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“Mandragora's Great Experiment” was the name given by Dactylopius-177 to Mandragora-257's scheme to resurrect the seven dormant Wellsians he had unearthed from below the Morningstar 1 base. With tensions between Governor-105's loyalists and the rebels reaching a boiling point, and the Wellsians turning out to have their own agenda, the Experiment ultimately resulted in the escape of five Wellsians into the Multiverse, the destruction of the base, and the apparent death of Mandragora himself. (PROSE: The Resurrection of the Wellsians) As such, it was also referred to as “the destruction of Morningstar 1” in one Incident Report. (PROSE: Plagiarism of the SavageMen) The surviving Wellsians, for their part, remembered it as simply the “incident at Morningstar 1”. (PROSE: The Frost King's Treasure)
History
Origins
The Wellsians of the 97th Cosmos nearly went extinct in 1897 when their attempt to invade the Earth was ended by an Earth disease which ravaged their ranks. A few escaped in a Tripod modified for space travel, which found its way to Venus, where it crashed. (VIDEO: The Wellsians, PROSE: The Resurrection of the Wellsians) The seven Wellsians who survived the crash went into hibernation while their craft became buried under many feet of Venusian sand. Eventually, nearly a century later, a base called Morningstar 1 was built by the Crew of the Copper-Colored Cupids over the exact spot of the crash. The Wellsians, in their sleep, telepathically felt the new presences, but did not wake yet. Over time, Governor-105 grew overconfident and tyrannical, beginning to send unauthorised missions to the 97th Cosmos's Earth and ignoring requests for reports from the Cupid Parliament. (PROSE: The Resurrection of the Wellsians)
Conceiving the Great Experiment
Having unearthed the Tripod by accident while trying to dig up a new pool, Mandragora-257, who had been banished to Morningstar after one of his experiments went wrong in the Homeworld, engaged in a “Great Experiment” to revive the intact, but hibernating Wellsians he had extracted from the wreckage. He promised the Governor that the resurrected aliens, who would be able to rebuild their Heat Rays, would allow him to rebel against the Crew once and for all, conquer the Earth, and use it as a launching point for an all-out campaign across the Multiverse. (PROSE: The Resurrection of the Wellsians)
Bloody conclusion
However, the Wellsians were playing the Cupids for their own ends. After finding that the Governor had locked the three Fog Ships kept on retainer in the base, they sent a psychic distress call to the Cupid Homeworld to lure a new vehicle: the Department of Problem-Solving's Ship. The Problem-Solvers uncovered Mandragora's plans, but were unable to stop things from violently coming to a head, with one Wellsian killing Governor-105 point-blank and the other trying to shoot Mandragora. Because Mandragora was carrying an explosive chemical on his person at the time, this caused an explosion which destroyed the base, killing that Wellsian and one other, as well as discorporating Mandragora. The other Cupids were unharmed, but soon discovered that the five remaining Wellsians had long since taken advantage of the distraction to make their escape. (PROSE: The Resurrection of the Wellsians)
Aftermath
When reports from Colony World #2 that the Wellsians had returned reached the Cupid Homeworld, the Cupid Parliament made an official statement to the Crew, claiming that it was “nothing to worry about”. However, other parties within the Crew decided to republicise the video Fact File to prepare Cupids for the potential threat. (PROSE: The Wellsians) The event was recorded threefold in the Book of Evil, which had entries for the Wellsians, Mandragora-257 and Governor-105. (PROSE: The Book of Evil)
After the surviving Morningstar-1 Cupids made their way back to the Cupid Homeworld, they were “reintegrated in normal Cupid society”, being scattered around various Departments of the Cupid Intelligence Institute. This included Dactylopius-177 joining the Department of Linguistics and Paintbrush-122 being reassigned to the Department of Entertainment to work on concept art for The Rainbow Adventures, which gave rise to the Skirmish at the Cupid Theatre some time later. (PROSE: Plagiarism of the SavageMen)
After some wandering in the Multiverse, the five escaped Wellsians founding the New Wellsian Empire in Dimension Epsilon Five. (PROSE: The Frost King's Treasure, The Time of the Toymaker) Sellane ag-Narra erected a memorial to the two Wellsians who had died during the incident, Mizrax ag-Ustis and Retsha sog-Wampyr, who were remembered as “the Lost Ones”. (PROSE: The Frost King's Treasure)