Chapter Text

The many sects and cults of the Imagiverse tell of many artifacts, hidden under moss and stone, or within sunken cities long forgotten, or floating within the deep gulfs of space. The Hands, a plentiful if seclusive species of druids, dedicate themselves to the Maker, and, to that extent, those artifacts which, by their association with the Creator of the Imagiverse, hold great power. Within hidden and time-worn tomes, they tell of objects that formed from the Maker’s restless dreaming, non-Euclidean oddities which commune with hidden but powerful energies.

One artifact of note is the Maker’s Eye, a perfect sphere now known to be comprised entirely of Narrativium, the element of which stories are made. Few people outside the sect of the Hands know of the Eye, consisting purely of Jonathan C. Skelecoot, Governor of the Underworld city Old Albion and terrier of knowledge, and those he tells its tale to.

The Hands say that, at a time of cosmic strife, the Maker’s Eye will Open, “and the sleeping God will witness, and change, those tales that inhabit the worlds of His children”.

As a matter of fact, in some offshoots of what is known as the Alpha timeline, this has already happened. In one, for instance, the S.S Victoria, piloted by John Skelecoot and crewed by the Chosen Few and a group of other unnoteworthy individuals, came across the Maker’s Eye, in an arid world inhabited by the Technicoloured Elves of Zol’hak and their temple guarded by the plasma ball-headed being known as Cognitix, and it made their journey near-terminally interesting indeed. It would seem that the Opening of the Eye, across the supposedly infinite expanse of time, is, as they say, a universal constant.

In the Alpha timeline, it didn’t even need to be brought into the Centre. It simply appeared, flying through space from an indeterminate location within the Edge, trailing a blue mist behind it. Where it landed, strange occurrences took place, following hidden laws forgotten by the modern age, ranging from peculiar but innocent to catastrophic and deadly.

This is the tale of the first world to be visited.