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| “ | I am the dark thought in their waking hours, I invade their dreams and bring horror! I am the essence of night, the terror around the corner, the echo behind! | „ |
| ~ Jupiter |
Jupiter is the main antagonist of The Deptford Mice trilogy, a hideous and bloated cat with powers of dark magic. He was worshipped as a living god by rats in the sewers of London, who were for centuries unaware of the true feline nature of their deity as he remained hidden in the blackness of a dark portal.
Appearance[]
As a kitten, Leech had black fur and green eyes. The runt of the litter, he was bony, scrawny, and ugly. After drinking Dr. Spittle's hair restoration tonic, his fur changed from black to ginger, the fur colour of his murdered brother Jupiter, whose identity he took for his own. During his time in the dark portal, he grew grossly obese, his skin becoming covered with disgusting, pus-filled boils. His eyes also turned red.
Biography[]
Early life[]
| “ | With all my heart I hate you! I despise you with every ounce of my being. Let darkness everlasting consume my soul and fill me with evil power that I might be revenged upon you. | „ |
| ~ Leech declaring his hatred of his brother. |
Jupiter started life as one of three kittens born in London to Imelza, an orange tabby cat, on the 13th of December 1664. His arrival was heralded by a comet that signified a terrible calamity about to befall the world. He was a sickly runt with sable fur like his father, the mysterious Imp. The feline midwife who delivered him recommended that the kindest thing to do would be to kill the weak newborn kitten, but Imelza was horrified at the idea and sent the old cat away.
A young Jupiter (then known as Leech) speaking to the imprisoned spirit of Magnus Zachaire.
After a week of winter hardship, Imelza and her kittens were found by William Godwin, the young, unwilling assistant of evil alchemist Elias Theophrastus Spittle. Taking pity on the freezing family of cats, Will carried them back to Spittle's apothecary shop. Though Spittle was at first angered by the arrival of the cats, Will was able to convince him that he could make a familiar out of one of them. The alchemist chose the strong ginger male, whom he named Jupiter. The sable runt he scornfully dubbed Leech because he found him repulsively ugly. Leech grew envious of his brother Jupiter, who began to learn the magic arts from Dr. Spittle. Meanwhile, Spittle would abuse Leech, taking out his anger on him.
After Dr. Spittle had imprisoned the spirit of a sorcerer named Magnus Augustus Zachaire in a bottle, Leech learned the magic arts from him. However, he could not use them because only one member of any family is given the right to do so, and Jupiter had taken that right away from Leech. It occurred to Leech that if Jupiter were to meet with some "accident", the powers would then pass to him. He resolved to murder his brother.
Finally, when Dr. Spittle's apothecary shop was burning down, Leech tossed Jupiter down a burning chimney and the cat fell to his death. After this, Leech took Jupiter's name and identity for himself. Beckett the rat led the badly-burned cat down into the sewers, where he entered a portal into a dark chamber and (because he drank from the elixir of life) he was able to remain there for centuries, worshipped by rats.
Evil plan and defeat[]
| “ | Yes. All these years, all this time I have lain hidden and secret from my subjects. Think of it -- a cat worshipped as a god by rats! | „ |
| ~ Jupiter after emerging from his lair. |
Jupiter's glowing red eyes in the dark portal.
Over three centuries after initially crawling into the portal in the sewers, Jupiter reigned supreme over the rats of Deptford, worshipped as their living god. None had ever seen him, for he dwelt in the shadows of the portal and only his glowing red eyes were ever visible. As revenge on humanity, whom he blamed as a whole for the cruelty he suffered in his youth, Jupiter planned to unleash the Black Death upon the world once again. To do this, he ordered his followers to dig in underground mines located where plague victims were buried. Through his dark arts, he turned the plague into a living thing that manifested as a deadly vapor that killed any creature it came in contact with. Jupiter was confident in his evil plans until Madame Akkikuyu, a rat fortune teller, told him of a vision she saw wherein a young mouse named Audrey brought about his downfall. Jupiter ordered his rats to fetch the girl to him so he could get her out of the way by killing her.
When Audrey was kidnapped and brought before the altar of Jupiter, he tried using his magic to force her to come to him in the darkness. But the powers of the Green Mouse, benevolent deity of the mice, protected Audrey and she stopped in her tracks. Audrey taunted him, saying he would have to come out of his portal to get her. In a rage, Jupiter complied, crawling out of the dark portal for the first time in hundreds of years. He was prepared to eat Audrey, but she flung her mousebrass talisman, the Anti-Cat Charm at him. Brilliant emerald stars burst from it and burned Jupiter's fur. He desperately tried to put the flames out and toppled into the sewer water. As he struggled, the ghosts of his many victims appeared, pushing Jupiter down and drowning him. The Black Death was destroyed and the world was saved by Audrey and her friends.
Back from the dead[]
| “ | It is I, your master returned. Jupiter has come back from eternity. | „ |
| ~ Jupiter to Madame Akkikuyu. |
On a hot day in Deptford, a terrible stench hung in the air. It was strongest at a building site near the River Thames. One of the human builders discovered the source of the foul stench, the rotting body of Jupiter, whose corpse washed up from the sewers. The man who found him lifted his grisly discovery with a shovel and tossed it into the building site's bonfire. A thick, dark smoke rose from the flames and hung over Deptford for two days before a summer breeze blew it away on the third morning.
Meanwhile, trauma-induced amnesia prevented Madame Akkikuyu from remembering Jupiter or any of the events in the sewers of Deptford. Then a mysterious voice began calling to her at night. Only she could hear it and it tormented her. In Fennywolde, the voice finally revealed itself to Akkikuyu as coming from the tattooed face on the rat's ear, which was now animated. It claimed to be Nicodemus, a spirit of the fields trapped in limbo. He begged Akkikuyu to help free him. When the rat agreed, it was revealed that Nicodemus was in fact Jupiter, who had returned from the dead and wanted to take over her body since his was destroyed. Akkikuyu tossed herself on the fire before this could happen, though.
The massive spirit of Jupiter atop the dome of Greenwich Observatory.
The bonfire spread and engulfed Fennywolde. In the weeks afterward Alison Sedge found Akkikuyu's charred crystal ball. Having lost her mind with grief and still blaming Audrey for everything that happened, Alison angrily threw the crystal ball away and it smashed onto some rocks nearby. Jupiter's spirit emerged and soared into the sky, free at last.
Wanting revenge against the mice, Jupiter smothered the world in an eternal winter. He stole the magic Starglass of the Starwife, the squirrel queen, and used this to remove the stars from the sky. He gathered an army of ghost rats wielding deadly ice spears who mercilessly hunted down the living. Audrey and her friends were at a loss for how to defeat Jupiter this time as he was already dead. They knew his next goal was to blot out the sun, which would end all life on earth. Then, in the middle of the snow, Audrey discovered an enchanted snowdrop flower. She took it with her to the Greenwich Observatory where she confronted Jupiter one last time. She threw the flower into the massive cat spirit's mouth and immediately he was wracked with terrific agony. He dropped the Starglass and it shattered, freeing the stolen stars. Consumed by blistering green flames, Jupiter was sent to the void to be tormented by spring eternally.
Gallery[]
