There are many universes and many earths parallel to each other.
Unlike Other Universes, People Souls live inside their bodies, but in this world, they
walk beside them as animals, which they call demon.
So many worlds, but connecting them all is dust.
Dust was here before the witches of the air.
The Egyptian is of the water, and the Bears of the ice.
In this world, scholars invented an alethiometer, a golden compass.
And it showed them all that was hidden.
But the ruling power, fearing any truth about their own, destroyed these devices and forbade
the very mention of dust.
One compass remains, however, and only one who can read it.
A young orphan girl named Lyra Belaqua, lives and is educated at Oxford's Jordan College.
Because she is young, Lyra's daemon can change his shape to appear as any animal he chooses.
He most often appears as an ermine, or at need a moth or a cat.
Adults' daemons settle into one shape and don't change.
Lyra overhears an interview between the Master of Jordan College, and Fra Pavel, a representative
from the powerful and sinister Magisterium.
They're discussing an expedition to the far north, planned by Lyra's uncle Lord Asriel.
Asriel wants to study a mysterious substance, but Fra Pavel pressures the Master to withhold
his support from Lord Asriel's expedition.
The Master refuses to cooperate with magisterium.
when left alone in the room, Fra Pavel poisons a decanter of Tokay wine that has been decanted
specially for Lord Asriel.
Lord Asriel soon arrives (accompanied by his daemon, a snow leopard), and pours himself
a glass of the poisoned Tokay, but Lyra emerges from her hiding place to stop him from drinking
it.
Lord Asriel sends her back to eavesdrop on the meeting that is about to begin.
The Master and fellows of Jordan College, convene to hear about Lord Asriel's proposed
expedition and research on Dust, which they agree to fund.
While listening to her uncle’s talk with the college elders, Lyra learns about Dust,
which in theory is found in the north and is said to unite with parallel worlds.
Asriel is sure that Dust is connected with a means to get from one universe to other
parallel universes.
Pavel tells Asriel that talk of Dust is heresy.
Even before we meet Lyra, boys and girls have been disappearing, snatched off the streets.
The children call the kidnappers Gobblers.
Lyra and her friend Roger promise one another that if either is caught, the other will come
to the rescue.
That night while Lyra is at dinner, she is introduced to Mrs. Coulter.
Meanwhile lyra’s friends Roger and Billy Costa are taken by the Gobblers.
At the dinner, Lyra is seated immediately across the table from the Master when Mrs.
Coulter arrives, accompanied by her daemon, a golden monkey.
The Master and all the scholars are evidently in awe of her.
Mrs. Coulter takes a seat right next to Lyra, who is most impressed with her new acquaintance
and agrees eagerly when Mrs. Coulter says she is also planning a trip to the far north,
and proposes that Lyra come along as her assistant.
The Master is evidently forced by Mrs. Coulter's influence to agree.
In the morning, just before Lyra's departure, the Master comes to Lyra's little upper room
in college and gives last remaining alethiometer, "the golden compass".
He tells her that it is capable of telling the truth, but he can't tell her much about
how it works.
He admonishes her to keep the alethiometer to herself and above all not to let Mrs. Coulter
know that she has it.
Lyra spends some time in Mrs. Coulter's company, going to expensive shops to be bought new
clothes and restaurants to dine with posh people.
All the while, Lyra keeps the alethiometer with her in a shoulder bag.
One day Mrs. Coulter orders her to stop wearing the shoulder bag, and when the girl shows
reluctance, Mrs. Coulter has her daemon strangle Pantalaimon.
Lyra runs to her room, now hating Mrs. Coulter, hides the alethiometer, then goes to explore
Mrs. Coulter's private study.
In a waste paper bin, Pan finds papers which show that Mrs. Coulter is deeply involved
with an arm of the Magisterium called the General Oblation Board, also known as the
Gobblers; and that the General Oblation Board is using children to investigate something
called intercision; and that Billy Costa and Roger the kitchen boy are on a list of boys
who have been taken.
Immediately after discovering this, Lyra catches Mrs. Coulter's golden monkey daemon trying
to steal the alethiometer.
Layra’s deamon changes into a bird and grabs it back.
and they both flee from mrs.
colter’s place.
On their run, they are being pursued by the gobblers and they both get captured.
Surprisingly they were rescued by friendly Gyptians, who have been watching over Lyra
at Lord Asriel's request.
One of their rescuers is Ma Costa, Billy's mother.
Lyra travels with the Gyptians and becomes acquainted with John Faa, lord of the Gyptians,
and his advisor Farder Coram.
She learns how to ask the alethiometer questions and how to interpret its responses.
She also meets Serafina Pekkala, queen of the witches, who tells Lyra that she is the
subject of a prophecy concerning the fate of the world; that the missing children are
being held at Bolvangar in Norroway; and that Lyra will find help in Trollesund, a town
on the coast of Norroway.
Meanwhile, Mrs. Coulter has dispatched a pair of mechanical spy flies to locate Lyra.
When the spy flies find the Gyptian ship, Farder Coram captures one and seals it up
in a tin, explaining that its sting contains a sleeping potion.
