Agatha H and the Siege of Mechanicsburg

by Phil Foglio

  AGATHA H AND THE CLOCKWORK PRINCESS: GIRL GENIUS, BOOK TWO

  Hardcover / $24.99 (available now)

  978-1-59780-222-2

  Trade paperback / $15.99 (available now)

  978-1-59780-223-9

  In a time when the Industrial Revolution has escalated into all-out warfare, mad science rules the world . . . with mixed success.

  With the help of Krosp, Emperor of All Cats, Agatha has escaped from the massive airship known as Castle Wulfenbach. After crashing their escape dirigible, Agatha and Krosp fall in with Master Payne’s Circus of Adventure, a traveling troupe of performers dedicated to staging Heterodyne shows—dramatizations of the exploits of Bill and Barry Heterodyne and their allies—who are unaware of Agatha’s connection to the Heterodyne line.

  Pursued by the ruthless Baron Klaus Wulfenbach, his handsome son Gil, and their minions (not to mention Othar Tryggvassen, Gentleman Adventurer), Agatha hides in plain sight among the circus folk, servicing their clanks and proving herself adept in performing the role of Lucrezia Mongfish, nemesis to—and later wife of—Barry Heterodyne. She also begins training under Zeetha, swordmistress and princess of the lost city of Skifander. Together, Agatha, Krosp, and the performers travel across the treacherous wasteland of war-torn Europa, towards Mechanicsburg, and the ancestral home of the Heterodynes—Castle Heterodyne.

  But with many perils standing in her way—including Wulfenbach’s crack troops, mysterious Geisterdamen, savage Jägermonsters, and the fabled Storm King—it’s going to take more than a spark of Mad Science for Agatha to get through . . .

  AGATHA H AND THE VOICE OF THE CASTLE: GIRL GENIUS, BOOK THREE

  Hardcover / $24.99 (available now)

  978-1-59780-295-6

  Trade paperback / $15.99 (available now)

  978-1-59780-833-0

  In the third installment of the Girl Genius novels, Agatha H. and the Voice of the Castle begins as Agatha Heterodyne returns to her ancestral home, the warped little town of Mechanicsburg. There she must claim her inheritance by convincing the artificial intelligence that animates her family’s castle that she is, in fact, the new Heterodyne. But this apparently simple task is made complicated in several ways: An imposter claiming to be the legitimate heir appears. The Empire is convinced that Agatha is the person responsible for the Long War (and to be fair, they are not entirely incorrect). And, worst of all, the Castle itself is insane.

  From the Hugo Award–winning Girl Genius online comics comes this third book in the Agatha H. trilogy; and just like the first two, Agatha H. and the Voice of the Castle will grab you from the first page and not let go!

  NOTES

  1 A scene detailed at the end of one of our previous textbooks: Agatha H and the Clockwork Princess. This was the first time the Lady Lucrezia had possessed the Lady Heterodyne.

  2 Lucifer Mongfish, the reluctant bête noir of the Heterodyne Boys, had not one beautiful daughter, but three. The most famous of these was, of course, Lucrezia, who eventually wed Bill Heterodyne. Serpentina Mongfish eschewed the family business and ran off with the science-adventurer Prince DuMedd, while the third, Demonica, remained in the family lair, which occupied an extinct volcano somewhere to the west of Minsk. There she continued her father’s work. You don’t hear much about Demonica Mongfish, which is just the way she wanted it.

  3 Airships—at least in the lurid pages of the pfennig dreadfuls—are expected to, on a regular basis, burst into flames, be attacked by sky-pirates, struck by lightning, grapple with air kraken, and be caught up in freakish air currents that swiftly and unerringly transport them thousands of kilometers to hidden civilizations and lost continents. Surprisingly, according to the empire’s records and statistics, this is in fact the case, but it is still the safest form of travel.

