Crew of the Copper-Colored Cupids

The Crew of theCopper-Colored Cupids
Pythagoras-858 introducing himself as a member of the Crew. (COMIC: Jenny Everywhere Meets The Crew Of The Copper-Colored Cupids)
Group Information
Origin	Prime Universe
Type	Organisation
Goals	Create multiversal peace
Vehicles	Fog Ships
Bases	The Cupid Homeworld
Leaders	The Supreme Quaestor
Members	See list
Behind the Scenes
First seen in	VIDEO: The Crew of the Copper-Colored Cupids
Also seen in	See list
Copyright	Lupan Evezan & Aristide Twain

The Crew of the Copper-Colored Cupids was a multiversally-active organisation made up of Clockwork Cherubs.

Description

Its members were Clockwork Cherubs — a race of sentient, clockwork androids resembling the classic figure of “Cupid,” hence the name of the organisation. They travelled through the Multiverse by means of Fog Ship and had a pocket dimension called the Cupid Homeworld as their home base. Members of the Crew were identified by a personalised name followed by a serial number, such as "Pythagoras-858". (COMIC: Jenny Everywhere Meets The Crew Of The Copper-Colored Cupids) The Crew's purpose was to spread love, by force if need be; they had access to a chemical Love Potion which they used to “romanticize” uncooperative targets. (PROSE: The Grand Multiverse Hotel) They were governed by the Cupid Parliament. (PROSE: The Time of the Toymaker)

The Crew's Cupid Intelligence Institute included a number of Departments with specific purposes, each of which was led by a Prefect. These included:

• the Department of Journalism. (PROSE: The Case Against Conspiracy)
• the Department of Transportation. (PROSE: The Case Against Conspiracy)
• the Department of Technological Advancement. (PROSE: The Case Against Conspiracy)
• the Department of Discipline. (PROSE: The Case Against Conspiracy)
• the Department of Festivities. (PROSE: The Case Against Conspiracy)
• the Department of Documentation. (PROSE: The Case Against Conspiracy, The Crew of the Copper-Colored Cupids)
• the Department of Literature. (PROSE: The Case Against Conspiracy)
• the Department of Zoology. (PROSE: The Case Against Conspiracy)
• the Department of Wizardry. (PROSE: Lord Thymon and the Department of Problem-Solving, The Crew of the Copper-Colored Cupids, The Winter Quests)
• the Department of Alchemy. (PROSE: Lord Thymon and the Department of Problem-Solving, The Crew of the Copper-Colored Cupids)
• the Department of Chemistry. (PROSE: The Crew of the Copper-Colored Cupids)
• the Department of Theology. (PROSE: The Crew of the Copper-Colored Cupids)
• the Department of Philosophy. (PROSE: The Crew of the Copper-Colored Cupids)
• the Department of Applied Contrafibulation. (PROSE: The Crew of the Copper-Colored Cupids
• the Department of Redundancy Department. (PROSE: The Crew of the Copper-Colored Cupids)
• the Department of Departments. (PROSE: The Crew of the Copper-Colored Cupids)
• the Department of Taxes. (PROSE: The Green Gorillas)
• the Department of Postal Services. (PROSE: The Society of the Rhyming Dove)
• the Department of Problem-Solving. (PROSE: Lord Thymon and the Department of Problem-Solving)
• the Department of Gender Studies. (PROSE: Lord Thymon and the Department of Problem-Solving)
• the Department of Chronology. (PROSE: Lord Thymon and the Department of Problem-Solving)
• the Department of Impossible Things. (PROSE: Lord Thymon and the Department of Problem-Solving)

There used to be a Department of Conspiracy Theories (PROSE: The Case Against Conspiracy) and a Department of Forestry, (PROSE: The Winter Quests) both of which were disbanded. (PROSE: The Case Against Conspiracy, The Winter Quests)

History

Creation

The Crew was created by an individual whom the Clockwork Cherubs reverentially called simply “the Creator” (PROSE: The Grand Multiverse Hotel) in the early 1960s. (PROSE: The Crew of the Copper-Colored Cupids) Cupid Fact File #828 highlighted the curious fact that the Crew's name followed the same pattern as the many Strangely-Colored Secret Societies created by former members of the First Horde. (PROSE: The Strangely-Colored Secret Societies)

They were originally based in her garage in her home city in the Prime Universe, but after they grew too numerous, she created the Cupid Homeworld, a pocket dimension to serve as their home base moving forward. (PROSE: The Crew of the Copper-Colored Cupids)

Early history

Eventually, the Creator withdraw from public life in the Homeworld, moving to the Forbidden Manor. She left them schematics for dematerialisation circuits and conceptual engines, allowing them to develop the Fog Ships, as well as the formula for the Love Potion, which were soon lost by the Prefect of the Department of Chemistry, (PROSE: The Crew of the Copper-Colored Cupids) Mandragora-257. (COMIC: Jenny Everywhere Meets The Crew Of The Copper-Colored Cupids) The Crew became directly affiliated with Aphrodite herself, who provided them with a substitute Potion with identical effects. (PROSE: The Crew of the Copper-Colored Cupids) As a result, to use an alternative Potion would have been blasphemy, prosecutable under “Section A113-B” of the Crew's Terms of Service by the Misuse Office in the Underworld. (VIDEO: The Crew of the Copper-Colored Cupids)

At some point, the Euclidean Plane was discovered by a group of Cupids who'd pressed the “random destination” button of their Fog Ship. After initial scouting was complete, the Plane soon became a favoured target for the Crew. (PROSE: The Euclidean Plane)

As early as 1978, the Cupids encountered evidence of the Gang of the Green Gorilla's activity in the form of people randomly abducted by the Crew on the Prime Earth who showed signs of Gorilla brainwashing. However, being unaware of the Gang's existence at the time, the Cupids didn't know what to make of them and released them back on Earth without reversing the conditioning. (PROSE: The Green Gorillas (short story)