The other mechanical flies escapes, though it's not clear that it does Mrs. Coulter any
good.
When they arrive in Trollesund, Lyra meets the Texan aeronaut Lee Scoresby, who offers
to help her -- but first he wants to get a friend out of a jam.
The friend is Iorek Byrnison, one of the great Panserbjørne armored ice bears of Svalbard.
Iorek exiled from his home after losing a fight, is a virtual prisoner in Trollesund;
the townspeople got him drunk and stole his armor, which he cherishes the way humans cherish
their daemons.
Now, alcoholic and despairing, he works as a mechanic and metalsmith in exchange for
whiskey.
Consulting the alethiometer, Lyra learns that Iorek Byrnison was heir to the throne of Svalbard
until he was betrayed and defeated by the current king Ragnar.
She also learns where the armor is hidden and tells Iorek, who promises in return to
help her find the missing children.
Lee Scoresby and the Gyptians dissuade the soldiers who try to stop the re-armored bear,
and Lyra and her allies march into the interior toward Bolvangar.
When they camp for the night, Lyra puzzles over something the alethiometer is telling
her and seeks out Iorek Byrnison.
She asks him to take her to a valley nearby, where she finds Billy Costa, weak and anguished
because he's been separated from his daemon.
And now Lyra realizes what intercision means; it's a fate so horrible she and Pan can hardly
bear to think about it.
Iorek Byrnison and Lyra take Billy back to the Gyptians' camp, which is immediately set
upon by the ferocious Samoyed people who live in that area.
They capture Lyra and carry her to Svalbard as an offering to the armored bears.
Recalling that Mrs. Coulter told her King Ragnar longs to have a daemon of his own,
Lyra asks Pan to hide and introduces herself to Ragnar as Iorek Byrnison's daemon.
As she hoped, Ragnar becomes furiously jealous.
Lyra tells him that if he can defeat Iorek in single combat, she will become Ragnar's
daemon.
Ragnar agrees to fight Iorek Byrnison, and Iorek gallops up on cue, intending to rescue
Lyra.
When Lyra explains what she's arranged, apologetic and frightened because after running all that
way Iorek seems in no shape to fight, Iorek surprises her with his enthusiasm.
He wants nothing more from life than a chance to fight Ragnar, and dubs her Lyra Silvertongue
for her skillful manipulation of the usurper-king.
Iorek fights Ragnar and kills him by feigning an injury, then hitting Ragnar so hard his
jaw flies off.
This victory wins back Iorek Byrnison's rightful place as king of the ice bears, but he leaves
his kingdom to complete his obligation to Lyra.
He takes her most of the way to the experimental station at Bolvangar where the children are
being held, but has to leave her and go for help when the bridge over a crevasse break,
leaving Iorek on the wrong side.
Inside the experimental station, Lyra asks Roger to get the other children ready to escape.
He shows her to a room where she can be alone with the alethiometer, but she has to hide
under the table when the experimental station staff and Mrs. Coulter come in.
After Mrs. Coulter leaves, Lyra's foot slips, giving her away.
She's captured by the staff and she and Pan are put into the intercision device, the machine
used to separate children from their daemons.
The separation is almost complete when Mrs. Coulter, looking terrified, runs in and stops
the procedure.
Lyra and Pan wake up with their bond intact, and a distraught Mrs. Coulter assures Lyra
that she's safe and she'll never be hurt.
Lyra shrinking from Mrs. Coulter, asks why they're separating children from their daemons.
Mrs. Coulter explains that Dust came into the world long ago when people first disobeyed
the Authority.
While children are immune from Dust, it contaminates adults through their daemons.
The goal of the intercision research is to prevent people from ever being affected by
Dust.
Mrs. Coulter says that intercision doesn't hurt –"it's just a little cut."
If intercision is such a good thing, Lyra counters why did Mrs. Coulter stop the lab
staff from doing it to Lyra?
Mrs. Coulter admits that the procedure isn't perfect yet.
When she mentions taking Lyra home, and she lies about being her mother, and that Lord
Asriel is her father.
she pretends to cooperate when Mrs. Coulter asks for the alethiometer, but gives her instead
the tin holding the spy fly.
The fly's sting knocks out Mrs Coulter and her daemon.
Lyra escapes and leads the children out into the snow, pausing only to sabotage the intercision
device, which explodes in a very satisfying way.
Outside the experimental station the children confront the guards, who attack them.
Iorek Byrnison intervenes but is nearly overcome before the arrival, at dramatic intervals
of Lee Scoresby, the witches led by Serafina Pekkala, and the Gyptians.
There's a ferocious melee; whenever someone is killed, their daemon disintegrates in a
swirl of Dust.
Lyra's friends win the battle.
Lyra sets off with Iorek Byrnison and Lee Scoresby to find Lord Asriel, who has been
captured by the Samoyed people, and Roger also insists on coming along.
Meanwhile, Mrs. Coulter having learned that Lord Asriel has bribed his captors and set
up a laboratory to continue his research on Dust, Mrs. colter sets off to stop him.
In the final scene, Lyra and Roger curl up with Iorek Byrnison in the back of Mr. Scoresby's
flying machine, as they all head north to help Lord Asriel.