distinct styles of their own, this can especially be pointed out in the music genres. For instance, Northerners prefer jolly, softer tunes or ones without electronica involved although there are a few exceptions. Meanwhile, Southerners prefer darker sounds, sometimes with depressing lyrics and guttural voices or just genres under the electronica category. The Notios Kingdom invented electronica and basks in their favorite invention. Lyricans tend to live up to 5,000 years at most unlike their Earth counterparts and spend hundreds of years producing new inventions that are distributed to Earth. At the age of 100, most Lyricans have developed into teenagers. At 500, they become adults until their age begins showing at 2,000. The beauty of a Lyrican shines for much longer than any other type of human being in the universe. There is no real religion in Lyrica either, except those of either kingdom believe in the usual good and bad besides the belief that natural beauty and their queen conquer all. When it comes to races, Lyricans are referred to as simply Northern or Southern, but sometimes those who live off of the mainland are called by names other than the usual: Pagosian or Makrian for those who live in Makria, Palatian or Chionian for the Chioni natives. Even those on the Kougla Isles are addressed as Islanders or specifically from Oasi, then just Oasians followed by a sigh, grumble, or eyes rolling. The Notios Kingdom’s mainland is shown as a dark purple on the graph as their land is covered in the evening sky (daytime) and the midnight sky(night time) always. The mainland is sheltered in a dense forest of tumbling trees that are sky-high. But, this shadowy forest has been abandoned. After all, everyone on the South’s mainland lives underground except the people of Basilia who prefer to live in the trees of their stone forest. Much wildlife is visible too as animals are generally not hunted because they live above ground, thusly every Southerner on the mainland minus Basilians are vegetarians. Much like the Boreios Kingdom, the Notios Kingdom has the Lyrikos River running through it, leading to their Vitalis Springs, the healthiest of all waters. This citrus-tasting water from the Vitalis Spring is supposed to restore youth so sometimes the elderly can be found with a goblet, devouring all the vital water in which they can. Irises are the most abundant flora in the Notios Kingdom as they grow even underground. Unlike the light patterns of the Notios Kingdom, the Boreios Kingdom’s day and night patterns are doppelgangers of Earth’s with the usually morning, afternoon, evening, and twilight skies. The region is covered in St. Augustine grass and freshly trimmed flora. The white granite pathway that links every part of the mainland to one another has numerous benches by it with hedges of roses all around. It is almost obvious that Queen Euterpe loves her roses quite a bit. Beech trees are the most popular trees in the northern kingdom and tend to hover over the benches upon the pathway, used as shade. Bells can be heard throughout the kingdom too, as Euterpe promotes her method of ruling by the altered feudal system. Certain bells chime at parts of the day to signal a particular rank in her feudal system that it is time to take a rest or time to work. It is also not uncommon to find statues of Queen Euterpe across the land, especially in the center of the main cities and towns. The climate ranges throughout Lyrica except it is quite obvious that the mainland of the Boreios is like a warm Mediterranean summer with much rain in the evenings while the Notios Kingdom’s mainland is rather chilly and dry due to its lack of sunlight. Kougla Isles and the Ygros Swamplands, meanwhile, are hot and humid. The temperatures remain the same as they would on Earth, without any sort of ridiculous increase or decrease. But, unlike Earth, Lyrica is full of various climates throughout close regions. On Earth, the temperatures of places nearby tend to be alike or similar at least, Lyrica’s varies from city to city at times. Chioni is the coldest part of Lyrica to the point where the snow has hardened into a long board of ice all-year-round. Makria, meanwhile, is a forest drenched in snow flurries every day with frozen trees. Of all the climates, Lyrica lacks any sort of tropical desert-like environment. From this, utterly dry and hot regions are barely found; most of the hot regions are wet and humid. In fact, there is not even a region in Lyrica to try and compare to a dry, arid climate. Lyricans are very adaptable though and are not affected so easily by extreme heat or cold. In fact, those who live in the Boreios Kingdom enjoy applying for a temporary citizenship to the Notios Kingdom so they can bask behind the icy walls of the palaces in Eythys. This is hardly a mutual agreement though, the Southerners much rather stay underground but would probably not mind the Boreios Kingdom’s warm showers and summery weather. The Northerners teach their children everything