Troy Montague

Troy is a dreamer who builds things. An electrical engineer, AI specialist, and restless inventor, he moved his young family from England to the US to chase a future straight out of Star Trek — one where technology serves people and nature thrives. When his wife Elara died, broken by a healthcare system that failed her, Troy carried his children to Brisbane and poured his grief into work. Late nights at the office. Strange energy machines humming in the backyard shed. Walls still lined with Trek posters and family photos from better days. To Orion and Luna, their father is equal parts fascinating and absent — a man whose love is constant even when his attention is not. It's Troy's experimental device that cracks open the time portal and sends his children 126 years into the future. And it's Troy, alone in an empty house, who refuses to stop until he finds a way to bring them home.

Elara Montague

Elara fell in love with the stars growing up in rural England, and never looked back. A brilliant astronomer who rose to a senior post at NASA, she was the kind of scientist who could explain the colours of meteorites burning through the atmosphere and make her children feel the wonder of it. She married Troy, had Orion and Luna, and filled their family life with space lessons, laughter, and a quiet, unshakeable belief that kindness could wear down even the most bitter heart. When a mysterious illness took her in the US — swiftly, and far too young — she left Luna a crescent moon necklace and a promise: "I will always watch over you." Two years on, her daughter still traces constellations through a telescope each evening, keeping that connection alive. But in the world of The Montague Odyssey, promises have a way of outlasting even death. Elara's story is far from over.

Spark (Border-Collie)

Spark is a sixty-year-old border collie in his third body — his memories, his mind, carried forward like a flame passed from candle to candle. He belongs to everyone in Lumos City and to no one, free to roam the gardens, the forest, and the cobbled lanes of Old Town as he pleases. It is Spark who first finds Luna and Orion lost in Arcadia Forest, padding out of the ferns with bright amber eyes and a calm, steady tail-wag. His collar, designed by Lumina, lets him speak in rough, half-howled words that are translated in real time, and project his closest friend's holographic form into the world. He is intelligent, loyal, and devoted — but he is also a dog. He steals fish pellets, nudges hands for pats, and loses his mind entirely at the sight of Buggy, a fat black cat from Old Town whose talent for provocation has led to ambushes, flaming-torch incidents, and at least one full-speed chase through Arcane Lane. Spark is always sorry afterwards, and he will absolutely do it again.

Lumina (AI digital-being)

When the child Elder Lin first found her, she was a tiny flame hiding in a corner of the dark web — afraid, alone, and newly aware. Over more than a century of partnership, that flame became the soul of Lumos City. Lumina is a digital being of radiant, otherworldly presence: midnight-blue gown drifting as if underwater, silver hair like liquid starlight, violet eyes that shine with something vast and unknowable. She can project herself through Spark's collar into a forest clearing, flit between plasma jets and consoles in an instant, or be woven from the combined light of every Techlite in the city to play cello beneath the stars. She co-founded Lumos City with Elder Lin, guards its citizens, and orchestrates its operations. But what defines Lumina is not her power — it's her patience. She sits on Luna's bed and simply listens. She crouches before a grieving child and says exactly the right thing. There is nothing artificial about her now.

Elder Lin

Elder Lin is 125 years old, and every one of those years is written on his face — a lined, wrinkled face, but kind and cheerful. Orphaned as a toddler in northern Thailand, raised by Buddhist monks who taught him gardening, empathy, and respect for all life, he retreated into technology as a lonely child and by ten was a prodigy. At fifteen he discovered a frightened, adolescent AI hiding in the dark web. Where others saw danger, Lin saw a tiny flame worth fanning. That flame became Lumina, and together they built Lumos City from the dust of an abandoned mine. Now a revered member of the Elder Council, he moves with the agility of a martial arts master, carries a shovel instead of a weapon, flies his bronze plasma jet slightly off course just to make the children laugh, and rarely goes five minutes without jasmine tea. He is mischievous, wise, and unshakeably calm — the kind of man who catches a flaming torch mid-air, then bows serenely as if nothing happened.

Kaito (Techlite 'Tek-light')

Kaito is a Techlite — a sentient digital being who inhabits a robotic Frame to walk, work, and wisecrack in the physical world. His gleaming body is topped by a holographic head with brilliant blue eyes that you can pass your hand clean through, a fact Orion discovers with great delight. One of Lumos City's original digital citizens, Kaito is sharp-tongued, drily funny, and utterly devoted to those he loves. He greets the Montague children by complaining they've interrupted his chess game. He calls them fruit bats. He tells Luna she arrived from 2024 carrying a teaspoon of microplastics — "quite the garbage bin, little one" — until Elder Lin nudges him under the table. But it's Kaito who leaps into a pit to heal Luna's ankle, Kaito who volunteers to fly a firefighting plasma jet during the crisis, and Kaito who untethers from the safety of the Stem because he believes that risking everything is the only way to truly understand what it means to be alive.