The East PacificBoard

Why is my lore so complicated and seemingly full of retcons?

Because the version of Kylondia I started with is a completely different version than what is on the map now in terms of lore.

Due to the fact, I’ve slowly been cobbling together the lore of Kylondia overtime, some things that I created at first I deem unusable or downright stupid later on and remove them.

The initial lore of Kylondia was basically dumped after a failed (in my opinion and one of my own making rather than any other party involved) diplomacy rp.

After the introduction of the character known as Helena Winters, I was able to start laying some sort of ground work towards a cohesive Kylondian world, which I decided to do by combining the worlds of Ragea(Rage mage):my previous Valsoran nation that I had removed from the map and Kylondia.

Essentially, my lore construction went like this: Ragea Lore then the Initial Kylondian Lore, and then the Kylondian-Ragean Lore Reboot.

Image taken from before Helena’s escape to Cardonia and first rebirth. Hence the lack of orange eyes.

Helena Post-Rebirth

Helena post rebirth in her armor with a retracted helmet.

Helena in her full Firebird MK 1 suit.

Helena’s greatsword, enchanted with the power of Xenia.

Who is Helena Winters?

Helena Winters is a 29 year old female and a former commander within the Shad. The ultimate secret police/special forces of Kylondia who answer directly to the High Speaker themself or on rare occasion: The Council.

Helena is actually the long lost twin sister of the Cardonian leader: Julia Winters. She was found by a Shad agent named Zina Serro and her partner, a drayrk named Enza, in the Kylondian mountains. Zina and Enza took Helena in and raised her as their own. Helena came to train with her mother and other Shad operatives as a hobby until her unique abilities were discovered.

Helena seemed to posses the ability to read the history of object and people, allowing for key details to be learned when they would have been impossible to learn other wise, hence she was given the code name: Seer. Helena is also equipped with the most advanced power armor the nation has ever produced, giving her a greater effectiveness in the field. (She also has an irrational fear of the wrath of a librarian.)

Helena would reach the rank of Commander within the Shad, but soon after, Zina would pass away. The grief from the event caused Helena to negotiate a temporary position change to an admiral, where she would serve until recently being called back to Shad active duty.

As of late, Helena has had even more strange experiences, including getting a visit from an alternate version of herself named Henry. Henry gave her a data drive before perishing and disappearing. Once Helena activated the drive, an alert was sent to the Kylondian Council that someone had accessed one of the nation’s darkest secrets and they eventually came to suspect Helena, who after everything she had experienced, had a mental breakdown and fled towards Cardonia.

Upon arriving in Cardonia, Helena was ambushed by the Winter Contingency (a Cardonian Terrorist Organization) due to her being mistaken for her twin sister. During this event, Helena met her brother, Chris, for the first time.

After dealing with the W.C, Helena was killed by Cryptid after he shot her in the head with a sniper rifle. However, Helena’s story did not end there. While she was “dead”, she met with Clare on another plane of existence. What was discussed is still unknown. Helena returned to life, with a new mission and a new pair of orange eyes.

After joining Chris and Julia Winters at the Spire, Helena gained the powers of chronomancy (Time Magic) after the crystal in her armor encountered it when Julia used the magic in its presence.

Upon returning to the Spire following a misinterpreted invasion from Kylondia, Helena and Julia had a heated row. This final emotional push forced the long dormant goddess within Helena to awaken: Xenia, the Ragean Goddess of Justice, Order, Free-Will, and Rebirth.

Not long after, Helena would face Julia communing with Chroma, who was allowing Julia to speak with her long dead parents, parents Helena never got the chance to meet due to her separation at birth. Xenia took control of Helena’s body and removed her from the area in order to prevent her from losing her cool in response to, what Helena saw as, Julia’s greed.

Once she regained control. Helena ordered Chris and Enza to not follow her and vanished. She then roamed the icy surface of Cardonia.

Upon returning and hearing of her parents message to her, Helena reconciled with Julia. Helena’s next order of business was to have a new armor set made so she no longer wore the armor of the Council. But she would be interrupted by an attempted assassination on Julia’s teacher from Terrabis-Seran: Veronica Celes.

After the chaos died down, word arrived of a lawsuit pending against Julia for her role in the misinterpreted invasion in shooting down innocent drayrks. To avoid having Helena sent back to Kylondia in her stead, Julia had her made a part of the Cardonian Honor Guard, so that she would accompany Julia to Terrabis, which had just fallen into Civil War and their leader, as well as Julia’s wife, Sara Treant was missing.