they know by the physical age of 16. This is so that their children know everything they do and can fulfill their rank in order not to disgrace the family by being downgraded by the Overseer or perhaps learn more so their ranking is upped. Teachings include artistic forms of sorts and how to use instruments, proper manners, and social skills. Mathematics in Lyrica? No way! Such things are generally shunned upon Lyrica. Besides mastering the trade of art, table manners and proper grammar are vital things in which a Lyrican mother or father must teach their child with this quote constantly in use: “What if Queen Euterpe was sitting here right now…what would she think of you? She probably could not even hold a 2-minute long conversation with you!” These sorts of quotes, of course, frighten children into learning how to be as proper as possible while at the table, in fear of a Guardian, Overseer, Imperial, or even Queen Euterpe herself dining with them at a point, observing them. And the South is not much different in the way of not having any sort of school system. In the Notios Kingdom, children learn from model behavior; children often stay in their parent’s shops or work places and observe the parent, hoping to learn on their own. Independence is important in the Notios Kingdom and the children learn this at very young ages. From watching how a Southern adult acts means watching how his or her entire family history acted. This is a very critical aspect of a Southerner’s life, which may be why Southerners seem so shy, anxious yet rather elegant at times due to all their expectations of their family and acquaintances around them. Lyrica is all about street smarts and creativity, not book smarts. After all, this is a planet dedicated to producing arts for the rest of the universe, not a place to find the cosine of a certain number or its derivative. The queens both allow anything dealing with entertainment to be used, the queens especially urge others to use the computer to type an email to relatives all over the galaxy and play games if needing inspiration. Found some odd person claiming to be from a distant galaxy on your World of Warcraft(W0W) server? It is most likely a Lyrican! Lyricans tend to write a bit to others too, using email as a way to make new pen pals and a reason to visit a particular place. Other than computers, the queens also allow television and radio but there are limited channels compared to Earth’s. There are about 5 stations for each kingdom total for both radio and television, being Lyricans are generally too busy to even watch television or listen to the radio or even turn on their computers to email someone. Besides the computer, radio, telephone, turn tables (Notios Kingdom only) and television, the queens have banned any other sort of technology that stemmed from Earth in the past century. Not to mention, every sort of connection is wireless thus there are not hideous telephone towers lining around cities and whatnot. If going to the Kougla Isles or the Ygros Swamplands and back, Northerners will take petite tea boats which serve almost the same purpose as traveling in a group; travelers tell their story and make new friends upon the ride. Sometimes if in a rush, Northerners take horse-drawn carriages. Usually carriages adorned with silks, velvets, and golds show status of someone of a Guardian rank or higher. A refined carriage shows a Northerner's status of wealth and they constantly use this method of transportation, arrogant and unwilling to interact with lower rank civilians on their travels. If a carriage looks more like a wooden cart, it is generally a commoner of some sort quickly setting off on a journey. While the Northerners walk from place-to-place or take horse-drawn carriages, the Southerners are fond of utilizing the underground tunnels. The most popular method of transportation would be the lantern-lit chairlift that takes Northerners from Kato Megali all the way to Basilia with stops to each town or city on the way. There are hundreds of paths in which this chairlift takes, occasionally going above ground for a more scenic view. The chairlift’s carriages are fancy too, made of black iron with exotic fabrics covering it which civilians can put over the windows if their eyes burn from the light while going above ground. Not only is the chairlift free, but it is also not hard to spot a boarding entrance in each city. If the chairlift is too overcrowded with people trying to get to their work places which may be in totally different cities, people generally use the public airships that are also free. Airships are quite fancy-looking as the chairlifts are, with blinds to cover any window view of the sky that may hurt a Southerner’s eyes. The airships have a restaurant service for those who are on a lengthy flight and features entertainment on the top floor for guests in the dark night. Airships tend to not be preferred by the Southerners though as they are not underground at all and are simply not used to it. |