Morningstar 1
Morningstar 1, or sometimes the Morningstar 1 Base, was a base of the Crew of the Copper-Colored Cupids, established on the planet Venus in the 97th Cosmos.
History
Morningstar 1 was the most notable of the few bases outside the Cupid Homeworld that the Crew of the Copper-Colored Cupids allowed themselves to operate. (PROSE: The Crew of the Copper-Colored Cupids) It was highly isolated, the 97th Cosmos's Venus being a “barren planet”. (COMIC: All That Sparkles Is Not Concrete) It was built “nearly a century” after the 1897 invasion, with the Council of Frogs agreeing to turn a blind eye to the project on the grounds that the planet was uninhabited and the Cupids had promised to keep out of the local Earth. The Cupids had apparently decided to build a base on Venus purely for the symbolic value, being worshippers of the goddess of the same name. (PROSE: The Resurrection of the Wellsians)
By the 2010s, the base was overseen by Governor-105 who ruled it as a listless dictator, and was also home to mad alchemist Mandragora-257, (COMIC: All That Sparkles Is Not Concrete) who had been “exiled” there following his dismissal from the Department of Alchemy after a reckless experiment he set up caused the deaths of several Cupids. (PROSE: The Resurrection of the Wellsians) He developed the Pure Elixir while living at Morningstar 1, but, after Governor pointed out how useless money was to Cupids, particularly ones in their circumstances, found no other use for it than to rebuild the physical base to have walls made of gold. (COMIC: All That Sparkles Is Not Concrete)
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. Only his guards (five Mark IVs including Goliath-329, and one Mark XI) remained loyal to him, while the others organised an underground rebel movement, but because they had no weapon unlike the Governor's loyalists, they had no hope of actually overthrowing him.
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.
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)
Pythagoras-858 subsequently regretted his failure to stop both Mandragora-257 and the Wellsians from escaping from Morningstar. (PROSE: The Grand Multiverse Hotel)
