Welcome to the Starforged Crown! We are a fantasy production team on the west coast specializing in D&D fantasy content.
The Starforged Crown is a three-act fantasy musical spanning three centuries on a single unraveling kingdom. In Act I, a dragonborn warrior named Aldric falls in love with Silvaine, a celestial being living in mortal form, and their wedding becomes the high point of a rising golden age.
In Act II, war forces Aldric's hand: he swears an oath of unbreakable power to save his kingdom, not understanding that the oath will preserve him rather than let him live, and the cost of that choice begins to unmake the world around him. Act III jumps forward three hundred years, into the ruin that oath created. A rogue named Mira is hired to steal an artifact from the palace vault, only to discover that what she's carrying could end everything that's left. To stop it, she has to walk through the wreckage of the story that came before her: a grieving Widow who was once a bride, a King who has almost forgotten his own name, a saint three hundred years into learning a lesson about faith, and a company of dying friends who refuse to let her go alone.
While epic in scale and intimate in its emotional center, TSC is closer to Hadestown or Into the Woods than high-fantasy spectacle. The magic is quiet: a harp that keeps playing itself, a lantern that won't go out, a light that follows one woman wherever grief takes her.
This live reading is the first public step toward a full staged production, targeted for 2027. The reading is intended to:
Test the material aloud, in front of an audience, to hear where the three-act structure, the dual-timeline storytelling, and the tonal shift from Act I's warmth to Act III's reckoning land and where they need work.
Build a company of performers who understand the show's voice, several of whom carry dual roles across the show's two timelines (Aldric/The Blackened King, Silvaine/The Widow).
Generate a recording and reference material for pitching to collaborators, designers, and potential producing partners that captures the show's sound and shape ahead of a fuller development process.
In parallel, a web series adaptation is planned as a way to build audience and visibility for the project ahead of the 2027 stage production; expanding key scenes, songs, and character arcs into a serialized format that can reach viewers who may never see the show live. We want to do this while staying faithful to the mythology, set logic, and emotional storylines of the stage version. The web series and the live reading are conceived as complementary and the reading proves the show works as a piece of live musical theater, while the series builds the audience who will eventually walk through the arch themselves.
“Let me tell you about the world. Not the world as it is now, cracked and cold and full of roads nobody takes anymore. The world as it was. Before the oath. Before the crown turned black. Before a very tired king sat down on a throne of ash and forgot his own name.
It began, as everything important begins, with grief.”
We are working with an amazing character artist to bring this story to life and will share more details as we have them. Our team has started reviewing the auditions and we have started our casting selection! There is still plenty of time to get an audition in, and if you have already auditioned you can expect an email from us soon!
We are working on the final three songs with our composer and the script is in its fourth and final pass before its ready for the live reading with the team!
Voice Actor
A dragonborn warrior, he is warm, direct, and constitutionally stubborn. A commander who grieves his soldiers by name and can't leave a wrong unrighted, his stubbornness evolves across the show into something that costs him everything.
"Most commanders celebrate the victory first. I promised a man his daughter's naming ceremony in six weeks. I'd rather keep count of that."
"I know the mountains. I know the cold. What I don't know is how to want something and just...ask for it, plainly, like a person."
"The name was one of the last things the oath took from me. I stopped being able to hold onto it. I still remember the shape of it, though. That has to count for something."
Voice Actor
The Moon's daughter in mortal form, she is half-celestial, precise, and warm while being fully aware from the very beginning of what her choice will cost her. As the Widow, she is grief given a lantern and a gown, three hundred years deep into mourning.
"I am the story you heard in the south. I'd rather you knew the difference between the story and me before you decide which one you're in love with."
"Permanence isn't living. It's being held in place while everything else moves on without you. I won't watch you choose that."
(As the Widow) "I have carried this light for three hundred years. Come closer. I only want to see your face."
Voice Actor
The last elven harpist, Elenwyn is gentle, ancient, and quietly certain of everything around her. She leaves the vale forever in the opening scene, and her harp keeps playing without her for the rest of the show.
