“I would have played out the story better! Puppets make for better actors! Humans can only be the audience beyond the stage!”

-Ebner Beiler

Ebner Beiler has always possessed dreams of becoming a great artist. Sadly what he didn’t have was the talent to match so being in charge of the Cache District was the best he could do. One fateful evening he met Savio Gennari, the famed artist and Maquette professor, who asked for his help with the pinnacle of art: Creation of a new human race. Savio designed the blueprints for an Infernal Machine while Ebner personally crafted the device, provided funds, and gathered those who stopped waking from their dreams. Feeling that even a genius had to depend on him, Ebner secretly made a second Infernal Machine to prove that he was the one, the only one, to stand above the rest. 

And yet he can’t stop Nil from laying waste to the secrets of the neighborhood other than the comatose, half-frozen citizens. Ebner refuses to acknowledge that he’s being used as Savio’s puppet, made to take on the punishment for breaking the laws of nature even magic can’t touch. He falls into the second Infernal Machine and ‘evolves’ into Awe, a monkey-like being with powers of mass creation. In response Nil lifts all restraints on Avery’s magic so he can summon a pirate ship, the Lost Raid, sailing upon a stormy ocean. Ebner-Awe’s massive army is drowned, torn, crushed and electrocuted as their creator runs to the shadows. He doesn’t look back or see Nil dying from the strain of such powerful magic.