Dandy-432
Dandy-432 was an elegantly-dressed Mark V Clockwork Cherub, one of the ragtag members of the Blue Feather taskforce.
Description
Physical appearance
Dandy-432 tried to appear elegant, hence his name, notably always carrying an umbrella even though it hardly ever rained in the Cupid Homeworld. (PROSE: Acquaintanceship-982 and the Missing Mail Mystery) He sometimes wore top hats. (PROSE: Magic Trick)
Personality
Dandy spoke in a “posh, refined, and entirely unplaceable accent”. He behaved in a somewhat pompous manner, in an attempt to look stylish, but this also led him to cultivate unfailing good manners. (PROSE: Acquaintanceship-982 and the Missing Mail Mystery)
Biography
Early days of the Blue Feather
The Blue Feather were originally housed in a derelict warehouse located on the opposite side of the Mainland Cloud, where Acquaintanceship had to use an upside-down crate as a desk. They weren't given missions of any importance, and indeed, it could be months in-between the missions they did get, disappointing as they were. For example, they once went months without any assignments at all after “the Great Grape Jelly Stain Catastrophe”, their grandiloquent name for the occasion upon which Marmalade-624 spilled grape jelly on his tablecloth and hired the Blue Feather to wash it off. (PROSE: Acquaintanceship-982 and the Missing Mail Mystery)
On April 29th, 2019, (PROSE: The Faction of the Fooling Fish) they were hired by Philatel-426 for an unusually significant operation: locating a bag of mail that had gone missing from the Cupid Post Office. They unsuccessfully interviewed a number of “suspects” — otherwise known as people who happened to be glimpsed at some level of proximity to the Post Office on the day of the crime — but at the last minute, Acquaintanceship realised the truth and actually solved the mystery: Philatel had himself stolen the mailbag, which contained blueprints meant to be transmitted from the Department of Architecture to the Department of Construction so that the latter could begin work on a new giant warehouse. The construction would have involved the destruction of the Post Office's west wing, which was officially vacant, but which Philatel secretly used to store his stamp collection. Rather than turn him in to the Department of Discipline, the Blue Feather blackmailed him into letting them use the selfsame west wing as a new HQ, while convincing the Department of Construction to build their new warehouse on their old site instead.
Just as they were getting settled in, Colonel-028 rushed into their new office with a new mystery to investigate: the theft of a pie from his windowsill. (PROSE: Acquaintanceship-982 and the Missing Mail Mystery) Having badgered badgered the Cupid Parliament into authorising an official investigation, he set the Blue Feather on the task. Following a trail of pie-crumbs, the Blue Feather found a Rift leading to the Faction of the Fooling Fish's headquarters in the Prime Universe, where they briefly confronted the Faction for the first time. After fleeing back through the Rift, they got the Department of Rifts to close it. After the Rifts reopened and had to be closed a second time after a second Fooling Fish incursion, the Blue Feather were assigned to guarding the location of the Rift, in case it opened again. (PROSE: The Faction of the Fooling Fish)
Further Blue Feather missions
Some time later, Acquaintanceship excitedly gathered the Blue Feather to tell them about their new mission (locating Investigation-464's misplaced coat). When the Cupid claiming to be Pessimist expressed enthusiasm at the prospect, Acquaintanceship finally realised that it was not Pessimist-242 but a cheap duplicate, and that the real article had gone missing — much to the weariness of Dandy, who had noticed much earlier but failed to convince the others of this fact. With the help of Pessimist's Fog Ship, they realised that he had been taken prisoner by the Drove of the Database-Compiling Dromedaries on the Prime Earth. Although the Ship briefly disappeared and stranded them in the Prime Universe, having been commandeered by Dromedary Head Assistant Researcher Darius, it returned almost immediately, having taken care of Darius with the help of Lord Thymon. The Blue Feather returned to the Homeworld and set forth in search of the missing coat. (PROSE: Pessimist and the Dromedaries)
Dandy and Larrikin were guarding the Rift, and rather bored at the lack of activity, when it briefly open again — allowing through not the prank-loving Fish, but a benign old man who was trying to find his way back to his home universe. The two Cupids were surprised to hear that he'd recently met Tracker-764, a legendary Cupid who hadn't been seen in the Homeworld in years. They agreed to help him, only too happy to have a good excuse to leave their post, and the three departed aboard Pessimist's Fog Ship, intent on taking the old man to the Prime Universe and a selection of Prime-adjacent ones to attempt to narrow down his world of origin. (PROSE: The Mad Cupid of the Euclidean Plane)
When the Cupid Suggestion Box was put up by the Copper-Colored Council of Elders, Dandy left a note suggesting that they invite a tailor, clothing designer, haberdasher and hatmaker to the Homeworld, noting that the rest of the Crew's ignorance on this point was getting silly, with Dandy having recently had to teach Pessimist-242 what a top hat was to stop him from eating soup out of one. However, his suggestion was rejected by the Council, who thought it frivolous and didn't want to add to the number of non-Cupids living in the Homeworld. (PROSE: The Cupid Suggestion Box)