"The music was never mine. I was only the one playing it. It will remember itself long after it's forgotten me."
"Is it the last time? Perhaps. I've never minded an ending I could see coming."
(To her harp, quietly) "Keep playing. Someone will need to hear you long after I've stopped listening."
Voice Actor
The great silver dragon. The world's oldest mourner, waking from an impossibly long sleep to find the spring she dreamed into being has gone cold.
"Spring. I dreamed it. I made it. I put it here with my own breath — and someone has let it go cold while I slept."
"I remember warm. I remember it so clearly I could weep, if I still remembered how that worked."
"I am not angry. I have simply never had to ask the world to keep a promise before."
Voice Actor
Aldric's second-in-command — loyal, dry, and the show's most useful minor character. Does not appear in Act III. She keeps Aldric tethered to the practical world for as long as anyone can.
"You do not know the Halvenmoor. You went through it once, lost three toes, and still insist they 'grew back adequately' ... which is not a thing toes do."
"Final count: forty-seven of ours. You can grieve them on the walk back. We don't have time for it here."
"You'll need better boots this time. And a better plan. I'll settle for the boots."
Voice Actor
Chief royal advisor, Halvard is intelligent, loyal, careful with his words, and the bearer of the worst idea in the entire show. He believes, sincerely, that he's saving everyone.
"There is another option. You swear on the crown in flame, and the power of the deep earth is bound to your cause. We would be unbreakable."
"The oath preserves what it binds. You would not age. You would not fall. You would persist. I have thought carefully about what that word means."
"I gave him the option. I did not make him take it. I have told myself that every night for three hundred years, and some nights I nearly believe it."
Voice Actor
A river-keeper who lights a lantern for her dead love every single night for the rest of her life. Quiet, stubborn devotion given a human shape.
"He said he'd be back for the festival. Not 'if the war ends in time.' Just... 'I'll be back for the festival.' Like it was already decided."
"He would have hated missing the lanterns. So I light his for him. Every year. It's not much of a conversation, but it's ours."
"I don't need you to tell me it's been long enough. The river hasn't said that to me yet, and it's the one keeping count."
Voice Actor
Brilliant, confident, and wrong in a way that can never be corrected. Her faith is genuine, not arrogant, which is exactly what makes her so dangerous to herself. Appears briefly as a ghost in Act III.
"The goddess is here, at this shore. I can feel her. If you understood my faith the way I understand it, you would not be asking me to step back."
"I'm prepared for anything the goddess requires of me. That's what faith is for, not to make the answer comfortable, but to make you willing to receive it."
"The tide is not a warning. The tide is an invitation. I have waited my whole life to be brave enough to accept one."
Voice Actor
Serafine becomes THE SAINT OF THE BROKEN BLADE in Act III and is three hundred years older. She is a warrior-saint who watches the Drowned Saint go under and spends the next three hundred years learning what her sister got wrong. By Act III, her patience has become her legendary.
"I watched a saint drown because her faith was a closed fist. She demanded the answer she'd already decided on. The deep water doesn't answer demands."
"Faith isn't armor, and it isn't certainty. It's a net you lower into the dark, not knowing what it will bring back, and being willing to hold it anyway."
(As the Saint, ancient) "Three hundred years is a long time to carry half a sword and call it a lesson. I'm still not finished learning it."
Voice Actor
A rogue with a genuine philosophy. He's right about almost everything and wants absolutely no part of any of it. The spiritual predecessor to Mira, he represents the road not taken.
"I liberated a very heavy hat. The distinction between that and theft is extremely important to me, and to my lawyer, if I had one."
"No oath, no pledge, no sworn allegiance to anything. You know what that makes me? Happy. Deeply, uncomplicatedly happy."
"If something happens that only a person with principles could stop; I will find that person, wish them luck, and stay very, very far out of it."
Voice Actor
Idealistic, protective, the one who says the true thing out loud.
