Crew of the Copper-Colored Cupids
The Crew of the Copper-Colored Cupids, known to the Geometrons as “the Enemy”, 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 Ships 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. (PROSE: Lord Thymon and the Department of Problem-Solving, etc.)
There used to be a Department of Conspiracy Theories (PROSE: The Case Against Conspiracy, Of Romeos and Juliets) 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 withdrew 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) The instructions she left on how to operate the Clockwork Sun and the Clockwork Moon were “exceedingly unclear” and the latter was soon misplaced altogether, meaning the Cupid Homeworld wound up without a real day-night cycle, contrary to her original plans. (PROSE: Family Business)
At some point, the Euclidean Plane was discovered by a group of Cupids who'd pressed the “random destination” button of their Fog Ship. (PROSE: The Euclidean Plane) Orbicularia Bubble later reminisced about these “first five Cupids”, and how, “tripping over themselves in the unfamiliarly-dimensional environment, they had smiled awkward smiles, tasted the food the locals had offered them, watched television with them”, before they'd remembered their mission and started romanticising people. (PROSE: Magic Trick) 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)
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.
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)
The Great Arrow Crisis was an event midway in the Crew's history caused by the sudden rise in the price of the wood the Cupids used to fashion their Cupid Arrows. Scarlet Wings investigators quickly determined that it was the fault of the Mélange of the Mauve Muskrat, a Strangely-Colored Secret Society they had not previously encountered, who had, under the guise of “MuskCo”, been accumulating business resources in order to further their quest for Atlantis. They had also purchased other factories which sold the chemicals the Gang of the Green Gorilla used to power their brainwashing ray.
After the Crew's supply of Arrows ran out, a group of Scarlet Wings operatives travelled to Earth to investigate, but had to flee the Muskrats' headquarters when they realised they were dealing with another Strangely-Colored Secret Society. Back in the Homeworld, the Scarlet Wings reported to the Cupid Parliament who ultimately ordered them to attack the Muskrats straight-on. When the Cupids returned to the Muskrats' HQ, they found it already under attack by the Green Gorillas, and stayed out of the fight until the stronger and more numerous Gorillas had won the fight, getting the Muskrats to sign ownership of the chemical plants over to them. The Scarlet Wings then romanticised a few of the Gorillas by lobbing bottles of Love Potion at them, and got the Gorillas to further intimidate the Muskrats into signing the lumber mill over to the Cupids.
Subsequently, though they made no further attempts to directly gum up the Cupids' operations, they took every chance to inconvenience them. The Muskrats, and the Crisis, were documented by the Cupids in their archives as Cupid Fact File #192. (PROSE: The Mélange of the Mauve Muskrat)
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, the Scarlet Wings, was dispatched 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)
“Nearly a century” after the failed 1897 Wellsian invasion of Earth in the 97th Cosmos, the Crew set up a base called Morningstar 1 on the planet Venus of that universe, seemingly purely because they felt that they ought to have a base on some version of the planet named after their goddess, rather than because there was a particular strategic advantage to it. Indeed, the Council of Frogs only authorised this project on the grounds that this version of Venus was uninhabited, and with a promise from the Cupids that they wouldn't try to attack the nearby Earth. As a result, the base became a dumping-ground for Cupids the Crew wanted banished from the primary Homeworld, including several unshrunken Mark IVs and the disgraced alchemist Mandragora-257, who had caused the deaths of several Cupids in a failed experiment. (PROSE: The Resurrection of the Wellsians)
2010s
At one point, a “mountain-sized” Mark XV prototype was created, but the whole idea had to be scraped after the prototype laid waste to an entire dimension, an event apparently witnessed by Cupid-002 in person. (PROSE: The Cupid Suggestion Box)
