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Century Smith, born Victor Smith, was a member of the Consistency Imperium who rebelled and spent a century travelling the Multiverse to help put an end to the Imperium's harmful activities. After his service was over, he began travelling the Multiverse in his increasingly battered Void Ship, befriending Briar along the way.
Description
Physical appearance
Even after defecting from the Consistency Imperium, Century Smith continued wearing the outfit he'd been provided with as a member of it, including the coat and hat. An insignia on the bicorn hat highlighted his former rank as a personal assistant to the Imperial Imperator. (PROSE: Century Smith and the Time Terror) His coat was blue. (PROSE: The Winter Quests)
Personality
Century Smith was a quiet, sometimes awkward man, but unfailingly selfless, with his guiding principle in life being (as he succinctly put it) to “keep people from getting hurt”. He made friends easily (being, in fact, a little too trusting) and loved to see the beauty of the places he visited, being neither bothered nor blasé by the strangeness of the many sights the Multiverse had to offer. (PROSE: Century Smith and the Time Terror) The Crew of the Copper-Colored Cupids considered him to be a “neutral” relative to their own mission, noting that he could become a “Hyper-class threat” if he became hostile to them. (PROSE: The Case Against Conspiracy)
Powers & abilities
Smith was capable of flying his Imperium Void Ship, and of making minor repairs to it, although they had more to do with haphazard tinkering than true engineering. (PROSE: Century Smith and the Time Terror) He could understand Subcinctan Audial Code on the fly. (PROSE: The Winter Quests)
Biography
Early life
Born Victor Smith, (PROSE: The Winter Quests) the future Century Smith joined the Consistency Imperium because he believed in their good intentions and wanted to do good in the Multiverse. He became a personal assistant to the Imperial Imperator, much put-upon even though this technically made him a high-ranking member of the organisation. (PROSE: Century Smith and the Time Terror)
Becoming Century Smith
He betrayed the Imperium when he realised that they were actually doing more harm than good (PROSE: Century Smith and the Time Terror) with the help of representatives of the Crew of the Copper-Colored Cupids, (PROSE: The Winter Quests) and he travelled across dimensions for a century (in his personal subjective timeline) to recall Imperium agents to the Palatium, keeping them from increasing the threat of the Rifts any more than they had already done. This earned him his perennial nickname of “Century Smith”. During these travels, he met a dimensional scientist without a name. She was in actuality an incarnation of Jenny Nowhere, a fact which Smith did not find out for many years; Nowhere faked a friendship with Smith, believing him to still be an agent of the Imperium and believing that he might be useful in pointing her in the way of interesting paradoxes. At some point, he also met and befriended Lord Nachtos (a Christmas-tree-shaped demon) and Jack Pumpkinhead. (PROSE: Century Smith and the Time Terror)
Meeting with Briar
After his mission ended, Smith continued travelling the universe, now on a more relaxed basis. He met Briar, a 19-year-old girl from a low-tech society, during an adventure facing the Invisible Vampyres of Sanguivor and, after the two were threatened by a mob of Briar's fellow villagers, they ran off in his Void Ship. The Ship lost a door during these events, and Briar was bitten by a Vampyre. Though searching for a cure, they first stopped off at the Adromedi Jungle Observation Tower so that Smith could do some repairs to his ship. They then met a friend of Smith's who was a dimensional scientist at the Interdimensional Tavern, and, after a stop at the Interdimensional Bank so that the scientist could retrieve her “library card” from her vault, to the Interdimensional Library, where they discovered a potential cure: a prick from the fang of someone who'd already been bitten and cured of vampirism.
After acquiring such a fang in the 819th Universe (stealing it from the Cult of Acantha), Smith, Briar and the undercover Nowhere found refuge at Nowhere's house in her home universe. There, after neutralising her guests, Nowhere revealed her true identity and tried to extract paradox energy from Briar. She managed to get struck by the resulting beam of shifting energy instead of Nowhere, resulting in a paradoxical feedback that caused the machine to explode. Smith, still tied to an office chair, was blasted into a storage room to the side of the laboratory. When he woke up, he was attacked by Sentis, one of the vengeful members of the Cult of Acantha; they briefly fought before Sentis overpowered him and went to meet Lainya Vantrik. However, Briar managed to defeat Acantha herself, and Sentis fled with Rubus. With Smith and Briar both safe and sound, they headed off in the Void Ship, hopefully to a more relaxing adventure. (PROSE: Century Smith and the Time Terror)
Further adventures with Briar
In December 2021, Prime Universe time, while trying to enjoy a vacation, Smith and Briar became embroiled in the conflict between multiple species and factions of cyborgs competing for the right to be dubbed Supreme Cyborg by Cybele. They ran into them at the Multiversal Waffle House, the Interdimensional Gift Shop and even the “Gnome Place”, which they only visited by accident in the first place. Realising the cyborgs were a threat wherever they went, they tried to beat one group of them to their apparent destination, the Frost King's Realm. Arriving before the cyborgs' ship landed, they borrowed a striberu-pulled sleigh and headed for the village. On the way, they met CS-NA, whom Smith recognised as a Subcinctan robot, the first human CS-NA had ever encountered who understood his Subcinctan Audial Code.
Arriving in the village, they witnessed the arrival of the Mecharons; showing himself to make a stand, Smith was shot by one of their energy weapons, although it proved ill-adapted to human biology, only knocking him back and making him taste gingerbread. Scrambling to hide, Smith and Briar tried to evade capture by the Mecharon squad but were eventually caught, with the Mecharon commander ordering them converted into Mecharons themselves. However, CS-NA managed to force all the Mecharons to go into hibernation mode and retreat to their ships by hacking into their own comms frequencies, saving the two humans. Smith ruled that now that the village was saved and the Mecharons they'd been chasing were defeated, he and Briar could move on with their holiday fun; he offered CS-NA the chance to join them, but CS-NA, being on a wider mission of his own, declined.
The two met up with Lord Nachtos once again, and told him about the Mecharons, much to his amusement. However, even as they received an invitation from CS-NA to join him in the Cupid Homeworld for the Christmas party he had organised, they found that Smith's earlier optimism had been misplaced, as they ended up having to fight Detraxxi in the skies of Tetrayon-Twelve. Smith and Briar instead sent Nachtos to the Homeworld with their recommendation. (PROSE: The Winter Quests)
Behind the scenes
Notes & references
- ↑ First appearance in directly Jenny Everywhere-related media; actual debut was in 2020's Stranded at Memory's End.