Last of the Mappers

One of Auteur's many possible pasts, observed into existence as one of his origins before he joined Faction Paradox, was as a Mapper from the early days of Homeworld history. Later known as the Astral Mapper within Auteur's mindscape, (PROSE: ) this persona would claim to be the Last of the Mappers when Auteur spent twenty years under that identity in the Plume Coteries' Library. (PROSE: ) Callum likewise described the creator of his map of the library as "the Last of the Astral Mappers". (PROSE: )
== History ==
=== Origins of the persona ===
This Mapper was putatively one of the original generation loomed on the Homeworld shortly after the anchoring of the thread, created to "use the Observer Effect to map the meridians of time". After "making the first maps of the Spiral Politic", they "all went insane, in the end", and "took on names, […] really stupid names, all trying to work with a timekeeping theme. Astrolabe, Pendulum, stuff like that" before being forgotten about. According to Intrepid, Auteur, actually a member of a much later generation, began claiming to be one of these Mappers with "his drinking buddies" after they left the Homeworld together to join the Faction Paradox. (PROSE: )
According to a story "scribbled in the Spire's lantern room", (PROSE: ) and confirmed by another account which did not otherwise seem to credit the "Mapper" backstory, (PROSE: ) Auteur's factional resurrection came about after the Faction "found Auteur skinless and dying in a crumbling reality bubble", a "little slice of reality all his own" where he had been hiding from the Great Houses, only to be found by "something". (PROSE: ) By then, Auteur could not remember if he'd already joined the cult or not; (PROSE: ) a version of Auteur's apparently "real", original thirtenth incarnation would later seemingly confirm that he had, but had been on "something of a sabbatical from [his] employers when [he] underwent that… unfortunate little mishap which forced them to resurrect [him]". (PROSE: ) However, before his Cousin Gideon convinced the Faction to save him and promote him, the dying Auteur "claimed, through choking, blood-filled laughs, that Life itself had stolen his skin". 
This claim underlined the parallels between the dying Auteur's predicament (PROSE: ) and the situation where Astrolabus, an ancient Time Lord who claimed to have "mapped out the meridians of time" and had encountered the Sixth Doctor multiple times, was left after his final battle with the Doctor: flayed alive by the Lord of Life, Voyager, in a dimensionally-transcendental cabinet of his own making. (COMIC: ) Kifah once had a vision of what appeared to be "Auteur from long before the Faction and a Spire" where he still had skin and appeared as a "wizened, wrinkled and yellowed, balding save for two maddened patches of white on either side of his head" with a matted and greasy beard, (PROSE: ) matching Astrolabus's appearance upon meeting the Sixth Doctor. (COMIC: )
=== Later uses ===
Well after the Cosmic War, a later version of Auteur travelled to the Plume Coteries' Library from outside the universe. He arrived at the Void Gate Room in disguise, resurrecting his Mapper persona with a false beard, thick glasses, and stolen flesh taped onto his skull, now wearing rich golden-yellow robes. He claimed to be the Last of the Mappers, who had been journeying across the Multiverse since before the coup against Urizen, knowing nothing of what happened to his people in the interim — and convinced the Bookkeepers that his final task before he could return home would be to map out the Library itself. He spent 20 years there, taking on an apprentice, Roland, during the last ten. However, Roland eventually realised that his mentor had a hidden agenda, and confronted him, forcing him to admit that he was not actually the Last of the Mappers. (PROSE: )
During Auteur and the Goddess of Gendar's wrestling match, a mental duel, a version of the "Last of the Mappers" was one of the multiple personas adopted by the modern Auteur's mind within the mindscape. Like the Astrologer, another one of Auteur's possible pre-skeletal selves within that mental space, he had brown skin and an aquiline nose. Unlike the bald Astrologer, he also sported "a long white beard, and wore a long, yellow trenchcoat; a pair of rimless glasses with round, tinted lenses concealed his leering eyes". Like the other splintered past versions of the skeletal Auteur, this manifestation of "the Astral Mapper" assisted in capturing the Goddess of Gendar within the minsdscape and attempting a ritual to sever her from their past. (PROSE: )
== Behind the scenes ==
The Last of the Mappers is strongly implied to be Astrolabus.
Category:Individual Time Lords
Category:Incarnations of Auteur
Category:Explorers
Category:Imposters