Salamandyr
The Salamandyrs were a species of mutant salamanders with dimension-travelling capabilities, based in the Salamandyr Dimension. They were the long-standing nemeses of the Order of the Automata.
Nature
The Salamandyrs' biology was unstable, such that they would abruptly transform back into ordinary, small four-legged salamanders if any lavender made contact with their bodies, even in trace amounts. (PROSE: Peace and Quiet) A number of unlikely substances had the same effect if brought into more direct contact with a Salamandy's body, including “eggs, cinnamon, eucalyptus trees, soil from the Amazon rainforest, alum, demesmaekerite, toast crumbs (but not bread crumbs or, indeed, full slices of toast)”, and “lemon oil”. (PROSE: The Salamandyrs and the Automata)
History
The first Salamandyrs were created in the late 1950s in the Prime Universe by Professor Scarper by exposing a dozen or so wild salamanders he had personally captured to a mutagen intended to transform them into anthropomorphic creatures loyal to the First Horde. They were meant to be a proof-of-concept, but he rushed the project too much, resulting in the Salamandyrs' long list of genetic weaknesses. Writing them off as a failure, Scarper locked them in a cage in his laboratory until his robot assistant rebelled against him and helped them escape along with himself.
Having built a crude Void Ship, the robot then took them to the Interdimensional Tavern, where the Salamandyrs insisted on stealing better ships from the parking lot instead of trying to get by honestly; when the robot objected, they simply forced him to come along. After finding a swampy dimension to call their own, they began mistreating him in much the same way as Scarper had done, to the point that he stole one of the ships back and left them. While he went on to found the Order of the Automata, the Salamandyrs spent a while enjoying their new home before their self-appointed Emperor decided to create an Imperial Salamandyr Army and use their fleet of Void Ships to loot, and occasionally conquer, other dimensions.
Soon enough, Automatia, which was home to the Order of the Automata that the robot had founded, came within their sights, leading to the First Great Salamandyr War. (PROSE: The Salamandyrs and the Automata) As the War seemed hopeless, the Ancient One declared that he had a “secret plan”, and also that should he be killed, he had discovered a way to come back to life in the Order's hour of greatest need. The former part was a lie meant to boost morale, though the latter actually wasn't, but the Order never got the chance to find out as the Ancient One was destroyed in a surprise attack, only for the tide to then turn and the Automata to triumph against the Salamandyrs on their own powers. (PROSE: Peace and Quiet)
At some point, a Salamandyr was captured by Darius for the Drove of the Database-Compiling Dromedaries among his various Scarper-mutant specimens. Though “quite rude”, the Salamandyr told him about the Order of the Automata. Years later, after he became stranded in the mountains of Manik and attempted to mail invitations to all his greatest foes, Darius considered sending one to the Salamandyrs, but he had no idea what their address was, and he thus had to settle for the Order of the Automata alone. (PROSE: The Frost King's Treasure) later,
Over the following decades, with no other threats forthcoming, they slowly “decommissioned all of [their] battling equipment and military bases and turned them into shopping malls and more robots and the like”. This left them basically defenceless when the Salamandyrs returned in 2019, with the Salamandyr War Fleet invading Automatia itself without warning, headed by the Salamandyr Emperor's Void Ship. Remembering the Ancient One's prophecy, the Automata waited around a while, but as the number of captured robots grew, they realised no help was coming, and the Captain gathered all the robots he could aboard the Order's single great Void Ship and headed out into the Void.
There, while hovering above the Interdimensional Tavern, they found Marksmanship-522, who they decided must be the reincarnated Ancient One. Taking him to Automatia, they beamed him onto the Emperor's ship despite his protests. However, by coincidence, Marksmanship ended up discovering the Salamandyrs' great weakness to lavender, and after the Emperor's Ship automatically teleported back to the Salamandyr Dimension, Marksmanship cowed the Head Military Strategist into ordering the rest of the Fleet to fall back in turn. Many of the Salamandyrs were happy with this, much preferring the Salamandyr Dimension to the dry rustbucket that was Automatia.
One of hte shrunken Salamandyrs, however, stowed away on Marksmanship's vessel and back to the Cupid Homeworld. (PROSE: Peace and Quiet) Later that year, while Bibliophile-962 was trying to organise a Christmas party in the Department of Documentation's break room, “a small salamander yelling something about getting ‘revenge on all robots’” was one of the individuals who hindered Larrikin-1029's journey across the Mainland Cloud as he transported a Christmas pudding from the Department of Baked Goods' building back to the break room. (PROSE: Larrikin and the Christmas Pudding)
