See the dance of a hundred billion stars, each bear witness to our joint struggle.
The Families of Tyr are a collection of families, each with their own motivations, sharing only the origins of their dust and decay ridden homeworld of Tyr.
Perhaps we are the only ones to share our struggle.
Before the calamity that ruined their homeworld forever, the families of Tyr had little apart from another La’theun being the largest and consisting of nearly all Tyr'ians.
However, after the calamity struck, a unique environment was formed that allowed for the rapid reforming and splitting of existing families and houses, resulting in few things remaining consistent today.
However, despite all this, some things remain the same after all this time:
-Using personal names to refer to another is uncommon, merely you are referred to by your family or house name under most circumstances.
-Reproduction is seen as quite taboo unless you and your entire family or house are entirely safe, the calamity having made people extremely cautious of making more mouths to feed and many such examples of what happens when you do.
-Relationships are common, however the concept of thing such as marriage is not, instead if two souls find one-another, they are merely seen as one soul by default so long as they will it, even in most non Karma-believing families.
Despite having very little in common however, threats almost universally combine the families into one, reffered to in the history books as "The coming of the one", where families are themselves ordered into a hierarchy with their houses beneath them each.
This is fabled to have once been the case, and La’theun claims to be have been "the one" before the calamity.
Our history means nothing, only the future is malleable.
Very little history is recorded of Tyr’s past, and those few fragments of the past have often become legend today.
What is recorded is often twisted into fitting a family's own narrative of the past. And so, the only concrete history is yet to be formed..
However, a few events are so major they are remembered, either as legend or fact, to this day:
The Calamity
Some time long ago, a grand battle consumed the stars around Tyr, space littered with the flashes of a thousand ships dancing amongst oneother, each falling one by one to the now-shattered world caught in the crossfire, once full of cities and life, whilst now full of only metallic dust and ruin.
The atmosphere has been utterly destroyed by this event, now only full of toxic fumes and an aura of decay.
There are many interpretations of this event by the various families and people of Tyr.
La’theun believe that the event was Karma, retribution for their misdeeds and that all other families today merely tempt the coming of Karma once more.
Kul’than believe that the event was proof the universe is a scary and hostile place, and place above all else the readiness to fight back and prevent this event from happening again.
Se’tar know the truth of the event, from the leadership of an AI core from a fallen vessel during the calamity, the location today seen as a religious monument.
The truth, despite seeming important, is rarely shared, as ultimately the truth does not detract from the theories that either other major families have, if anything adding to their credibility.
To leave is unthinkable, and certain death.
The La’theun are the oldest family of still-recorded history of the Tyr'ian race, however perhaps even in the very beginnings of society on Tyr, “Families” have been a static and omnipresent part of Tyr'ian society.
Each family contains a hierarchy of houses, each submitting to a powerful leader class house of the same name as the family itself.
However, each family is different in scale and organisation, the largest such as La’theun, contain hundreds of houses, each consisting of hundreds of thousands of people loosely subservient to the La’theun house.
Some, however, contain very few hundreds of people, with a strict order of subservience and hierarchy, throwing away more traditional values and replacing them with radical extremist replacements.
Each house typically is renowned for specialising in one thing, such as the pursuit of technologies, or the construction and maintenance of something, and each adopts the first half of the family name.
Many smaller families also are subservient to others, while some are so instrumental to the survival of other families they are given special protection even if not part of the families it assists.
Post Calamity Hierarchies
After the calamitous events of the battle above the planet, the Hierarchical systems of society were strengthened tenfold. Living in a now dust and ash filled wasteland with working together being the only hope of survival, all Families became well oiled machines, each house a cog in a mechanism that all other houses within a family relied on for basic needs of survival.
Some more extremist hierarchical based families still held onto a less favourable view of the houses within them, such as those of the Kul’than, who’s favourable position inside a bunker city allowed them to struggle much less as a group, therefore more time was spent instead enforcing subjugation of her houses.
Once the situation had stabilised post calamity, and lesser families had merged together into their modern counterparts, the hierarchical system has remained strong to this day.
Exiles / Fallen families
Fallen families are rare, often wiped out as survival is so difficult without the help of others, meaning despite their seemingly immense quanitty in records, few survive to this day.
However, their origins are all the same, houses who are shunned from a family for non aligning views, and left to waste away alone.
Many are forced into other houses, but when they cannot find a family to join, they become a fallen family of their own.
Many fall to banditry or living in squalor hiding within the depths of bunker cities alone, but in this day of space travel, many have found a new purpose of piracy and living a nomadic life amongst the stars akin to the non-fallen families.
There are three major families on Tyr today:
K'helsa watches.