These events forced Helena to rush to the exosuit manufacturer to get her new suit, but upon arrival she collapsed as a result of Enza’s “death” due to him attempting to locate Sara. She quickly returned to the Spire and after a frustrating ordeal with her sister’s god Chroma, was able to get Julia refocused on finding Sara.

How was Helena created?

Helena was originally a random admiral character I created for a combined military forces meeting for SETO when they were at war with Unity. I randomly came up with her name on the spot and went with it. Later on, I learned that I accidentally gave her the same last name as Of Centralist Brexit’s character and nation leader: Julia Winters.

As a result, we wound up working with the idea that Helena and Julia were actually twin sisters that had been separated at birth, with Helena winding up down south in Kylondia.

I’m that one person who decided to read all the posts mentioning Helena and I’m extremely confused as to what her actual backstory is.

So after this was all set up, I decided I want to get more out of the character in rps. But there wasn’t much I could do with her being an admiral. So I chose to make some sudden retcons to her character in order to make her more usable in the future. So the really strange plot point of her going from Admiral to a Shad agent was a result of that decision.

Another issue as to her strange backstory is simply the fact that I never planned on her becoming so important, so her history was basically a blank slate I needed to fill in as my plans for both her and Kylondia as a whole developed in world building.

At this point, I have a pretty good idea of Helena’s current story, much of which is still unwritten as of yet as it is key to my current story line for Kylondia. So there will be more backstory to see in the future.

Who is Cryptid?

Cryptid is an agent within the Shad. His real name isn’t yet known and it is unknown how he acquired his current codename of Cryptid.

Cryptid is one of the leading agents within the secretive organization and is one of the few agents who operate without a drayrk partner. Instead he prefers to handle all his assignments completely solo when the opportunity is presented.

He has a very outgoing and joking personality for someone in his line of work, he has on more than one occasion been called in for a psych evaluation in order to ensure his focus and sanity, he has barely managed to pass the test every time.

Cryptid’s current mission is to track down and eliminate Helena Winters, and seemingly succeeded. Unfortunately, his actions have set forth events that cannot be stopped…

Why did I create Cryptid?

I needed a way to help forward my plans with Helena, which involved her getting hunted down by the Shad. In order to make that part of the story more engaging, I created Cryptid. So now there won’t be random nameless agents running around trying to kill Helena with no setup or lead up.

Wait why does the image of Cryptid conflict with his previously written description?

You are a real picky feller aren’t you? Well the answer to that is when I originally made Kylondia, I didn’t have a discord based ai image generator to create custom images, therefore I could only get what images I could find on good ol’ Google Images.

Now that I have the ability to create the images I want, I no longer need to rely on the base picture I once had. So my in lore reason for this change is that Shad agents basically can create their own armor loadout. Therefore allowing me to give more agents an identity and a character.

Plus, I think this new look is much better than the one I had before. The purple triangle was always hard to explain in my head as to why it existed.

Who is Enza?

Enza is a drayrk and the partner, guardian, and father-like figure of Helena. Having been with her since she was found, the drayrk has become increasingly protective of her well-being.

Due to Enza being a drayrk, he has many abilities that can be considered supernatural. In comparison to other drayrks, he has been listed as being a much more powerful subject.

One of the key ones being his telepathic prowess, allowing him to communicate with anyone he has established a link with before at any distance. His other abilities include: shifting between a physical raven form and a form made of pure drayrk energy, firing hot purple flames, induce mass hallucination, mind reading, limited mental control (ie: shutting down certain parts of the body and nervous system), enhanced tracking, enhanced vision, and incredible flight speed.

Why did I create Enza?

Enza was created at the same time as Helena and was always meant to be her partner. His purpose was to help show off more of the drayrk’s abilities and worldbuild them more. Of course, once Helena’s significance became much bigger than planned, Enza also had to adapt.

Thankfully, his lore had not been as fleshed out, so I didn’t have to do much in order to make him work with Helena’s new image as a Shad commander.

If Enza has so many powers, why is head butting everything? I mean like, he literally hits stuff with his head almost all the time, even when not fighting something.

1. I can’t exactly have him just incinerating or mind crushing everything.

2. I find it funny to have a running gag of him bashing his head into something, intentional or otherwise.

3. Shut up, it’s my character.

Who is Clare?

