Archimedes Von Ahnerabe
Archimedes Von Ahnerabe was a notable cyborg from the 10,000 Dawns who was good friends with Graelyn Scythes, and, like her, a one-time companion of Lady Aesculapius as well as an agent of Dawn. He had a solid metal head, with a single eye drawn on for artistic effect.
Biography[[edit] | [edit source]]
Origins[[edit] | [edit source]]
Archimedes was raised on a space-station in the middle of nowhere, whose leaders "lied to all the inhabitants and told them that the world outside didn't exist". (PROSE: Rachel Survived) It was called Ahnerabe Station. Before eventually finding his way to Earth, Archimedes spent a while as the last survivor on the Station, believing he would spent the rest of his life alone. (PROSE: Birthdays are Made for Memories)
Early adventures[[edit] | [edit source]]
Archimedes and Graelyn Scythes once went on a mission for Dawn to a moon chasing something and Archimedes was taken, leading Graelyn to rescue him from the past by infiltrating a World War II special operations mission. (PROSE: White Canvas)
Travels with Lady Aesculapius[[edit] | [edit source]]
Graelyn and Arch also travelled with Lady Aesculapius for a time (PROSE: White Canvas, Life After Death) in her Factory of Crystal. During this period, they once visited Rogeria City on the planet Mercury, where Graelyn bought a cheap Sherlock Holmes Halloween costume. When she eventually parted ways with Aesc, she left the costume behind in the Factory. (PROSE: Life After Death)
Meeting Rachel Edwards[[edit] | [edit source]]
On behalf of Dawn, Graelyn Scythes and Archimedes Von Ahnerabe were sent to follow the Arbiter of Knives to the Totality to prevent her from starting a war between the Firmament and the rulers of that universe. The Arbiter was trying to get the Book of Books, which was being held at the New York Public Library alongside a cache of books about the War from the 10,000 Dawns. By coincidence, the actual Rachel Edwards, who was a real being in this world instead of a fictional character, was one of the journalists doing a story about the Books, which were believed to be a rare find from the 18th century by the human authoritie. Thus, to disguise her presence, the Arbiter had bribed a member of the local cosmic authorities to overlook any strange events surrounding Rachel for the next few days.
She and Archimedes thus prevented Rachel from being abducted first by the Arbiter, then by the Strid, an alien species native to the war's universe who were trying to take advantage of the situation. After a few brief encounters, they finally decided to explain the situation to her, with Archimedes generating a holographic play entitled Why We Need This Book to get the facts across quickly. Eventually, events came to a head in the room in the Library where the books were being kept, with the Strid having taken the book before anyone and trying to auction it off between the three Dawns powers represented. Graelyn and Arch refused to negotiate with the Strid, merely demanding that they release the stash unilaterally. In the end, the action became moot when Rachel, inspired by Graelyn telling her how much she'd meant to her as a fictional character, managed to turn the situation to her advantage and peacefully recover the book. After sharing fond goodbyes with Rachel, the two visitors left the Totality again by throwing dust on a wall to create a glowing, temporary portal. (PROSE: Rachel Survived)
The gauntlet mission[[edit] | [edit source]]
When an Emissary from the Firmament-equivalents of the Totality visited Spiral to complain that an immensely valuable gauntlet had been stolen by a rogue Knight of Sky, Dawn leader Kinan Jans sent Graelyn and Archimedes Von Ahnerabe to track him down. Archimedes had previously been giving out candy and toy at a children's hospital, leading to him wearing a blue fez with Centro Children's Hospital Fun Gang written on it into battle.
The two found the Knight on Christmas Eve in Times Square, New York in one of the 10,000 Dawns' 2460. The Square, they soon noticed, was mysteriously empty. They caught the thief, one Artillo Brinzo, and recovered the gauntlet from him, with Graelyn trying it on — but before he could tell them who had hired him to steal it, he was abducted out of time and space by a painted warrior. As more and more of the mysterious extradimensional living statues began to circle them, the group ran into Lady Aesculapius, who told them that the painted warriors had already abducted away all of the Firmament save for her.
Returning to Spiral, they found that the gauntlet had initiated a danger lock, refusing to separate from Graelyn until it perceived the threat of the painted warriors as having been resolved. Thus, despite her eagerness to simply recover the gauntlet, the Emissary had no choice but to accompany Graelyn, Arch and Lady Aesc on a further journey investigating the painted warriors. With Lady Aesc noting that the painted warriors had also been gathering copies of The Book of the Enemy from the Dawns, they deduced that the book must contain information about them, and hurried to the Plume Coteries' Library, where Coloth and Marissa helped them find a remaining copy.