La’theun is the most numerous of all the families, consisting of millions of people within her vast collection of houses and herself containing hundreds of thousands of blood or honour-relatives of the house of La’theun. They are well known for their focus on pacifism and conservatism, preserving old beliefs thought to be from well before the calamity. Most notably, all of family La’theun and her houses are bound to a strict system of Karma, acting as a sort of state-religion. To a la’theunan, “Karma” is known as "K’helsa", a literal goddess of justice. When performing a bad act, K’helsa is believed to keep score on an infinitely long parchment with a feather pen dipped into the essence of reality, the parchment signed by your soul as a contract before being sent into life itself. Should you act poorly, she will keep score, and punish you and those around you for your wrongdoings, even if they had nothing to do with it. For a la’theunan, to associate with a “bad” person willingly (or to not repent for unknowingly have been in their presence once revealed to be bad) often means shunning by the house the la’theunan was a part of, and certain death within the wastes of Tyr,
In recent times, the great family of La’theun has mostly stagnated, despite being the largest and most powerful is still subservient to Se’tar for even basic survival, something their pasifictic nature tends not to motivate them to solve.
They maintain neutral relations with all other families, however maintain openly antagonistic towards family Kul’than.
Bear witness to our might, old ones.
Kul’than is the second largest family, consisting of a couple million members and rapidly growing. Notably the house of Kul’than herself has very few members, relying on house Kul’thas for protection as royal guards. Their society is modelled around the hierarchy of birth and bloodrite, seen as absolute and just even in the face of the more popular beliefs of Karma and K’helsa. kul’thanians don’t typically believe in any kind of Karma even if belief is not outlawed, the former fact having led to many minor conflicts with the La’theun family in the past. Kul’than are aggressive, extremely xenophobic, and highly obsessed with the idea of war and taking what is in the Kul’than house' “birthright” to possess.
In recent times, Kul’than has focused mostly on consolidating its own ability to reach space alone, something family Se’tar is greatly displeased by.
Lesser Destiny Guides us.
Se’tar is a rather small family, not even the third largest in number, yet this is offset by their sheer speciality. Se’tarians specialise, almost entirely, on Tyr's drone production and general technological development. Se’tarians, despite almost half disbelieving in Karma, are disallowed from shunning from any circle on Tyr even if they do not, for their sheer importance in maintaining the vast bunker cities and the millions of drones that salvage the surface and spaces around Tyr. Se’tar is notable for having discovered a single AI core from a crashed warship, incorporating it into their command structure as an honorary member. To a se’tarian, mechanical life is about as sacred as that of a living being, rituals of worship often performed on the great water-pumping machines they operate for the other families.
In recent times, not much is known about Se’tar's motivations on the grand stage of the cosmos. Despite having been the first to again launch satelites and eventually salvage craft into orbit, they still seem passive to other families, perhaps content with their place, or perhaps plotting away in the shadows that such a spotlight can provide.
There are many minor families on Tyr's council.
from top left, to right:
Rik'thos:
A minor family of around 500,000 people. Known mostly for work with Se’tar on mining equipment, a rarity on Tyr.
Fan'tun:
Relatively unknown, the Fan'tun are a small family of 200,000 people, sometimes seen as a new leader of the smaller families on the council and very recently formed from houses of other minor families.
Kus'nat:
Larger than most at around one million members within her houses, Kus'nat is the fourth largest family numerically.
Historically, Kus'nat are a splinter family of Kul’than, often to this day working favorably together.
Kuhs'to:
A small devoted sect of K’helsa worshippers, with around 100,000 members.
He'tas:
Another tiny family, known mostly for living entirely on the surface in their vast fleet of nomadic vehicles. Has around 100,000 members.
Le'nesh:
A very newly formed family, very small at a size of about only about 10,000 members, they are the smallest of the council, consisting purely of members of the command structure of space/ground-operations.
They operate mostly in space, living in small debris supplied by JCV-2, only given a seat on the council to prevent another incident like JCV-1 where they all form into their own group entirely away from the council.
Le'nesh is notable for consisting of most of the fleet-command structure of Tyr'ian spacecraft, their members often found in the bridges and operation rooms of all vessels regardless of family affiliation.
Ruk'ta:
Ruk'ta is a dwindling surface dwelling family, now with only about 100,000 members.
Lun'theus:
A small family known for mostly assisting with Se’tar ship design, with around 80,000 members.
Kas'nul:
Although not small, Kas'nul contains around 600,000 members.
Kas'nul are another splinter family of Kul’than, who after the end of the wars against La’theun continued to claim territorries of their own as something of a proxy, eventually becoming what they are today.
