The Image Man, usually working with The Activist, stays out of the conflict, except to help by bringing attention to the conflict, and teaching the downtrodden to stay on message and keep out of negative attention. He wields his paradox through Public Relations work.

The Activist was in an Agikaani breeding camp, and was one of the few they could not intimidate into silence. She defied them at every turn, helping other prisoners to escape. The Image Man was her contact on the outside, and he did everything he could to help end the breeding camps from outside. Near the end, he was also captured--and put in the same camp as the Activist. They were both experimented on magically, nearly driving her insane but for his help and support. As the enemies of Agikaan closed in to liberate, the two of them staged a breakout. Not satisfied to merely escape, the two of them decided to go after the camp "doctor," who was also a powerful mage. They wanted to take him alive, to make him pay for his horrible deeds. The doctor attempted a spell to erase them both from all existence, but a shell from a Kalachnikov mortar whistled through the air right towards them, and three things happened at once: A) The Activist tried to shield the doctor, successfully saving his life, B), the Image Man dove to shield her, successfully saving her life, and C) the spell went off, successfully erasing them both from existence.

But in so doing, the Activist never saved the doctor, and his spell never went off.

In the delirium of the Paradox, the Activist pulled herself together--there's just no other way to say it. The Image Man, deliriously believing he was stabilizing a PR disaster elsewhere, began to protest, "Don't believe them. We are alive. Rumors of our death are misinformation spread by the Agikaani warlords to demoralize the resistance. I repeat, we are alive."

No one knows what happened to them after that, except an old Tenzanese story-teller who claims they were displaced in the first breaking of time, and frozen in the Age of Hours. From there, now thoroughly confused, they followed the old man into another realm, where he led them to a stone bungalow in the middle of a rocky scabland.