Cosmic Plot Device
The Cosmic Plot Device is exactly what it sounds like – a device of enormous cosmic power that net.villains fight over a lot, making the plot go. It was introduced in its namesake, the Cosmic Plot Device Caper.
Powers
The Cosmic Plot Device can alter reality on a number of levels, and gives its wielder access to cosmic senses. However, it cannot retcon; it affects the present, not the past.[1] As well, the bearer of the Ring of Retcon is immune to its power.
Using the Device carries the risk of being corrupted by its power and/or overwhelmed by the senses it grants you.
History
The origins of the Cosmic Plot Device are shrouded in mystery. The Looker claimed that his brother, Idid, had created it; however, this was in the midst of a number of other manipulative lies.
In the Early Middle Ages, a Germanic baron named Krieger acquired the Device and founded the Cult of the Cosmic Plot Device. Thanks to being less bloody than most cults of the era, the Cult of the Device gained an almost mainstream following, and was able to guard the Device until 1937, when the Nazis stole it.
However, it vanished before Hitler got his hands on it, and the Cult searched the world for decades without finding it. In the late '80s, a Dr. Plot discovered the Device lying in the center of an English crop circle. Not knowing its history, he declared it to be undeniable evidence of extra-terrestrial intelligence and had it shipped to Net.ropolis for further study.
The Device ended up on display at the Net.ional Museum of History, where it was promptly stolen by multiple net.villains. First, General Jarrek took it, intending to open the pan-reality nexus within LNHQ (then the Net.ropolis Hotel Grand) and create a beachhead thru which the Dorfian Empire could conquer the Loonivearth. Captain LNH and a ragtag team of net.heroes stopped him at great cost. Then, after it was returned to the Museum, Lagneto stole it, using its power to capture Asteroid L and set it in orbit around the Loonivearth.
In turn, Y-Plex Burp stole it from him[2]. He showed up in the Cosmic Plot Device Caper, using the Device to turn the Golden Age DC Comic Swiper Man back into Marvel Zombie Lad. When he used it to battle the Time Crapper, Table and his Brotherhood of Net.Villains stole it once more, but in the chaos of the battle, it was shattered. (In Martin Phipps's version of the CPDC, it somehow ended up un-shattered in Sing-Along Lass's hands, making her go mad with power, but then she heroically re-shattered it.)
In The Cosmic Conspiracy, Doctor Killfile revealed that the Cult of the Cosmic Plot Device had managed to preserve two of its broken shards. He used these to create two shapeshifting liquid metal androids. One android became Continuity Champ's Aunt Comic-Relief, while the other was implanted with the spirit of Obscure Trivia Lad.
In What Ever Happened To...?, The Looker revealed that he had reconstructed the Cosmic Plot Device, but that it needed recharged. Kid Yesterdaze and the Legion of Substitute Net.Heroes traveled to the Comics Crossroads to do so, but KY ended up in battle against the wielder of the Ring of Retcon. He came away with both, and gave them to the Looker – who promptly brainwashed them, plotting to combine the Device with the Ring to free him from his oath. However, this was part of a plot by Defacto to get both cosmic artifacts. Luckily, the Drizzt's Defenders stopped him, and the Device was sealed alongside the Ring on the Looker's dome.[3]
Sometime after The Cosmic Conspiracy, Hex Luthor had been Dr. Killfile's cellmate, and learned about his androids. Hex dug up Aunt Comic-Relief's body and used the shard of the Device within her to find the others – all except for one. He used the incomplete Device to construct the Cosmic Reset Button, erasing his history as a net.villain. But, missing the identity of the other android, was never able to find the final piece – until Beige Midnight, when he took it from Dizzy Collar. However, this final piece was, in fact, an edited WikiBoy, and at a crucial moment, he was reverted, taking Hex's power. But in order to undo the terrible things Hex had done, Obscure Trivia Lad sacrificed himself to truly reform the Device.
Occultism Kid brought the shards of the Device together with the Ring of Retcon and the Insanity Gauntlet, casting an enormously powerful spell to stop the Bryttle Brothers alongside 57.5 other trenchcoaters. He went on a cosmic journey, where he was tempted and tested by the power, and ended up draining it all – the Device, the Ring, and the Gauntlet – in order to accomplish an impossible feat, splitting the Looniverse into a mind-bogglingly huge number of alternate Looniverses, containing no life but the LNH, in order to protect it from the Bryttles.
Since then, the pieces of the Device lay powerless, somewhere in the Deepest Omnilooniverse...
Appearance
Among its other powers, the Cosmic Plot Device could shapeshift to look like anything. (It's been implied that its original form was some sort of pottery.) At some moments, it looked like a small gray cube, or broken pieces thereof. One shard had been hidden in the Museum of Modern Art as a display piece. When Hex Luthor got ahold of it, he made it look like a gold pocket watch with a gold chain.
Current Status
Broken into shards again and fully depowered.
Footnotes
- ↑ Unless the protagonist of LNH Forever stole it first and gave it to Y-Plex.
- ↑ There's an obvious continuity conflict between The Cosmic Conspiracy and What Ever Happened To...?, despite the fact that they were both written by Drizzt in a relatively short span of time. The latter story may have been intended to imply that The Looker had retrieved the shards of the Device within Aunt Comic-Relief and Obscure Trivia Lad; however, the android OTL became a core member of the series that spun out of this story, Continuity Champ and the Drizzt's Defenders, and no mention of him losing his piece of the Cosmic Plot Device was ever made.
