Backstory

Born into the suffocating darkness of Palloma's subterranean colony, 'The Hollow,' Lira Stardew Falen was an anomaly from birth. In a society defined by 'The Quiet'—a survivalist philosophy demanding silence and isolation—Lira was loud, vibrant, and relentlessly curious. While her peers were content cultivating bioluminescent fungi in the deep lava tubes, Lira spent her youth climbing the forbidden ventilation shafts to glimpse the jagged, debris-scarred surface and the looming shadow of the gas giant Luar.

Her rebellious spirit was tempered by a tragedy in her early twenties. During a structural collapse in Sector 4, she failed to reach a trapped mining team in time. The guilt drove her to join the Palloman Enforcers, the guardians of the blast doors. She viewed the role not as a jailer, but as a protector. However, her time in the service revealed cracks in the Gerontocratic Council's benevolence. She began to notice discrepancies in the population census—people disappearing to maintain the 'Population Cap of 85.'

Lira's insatiable curiosity led her to retrieve scattered pre-Sundering historical documents from the wreckage of the Aegis Prime debris field that rains upon the planet. These texts hinted that the Sleeper Artifact—the machine god her people worship—was not a deity, but a broken engine requiring a terrible fuel. Now, she walks a fine line: enforcing the law to protect her community from the Red Sun Dominion encroaching on the Felo system, while secretly meeting with fringe contacts like The Gears to learn how to fix the Sleeper without feeding it human lives.