Clare is an enigma within the Kylondian mythos. Her story as a drayrk began when she fell asleep on a ship and woke up in Brethren. After a series of misadventures involving a dragon, a church, a cat, a drayrk god named Vendril, sentient dolphins, and her “death”, Clare was reborn as pure orange phoenix.

After some time, she decided to travel to an (at the time) uninhabited area of land on the island Skillia inhabits. There she learned her true identity: Elise Clare Howard, Chancellor of Ragea.

Long before Clare the drayrk existed. The nation of Ragea experienced an unknown and tragic event, resulting in it being wiped from existence. But as a result of Elise’s return, the nation of the orange phoenix was also reborn.

Elise’s pre-drayrk history has long become redundant in the modern landscape of Valsora, so much of her backstory beyond this will be vague and incoherent. But she has been waiting for something important to happen, and it seems Helena is a factor in this future event.

So I went and read all the posts involving Clare…what the hell is going on?!?

Sigh…yeah. Clare has been…though a lot. Not just her in the story. But her as an idea of a character. When I originally created her way back when, it was for a diplomacy rp with Brethren.

Now this rp took place soon after I had abandoned my original Valsora nation: Ragea (Rage mage) due to the fact that when I first joined the map…I decided to make my claim on a small island in an inactive corner of the map…and there was no natural expansion allowed at the time.

So I was stuck in the middle of no where, with nothing to rp with but myself. While I did have the occasional lucky rp, it was mostly through some form of begging. As a result, my rp skills were relatively poor.

So come this rp and I almost immediately derail the thing. Made things way too crazy and over complicated. Tried to do things that didn’t matter or were obviously too over the top, it was a mess. Afterwards, I decided to bury as much as I could about it from my lore as possible, thus, Clare was left stranded in a church for some time.

After some much needed time organizing my lore and making plans for where I want to take my nation story wise, I decided to bring back Ragea, and in order to do that. I needed a plot device. Enter the current incarnation of Clare.

Alright, so what is Clare’s purpose now?

I’ve decided to make Clare and her actions occur more in the background of current Kylondian events as I feel that’s where they would be the most useful to the story. But I do have plans that put her back into the spotlight as both her Clare and Elise personas. I don’t know when those events will occur, I just know what I need to do to get there.

Who is Simon?

Simon Daemon is the current High Speaker of Kylondia, the figurehead leader of the nation who reports directly to The Council. Simon still has the ability to act on his own however, it’s just that if the Council tells him to do something, he better do it.

Simon is a cheery and friendly individual who does what he can to alivate the nation from its normally cheery environment. A very close friend and boyfriend of Commander Helena Winters, he often finds himself embroiled in turmoil brought about by her misadventures.

Why was Simon created?

Simon was made because I got frustrated having to write about a bunch of nameless individuals supposedly ruling Kylondia. So he is intended to be the actual ruler of Kylondia, but not really at the same time.

So…who actually runs Kylondia?

Lorewise? The Council. When it comes to writing rp or diplomacy? Simon, I just say the Council has weight over the decision. Hence why I’ve established the fact that Simon has considerable independence when leading the nation otherwise.

Who is Vendril?

Vendril is a god-like drayrk within Kylondia and is revered as the Kylondian God of Destruction and Chaos. His powers far exceed those of the ordinary drayrk and he has no attachment to the government of Kylondia. He revels in causing chaos and sowing destruction wherever he can.

Why did I create Vendril?

Vendril was the second character I made for the Brethren rp that Clare was originally made for…and his creation and implementation is the reason why I feel that rp went so far off the rails. So ever since then, I haven’t really touched on him. I had him make a minor appearance in the Clare reboot story but that never really went anywhere.

So at the time of writing this, I’ve come to the realization that I lack of any real religion for Kylondia, and I can’t just have my characters saying “My God!”, all the time. So I decided to start making a Kylondian pantheon of sorts, with Vendril being retconned to being a part of it.

Who is Xenia?

Xenia is a god-like drayrk and the Kylondian God of Justice, Rebirth, Order, and Free Will and is considered to be one of the morally good gods. Her presence has become slowly more and more difficult to see. Her followers haven’t been able to reach out to her for over almost 3 decades after she suddenly vanished completely.

Xenia had in fact bound herself with a champion: The young Helena Winters. Only recently has she awoken once more.

Why did I create Xenia?

I just needed a name for Enza to exclaim in surprise instead of “God”. Not much to this one. I also needed a name for the figure that was the opposite end of the spectrum from Vendril, so two moles with one hammer.