Fu'lus:
A small family of 100,000 members. Mostly intergrated within La’theun.
Nel'nur:
A splinter of La’theun, disbilieving in K’helsa and attempting to fix the issues with La’theun society being so dependent on it.
There are around 400,000 members.
Kel'nas:
A tiny 200,000 strong splinter of Kul’than from the wars, however almost fully intergrated into Kul’than command structure and a puppet in all but name due to neccessity.
We are granted life.
Tyr'ians are a small, roughly metre tall species of bipedal creatures. Their bodies are covered within a thick layer of skeletal-like carapace, their heads also covered by a skeletal carapace and mounted set down between their shoulders. Their arms are long, reaching down nearly to their feet, covered in armour and with two elbow-like joints. Their hands are more like claws, with opposable thumb-like nubs. Tyr'ians have short avian-like legs with claws for feet, again most similar to an avian however plated in a thick carapace too. Sprouting from their lower back is a short nub-like bony tail, and encased in their carapace are two sets of large folded wings, similar to a dragonfly’s in appearance. When flying their legs and arms are often folded into their carapace.
Their carapace is surprisingly tough, able to resist many beatings and even deflect some “slower” projectiles such as arrows due to its shape and bony composition.
Despite looking similar to bugs, with colours often akin to the many versions of lady bug on earth, they are classified by earth standards as reptiles.
Tyr'ians reproduce by laying eggs in large quantities, and are cold-blooded.
We expand to our birthrite.
A dancer in a dance older than the oldest of the old ones.
Tyrs is a rather unremarkable yellow dwarf star, dancing around the cosmos as with all the others.
K’helsa's eye.
Ris, despite being a holy-site, is absolutely uninhabitable, its surface on one side tidally locked so that it is permanently a molten hellscape.
Ris is often seen by believers in K’helsa to be her eye, how she witnesses all misdeeds and seeks out those in need of punishment.
Home is our world.
Home for almost the entire Tyr'ian race.
A huge almost twice earth-sized desolate world of metallic dust and decay, constant dust-storms sweep the surface and sand down more and more wrecks into the fine metal-rich dust that covers the entire world.
Where there is no dust, there is instead burning-hot rock, and constantly eroded away by the dust.
The sun bears down hard in the mornings, but by noon is mostly covered by the giant clouds of ash and dust that form in the skies above.
To breath in air, here, is certain death, for not only is there a severe lack of oxygen but the microscopic metallic particles in the atmosphere will certainly damage your lungs.
Only a fool would step foot here, yet Tyr'ians had no choice in the matter.
Once, this planet was temperate and even had some oceans as some would say, but today none remain, no evidence they ever existed even remains too.
The planet's infastructure is highly irregular, numerous light-beacons dot the landscape for navigation and various surface-bases designed with angled walls allow for the operation of thrustercraft and rockets to reach far away places and even space itself.
Most land-travel is done via giant land-cruising vehicles, each much bigger than even the most extreme counterparts.
The only aircraft that fly here are large and rocket-powered, turbines and other propultion routinely fail when exposed to the ash clouds of Tyr.
Tyr herself is surrounded by the main debris field in Tyrs, and herself surrounded by a huge amount of debris in orbit.
The twins of Tyr.
Luhs and Lahs are two large moons orbiting Tyr, each littered with debris and impact craters.
Neither have an atmosphere, but each have reasonably high gravity.
Her soul.
Khar'mais is a huge blue gas giant in extremely far orbit of the Tyrs system itself, housing four moons of unremarkable quality.
Many believe Khar'mais to be K’helsa's very soul, the essence of her reality.
The sometimes forgotten.
There are multiple minor bodies in Tyrs:
JCV-2:
"Joint construction Vessel - 2"
A large derelict in orbit of Tyr, its internal structure gutted to make way for a very primitive shipyard.
Despite being joint in theory, most of the station is operated by Se’tar due to the events of the first JCV.
Greater Destiny:
Greater destiny is a wreck in orbit of Tyr, named by Tyr'ians, her purpose unknown but a deeply guarded Se’tar site of interest.
Cansa belt:
The cansa belt is a large belt of mostly icy asterioids between Khar'mais and Tyr.
Wreck sites:
There are multiple ship debris fields that litter Tyrs, each mostly salvaged of important technologies perhaps many hundreds of years ago by external forces.
Knowledge is power.
Most advanced technologies are kept by their creator and custodian, family Se’tar.
All drones and foundries are only manned and operated by Se’tarians working for other families under orders from family Se’tar.
Most technologies are salvaged from various derelict ships, and highly inferior to other factions.
Drones are a huge part of Tyr'ian technology and a common sight everywhere, used in vast quantities for various tasks.
