First Horde

The “First Horde” was a secret organisation from the Prime Earth, active throughout the 20th century.

Nature

The Horde's ultimate aim was to rediscover relics of the Lost City of Atlantis, hoping to use their fabled advanced technology for world domination. They kept themselves staffed by brainwashing ordinary people, and dressed in incongruously-coloured animal costumes, (PROSE: The Strangely-Colored Secret Societies) possibly resembling “purple bunnies”. (PROSE: The Mob of the Maroon Magpie, The Faction of the Fooling Fish)

History

At some point prior to 1960, (PROSE: The Crew of the Copper-Colored Cupids) the Horde had in its employ several scientists. One, who would go on to found the Crew of the Copper-Colored Cupids, was an expert engineer, who had created the brainwashing devices used by the Crew. (PROSE: The Salamandyrs and the Automata) Another was a brilliant, if mad, geneticist called Professor Irving Scarper. (PROSE: The Strangely-Colored Secret Societies, The Salamandyrs and the Automata)

After giving up on a brainwashing liquid, Scarper began working on creating an army of mutated, humanised animals for the Horde. His superiors initially gave him a tight deadline for a proof-of-concept, which, after creating and discarding the Salamandyrs, he passed by creating the first two of the Mob of the Maroon Magpie. With his project greenlit, he was given the go-ahead to create more such creatures, (PROSE: The Salamandyrs and the Automata) beginning with a herd of talking, genetically-modified dromedaries to maintain the Horde's databases. (PROSE: The Strangely-Colored Secret Societies, The Salamandyrs and the Automata) During this project, he was also asked by his overseers to provide turkeys for their Thanksgiving meal on November 28th, 1959. Screwing up the task, he ended up creating the sapient Trio of the Talking Turkeys instead. (PROSE: The Trio of the Talking Turkeys)

At one point, they owned a large number of Genies, but they freed themselves from the Horde's clutches in the 1960s, going on to form the Company of Free Genies. (PROSE: The Interlude of Jenny Everywhere)

Over time, their lack of success led to them finding that they couldn't afford to keep their huge numbers housed and fed, and they ended up letting go of many of their numbers, including Archibald Fishflipper and Irving Scarper. Due to the Horde's lack of experience with undoing brainwashings, the lay-offs resulted in the creation of many Strangely-Colored Secret Societies in their mould by the former operatives, channeling incomplete memories and lingering psychic commands. (PROSE: The Strangely-Colored Secret Societies)