A “few years” prior to 2019, during a routine romanticisation mission on the Prime Earth, Discovery-664 coincidentally encountered members of the Drove of the Demesmaekerite-Dyed Discordias, villainous counterparts of the Crew of the Copper-Colored Cupids from another universe, who captured him and took him to their Homeland in the Discordia Dimension. Scarlet Wings investigators led by Amity-965 stumbled upon the empty Smog Ship of one of the Discordias, D123-Blackheart, and flew it to the Discordia Dimension, stranding Blackheart. There, they discovered the Drove's true nature, being brought before their Creator and leader Eris. After the Discordias threatened to have them all melted down, Amity sent a distress signal to the Cupid Parliament using his two-way communicator, and they were rescued by a battalion of Fog Ships led by Amadeo-378. The Drove, in turn, realised the Crew's nature as their equals and opposites, and elected not to fight them. Upon returning to the Cupid Homeworld, the Cupids immediately reported to the Department of Documentation. In subsequent years, the Cupids had a few more chance encounters with the Discordias, learning that their Hate Potion and the Cupids' Love Potion could cancel each other out completely in either direction. (PROSE: The Drove of the Demesmaekerite-Dyed Discordias)
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 romanticise 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)
Juliet soon proceeded to cause another stir when an attempt on her part to sneak out of a day's work caused the creation of over a thousand and five hundred duplicates of herself, the Sisters of Juliet, to come into existence. (PROSE: The Labors of Juliet) They briefly began causing chaos in the Homeworld until the Cupid Parliament made an emergency judgment that exiled the lot of them to Dimension 1579. (PROSE: Of Romeos and Juliets)
On April 29th 2019, the Crew had their first encounter with yet another Strangely-Colored Secret Society, the harmless but irritating Faction of the Fooling Fish, when a group of Fooling Fish made their way into the Cupid Homeworld through a Rift which had mysteriously appeared, linking the Homeworld to the Fish's headquarters. The Department of Rifts were unable to close the Rift in such a way that it could be relied upon to stay closed, leading to the Blue Feather taskforce being tasked with guarding the site just in case the Fish returned. (PROSE: The Faction of the Fooling Fish)
In the Morningstar 1 Base, tensions between Governor-105's tyrannical rule and the rest of the Crewmembers reached a boiling point on the occasion of the discovery of seven dormant Wellsians entombed beneath the base. Mandragora-257 set out to revive them, initiating “Mandragora's Great Experiment”. Heedless of Governor and rebels alike's hopes of using them as weapons to tip the balance of power, the Wellsians had their own agenda, involving the theft of a Fog Ship. Using their psychic abilities, they sent a telepathic S.O.S. to the Cupid Homeworld so that they would send the Department of Problem-Solving to help, aboard an unlocked Fog Ship. The Problem-Solvers gradually untangled the situation, but were too late to stop the resurrection of the Wellsians.
While five escaped and stole the Ship, two others participated in a three-way confrontation between the Problem-Solvers, the rebels, and the Governor's side. During this standoff, Mandragora double-crossed the Governor, ordering “his” Wellsian to kill him, but was in turn betrayed by the Wellsian as both aliens revealed that they had no true loyalty to any of the Cupids. They turned their weapons onto Mandragora, seemingly destroying him and causing an explosion which destroyed the two Wellsians as well as the base itself. In the aftermath, loyalists and rebels worked together to unlock the Governor's three Fog Ships to make their way back home. Pythagoras-858 berated himself for not having worked out the truth sooner, and also expressed a belief that Mandragora had survived in some shape or form, even if his body had been destroyed. (PROSE: The Resurrection of the Wellsians) When reports came in from “Colony World #2” that the Wellsians had returned, the Cupid Parliament made an official statement to the Crew, claiming that it was “nothing to worry about”. However, other parties within the Crew disagreed, and arranged to republicise the old video Fact File about the Wellsians. (PROSE: The Wellsians)
A little while later, Conspiracy-1263, the Prefect of the Department of Conspiracy Theories, made the headlines of The Cupid Courier Issue #1034 when he travelled to the Prime Earth to tell the Gang of the Green Gorilla, to their faces, that they were “a bunch of fakes in gorilla suits”. The Gorillas retaliated by capturing Conspiracy and leaving him tied up at a carnival on a rack of prizes. He was rescued by other Cupids and interviewed, with his observation that the Green Gorillas had been “rather displeased with the whole situation” being noted as a rare instance of a completely factual Conspiracy quote. (PROSE: Conspiracy-1263 Publicly Accuses the Gang of the Green Gorillas)
