Lyra Belacqua is the heroine of the His Dark Materials series. She lives in a parallel universe where people's souls, called daemons, live outside their bodies and take on the forms of animals. Lyra's the result of an illegitimate affair between Mrs. Coulter and Lord Asriel. She was raised at Jordan College, and before leaving, one of the Masters there gives her an alethiometer, also called a golden compass, which tells the truth. When Lyra's best friend, Roger Parslow, is kidnapped, she sets off to rescue him, and in the process discovers that some very evil experiments are being done on children up north. Later on Lyra is given the name Lyra Silvertongue by her friend, the armored bear Iorek Byrnison, because she's able to lie so convincingly, and she later makes this her official name.