What started out as a lark, dipping my toes into fantasy romance writing by using my spouse’s TTRPG world as a setting, has since spun off into its own expansive thing.
Lore Drops is a series here and on my main site where I do one big long post as a FAQ about my various projects over time. As time goes by and my writing career history gets more and more convoluted, this provides people who feel like they have come in halfway with a way to catch back up into the conversation. These Lore Drops are living documents which I will add to as things occur to me. Feel free to ask questions, and watch as the answers become part of the ever-growing lore.
History of Development
In August 2020 I joked that I could write a romance novel. I set it in my spouse’s TTRPG work Dragons of Tirenia, outlined it, and then didn’t touch it…
… until November 2022, when I was so fed up with my main novel project that I was willing to do anything else for a break. Why not try that silly fantasy romance with sex scenes in it? Why the heck not?
Thus was born DESIRE BEYOND DEATH. I’m wanting to rework the names and setting in this one, so I will just use the vaguest descriptions for now. An ingenue with major draconic heritage, her fiance the astrolomancer Count, and her estate groundskeeper with mysterious shape-shifting powers, find themselves up against a dark force which comes nightly to the mansion to drain the life force from our young heroine. Can they defeat the creature, and how will they resolve the twist of the feelings they are each developing for one another? Find out in this monster-hunting ‘why choose’ romance… (one day, when I redraft it and hopefully eventually publish it! With a different title, because by God, that one is NOT IT.)
I actually loved writing that so much that I leapt straight into a second one! LOVE AMONGST LIARS was based even more strongly on a TTRPG scenario that my spouse came up with. Vittoria is the bookish secretary of the Dragon of Menabria, crushing on the Dragon’s beautiful courtesan Allegra. But when the Dragon dies and the city is on the brink of war, they are pushed together into an unlikely alliance to keep calm and carry on. In close quarters, their relationship blossoms into a heady rush of love Vittoria never imagined possible. But she has secrets, and little does she know, so does Allegra. Can they stick together and see through the defence of Menabria, or will hidden truths become unsurmountable betrayals? This manuscript was awarded Third Place in the Romance Writers of New Zealand Pacific Hearts Competition, but I have it on hold for now… more on why further down…
Not long after that I started on a third one. I was well addicted by now. In HEAVEN AND EARTH, Katrine, genderfluid artist extraordinaire, flees the fashionable city of Rialte to seek refuge in the country village of Verault after a humiliation by her patron, the fairith Prince Stephane. There she meets her stand-offish neighbour Pierro, a reclusive farmer of impressive build and stature. Katrine wants nothing more than to have him model for her next masterpiece. As their relationship evolves over time, they will come to grapple with not only challenges in the present, but ghosts from their pasts, some of which bind them together closer than they initially realised. Are the people they have become irreconcilably different from each other – too country / too urban – or can they weather the hard times to find common ground?
It was halfway through me writing that third novel that my spouse convinced me that Tirenia was not the right place for these stories to live. He was trying to do something very specific with his world, and I was getting too handwavey with some of the magic in my books. He suggested I would be much happier in my own world, where I was in charge. Perhaps I could ressurect an old world of mine, from a TTRPG campaign from a decade ago. In the end, I decided he was right, and I changed up what I was doing.
After that I wrote A PRAYER FOR THE PIRATE QUEEN, which you can read more about here. But in brief: Captain Kallista Audax, betrayed by the Iunian Navy she has faithfully served for years, turns to a life of piracy, joining forces with the natives of the Isles against the imperial designs of the Capital. Doctor Eugenia ‘Geni’ Philistos, having recently taken vows as a nun, embarks on a quest to find contraceptive medicine for her secret women’s clinic running under the church’s nose. The two women meet and sparks fly. But when Geni takes up the mantle of ship’s doctor, this leads to conflict as the Captain and Doctor’s values differ when it comes to running the ship and keeping the crew healthy. Not only that, but Kallista has vowed to maintain a professional relationship only with her crew members, which makes the burgeoning tension between the two of them unbearable. With the forces of the Capital pursuing them for their crimes against the state, what will it take for the two of them to admit their feelings for each other?
On the Current State of the Manuscripts and Future Plans
Currently [2025] all of these stories are unpublished. I am actively working on polishing A Prayer for the Pirate Queen and further books in that series because I believe now that it is the strongest entry point into the world of Ao Rakona. My intention is to write that trilogy, then follow it up with a book that takes Kallista and Geni beyond the country of Iunia, and introduces them to a new gang of friends to adventure with. At the same time, I’ll be able to release separate books about all the origin stories for the interesting people they met. So that’s when I’ll have Desire Beyond Death, Love Amongst Liars, Heaven and Earth, and two other books all drop so you can get to know those other characters if the main series has piqued your interest in them.