  4 The locket under discussion was given to Agatha by her uncle, Barry Heterodyne, when she began to display signs she was about to “break through,” i.e. transition into a full-blown spark. Whereas this was something to be expected, considering her lineage, Agatha began to do this at the unprecedented age of five. The locket, in brief, acted as a governor on young Agatha’s brain, effectively retarding its development. Every indication we have was that this was supposed to be a short-term fix. Unfortunately, Barry disappeared and Agatha wore the locket nonstop until it was removed when she was eighteen years old. At that point, a lot of the preliminary neurological processes of a spark’s breakthrough had already begun, but had been allowed to develop incredibly slowly. As a result, Agatha did not so much break through, as ease through. This goes a long way towards explaining her relative sanity, despite her otherwise worrying pedigree.

  5 Statements like this have helped convince behavioral psychologists that, wherever the original Lucrezia was, she was either incredibly mad or no longer human. A large majority of those questioned opined for “both.”

  6 Many minions have developed the knack of imitating various sparks. It only becomes a problem when somebody gets interested in the whole mind-swapping thing. It’s one of the reasons why, by common consent, this is a field of science that is never pursued, or if it is, it stays between consenting adults.

  7 The diminutive clanks, now colloquially known as dingbots, were constructed by the Lady Heterodyne as lab assistants and were fascinating entities. The ones the Lady constructed herself served as primaries. Once activated, they operated independently, scavenging parts and constructing additional, secondary dingbots. These would then go forth to construct tertiaries. Persons of a nervous disposition have allowed themselves to become overly concerned about a future where all of Europa is buried hip deep in duodenary dingbots busy disassembling the Earth itself for parts. Fortunately, secondaries were not as good at building dingbots as the primaries are, and the tertiaries were barely capable of performing simple tasks, let alone constructing more dingbots.

  8 After some experimentation, it was determined that the defense system of Mechanicsburg defines a league as 5.556 kilometers.

  9 Intriguingly, there is no written record of a Roxalana Heterodyne. However, in a hundred kilometer radius around the town of Mechanicsburg, one will find assorted geographic features, clearly caused by the unleashing of cataclysmic forces; these include “Roxalana’s Chasm,” “Roxalana’s Blight,” “The Melted Mountain of Roxalana,” and a vast wasteland where nothing grows known as “Roxalana’s Comeuppance.”

  10 Balloon bees (urinaria apis caeli Europa) are a species of cave-dwelling honeybee that has adapted to living within airship cells. Their signature characteristic is that they spread out in an enclosed space until they are as far as possible from each other. They then construct small, solitary dens.

  11 Marshmallow guns (or other similarly useless weapons) are actually fairly common accessories in your typical spark laboratory. No one knows why. They just sort of accumulate.

  12 Death-trauma-induced memory loss and the subsequent inevitable personality shift (usually resulting in deranged, murderous, fire-phobic dullards) are the biggest reason why sparks, as a rule, do not attempt to transform themselves into superior constructs.

  13 Many sparks are perfectly willing to experiment on their fellow sparks when the occasion demands. Nevertheless, if one wishes to resurrect a specific person, one must have a functioning brain. While many people are accused of “thinking” with assorted other body parts, this does not actually work.

  14 The Smoke Knights have developed a rather potent line of motivational drugs, all gathered under the family name of “Movit.” They range in strength from Movit Number One, which has an effect much like several very strong cups of coffee seasoned with horseradish poured directly into your sinuses, up to the until-now-unknown Number Eleven. Your humble professors, while advocating against unnecessary pharmaceuticals—especially in the work place—must confess it usually takes a dose of Movit Number Three to get them out of bed in the morning. It’s all right for us, you see, because it is research; as in fact, are most of the recreational excesses we indulge
in. A finding reluctantly confirmed by several Faculty Review Boards.

  15 The crypt in question held the Throne of Faustus Heterodyne, an ancient interface dating from before the Castle was actually finished. It allowed the Castle to speak through anyone foolhardy enough to allow specialized sockets to be implanted into his or her skull. This was an honor reserved, in recent generations, solely for the seneschals of Castle Heterodyne. It was a creepy and horrible system and thus pretty hard to circumvent.