Acquaintanceship-982 was sent on a routine romanticisation mission to one universe's version of the Emerald City of Oz. He helped the Ozites foil the return of the Wicked Witch of the South Blinkie, but failed to meet his romanticisation target, and additionally lost his Fog Ship due to it having been affected by the Powder of Life during the adventure, and electing to stay behind in Oz alongside his bow and arrows, which had undergone the same transformation. As such, he returned to the Homeworld thanks to the power of Dorothy Gale's Magic Belt instead. He elected not to tell the full story to Penalty-534, who believed he had simply lost all these items through incompetence and instantly sent him on another, punitive assignment to Wonderland. (PROSE: The Crew of the Copper-Colored Cupids in Oz)
Meanwhile, adopting the title of “Grandmaster” and trying to conceal his identity with a black hood and robes, the frustrated Conquest-932 ended up founding the Triangular Society, with the intent of overthrowing the Cupid Prime and Cupid Parliament. Recruiting other malcontents such as Conspiracy-1263, he held the group's first meeting in a shed, and soon found his attempts to strike a serious, ominous tone thwarted by the fact that one of his new, hooded recruits was under the impression that this was some kind of Halloween party, and asked when they'd start bobbing for apples. (COMIC: A Slight Misunderstanding)
Some time later, while walking around the Cupid Homeworld, Pythagoras-858 spotted Conquest-932 sneaking around in his hooded black Triangular robes. Pythe stopped him on his authority as Prefect of the Department of Problem-Solving, reasoning that he certainly looked like a problem in the making. Conquest tried to claim that his robes were not an emblem of evil but merely a way to protect his identity, something Pythe instantly disproved by pointing out that with such a relatively low overall number of Cupids, everybody knew everybody else and Pythe was well aware that he was talking to Conquest. (COMIC: Suspicious)
Some type later, another Crocodile travelled to the Cupid Homeworld, presenting Pythagoras-858 with a contract allegedly signed by the Crew in the future which pledged allegiance to the Collective. The Crocodile argued that the Cupids had no choice but to sign it to avoid a paradox. Pythagoras dodged out of the situation by burning the contract with his pocket lighter, rendering the signing of it irrelevant as it would be destroyed before the Crocodiles could do anything with it. (COMIC: Time Loops & Treachery)
On a day off from the Blue Feather, Pessimist-242 was wandering the Mainland Cloud, annoyed at his own inability to find something tangible to be annoyed about, when he stumbled upon a mysterious magician's hat. He briefly encountered its ostensible owner, a magician who appeared as a faceless phantom, which Pessimist attributed to him being a careless dimensional traveller who had phased nearly, but not completely, into the Cupid Homeworld by accident. He tried to hand the Hat back to the magician, but the magician pretended not to hear him and vanished. Trying to put the Hat out of his sight, Pessimist attempted to bury it, but instead activated its magic as it began to spew out a veritable tidal wave of illusory white rabbits.
The mounting mass of rabbits soon reached the Cupid Post Office and then the Cupid Parliament, becoming such an unstoppable force that the Cupids made for their Fog Ships and escaped en masse to the Euclidean Plane, where the Copper-Colored Council of Elders asked the Geometron Pentagon for asylum. The Cupid Prime, for his part, had escaped to Hawaii in his personal Fog Ship alongside his entourage, but not before telling the Department of Problem-Solving to stay behind and solve the problem. Lord Thymon used his powers to hold off the tide long enough for the Prime-Solvers, and Thymon himself, to take refuge in an empty warehouse.
After three days, having concluded that only a Deus Ex Machina could save the Homeworld, Valerius-1497 told the others that they should summon Aphrodite herself to help. The plan worked, but before she used her powers to make the rabbits and hat vanish, the goddess took out her anger at being summoned without permission on Valerius, turning him into a (mechanical) parakeet. The Problem-Solvers elected not to tempt fate by asking Aphrodite to reverse the transformation, content to add returning Valerius to his natural form to their list of problems to be solved. Juliet located a Psychic Broadcasting Cone in the headquarters of the Department of Communication and used it to summon the rest of the Cupids back to the Homeworld. (PROSE: Magic Trick) These events were later dubbed “the Rabbit Invasion”. They caused further mayhem in the following days, with the Department of Haberdashery being inaccurately blamed for the Hat's existence by Colonel-028, and the Cupid Prime having failed to return to the Homeworld at the same time as the others (for the benign reason that he had extended his holiday in Florida, something which was subsequently discovered by the Department of Stage Magic when they tried to flee there for fear that they would be accused next). (PROSE: The Cupid Parliament Destroyed?)
