Character

In an effort to gain safe entrance into the Crystal Tower and avoid its menacing gate defenses, Garlean Optio Lyra pyr Zwahn was ordered by her commanding officer, Nim quo Valius, to lead a special expedition into the caves at its base.

However, Lyra and her hand-selected team navigated deep into the tunnels near the tower, only to be ambushed by its maintenance drones.

The fight was brief but vicious, and faced with technology they could not match and the tight confines of the caves, the squad was nearly decimated. Lyra ordered their retreat, but at that instant, a drone lashed out with such force it shattered Lyra's Gunblade. She was thrown from her Magitek Predator and against the cave wall. The drone delivered a mortal blow using its tower repair tool as a weapon, which sealed Lyra and her mobile armor within aether-infused crystal.

Lyra's team, badly beaten and horrified at the sight of their commander sealed away, withdrew and reported her dead.

For nearly forty years, Lyra lie dormant within the crystal. Her body remained in suspended animation and sipped the crystal's aether for survival. The Calamity struck, and she saw the world warp within tormented dreams. At times, she watched over her love, Nim, as a disembodied form -- unable to tell him how she truly felt, unable to help him as he struggled. She watched him trudge through knee-deep snow in exile. She watched him suffer alone in the frozen landscape.

She watched him die.

Pieces of her mind faded into obscurity as the world became quiet. Eorzea eventually recovered, but Lyra remained there in fevered sleep until the Scions of the Seventh Dawn discovered her. They were exhausted from liberating Ala Mhigo, but they and the Ironworks crew were able to draw on all their skills and knowledge to extract Lyra from the crystal that sustained her for decades. They woke and nursed her back to health only to discover she became weakened if separated from the crystal for long. Her aether was much too fragile and unstable without its glow.

It was as if the Lifestream itself bent through her.

To remedy this, Lyra's new friends at the Ironworks used the shattered remnants of her Gunblade to craft a new weapon using a sliver of the crystal as its blade. This enabled her to move freely about while still keeping the crystal close. She was a stranger to the post-Calamity world and without a home, but she was fortunately long-considered dead by the Empire. She spent many long nights afraid to sleep and dream, pouring over stolen documents to learn the fate of her friends, and endlessly reading tomes to study the new world.

While her grief often overwhelmed her, she found new purpose as an affiliate to the Scions of the Seventh Dawn, as a soldier for the Immortal Flames, and later as a member of the Free Company: Hildy's Heroes where she found many new friends.

She continues aiding adventurers to this day in an effort to heal her broken heart.