# Canon ledger and research notes

Compiled September 18, 2026. The user's directions govern this project. The website supplies continuity context, not a mandate to reproduce its current tabletop rules or campaign.

## Confirmed by the creator in this conversation

- This is a 2D or hybrid 2D/3D tactical RPG with FFT-like combat and job building plus Gemfire-inspired territorial responsibilities.
- September 23, 2026: compact map sprites and larger Street Fighter/Guilty Gear-inspired side-view combat sprites are the selected presentation direction. Map idle is the walking cycle played in place. All combat scenes play automatically, with no player gameplay inputs during them. AutoSprite supplies the first hero/enemy map and cinematic assets.
- The setting is Ayelette; the protagonist is **Pyrrhus Menethil**.
- He is the King of **Menelea**'s firstborn illegitimate child. His mother begged for his life, and mother and child were sent away rather than killed.
- The king later had two legitimate sons: **Ciro**, the middle child, and **Xeno**, the youngest.
- Ciro was eventually promoted to **General of Menelea's armies**. Xeno remained the overprotected heir and prince at home.
- The game concerns earlier wars and does **not** cover the events narrated on the supplied site beginning with *The World Before the Tears*.
- The story should include mature themes, painful decisions, and three love interests.

## Established context from the website

The [Chronicle](https://dawnbreakertrials.com/pages/chronicle.html) describes Ayelette as a world harmed by sustained elemental exploitation. Its later catastrophe involves Ayelette's Heart, the Tears, and the Shadows. The account identifies Pyrrhus Menethil as the last of his bloodline, describes a later multinational pilgrimage and the Dawnbreaker Blade, and records his final sacrifice. Those events are outside this game.

The [World Atlas](https://dawnbreakertrials.com/pages/world-atlas.html) identifies **Ayeleen** as a country, **Ayelette's Landing** as its capital, and **Menea** as a port city. It also documents other countries and regions, much of it from a post-Purge viewpoint. The atlas does not establish the relationship of the user's **Menelea** to these names.

The [Class Progression](https://dawnbreakertrials.com/pages/classes.html) and [Academy Lexicon](https://dawnbreakertrials.com/pages/academy-lexicon.html) describe a later Academy ruleset: class branches, JP, armor/Break, facing, and recall/Kennel concepts. The design borrows selected vocabulary and positional ideas where useful, but labels its digital action economy and historical professions as proposals. It does not backdate cadet facilities or recall infrastructure.

The [Personnel page](https://dawnbreakertrials.com/pages/personnel.html) documents the current Squad 0198 and provisional contacts. They are not inserted into this historical campaign as contemporaries.

Access note: the web extraction tool could not retrieve the root URL. Public HTML for the homepage and the five pages above was retrieved directly with PowerShell and inspected. Only the homepage is retained as `lore-source.html`; this is not a comprehensive website archive.

## New material proposed by this package

- Working subtitle *Before the Ash*, the Winter Levy, Whitebridge truce, grain/debt conflict, and the River Assembly.
- King Edric, Mara Vale, Mira Fen, Yselle Veyr, Seris Ash, and all new supporting characters.
- Proposed ages, outfits, appearance, Pyrrhus's exile upbringing, family letters, and how parentage is established.
- All twelve province names, their borders, and the visual map. The map is a composition study, not a canonical atlas.
- The timing of Ciro's promotion at the end of Act I and Xeno's exceptional supervised truce visit.
- The idea that the king separates military command from succession. The exact law remains unset.
- Jobs, campaign statistics, romance states, ending families, and political institutions.

## Continuity decisions still open

1. **Menelea / Menea / Ayeleen:** independent kingdom, historical predecessor, regional realm, or naming revision? Preserve all spellings until the creator decides. The visual map's royal seat labeled Menelea is provisional.
2. **Historical interval:** how old is Pyrrhus during this game and how much time passes before the later chronicle? Do not infer a centuries-long lifespan from a world-history paragraph.
3. **The surviving brothers:** the later “last of the Menethil bloodline” statement needs an eventual resolution for both Ciro and Xeno. This game can end while they live, but the intervening canon must address them. Abdication does not erase a bloodline.
4. **Romance and descendants:** no ending currently confirms biological descendants. Establish this before adding dynastic epilogues.
5. **Technology and magic:** the later world has elemental industry and Academy technology. Which tools and institutions exist during these early wars is not yet dated.
6. **Pyrrhus's visual identity:** hair, complexion, facial features, clothing, and emblem are concept proposals until approved.
7. **Political canon:** alternate game endings require a chosen canonical history if the tabletop world is to reference one definite outcome.
8. **Chronicle institutional chronology:** the published account both includes Academy-associated participants around the sealing and describes academies emerging in the rebuilt era. This game avoids resolving that ambiguity by not using those institutions.

## Technical sources

- [Godot stable release archive](https://godotengine.org/download/archive/) — version availability checked for the recommendation.
- [Godot 2D in 3D](https://docs.godotengine.org/en/stable/tutorials/3d/introduction_to_3d.html) and [Sprite3D](https://docs.godotengine.org/en/stable/classes/class_sprite3d.html) — hybrid presentation support.
- [Godot AStar3D](https://docs.godotengine.org/en/stable/classes/class_astar3d.html) — graph pathfinding building block.
- [Godot license](https://godotengine.org/license/) — MIT license.
- [Unity Engine](https://unity.com/products/unity-engine) and [URP](https://docs.unity.com/en-us/engine/6000.7/manual/render-pipelines/universal-render-pipeline) — comparison context.
- [AutoSprite introduction](https://www.autosprite.io/docs/introduction) and [product page](https://www.autosprite.io/) — documented export and directional animation capabilities, not independently tested here.
- [GPT-6 Astra model documentation](https://developers.openai.com/api/docs/models/gpt-6-astra) — separates input/output modalities from image-generation tool support.

The Old Road now provides a working browser combat prototype and an AutoSprite pilot quality check. It is not a production performance benchmark, a commercial budget quote, a full campaign or a Godot engine project. Design numbers and milestone durations are explicitly planning assumptions.