1980s

By 1984, there existed an elite taskforce of Cupids, the Scarlet Wings, including Arganthone-056. They were sent to the Euclidean Plane to raid the Geometron Pentagon's Library. (PROSE: The Time of the Toymaker) In 1986, it was still considered “newly-established”, suggesting the 1984 events had been among their first missions. (PROSE: The Society of the Rhyming Dove)

In December 1986, a group of Green Gorillas took control of the town supermarket of Vanityville, emptying it of all Christmas paraphernalia and instead forcing the shopping customers to buy their green-gorilla merchandise, at gunpoint. They encountered a group of Clockwork Cherubs of the Crew, led by Commander Amadeo-378, by coincidence. Noting the affected humans' unhappiness, the Cupids decided the Gang's aims seemed oppose to their own and decided to defeat them, kicking off the Skirmish at the Vanityville Supermarket. The Cupids were victorious, although the Gang's scientists subsequently learned how to reverse Cupid romanticisation. Thereafter, the Cupids went on to oppose the Gorillas on many occasions, “from the depths of the Amazonian jungle to the very North Pole”. Meanwhile, Amadeo-378 was commended for his effective leadership, and was awarded membership of the Order of Aphrodite.

Colonel-028 remembering the Mark IVs of the 1980s. (COMIC: Scaled-Up Soldier)

In addition to marking their first meeting with the Gorillas, this event was notable as the Crew's first formal use of physical force other than Cupid Arrows against their opponents. As the Cupids learned about the idea, there was a brief fighting craze in the Homeworld, with Cupids getting into fights with other Cupids with whom they had mild disagreements. However, this quickly passed. (PROSE: The Green Gorillas) In “the 1980s”, the Crew made some attempts at romanticising dinosaurs. The Mark IVs seemed to have been designed with this in mind, in line with the new acknowledgement of violent strategies: in contrast to most marks of Clockwork Cherubs, they were house-sized colossi, armed for war. (COMIC: Scaled-Up Soldier)

Shortly after their first encounters with the Gang of the Green Gorilla, the Crew received letters from the Society of the Rhyming Dove, another Strangely-Colored Secret Society who wished to make contact with all the Societies it could. Fearing a trap from the Gorillas or some other ill-intentioned group, the Crew sent the Scarlet Wings to meet the mystery-writers, but the Rhyming Doves turned out to indeed be friendly. An alliance between the two groups was established. (PROSE: The Society of the Rhyming Dove)

1990s

In 1994, the Cupids discovered that their “emergency supply warehouse” on the Prime Earth had been burgled, with a great number of Cupid Arrows going missing. The elite mobile taskforce, Scarlet Wings to investigate. The Scarlet Wings operatives were able to trail the thieves — the Mob of the Maroon Magpie — back to their lair where, after a brief scuffle, they agreed to negotiate over a cup of tea. The Magpies offered to help the Cupids in their romanticising if the Cupids would let them keep stealing more Arrows, as well as store their increasingly large hoard in the Cupid Homeworld.

The Cupid authorities refused to ratify this agreement and attempted to obviate the need for negotiations by increasing the security measures of the Cupid warehouse, with little success. A second Cupid detachment was sent back to the Magpies' H.Q. to romanticise them, but it was found that this only increased their enthusiasm for theft, failing to solve the Cupids' problem. Ultimately, the Cupid Parliament decreed that the Cupids should simply remain neutral towards the Magpies and avoid them altogether. The Magpies solved their storage problem by building a larger warehouse, while the Cupids moved their own hoard of Arrows to some other location unknown to the Magpies. (PROSE: The Mob of the Maroon Magpie)

2010s

Mr Rectangle and Ms Bubble are romanticised on-camera. (VIDEO: The Crew of the Copper-Colored Cupids)

At some point, a group of Cupids attempted to film an infomercial about the Crew's operations, filming the live romanticisation of two Geometrons, named Mr Rectangle and Ms Bubble. The result was less glossy than expected due to the Cupids on duty overdosing the Love Potion, causing both Geometrons to devolve into cooing, non-verbal simpletons. (VIDEO: The Crew of the Copper-Colored Cupids) Nevertheless, they put out a bulletin claiming the mission had been a great success. (PROSE: Our Latest Success Story)

Growing weary of having to sneak past the Mechanical Sphinx to access their own Archives, the Cupids eventually launched a project to digitize their files, starting with the most often-used Cupid Fact Files. The first was #94, concerning the Euclidean Plane. Around the same time, the Crew was trying, unsuccessfully, to covertly romanticize the Chief of the Euclidean Flying Squad in the hope of getting him to stop the Flying Squad from opposing the Crew's operations in the Euclidean Plane. (PROSE: The Euclidean Plane)

After multiple Fog Ships traversing the Void were attacked by Lord Thymon, it was decided to try and do something to subdue or destroy the entity. The Department of Impossible Things did not feel up to the task, and it was transferred to Pythagoras-858's Department of Problem-Solving. They successfully summoned Thymon and bound him in place, and Juliet-178, with remarkable audacity, shot a Cupid Arrow at his heart, successfully romanticising him and making him undyingly loyal to the Crew. (PROSE: Lord Thymon and the Department of Problem-Solving)

After the Rifts Crisis

After the Rifts Crisis began spreading through the multiverse, one Rift prevented travel to and from the Cupid Homeworld. Pythe became stuck on the outside, and continued his chase of Mandragora before bumping into Jenny Everywhere in the Void. (COMIC: Jenny Everywhere Meets The Crew Of The Copper-Colored Cupids)

Behind the scenes

The Crew are, obviously, the main focal point of the series of the same name.