After Larrikin-1029 suggested to Madame Tarsa that she create plush toy versions of Lord Thymon, (PROSE: The Toymaker's Labyrinth) Dandy had to endure Larrikin endlessly bragging about his idea. When large shipments of Thymon Plushies started showing up in the Cupid Homeworld with no known explanation, Dandy shared his theory that Larrikin was the one ordering them in Issue 1034 of The Cupid Courier. (PROSE: Conspiracy-1263 Publicly Accuses the Gang of the Green Gorillas)
During his adventure in Oz, Acquaintanceship-982 mused that Tik-Tok's attire reminded him of Dandy's. (PROSE: The Crew of the Copper-Colored Cupids in Oz)
On Halloween 2019, Dandy suggested that the Blue Feather engage in a costume contest. Dandy dressed as Salvador Dalí, about whom he'd heard from an art museum curator he'd once romanticised. However, he came to regret his suggestion as the others' contributions to the contest were severely lacking at best, and nonexistent at worst, being particularly aggravated by Larrikin-1029's oblivious assertion that his “space robot costume” (a cardboard box with a face scribbled on it) was the clear winner. (PROSE: The Ghosts and the Machine)
Quest for the Frost King's treasure
In December 2019, when Celebration-665 organised the Festival of Giving, Dandy attempted to form the Blue Feather into a caroling quartet. However, he could not find Larrikin-1029, (PROSE: The Frost King's Treasure) who was spreading Christmas cheer in the Euclidean Plane in his own mischievous way, (COMIC: Geometrons' Holiday) and Pessimist proved less than enthused by the suggestion, immediately foisting his sheet music onto a guileless Pseudo-Pessimist before attempting to sneak out. Before Dandy could try and find Acquaintanceship-982, he was side-tracked by receiving an invitation to the Frost King's Realm sent by a mysterious figure, and ended up dragging Pessimist off to Manik in a Fog Ship in this quest to find “the Frost King's treasure”.
Landing on a snowy ridge, the two Cupids deduced that the treasure must be located in the closest mountain and began climbing it despite Pessimist's remonstrations. Eventually, they found themselves on a ledge near the top of the mountain where they bumped into several other groups who'd received identical invitations — including the Five Surviving Wellsians, then the Interdimensional Tavern waiters Tpxszum and Frederick (plus Alistair Neezley), then 21-419 with the Retconning Crocodiles in pursuit, and finally Madame Tarsa. A fight quickly broke out before they all began to chaotically race the remaining distance to the crater-like basin at the top of the mountain. There, they found that the invitations had been sent as a lure by Darius, who wanted revenge on all of them for varyingly-arbitrary reasons.
The insane dromedary had not actually planned out any coherent means of subduing all his enemies once he'd lured them, however, and they easily overpowered him. After Dandy found that the treasure actually existed, being buried under the great ice throne which Darius had taken for himself, there was a brief risk of another brawl, but Pessimist, to everyone's surprise, stepped up and delivered a moving speech in favour of peace and goodwill which convinced everyone to agree to a truce and to divide the plentiful treasure equally. The Cupids thus got to pick their own share of the bounty, with Dandy extracting from it “a finely-woven outfit clearly meant for royalty” but also a pair of golden ear-muffs which he gifted to Pessimist so that he could use them to “block out the sound of other people's voices”. (PROSE: The Frost King's Treasure)
Back in the Homeworld, he resumed trying to put together flamboyant Christmas festivities, and roped Foreman-964 into flying with him to the Prime Universe aboard Dandy-432's Fog Ship in order to bring back an Earth Christmas tree. They found a tree plantation connected to a farm, which Dandy guilessly interpreted as a “Christmas tree forest”; it was only after getting Foreman to cut a tree (of suitable size to fit in Dandy-432's house), and dragging it halfway to the Ship, that the Cupids bumped into the owner of the premises and realised they were, in fact, committing theft. This did not deter them, however, and they made off with the tree faster than the farmer could follow. (PROSE: Dandy and the Christmas Tree)
Late in the afternoon of December 24th, he swung by Philatel-426's office to invite him to the Christmas party he was putting together, but was initially rebuffed. In the night, Philatel was visited by the Three Spirits and given a Christmas Carol-style experience, with Dandy in the role of Scrooge's nephew Fred; consequently, the Ghost of Christmas Present gave him a vision of the party going on without him. There, he witnessed Dandy recounting his failed attempt to invite Philatel to the other Blue Feather operatives, then playing a guessing-game in which “Dandy thought of something and the others had to figure it out, through only yes-or-no questions” — with the answer to “a rather temperamental machine. A most disagreeable sort of machine, which one might not want to have in their home” being Philatel himself. After waking up, however, Philatel found the dinner party only just beginning, and joined it after all, being warmly welcomed by a startled Dandy. (PROSE: A Copper-Colored Christmas Carol)
Behind the scenes
Dandy-432 is a secondary recurring character in The Crew of the Copper-Colored Cupids.