"We knew there were risks. We didn't know which ones. We drank the blood anyway — it seemed like the right thing to do, after killing something that size."
"You've got seven knives and one of you. We've got five warm bodies and very little left to lose. We're coming with you."
Improve a line for me that a roguish adventurer would say.
Voice Actor
Dark humor given a body, she finds the jokes in the dying
"Warm? Yes. Increasingly, alarmingly warm. Ask me again in a year, if there's a me left to ask."
"She looks like she understands exactly how tired I am. That's usually how the dangerous ones get you."
Voice Actor
The brightest crayon in the box, Osric is the idealist of the party.
"What if something happened that only someone with principles could stop? Somebody has to be the one who doesn't walk away."
"What if it only calls your name a little? Does that make it safer, or worse?"
Voice Actor
The moral compass of the company, Mace is well grounded in what is and not what if.
"Aren't you worried they'll catch you? Someone has to ask the practical questions around here."
"Eighty years, a hundred and twelve — I've stopped being surprised by how long people wait for supper in this kingdom."
Voice Actor
Quick, unbothered, funny under pressure.
"Now we're very warm, we have excellent stories, and we drink for free in every tavern from here to the coast. There are worse ways to spend however much time we've got left."
"Rich? No. Happy, apparently. I'll take happy."
Voice Actor
Lyra's love in Act II — a soldier who dies in Aldric's last war. Quieter than the woman who waits for him.
"Soldiers talk. I heard, and I thought you should know before someone crueler told you badly."
"You look like someone I knew once. A soldier. He carried things he never learned to put down, either."
"I chose to stay near her. There's a difference between staying and being stuck, and I'd like to think I know which one this is."
Voice Actor
A rogue, self-contained and running from something she's never named out loud. She carries seven knives and the names behind each of them. She is the emotional center of Act III.
"I find things people have lost, and things people have hidden. Depends on the day, and on how much I want to know the answer."
"Don't look at the lights. Don't follow the sounds. Don't walk toward anything that calls your name like it already knows it. Especially then."
"Captain Brenn. Sera. Tomec. The merchant of Falside. Leni. Davan. Mira Ashvale. Seven names. I only meant to say six of them."
Voice Actor
Died young, two hundred and sixty-three years ago. She is sharp, accurate with her knowledge, and two centuries past relevancy. Still choosing, every day, to be exactly where she is.
"There's only me, the hermit, and the dead out here. And the dead, bless them, do not care even a little."
"You're carrying someone. On one of those knives. I'd know that look anywhere — I've worn it myself, for a very long time."
"I chose to stay. There's a difference between staying and being stuck, and it took me a hundred years to learn it."
Voice Actor
Died in her twenties and has been dead one hundred and twelve years. She was the palace cook. Dead, and entirely fine about it. Runs her ghost kitchen with the same brisk energy she ran the living one.
"Wipe your feet. I don't care that you're all being chased by something terrible, this floor doesn't clean itself."
"A hundred and twelve years. I went down for flour and the time got rather ahead of me. It happens."
"How many for supper? The last group that came through didn't stay to eat, and frankly, I was quite put out about it."
Voice Actor
The show's villain, he is patient, exact, and philosophically committed to ending the world. Never raises their voice. Never needs to.
"I need the second kind of thing found. Not what's lost... what's been deliberately, carefully hidden."
"Bring it out intact. Don't open it. Don't look at it directly if it gives off light. I ask so little, really, for what I'm offering."
"They believe the world should end and begin again. I don't ask you to believe it. I only ask you not to ask what's inside."
Voice Actor
The last living soul in Hallowmere. He is old, alert, and oddly at peace surrounded by ghosts who dance every midnight.
"They're not haunting. They're remembering. It's a different thing, and it took me thirty years living among them to see the difference."
"They don't bother me, I don't bother them. We have an arrangement. Most marriages should run so smoothly."
"Where else would anyone be going through here at midnight? This road only leads one place anymore."
