Electromancer Optimus of the Havens
One beautiful spring morning the Treetop Triclops of Wormwood came down from its nest to hunt some bears for breakfast. It wasn’t long before his third eye spotted a mama bear a few miles off and the hunt was on. The triclops caught up to her quickly, wrestled her to the ground, and was about to crush her head with a boulder when a face arm whipped out, grabbed the boulder, and used it to smash the Triclops in the neck, sending him sprawling backward. No bear will be brutalized if Ghorhoth has anything to say about it. A vicious, forest leveling battle ensued and then, as the sun began to set Ghorhoth managed to get his face arms and regular arms around the Triclops’s neck, and after a few minutes of struggle the triclops fell, choked out by the mighty Cthulhu.
Ghorhoth wanted a memento from the battle so he plucked out the triclops’s third eye, put it in his satchel, and there it stayed until that night at the tavern when, down on his luck, he bet it in a game of poker. When he lost and the winner tried to grab the eye, his hand turned to cinders. Then he made his extra large henchman try to grab it and his hand turned to cinders too. Then he made his large henchman try, then his medium henchman, and finally the smallest most adorable henchman tried, and all of their hands turned to cinders. Nobody could hold the eyeball except Ghorhoth. Maybe it was because Cthulhus are resistant to magic, maybe it was his callouses, but it didn’t matter because everyone was so pissed on account of only having one hand left. Ghorhoth had to fight his way out of the pub that night, and the eye remained just an eye until he recounted the Triclops story to Billy and showed it to him. As soon as the eye laid eye on Billy it started crackling with electricity. Brilliantly colored bolts of magic came down through the Void above, encircling Billy and the eye, moving faster and faster and lifting them above the ground while a radical synth anthem played in the background. Then with a flash, the colorful energy was gone and Billy dropped to the ground, standing right next to the fully formed Optimus, who was fascinated by the pair. “So the Cthulhu freed me from the Triclops eye socket, and I was summoned here by a Necromantic goat? I don’t know what the Void is playing at but this is definitely the strangest timeline.”
Optimus always comes through the Void when Billy summons him, but he can’t always stay for long because he lives surprisingly active lives in several other dimensions and sometimes he’ll be summoned by someone else at exactly the wrong time. “I know we are busy but I must go now. My cousin is getting married this weekend and I swore an oath to my grandmother that I would attend. Just remember, these gargoyles’ hides are impenetrable except for the weak spots under their wings, their fingernails are venomous, they have seven lives each, and they’re particularly susceptible to organic toxins. Good luck, see you Sunday!”
Optimus spends as much time as he can at the castle because he’s not welcome in his home dimension. He was born with a blue eye while everyone else on the planet has a brown one, so they banished him to live in the Triclops skull for decades before Ghorhoth managed to rescue him.
Optimus is extremely good with facts but bad with empathy. “There’s a 17% chance your parents are still alive. I can assure you crying will not bring them back.” He has no concept of embarrassment. “Ghorhoth didn’t wash his claws after going to the bathroom. I can see the waste molecules from here.” He has no tact. “That crown makes your head look fat, your highness.” Optimus is extremely literal. “No you asked me if there was a murder weapon close to the body but the weapon was 12 feet away which is exactly two feet too far to be considered “close” according to Finsters Comprehensive Compendium of Weights and Measures Volume IV, page 178, paragraph 2. Be more specific next time.”
When Optimus uses his mystical eyeball head to find clues in far away lands he always sees flashes of random things before finally zeroing in on what he’s actually looking for, sort of like when you have to scan through a bunch of awful radio stations before finding one that plays decent music. “No, this can’t be your missing son unless he’s a reverse centaur. Let’s try over here... no, this kid’s parents actually care about him so he’s in no danger… Oh wait I see him! He’s trapped in a cave surrounded by goblins. Why are your mini Optimuses watering? You’ll have another child in 7 months to replace this one. Oh was that supposed to be a secret? Secrets are illogical.”
