Trycanta

Trycanta is the world where the Tales of Anosir take place. There are three main races that inhabit it - greatcats, or lyrror; dragons, or mazor; and humans, or nequor. But there are also three different main human settlements, with very different attitudes toward the non-human races.

One of the cities on Trycanta is Nassus. It has both a zoo and a university.

The Kingdom of Anosir

In Anosir, lyrror and mazor are known both to exist and to be equivalent to humans in their capability for thought and emotion. Still, they remain marginalized by the mainstream of human society, which exists on a roughly medieval level (though with magic).

Dulia

Across the ocean in a country called Dulia, however, attitudes are very different. The main human culture is quasi-Victorian, prudish and regimented with a rigid social order. Mazor and lyrror keep mainly to themselves, for the very good reason that most humans consider the lyrror nothing but animals and the mazor evil and soulless.

Celitar Confederation

Even further around the world, in the Celitar Confederation (hard C, please), human beings have developed a level of technology which rivals our own in some ways, but have completely lost sight of the two other races with which they share their world. To Celitarans, lyrror and mazor are generally thought to be nothing more than myth.

History of Trycanta

in a Watsonian sense, the world of Trycanta
began billions of years ago, like all planets, when its star spun off
enough mass to conglomerate into a proto-planet, etc, etc. Moving
along, the lyrror and the mazor evolved, each in their own original
habitats. Eventually they came into contact... and hated each other on
sight.

The
two populations spread out, each colonizing various portions of the
world with its three continents. Almost everywhere that they discovered
one another, wars broke out, only made worse by the existence of an
energy field permeating all states of matter, which lyrror or mazor born
 with a particular gift could manipulate at will.

Strangely,
 lyrror never seemed to be born with the ability to affect gases through
 this energy, though those who could handle solids, liquids, or plasmas
were well known. Equally odd was the lack of mazor whose knack with the
energy was for solids, though abilities with liquids, gases, and plasmas
 were quite possible.

At
 last, a "final weapon" was devised, by one side or the other (each side
 of course claims the other thought of it first, and the truth may never
 be known). Two agents were designed, both subtly poisonous, not harming
 those they touched but altering, by the use of this same energy
field, the chemistry and biology of their bodies.

The
 agent used by the lyrror was dependent on the social structure of the
mazor for its worst effects, for it caused the eggs of the mazor to
hatch three times as many female children as male. As mazor, by long and
 strict custom, are both matriarchal and monogamous, the surplus of
mazir threatened to capsize their society.

The
 mazor, whether they struck first or second, landed a far more
devastating blow, for their agent brought about the opposite effect on
the lyrror, with three male births for every female. Such a ratio, in
a species which bears live young, would most likely have devastated the
race within a few generations at best.

But as
 the first generation touched by the agent came to its young adulthood,
one young mazi flew out of her home city one night, determined to find
an answer to her sisters' problems, and one young lyrre slipped out of
his family's cave at dawn, vowing to discover some solution to the
troubles faced by his brothers.

As
 you may have guessed, the two young people found one another, and their
 efforts together did indeed find what they were looking for: a *third*
 race, one which shared characteristics with both mazor and lyrror,
which could understand them both, and, with the proper use of the
Trycantan energy field, even interbreed with them both.