  16 Fra Pelagatti’s Lion was a device capable of generating a low-pulse ætheric “roar.” It was constructed by prisoners using parts smuggled in by Zola’s organization. It was designed to completely eradicate the artificial intelligence that operated the Castle. When activated, it astonished everyone by working perfectly.

  17 Klaus Barry Heterodyne: child of Bill Heterodyne and Lucrezia Mongfish. He was a little over a year old when he was killed in the destruction of Castle Heterodyne.

  18 Everyone had heard about Abominations of Science but, like unicorns, they didn’t actually believe they existed. Thus everyone was rather grateful when the third Madrid Conference of Scientific Inquiry and Philosophical Horrors—Unleashed! released a codified list of things that constituted actual Abominations of Science. Over the years, this useful list has been updated and curated by our own Transylvanian Polygnostic University and has proven of great use to teachers, courts, and record books. The only downside was that one of the conference members—a Herr Doktor Spanakopita—was so embarrassed that none of his previous efforts met the requirements that he, in a fit of pique, bred a race of unicorns, who went about stabbing people while quoting the parts of the list that covered biological abominations. Before he was stabbed to death, he was graciously acknowledged as a genuine Tamperer in Things Man Was Not Meant to Know and his oft-desecrated gravestone lists his accomplishments in full.

  19 A secret lab is considered by many to be the physical manifestation of a spark’s mind. Thus they tend to be rather individualistic. Some are spotlessly clean; some are filled with dangerous trash. Some are ruthlessly efficient; some are filled with suicidal deathtraps. Needless to say, sparks are usually vocally dismissive of the labs of others, while surreptitiously making notes about things they’d wished they’d thought of themselves.

  20 The Muses were a set of nine clanks built long ago for the Storm King. Most people thought them lost, destroyed, or even mythical. But as we see here, this was not the case. Otilia was the Muse of Protection—a job she took very seriously.

  21 The wizard Van Rijn appears in most popular stories of the Storm King, usually in his role as the king’s trusted friend. Little is known about his life (or death if you want to be paranoid about it), but he was certainly a genius who created scientific wonders that even the sparks of today have trouble duplicating.

  22 Castle Heterodyne only remained operational at all due to a vast cavern full of Baghdad salamanders, a type of voltaic pile.

  23 A P. P. R., or Post Revivification Rush, is experienced by constructs and humans that have been brought back from what those of a pedantic turn insist upon calling “death.” All of the senses are greatly enhanced and all of the governing mechanisms to be found in the human body are temporarily suspended. This means those experiencing a P. R. R. are filled with a great euphoria and a feeling of invulnerability. This is unfortunate for those around them as while they are mentally unstable, they are capable of great speed, strength, and endurance. However, once this effect wears off they tend to crash and they crash hard.

  24 A microgarrote is a very thin wire that can easily slice through flesh. It is a staple of pfennig dreadfuls as an assassin’s weapon, where it is routinely strung inside doorways, slicing unsuspecting people, constructs, and clanks into messy chunks by their own momentum. This is absurd, as anyone who has ever leapt back from encountering a similarly strung spider’s web will tell you. To further disillusion our more bloodthirsty readers, we must point out that bone and metal are quite resistant to it when it is used by hand. Make no mistake: it can still do a fatal amount of damage very quickly, but there is no need to exaggerate.

  25 This particular King Darius was presented with a “Magic Coat” that let him fly. It worked perfectly for almost fifteen years, in which time he used it to quell rebellions, rescue princesses, assassinate rivals, and awe the general population by correctly asserting that he could see their houses. Unfortunately, he neglected to carefully read the attached Magic Owner’s Manual—especially the chapter titled “Maintenance”—and thus subsequently earned the sobriquet “The Incandescent.”

