PAGE THREE (4 panels)
Panel 1. A lone hunter/explorer, Mindosus the Brave, inspects a sparkling meteor that has fallen into the jungle. This great chunk of the mystical element Nyzium has fallen from Elyptra and now rests in a smoking crater beneath the great hanging trees. The steaming meteor bathes Mindosus in mind-altering mists.
CAP: “IN THE SECOND CENTURY, MINDOSUS THE BRAVE DISCOVERED THE FIRST DEPOSITS OF NYZIUM IN AN ELYPTRAN METEORITE.”
Panel 2. Mindosus rides upon the shoulders of a great, flying Olfari dragon as it soars through the sky above the jungle realm; in the distance we see the Great Keep rising from the horizon. Mindosus holds his spear up triumphantly, and his face wears an expression of euphoria and glory--he has formed the first of the telepathic bonds that will change the course of his people’s future. The dragon soars above the jungle realm carrying Mindosus;
CAP: “HIS EXPERIMENTS WITH THE PRIME ELEMENT RESULTED IN A TELEPATHIC BOND WITH AN ELDER OLFARI. THUS THE FIRST PACT WAS FORMED, AND THE KNIGHTS OF ANDRONUS BEGAN THEIR SYMBIOTIC RELATIONSHIP WITH THE PLANET’S NATIVE INHABITANTS.”
Panel 3. Now an entire legion of knights (garbed in Nyzium techno-armor) ride upon the backs of a soaring pack of Olfari.
CAP: “THE WINGS OF THE OLFARI CARRIED US TO ELYPTRA, WHERE OUR MINERS BEGAN TO EXTRACT NYZIUM AT ITS SOURCE.”
Panel 4. A view from the surface of Elyptra: a barren, rocky planet with a thin atmosphere and very light gravity. Several armored dragon-riders look on as miners haul cart loads of freshly-mined Nyzium crystals out of a great cavern (the first of the Nyzium mines). In the distance sits a small village of stone-carved huts where the mining families have come to live. It is hard work mining Nyzium, but the rewards are great. Here is the birth of the Nyzium dependence which comes to define societies on both Greater Planets. NOTE: The Greater Planets (Andronus and Andrylla) dominate the sky, leaving only a thin swatch of starscape visible from the surface of Elyptra.
CAP: “A RENEWABLE SOURCE OF THE PRIME ELEMENT SOON REPLACED OUTMODED SYSTEMS OF ENERGY PRODUCTION, AND STRENGTHENED THE BOND WITH OUR OLFARI BRETHREN.”