About the World as it currently stands
The detailing of the world itself isn’t particularly sexy, but I just wanted to publish it somewhere so that anyone who likes to read worldbuilding background on fantasy worlds can have that, because in the books themselves I won’t be going into particular detail. The emotional journeys of the characters are what the books are for. So consider the stuff below a bit of an appendix to all that. I would love to be able to supplement the notes below with some maps and diagrams in time, so hopefully I can update this page with some of that one day soon!
This all came from an amalgamation of fantasy worlds I’ve been developing, or part of developing, over my whole life. Some of the stuff is from a short lived roleplaying campaign I ran in 2013-2014. Much of the stuff I used there and in this new form is from dreams. There are some things which are inspired by an old multi-user dungeon game which is no longer around, called ‘Eternal Stuggle’. Other things are still very much inspired by my spouse’s roleplaying world. And I cannot deny the influence of RPG video games like The Elder Scrolls! Ao Rakona is quite a ‘kitchen sink’ of a world, intentionally. I joke with friends that it’s my attempt at making a Discworld that’s horny rather than funny.
DRACONIC COSMOLOGY
The Sun, the Moon, and Ao Rakona are all said to be dragons, but of such cosmic remove that they do not appear to be alive or even dragon shaped. Those who hold the belief that they are dragons believe that the Seasons are all Ao Rakona’s children (possibly two conceived with the Sun and two with the Moon).
The Ring of Seasons orbits around Ao Rakona, composed of four celestial dragons locked in a constant pursuit of each other. They are at a complete remove from the concerns of physical reality: immortal, primordial, eternal, unable to be affected by outside influence. Their most common names are:
- Raumati, Lord of Summer
- Ngahuru, Lady of Autumn
- Takurua, Lord of Winter
- Kōanga, Lady of Spring
The next generations down, the children of the Seasons are the Celestines, including a Zodiac of constellations that orbits Ao Rakona, minor satellites with their heavenly palaces. Their domains are the broad range of emotions and motivations available to humanity, some stronger than others. Astrologers chart their influence on human birth and personality with high mathematical precision, and claim to be able to predict compatibilities for marriages, success or failure for any ventures, and events of great portent.
The Celestines are ranked into the following tiers:
1. The Cardinals, invisible but said to be running perpendicular to the Ring of Seasons:
- Creation (aligns with end of spring, beginning of summer)
- Order (aligns with end of summer, beginning of autumn)
- Destruction (aligns with end of autumn, beginning of winter)
- Change (aligns with end of winter, beginning of spring)
2. The Zodiac, twelve palaces moving at a diagonal to the Ring of Seasons:
- The twelve palaces answer to major human needs and desires: Power, Acceptance, Curiosity, Romance, Familial good, Remembering, Idealism, Status, Social good, Honour, Independence, Tranquility (I’m currently rewriting the names of the Zodiac from an older version, will update one day!)
3. The Aspects:
- Too many to name, minor emotions and influences that move freely around the Ring of Seasons and thus create interesting conjunctions with each other and the more significant celestial bodies
The children of these are the Host. There are those who might bear good will towards Ao Rakona and humans and appear in the form of angels to make declarations and to tip events towards the Cardinal balance. Others for whatever reason, and these are fewer in number, may appear as dread portents or in rare cases, annihilation agents that bring down civilizations.
The children of the Host, down the ages, are the mortal dragons, and each successive generation suffers a degradation the further down. The greatest amongst these play special roles in the mortal world, such as hidden sages in remote places. Lesser still are the tyrant kings who burned themselves out with constant warfare hundreds of years ago, a vanishing few of whom still remain south of the Circle Sea on Tianzo. This group of two or three dragons are now locked in a cold war of mutually assured destruction should any of them move against the other. Lesser dragons still haunt the wild places of the world as fell beasts.
One school of thought is that all humans are very lower dragons, or dragon half-breeds. Certainly some draconic ancestry has made its way into human bloodlines.
THE INVASION OF THE STRANGE FOLK (aka. the PORA or FAIRITH)
The Host do not often intervene in human lives, but one particularly important time they did was in the Invasion of the Strange Folk, a thousand years before when the novels are set. Coming from another world, the Strange Folk enslaved the people of Birrland and Nearer Grandisia and instituted a polytheistic religion where they demanded worship and tithing, where before the Celestial Dragons had demanded nothing. But the Strange Folk had magics of their own to make themselves seem plausible as the rightful gods. They spread their influence further, taking Gaelle to the south, Cormishland to the north, and the Iunian colonies in the Circle Sea, but when they marched on Nairu, a bustling independent magical capital to the west of the Circle Sea, a powerful movement rose up against them.
