Cupid Fact File No. 828 — On the Origins of Hooligans

First page of the story as presented in “The Quintessential Cupid”.

 ***Cupid Fact File #828 — The Strangely-Colored Secret Societies*** is a prose story written by Lupan Evezan and illustrated by Aristide Twain. The sixth *Cupid Fact File*, it features the Crew of the Copper-Colored Cupids as well as Professor Scarper, Archibald Fishflipper, the Sect of the Silver-Shelled Snails, the Society of the Rhyming Dove, the Society of the Scarlet Crabs, the Trio of the Talking Turkeys, the Pack of the Patriotic Platypus, the Possé of the Azure-And-Emerald Panther, the Gaggle of the Golden Goats, the Legion of the Chartreuse Tortoise, the Faction of the Fooling Fish, the Mob of the Maroon Magpie, the Mélange of the Mauve Muskrat, the Secret League of the Orange-Bearded Gnomes, the Drove of the Database-Compiling Dromedaries, the Ennead of the Eigengrau Easter Eggs, the Gang of the Green Gorilla, the Collective of the Retconning Crocodiles and the Horde of the Mad Elephants. The “First Horde” is also repeatedly mentioned.

## Description

Like other *Cupid Fact Files*, the short story purports itself to be a digitized version of a file from the Crew of the Copper-Colored Cupids' Archives, detailing information about a target that is, or was once, of interest to the Crew. In this case, it is an overview of the various Horde of the Violet Haresque secret socieities the Crew keep running into, and of their probable origins…

### References

* The Drove of the Database-Compiling Dromedaries were originally the First Horde's “very own Department of Documentation”; hence, in their memory-wiped state, the organization retains a compulsion to document everything relating to the activities of secret societies, rather than to seek Atlantis.
* The Secret League of the Orange-Bearded Gnomes do not seem to fit the pattern of the other Societies and remain a baffling enigma to the Cupids.
* Professor Scarper's first name is established to be “Irving”.

### Continuity

* This story retells a slightly altered version of the backstory for the various secret societies that was featured in the unofficial comic *Hare-Brained Hooligans* (2018), with the Horde of the Violet Hare no longer appearing by name, and the Duke of Baloni plotline being reduced to a blink-and-you'll-miss-it mention of the First Horde having “brainwashed a few billionaires for funding purposes”.
* In accordance with *Cupid Fact File No. 180 — The Society of the Rhyming Dove* (2019), the Cupids mention that the Society of the Rhyming Dove are “old allies” of theirs.

## Behind the scenes

This short story was exclusive to the short story collection *The Quintessential Cupid*, published in 2020.

Like other entries in the anthology, the story as printed is part of an ongoing thread throughout the book of Technician-042 working to transfer the Cupids' digitized files back to a paper format. The note from Technician in this story suggested that all the illustrations of the Secret Societies' sigils used to be clickable, allowing the user to immediately go read the Fact Files about those organization, but that printing the page had obviously negated that possibility. It was supposedly to make up for this loss that *Cupid Fact File No. 177 — The Green Gorillas* and *Cupid Fact File No. 444 — The Faction of the Fooling Fish* were “manually uploaded” by Technician at later points in the book.