On Halloween, Frankenstein-818's Spirit Realm Gateway, which he used every year to widen a spirit path into a portal into the Prime Universe's Spirit Realm, malfunctioned. His clueless attempt to repair it instead caused it to collapse into a Rift. The Great Ghost took his chance and led his legion out of the Realm through that portal, forcing the Cupids to evacuate using the Emergency Transport Button. Instead of staying in the Homeworld all day only to be inevitably pulled back to the Spirit Realm, however, the spirits stole a flotilla of Fog Ships and then moved on to other parts of the Multiverse. Deducing this, the Cupids returned to the Homeworld, where Frankenstein built a One-Way Forced Spirit Realm Gateway which, when activated, would send everything around it to the Spirit Realm.
However, before he could use it, Frankenstein was abducted by the spirits, who had briefly returned to the Homeworld for the occasion, and forced to build a Reverse Spirit Realm Gateway to replace the Rift, which the Department of Rifts had sealed. After a short mishap with the One-Way Gateway where Foreman-964, Pythagoras-858, Technophile-963, Igor-1612 and Philatel-426 were briefly transported to the Spirit Realm before being summoned back by Juliet-178 using the reverse switch of the One-Way Gateway, the Cupids managed to send most of the ghosts back to the Spirit Realm. When they tried to return through the Reverse Gateway, they were transformed into clockwork toys of which Madame Tarsa took possession. The Great Ghost, meanwhile, was separated from his host body and sent to parts unknown. (PROSE: The Ghosts and the Machine)
Around this time, the Crew of the Copper-Colored Cupids discovered the planet Triskadeckia in the Jynx Dimension and began sending romanticisation parties there. The first, made up of John-181 and Tom-176, wound up rescuing Pessimist-242, who'd been kidnapped a few weeks prior along with his Fog Ship, from the clutches of Triskadeckian mad scientist Doctor Curious. They also brought back Doctor Curious's Monster, a long-dead Mark I Cupid who had been reanimated by the scientist with a rejiggered, but benign, personality. Curious swore revenge on the Crew, though as he did not possess the coordinates to the Cupid Homeworld, the Cupids were not very concerned by this. (PROSE: The Companions of Doctor Curious)
On November 17th, Conquest-932 moved forward with the destruction of the Cupid Parliament, using a charge of dynamite to blow up the Cupid Parliament building, with the unexpected help of a usually-law-abiding member of Parliament. (COMIC: Professional Endorsement) No other members of Parliament were nearby, however, such that the attack caused no casualties: the Parliament had yet to resume regular sessions in the aftermath of the Rabbit Invasion. After the smoke cleared, the Council of Elders decided to commission Foreman-964's Department of Construction to build a new Parliament building, pleading with him that it not be a warehouse (something about which Foreman made no promises). (PROSE: The Cupid Parliament Destroyed?)
In December, with the Cupid Parliament having forbidden them from organising Christmas festivities (PROSE: The Frost King's Treasure) due to the threat represented by Santa Claus, (PROSE: Father Christmas) Celebration-665's Department of Festivities instead organised a non-denominational “Festival of Giving” slated to cover the whole month of December. The preparations included setting up a giant Advent Calendar on the Mainland Cloud. The Blue Feather were, for the most part, enthusiastic; (PROSE: The Frost King's Treasure) Dandy-432 roped Foreman-964 into acquiring a Christmas tree in the Prime Universe and bringing it back to the Homeworld to decorate Dandy-432's house, (PROSE: Dandy and the Christmas Tree) while Ally-1243 talked Pessimist-242 into accompanying him to a snowy field on the Prime Earth to enjoy various wintery activities, though of course, Ally did all the enjoying. (PROSE: Ally Builds a Snowman) Celebration's flagship activity, an attempt to get a caroling group started, became an unexpected success due to the intrusion of Lord Nachtos, a Christmas-themed interdimensional demon who had initially been intent on destroying the Homeworld, but changed his mind upon being invited to join the singing. (PROSE: The Copper-Colored Cupids go Caroling) Over the course of the night, the ghosts of several dead Cupids returned to the Homeworld, attempting to make contact; Mailbag-431 successfully manifested to Philatel-426, who went on to go through an entire Christmas Carol scenario with the Three Spirits. (PROSE: A Copper-Colored Christmas Carol)
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.