One chapter of the Book informed them that the painted warriors were servants of the Original Mammoths, and gave a description of their alter-time realm. Combining extreme skill with using the crystalline dust with mental focus on the information and all her memories related to mammoths, Graelyn was able to open a crystalline incision portal to the alter-time realm in question. There, they were briefly threatened by the mammoth Taranis, who explained that he was the one who had sent the painted warriors to depopulate the 10,000 Dawns, on the basis of a prophecy that "she-with-the-arm-of-gold" and the Firmament would combine to destroy the mammoths. In fact, however, the prophecy was a fake planted by the real thief, the Emissary herself, in order to trick the mammoths into doing her work for her of capturing the inhabitants of the 10,000 Dawns and menacing Graelyn. With Taranis realising Graelyn was not his enemy, the danger lock released and the Emissary recovered the gauntlet for herself, revealing her true name to be Auteur. (PROSE: White Canvas)
Turned into fiction[[edit] | [edit source]]
Auteur wasted no time in unleashing the gauntlet's true power, which was to turn people into fiction. While most people were reduced into books which truthfully described their life story, there were a few exceptions, including Arch, who instead turned into a series of action films telling exaggerated versions of his past adventures with Graelyn. Because Graelyn managed to trip up the ritual at the last minute, she was not fictionalised, and was replaced in the films with Celeste Roth as Arch's female adventuring partner. In the films, Archimedes was played by a costumed Brad Pitt. They were part of a wider "Archimedes cinematic universe". Films in this franchise had a bespoke opening logo where "a whole ton of images from the Archimedes cinematic universe flashed, and the camera panned out to reveal the images were being projected on his screen-like chest all along".
Graelyn's interference destabilised Auteur's grand ritual and caused the books she'd accumulated to collapse into an expanse of hostile blank reality called the White Canvas. As she'd written in the book, Graelyn then turned back from a book to a baby. Because she needed Graelyn to write an ending for herself, Auteur built a Town in which to raise her over again. It was constructed in the middle of the White Canvas, and its cinema exclusively screened the films created by the 10,000 Dawns, including the "Archimedes films". Continuing to feel a kinship for the cyborg hero, the reborn Graelyn was a big fan of the movies. She eagerly watched Archimedes: Skymetal, which opened with a sequence of Arch surfing on lava to save an underwater base from the "evil cult" known as the Firmament, when she was ten.
Five years later, at the screening of a new Archimedes film which was loosely based on Graelyn and Arch's adventure in World War II and featured Arch being captured for information by a villainous "Doctor Von Badguy II", Graelyn somehow managed to speak to Archimedes through the screen. He, too, regaining awareness of reality, was able to perceive her and answer briefly until Auteur intervened to stop the screening.
Two years later, having finally figured out the full truth about the Town and the Canvas and remembered her original life, Graelyn secretly returned to the cinema at night with the Hollow Childe and Citizen 176's help, and, screening an Archimedes film, was able to coax him fully out of the film. They confronted Auteur together, with the rest of the 10,000 Dawns characters being freed from fictionality one by one and taking the Town by surprise. When Auteur surrendered, however, this triggered the ritual's clause about Graelyn creating her own ending, and briefly fictionalised everyone but Auteur and Graelyn again until Graelyn tricked Auteur into fictionalising herself, then used her gauntlet to reverse everything she'd done with it.
The next day, Archimedes was present at the Needle for the negotiation of the Christmas Needle Agreement. During the festivities which followed the signing of the Agreement, he and Lady Aesculapius started a card game with "a whole mess of aliens", with Coloth also participating. (PROSE: White Canvas)
The funeral of Lady Aesculapius[[edit] | [edit source]]
After one of her incarnations was murdered by an unknown party using a booby-trapped parcel, Lady Aesculapius, reborn in a new body, chose to keep her survival a secret in order to find out who had sent the parcel, and organised a lavish funeral for herself in the Factory, inviting everyone she knew. Graelyn and Arch were among the first names she scribbled down on her list. There, while waiting for the service to start, Archimedes made small talk with another former companion of Aesculapius's, Blanche Combine. After Aesculapius made her deductions about her murder public, Graelyn and Arch stopped the killer, Meistras, from slipping away quietly. (PROSE: Life After Death)
Quarantine[[edit] | [edit source]]
While on a mission for Dawn, Arch and Graelyn ended up in a universe currently going through a pandemic, meaning they had to rent a house and spend a while in quarantine before they were allowed to return to Spiral. To make matters worse, they were unsure how they would do so, as they had lost Graelyn's bag of crystal dust, though they did manage to contact Kinan Jans through a spotty interdimensional Internet connection; and to add insult to injury, the planned span of the quarantine included Graelyn's birthday, scuppering her plans for a big birthday party with all her friends from across the Multiverse.
Hearing her grousing about her dashed hopes, Arch decided to send out a request for all of Graelyn's friends to send birthday greetings in video form. After a brief visit by Elliott Jo Jordan, a small-time enemy from whom they easily recovered the bag of dust, they watched through the video messages together, but were then informed by the last one to arrive, from Kinan Jans and Backgammon Jenny, that them having met Jordan face-to-face meant that they had to restart their quarantine period from scratch. They took this in good spirits, however, deciding to immediately set about cooking a big birthday meal for Graelyn; though he didn't eat normal human food himself, Archimedes had been practicing his cooking for just such an occasion. (PROSE: Birthdays are Made for Memories)
Behind the scenes[[edit] | [edit source]]
Archimedes is a main character of 10,000 Dawns.
| ||||||||||
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||
