» Fri May 04, 2012 2:06 pm
Page 3
Panel 1 - An Imperial Mananaut, whose suit is differentiated from others, signifying perhaps a higher rank, holds a mangifying glass up to one of the numerable eyelets in his helmet, eyeing the landing of the mothship.
Imperial Mananaut: Glass confirms it’s the Professor, Admiral. His megalomoth is following proper lunar size dilations. Safe landing expected.
PROFESSOR NUMINATUS [BALLOON]: Ah, good to see you, too, Jauffre. This must be something serious if they’ve brought you moonside, old boy.
Imperial Mananaut Jauffre: It's bad. You’ve no idea.
Panel 2 - Professor Numinatus, inside Cousin’s main control room, seated, backlit so we have yet to see his face, but it’s obvious that he’s wearing a naval cap of some kind. Jauffre, the Admiral, the Morbad, as well as other Imperial servants appear on multiple gel-screens.
Cousin: Doing ever so hard to secure us a safe landing.
Professor Numinatus: Forgive them their sins, love. When you pout, the whole cockpit gets itchy.
Professor Numinatus: And why am I reading three billion life forms nearby? Are we phased correctly?
Panel 3 - Back inside the magical-military installation, on the Admiral and his clerk. This small panel overlaps the upper left corner of the next
Admiral: Your phase is fine, Professor, and those readings are correct. Certain precautions had to be taken this morning.
Clerk: They shouldn’t have the ability to detect them. Em. Em.
Admiral: Oh, do and go get yourself to the reset chambers.
Panel 4 - Large panel, above the Lunar Colony. Cousin has landed. A southern cargo area is littered with countless silver spheres, penned-in and guarded by juggernauts of the Imperial Legion.
PROFESSOR NUMINATUS [BALLOON]: Oh my. Those spheres are... each one is a contingency chrysalis!
ADMIRAL [BALLOON]: Yes, it was a full evacuation, Professor.
Panel 5 - On one of the silver spheres: each is filled with countless humanoid shapes. This small panel overlaps the lower right corner of the one above.
COUSIN: They’ve gone insane, Amiel.
PROFESSOR NUMINATUS [BALLOON]: Never call me that on an open channel when we’re working.
Page 4
Panel 1 - As Page 3, Panel 2, but Professor Numinatus has risen, preparing to disembark. Still backlit, the fact that he’s wearing a cape becomes obvious.
Professor Numinatus: But you’re right, Cousin.
Professor Numinatus: A single contingency chrysalis can, at best, hold four thousand souls synchubating inside itself for fifteen hours before everyone inside begins to bleed their memories together. Then they all mega-ghost.
Panel 2 - Behind the Professor as he walks down a corridor of the mothship, running a finger down one of its stone-and-flesh walls.
Professor Numinatus: A swirl-thought monster outside of the regulated planar wheels, driven mad by conflicting desires...
Cousin: You’re tickling me.
Professor Numinatus: ...I know. Conflicting ideas of escape...
Cousin: Harder.
Professor Numinatus: ...as you wish. Conflicting ideas of who and where and when...
Professor Numinatus: ...and all of it draqed in that singular fear of I ARE ALL WE.
Panel 3 - Behind the Professor as he walks down another corridor of the mothship, this one lined with weapons, paintings, hosiery, masks and capes and ward-staves, porcelain idols and floating baubles, magical apparati of unguessed function.
Professor Numinatus: Remember what happened at the Isle of Artaeum?
Cousin: Which time? It kept vanishing.
Professor Numinatus: The time we saved it, Cousin. It doesn’t do that anymore.
Panel 4 - Behind the Professor as he walks up to an airlock. It’s opening on his approach, the lunar light flooding the hall.
Cousin: I don’t remember that at all, love. Have you been storing secrets in your second brain again?
Professor Numinatus: Heavens no, that one belongs to you. My third.
Professor Numinatus: But the point remains, Artaeum was caught in a Belharzian synchro-null blossom-loop by just one broken contingency chrysalis.
Professor Numinatus: So I really have to ask...
Page 5
Panel 1 - Large near-splash, the Professor wearing his most beautiful velvet and filigree uniform as First Sea Lord of the His Majesty’s New Void Navy, striding down the exit ramp to be met by Jauffre and other assembled Imperial Mananauts.
Above them all is Tamriel, blue and oceanic, but with no continents at all.
Professor Numinatus: ...what were you lot thinking?!?
COUSIN: Cousin, look up.
Professor Numinatus: Three billion citizens! Caught in an unstable enchantment that we can barely understand!
Imperial Mananaut: She’s right, sir. If you would kindly raise your gaze and--
Professor Numinatus: We have the spare continent for these kinds of evacuations!
Panel 2 - On Jauffre, a small inset panel.
Imperial Mananaut Jauffre: No we don’t, Professor. Told you it was bad. All landmasses on Mundus have, well, absconded. They’re simply not there anymore.
Panel 3 - On Professor Numinatus, looking up, frowning.
Professor Numinatus: Martin’s balls, they’ve gone on strike again.