This movement forms the basis of the modern religion most people around the Circle Sea follow, where pockets of Strange Folk worship don’t still persist. Six heroes, each from a different territory around the Circle Sea, were tasked by angels to join forces and defend their people from the Strange Folk. After a terrible fight which cost the lives of all of them, they were brought back from the dead by the power of the Celestines to wreak a final destruction on the Strange Folk armies, pushing them back to hidden pockets in Birrland and Grandisia (and some got left behind for longer in the Iunian colonies). There they still remain, in superstitious and dark places. Some of the more effete, cosmopolitan Strange Folk live in northern Gaelle, explicitly not enslaving people but holding a lot of sway due to their powers.
The six heroes became the Saints, particularly celebrated around the Circle Sea and beyond, but they are not treated as gods. The goodness of the Celestines is praised in these temples, and lessons are taught about upholding the Cardinal values and honouring all the aspects the Zodiac, but apart from costs to keep the churches running, in most places there is no great emphasis on tithing, self-sacrifice or self-flaggelation – except in a few sects where belief has spun off into cul-de-sacs of authoritarian thinking (in particular, some parts of Cormishland practice a particularly self-effacing type of Celestine religion, where a concept called Sin threatens to allow the Strange Folk to return).
The Six Saints are:
- An impassioned knight from Gaelle – Saint Joelle
- A wise diviner and priestess from Iunia – Saint Seraphina
- A penitent, redeemed rogue from Tianzo – Saint Adriana
- A shapeshifter, escaped slave from Birrland – Saint Darraigh
- A cursed apprentice wizard from Cormishland – Saint Taem
- A down-on-their-luck blade-for-hire from Nairu – Saint Kaeo
One pervading influence of the Strange Folk around the world is elven peoples. Descendants of humans and the Strange Folk, elves and half-elven people are in some places accepted, some places exoticised and prized, other places feared and hated. (They are not always called eleven in every place. For example they are not called such in the Iunian Isles)
THE UMBRA COUNCIL
There is one significant cult separate from both the Celestine and Strange Folk worship, and almost solely concentrated on Nairu and its surrounding lands. Nairu was, and to an extent still is, a technologically advanced hub, where magic had been used in the time immediately preceding the Strange Folk invasion to achieve many wonders e.g turning Nairu into a floating city to escape a weapon of mass destruction in the Blasted Lands, moving the city north to its present day site. The advances of Nairu have since been shared out with the rest of the world, but a great deal of the knowledge at the time of the Strange Folk Invasion was lost because of the actions of the Umbra Council.
Ask a historian who discredits the Umbrites, and you will hear this: they were a boastful group of mages who wouldn’t listen to anyone but themselves, thought they knew best, and went to some pretty terrible ethical lengths to get what they wanted out of magic and technology. They made some kind of weapon against the Strange Folk, and sealed themselves away against being destroyed by them, thinking this was the end of the world. If they’ve been obliterated by their own hubris, so be it! Anyone who still believes they did anything to save the world is a raving conspiracy theorist.
Ask any of their cultists (good luck finding one) and you will hear: the Six Saints weren’t nothing! The Strange Folk were really truly stopped by the magics and artefacts of the Umbra Council. If you worship at their shrines, hidden throughout the land, and if you are found worthy, you may be granted the opportunity to find one of their relics, magical items of great power. Some people say that humans should never have tried to attain such power, but I say that the people saying that have been blinded by draconic propaganda. Humans have to look out for themselves, and achieve apotheosis, not die in ignorance and let the dragons and Strange Folk continue on acting like they are the superior lifeforms in the universe.
ELEMENTALS
One minor influence on the world is primordial elemental spirits that may or may not be draconic children of the seasons, another tier of Celestines or the Host, but one that is not acknowledged in mainstream theology. Powerful beings of pure elemental nature occupy special places on Ao Rakona, often as protectors, and sometimes doing so in a deadly fashion. Humans born with elemental features or who grow into the magical affinities may have somehow descended from elementals, but at this point it is all conjecture and rumour. The Host has been known to intervene sometimes in cases where elemental/environmental balance is threatened by human activity.
The elementals sometimes manifest as monstrous beings. But more commonly, creatures of power or kaitiaki such as dryads, nymphs, nereids etc. are the descendants of Strange Folk and elemental unions.
Links for more information:
My posts for #MythAugust on bluesky go into even more detail on the religion of Ao Rakona
My posts for #Septopolis on bluesky tell even more about the city of Nairu
If you have any questions, feel free to ask and I might add more to this page based on those questions. Other than that, I will add more over time as it occurs to me.
Kara Moon - Author of adult romantasy 