SMOKE GENERALS
(Earth-59541)

Membership: Several unidentified members

Purpose: Maintaining a spell preserving the illusion over the horrific nature of reality

Aliases: None

Affiliations: Dry Academy

Enemies: Druid (Anthony Ludgate), Second Assembly
   possibly Baby Icon, Redeyes (see comments)

Base of Operations: Tunguska, Siberia

First Appearance: Druid#1 (May, 1995)

Powers/Abilities: The Smoke Generals exist as severed heads suspended in clouds of nanotechnology.

    They possess vast magical powers, maintaining a constant illusory spell over every sentient creature on Earth.

    An equivalent of a thermonuclear explosion directly above them only disrupted their spell briefly, whether due to the Smoke Generals' magic or them being located deep underground.

History: (Druid#3 (fb) - BTS) - Smoke Generals originated in the far future of Earth-59541, where uncovering of reality's true nature horrified the world into suicide. The Smoke Generals issued an order to drown the planet in environmental toxins, which killed most of the world's phytoplankton and stripped the atmosphere of oxygen.

   The Smoke Generals traveled deep into the past of Earth-616. Their history was recorded on platinum scrolls, wrapped around bodies placed into the vents at the base of Mount St. Helens. The Smoke Generals formed the Dry Academy and set up a base deep beneath the snow in Tunguska, in which they maintained a constant Wordspell that altered the perception of the entire world to hide the horrifying nature of reality. At some point, they were reduced to severed heads suspended in clouds of nanotechnology. The Dry Academy served the Smoke Generals, and the Smoke Generals served mankind, worshipping no other god.

   The eruption of Mount St. Helens in 1980 expelled the bodies from the vents, allowing the C.I.A. to find and read the scrolls detailing the history of Smoke Generals.

   Some members of the Dry Academy believed that the truth hidden by the Wordspell was beautiful and deserved to be freed. They split off to form the Second Assembly.

(Druid#1) - While being empowered by the Celtic gods, Druid saw a Smoke General and experienced their future world without oxygen.

(Druid#3 - BTS) - Working for Daimon Hellstrom to keep tabs on the suddenly much more powerful Druid, Nekra Sinclair told him about the Dry Academy and a false "god" constructed by the Second Assembly. Druid found it sacrilegious against his Celtic Gods and set out to destroy it. He located the Second Assembly and slaughtered all of them; the false "god" told him more about the Smoke Generals, but Druid dismissed it as lies and killed it as well.

(Druid#4 - BTS) - An assassin shrouded in mystical mists appeared at Druid's home and killed two of his followers, Baby Icon and Redeyes, before Druid killed him and identified him as one of the Smoke Generals (see comments). Seeking to put an end to their heresies, Druid called upon the power of the Sun God Lud to create a thermonuclear explosion in Tunguska. The Worldspell was disrupted, causing everyone to see the reality as the nightmare of maggots, disease, and rotting meat from which suicide was the only escape. However, this attack did little more than to spite the Smoke Generals, who quickly restored their illusion.

Comments: Created by Warren Ellis and Leonardo Manco.

   The Druid series is quite esoteric in nature, and few of its characters can be called bastions of sanity. The main events of the series undoubtedly happened, and the only two characters to survive it with their heads intact (both literally and metaphorically) - Nekra and Daimon Hellstrom - are both aware of the Dry Academy but also had not been fully truthful with Druid to begin with. The brief disruption of the Worldspell and its effects have also not been referenced elsewhere. For the sake of this profile, the information about the Smoke Generals is treated as factual, if only to avoid having "allegedly", "ostensibly" etc. in every sentence.

   The question of whether the assassin in Druid's home was in fact one of the Smoke Generals remains open, as Druid identified him as such without reason, immediately before "deducing" that Nekra had been working with the Dry Academy, while she was in fact working for Hellstrom.

   Even were the backstory of the Smoke Generals be revealed as false, the future in which the death of phytoplankton left the world without oxygen exists in the Multiverse, as it was experienced by Druid during his transformation.

    This profile was completed 11/27/2025, but its publication was delayed as it was intended for the Appendix 25th anniversary 's celebratory event.

Profile by HBK123. 

CLARIFICATIONS:
Smoke Generals have no known connections to:

images: (without ads)
Druid#3, p19, pan2 (main image)
Druid#1, p17, pan4 (headshot)
Druid#4, p17, pan3 (Druid's would-be assassin, possible Smoke General)

Appearances:
Druid#1 (May, 1995) - Warren Ellis (writer), Leonardo Manco (art), Marie Javins (editor)
Druid#3 (July, 1995) - Warren Ellis (writer), Leonardo Manco (art), Marie Javins (editor)
Druid#4 (August, 1995) - Warren Ellis (writer), Leonardo Manco (art), Marie Javins (editor)

First Posted: 09/17/2026
Last updated: 11/27/2025

Any Additions/Corrections? please let me know.

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