Optimus is the smartest one in the crew by a mile, and sometimes he gets impatient waiting for everyone else to deduce what he figured out ten minutes earlier. “Keep going, I’m sure you’ll make the connection eventually. In the meantime I’m going to catch a little shuteye. That is if Ghorhoth remembered to bring my eyelids this time.” “Okay the killer is someone known to you… no it’s someone you interrogated already… no, it’s not him it was actually a woman… no, the name starts with T… Oh for god’s sake it was Theresa! T, T, T, Theresa! Remember? She couldn’t have been at the tavern the night of the murder because the tavern was closed for Hunchback’s Holiday! Her whole story falls apart under the slightest bit of scrutiny. Are you guys drunk? I’m not trying to be a jerk, I really want to know.”
Optimus and Ghorhoth frequently disagree over who’s boss in the relationship. Optimus thinks he’s more important because he’s the expert who the crew calls in when they’re stumped. Ghorhoth thinks he’s the boss because he gets to be around all the time instead of just appearing for a few hours when someone needs something from him. Optimus thinks Ghorhoth is his bitch because Ghorhoth has to carry him around everywhere. Ghorhoth knows Optimus is his bitch when he shakes him around furiously like a snow globe. They’re a true odd couple.
Optimus is a powerful electromancer who wields a lightning bolt to strike down and incapacitate his enemies. In addition to his mastery of electricity, he specializes in visual magic and can see everything in every spectrum anywhere in the universe, which can be both a gift and a curse: he is often subjected to unwanted visions, which he will describe to the crew with his signature robotic detachment no matter how strange or perverse the details. He also has the ability to project visions for others to see: true visions which can help the crew solve cases, or false visions which can make enemies think they’re about to be beset by a swarm of murder hornets or crushed under a falling boulder.
Optimus’s magical vision makes him the best CSI in the crew because he can see microfibers, DNA, and all the fluids with just his naked eyeball head. While he’s excellent at investigating crime scenes and gathering evidence, he’s terrible at connecting the clues together because he has no idea what motivates average people to behave the way they do. “It’s obvious from the bullets lodged in the plaster that the killer was having a heated argument with the wall. The dead guy was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.” Billy and Ghorhoth know his theories are ludicrous so they never follow his advice.
Optimus is a rabid media consumer and he loves simultaneously streaming several earthly true crime and forensic shows at once, like The First 48, Forensic Files, Cold Case Files, Snapped, or Grey’s Anatomy. He devours shows like Judge Judy, Judge Joe Brown, and Project Runway, because it has three judges at once. He watches travel shows not for pleasure but to learn about the architecture, geography and terrain of potential bad guy locations. He enjoys hunting shows on occasion, but only to gain insight on how the hunters stalk, outsmart, capture and kill their prey. He also thinks scopes are hilarious.
He’s also a bit indie travel writer a la Chuck Klosterman’s personality. Famous renowned author of such titles as “Rough Terrain”, “GPS: Grizzly, Piney, Saskatoon” and “Poblano: A Love Story”. He poses in the same way for the inside cover photo of all these books, in an Oxford style library with a jacket and scarf on, hand beneath his chin, umm eyeball. In each episode there’ll be a breakout moment where he appears like the character in Stephen J. Cannell Productions. He’ll be at his typewriter and the book in question will be on that episode’s case. If the crime happened in Louisiana, the cover of the book will feature that region.
Optimus directs the show every night and occasionally Billy will talk to him in the control room from the set and Optimus will talk back to him through the intercom so people hear their mundane BTS banter. The control room is wall to wall enchanted monitors showing every angle of the studio plus other random scenes from across the universe and every kind of WAV form, chroma display, color scope, and ratings data graph concerning the show moving and flashing in real time, so it’s a paradise for Optimus. He’s a good director but he won’t shut up about his intricate camera moves and prime lenses and f-stops and all that technical crap.
Written by Rob Anderson with Tim Smith
Entered by: 0x279c…43cd