  26 It is the rare person who manages to actually remember their death after they have been revived. There is an amusing theory making the rounds that people would remember their death just fine. Death is natural. One goes through their entire life coming to grips with its inevitability. But resurrection—ah, that is incredibly unnatural, countermanding, as it does, the laws of gods and men and forcibly dragging a person back from the Undiscovered Country, regardless of whether or not that person actually wishes to return. That experience, being summarily wrenched apart from the natural order of things and crammed back intro one’s meaty little shell, that is the trauma so great that sanity demands its erasure. Unfortunately, this is a theory that will only be proved once science has made substantial breakthroughs in ouija technology.

  27 Rudolf Selnikov was part of the extended family that contained both the Sturmvoraus and the Von Blitzengaard branches. Murder, deceit, blackmail, and betrayal were everyday considerations, and that was before people got together for the holidays.

  28 Doctor Sun did not coddle his patients.

  29 The Fifty Families, who hewed to traditional monarchical practices, were loath to deal with the philosophical ramifications of resurrection, if only because it played hob with the laws of inheritance. Therefore, when you died you were treated as if you were permanently dead, regardless of whether or not you were revivified by mad science a minute later.

  30 While this appellation could be applied to any number of Rudolf Selnikov’s nephews, it is generally assumed he is referring to Aaronev Tarvek Sturmvoraus, who was, within the family, universally admired and personally disliked.

  31 At this time, Rudolf Selnikov was married to the Lady Margarella Oklazavich Selnikov, an adventuress he met in his days as an explorer. She was known for her intense physical appetites. Her flying visits to Sturmhalten were tiring for the entire staff who were expected to keep up with her assorted itineraries which covered her philanthropic and charitable enterprises, her political and entertainment events, and her lectures and general meddling in the affairs of the people of Balan’s Gap. It is said there were further excesses she reserved for Lord Selnikov alone. This helped to explain both his physical fitness and his perpetually hunted look.

  32 Sun Ming Daiyu was Doctor Sun’s granddaughter. While not a spark herself at this time, she was expected to breakthrough at any moment. Her younger twin, Sun Ming Mei, was one of the students on Castle Wulfenbach and had been present when Agatha’s true identity was revealed.

  33 The gargoyle sweepers were not part of the Castle Heterodyne systems, but were actually a part of the Great Hospital’s protective array. The Great Hospital prided itself on admitting anybody (though they might very well be arrested as soon as they were wheeled out of Recovery). However, this meant, as a matter of course, people who had enemies were lying around helpless. Needless to say, there was the occasional attack by people who just couldn’t resist the opportunity. Quite frequently, these attackers wound up next to their intended victims in adjoining beds, which actually had an astonishing recuperative effect on all concerned, as no one wanted to be the “last man down.”

  34 Despite the prohibition of all Jägers in town, General Gkika had chosen to stay in Mechanicsburg. This was part of the deal when they accepted service with the Wulfenbach Empire. As far as can be determined, in the sixteen years the deal was in play, she never left the premises of her tavern, whic
h was merely a façade that hid a much larger subterranean establishment. This served as a hospital and hospice for those Jägers that were too ill or damaged to continue to fight. Jägers refuse to let any medical personnel treat them, except for a Heterodyne, so here they had a place where they could wait until a Heterodyne was actually found.

  35 Not an unusual feeling for a Smoke Knight, actually. A significant amount of the training seems to consist of going about one’s daily business while an instructor secretly watches to see how soon you notice the poison.

  36 One of the subtler of the many fine Smoke Knight poisons that you’ll now find available in the Castle Heterodyne gift shop, “Auntie Mehitabel’s Natural Causes” makes it look like the victim died of perfectly natural causes. Right on schedule.

  37 Oglavia Spüdna was the head of the empire’s espionage division. She is best known for the quote, “If you can’t say something nice about someone, you’re not very good at the whole spying thing.”

  38 Breaking through (or breakthrough) is the informal term used to describe the moment when a heretofore “normal” person becomes a spark. This is usually accompanied by excessive histrionics, life-changing trauma, and vast amounts of property damage. It is almost universally accepted the reason the Lady Heterodyne is as well-adjusted and sane as she is, is that she was able to ease into the physiological changes that the spark engenders in the human body without having to weather the inevitable brainstorms at the same time.