Bianca: This recap is in chronological order, not the order in which us characters figure things out! That means spoilers! So if you’re new to the strip, don’t use this as an introduction. Go back and start reading from page one.

Back In The Day, humans made a bunch of sophisticated, lifelike automatons out of rock. They didn’t have a fixed shape, so they were dubbed
גולם
— “amorphous, unformed beings” — eventually shortened to “Beings.”

As a design shortcut, they’re based on real animals . . . per Back-In-The-Day taxonomy.

Lion: I’m a Lion.

Blake: I’m a पाण्डर .

Lion: What’s that?

Blake: “That other kind of big cat, you know, without the manes.”

They slice! They dice! They plow your fields, feed your goats, and defend your temples from invading armies! . . . or, they used to. There’s currently a “don’t hurt humans” clause in the words (the “Contract”) that animate them.

The most-recent creation of a Being was in the mid-20s AD . . .

Josh: When I was a kid, I used to make clay birds that would flap around.

Saxon: Then he leveled up!

. . . and the only known destruction of a Being was in the 1940s, because Nazis make everything worse.

Not long afterward (and this is where the story really starts), our oldest major character, Ann Walker, comes on stage. She talks her way into inheriting the Mastery of the Big Cat Without A Mane . . .

Walker: So after Dad’s mysterious early death, I’ll be using my inheritance to build a worldwide business empire. It would really help with that if I had a seeing-eye tiger.

Oliver: I like the way you think, doll. You got moxie.