The painted warriors, (PROSE: Cobweb and Ivory) Painted Warriors, (PROSE: White Canvas) or men of stone, (PROSE: Christmas on a Rational Planet, Cobweb and Ivory) were a race of living painted statues created alongside humanity by the "original" mammoths of the time before time. They worshipped Cernunnos, the Enemy. (PROSE: Cobweb and Ivory)
History[[edit] | [edit source]]
In the time before time[[edit] | [edit source]]
As the Carnival Queen showed to Chris Cwej in a vision of the time before time, the men of stone were originally the caretakers of enchanted gardens in the mammoths' city. They were made incompatible with reality following the Time Lords' anchoring of the thread, (PROSE: Christmas on a Rational Planet) but some survived in an alter-time remnant of the Mammoth city. In their new state, the warriors were only able to move when not being observed. (PROSE: Cobweb and Ivory)
During the War in Heaven[[edit] | [edit source]]
Avus encountered some of the painted warriors when he journeyed into their alter-time realm and unwittingly facilitated Cernunnos's return to the universe, which initiated the War in Heaven. (PROSE: Cobweb and Ivory)
Subsequently, the revived Original Mammoths who based themselves in the alter-time realm were able to use a great population of painted warriors as agents in the wider cosmos. As part of her masterplan to highjack the power of the 10,000 Dawns and use it to overwrite the war, Auteur and the cultists she'd allied with created a number of small tears between her universe and the Dawns, then tricked the mammoths into believing that the inhabitants of the 10,000 Dawns could be their undoing. On the orders of the mammoth Taranis, a swarm of Painted Warriors thus invaded the 10,000 Dawns and took all their inhabitants out of time, beginning with the Firmament and soon followed by Dawn's leadership, then the general population.
The Painted Warriors also stole every copy of The Book of the Enemy which existed within the Dawns in order to cover their tracks, as one chapter, entitled Cobweb and Ivory, revealed their allegiance. However, Graelyn Scythes, Archimedes Von Ahnerabe and Lady Aesculapius, with the help of Coloth and of "the Emissary" (really Auteur in disguise), were able to find a copy of the book in the Plume Coteries' Library, and, from there, travel to the alter-time realm, where the Emissary revealed her true identity then stole the gauntlet and used it to turn the Painted Warriors into fiction, reducing them to paintings on the walls of Taranis's chamber in the mammoth city. (PROSE: White Canvas)
Compassion enlisted a legion of moving Terracotta warriors to influence the discovery of the jade casket. During initial surveys of the Great White Pyramid, when the warriors were "sleeping", they were still able to move when unobserved and chased Mao Lie Wei as he explored the tomb's dark corridors. The stone warriors were later woken when exposed to Octavia Sutherland's witchblood, becoming able to move at will. They killed William Grieves and saved the life of Liu Hui Ying. (PROSE: Warring States)