Agatha H and the Siege of Mechanicsburg

by Phil Foglio

  39 Professor Ullebröt Snarlantz (MD, PhD, University of Vienna) was a member of the Council who worshipped Lucrezia for assorted religious and/or scandalous reasons. A strong spark, he was entrusted with the secrets of her slaver wasps. Over the years, he began to experiment, obsessed with the idea of creating different varieties of revenants. His greatest success came when he developed a breed of slaver wasp that could actually infect sparks, which had heretofore been immune. His greatest failure was when he developed a mindless, feral breed of revenant that overran the town of Passholdt, where he had located his hidden laboratory. These creatures killed or converted everyone they found within a thirty-kilometer radius before the Baron’s forces heard about it and sterilized the entire area. Good work, doc.

  40 By this point, even the most lackadaisical, just-skimming-to-pass-the-test reader of these textbooks will be familiar with Othar Tryggvassen, one of many colorful threads winding through the life of the Lady Heterodyne. A powerful spark in his own right, Othar specialized in battling sparks, foiling their schemes, and exterminating them. He had decided that since sparks were the source of what, for lack of a better term, we shall call “all evil,” then the world would be a better place if they were all eradicated. This he has pledged to do, promising to kill himself when the final spark falls dead at his feet.

  41 Sanaa was not a spark herself, but had inherited the part of the Tryggvassen make-up that resulted in wandering accidentally into a never-ending series of calamitous (for others) adventures. One of these was responsible for her being sentenced to Castle Heterodyne, where she found love and . . . Oh, I’m sorry, I’m getting a bit ahead of myself.

  42 Evil beer is an actual thing. Beer is supposed to make a person feel good about themselves and the world in general. If this is not your experience, then you are drinking evil beer and should switch to something else immediately. The professoressa recommends a nice Benedictine.

  43 When she was sentenced to Castle Heterodyne, Sanaa realized letting people know she was the sister of one of Europa’s most prominent do-gooders was a spectacularly bad idea. Especially since Othar was, in fact, responsible for a significant number of them being in the Castle in the first place. In the cause of self-preservation, she adopted the nom de detention of Wilhelm.

  44 Behaviorists find it interesting that, whenever people enter into a discussion with a disembodied entity such as Castle Heterodyne, they invariably assume the entity is hovering somewhere above them. Some have speculated this is a throwback to ancient concepts of unseen entities being some sort of god or spirit. A slightly more sophisticated take is that if you are going to pretend to be a god or spirit, you hide somewhere near the ceiling. Proper researchers, such as your professors, who actually bothered to interview the few survivors of Castle Heterodyne, learned it was because the Castle is very fond of dropping things on people.

  45 Bill and Barry’s oft-neglected mother, the Lady Teodora Vodenicharova, insisted on raising her children away from the Castle. As a result, the Heterodyne Boys never really warmed up to the Castle. This goes a long way towards explaining their constant adventuring away from Mechanicsburg.

  46 Professor Hristo Tiktoffen (MFA, PhD, MAR, Rupert-Karls-Universität, Heisenberg) was the Chief Prisoner within Castle Heterodyne at the time of our story. He had a genuine appreciation of the Castle and served as the main facilitator between it and the other prisoners.

  47 As a rule, sparks have an intrinsic fascination with learning the secrets of life and death. Considering that thousands of mad scientists have been tinkering in this particular field for several centuries, it should come as no surprise there is an astonishingly diverse body of work on the subject. Resurrectionists are specialists. They tend to be relatively minor sparks who have collected dozens, if not hundreds, of different techniques for raising the dead, and are conversant on which method is suitable for the occasion. Despite this, their track record is actually pretty dismal. Someone considered a top-notch resurrectionist usually succeeds in only one out of fifty attempts. The industry also has one of the best written “no refunds” policy in the western world.

  48 Every army in history has included women who disguised themselves as men: to be near a loved one, to escape something so onerous that army life was an improvement, or simply because they wanted to loot and pillage in the company of like-minded companions while seeing the world. Usually, these women hid their sex from their companions and superiors. Sometimes for decades, because they would be drummed out if discovered. The big difference with the Heterodynes was that if one of their warriors was discovered to be female, they simply didn’t care.

  49 Skifandrians take weapons very seriously. A member of the warrior class spends her entire life getting better and better at wielding bigger and progressively more destructive weapons. However, there is a theoretical limit to how big and nasty a weapon one can carry without rupturing something. At that point, a supreme warrior will often aim for Omeetza, an advanced level of skill which requires no weapons at all.

  50 The Jägermonsters were the core of the army of the Heterodynes. They were monstrous reavers and pillagers, who became more physically warped as they grew older. While Bill and Barry redeemed the Heterodyne name, the deeds of the Jägers had remained fixed within the lore of Europa, and they continued to be shunned and killed when possible, which was not very often. Because of this, after the Heterodyne Boys had disappeared, the Jägers had taken service with Baron Wulfenbach who, in return for gaining an already feared army, granted them the protection of the empire. It was a deal that had worked out well for everybody.

  51 After the Heterodynes disappeared, the Jägers were absorbed into the forces of Baron Wulfenbach. However, they had pledged undying loyalty to the House of Heterodyne. In order to resolve this conflict, a group of Jägers volunteered to leave the Baron’s service and dedicate their lives to searching the world for a Heterodyne heir. Everyone was sure there was no such thing and that this was, in effect, a suicide mission. But honor would be served and the Jägers, as a whole, would survive. Then Agatha appeared.

  52 For a while, Barry and Agatha lived incognito, in the town of Beetleburg, with the constructs Adam and Lilith Clay. Adam and Lilith were themselves hiding their past identities as “Punch” and “Judy,” the famous assistants of the Heterodyne Boys. Barry disappeared shortly after he constructed the locket for Agatha.

  53 For the record, Dimo means Agatha probably would not venture forth on extended campaigns of conquest, carnage, and pillage. Proving that you just can’t please everybody.

  54 Little is known about the process by which a normal human was transformed into a Jäger, but we do have tantalizing clues. It involved a ritual which cumulated with the ingestion of the famous Jägerdraught. The formula is unknown, but one of its ingredients was almost certainly untreated water from the River Dyne. Odds of surviving the process were only slightly below fifty percent, and those who did survive recall it as being “the worst thing they ever experienced, and yes, completely worth it.”

  55 As hard as it is to credit, this statement is actually quite true. As we mentioned in an earlier textbook, all the Jägers took up little hobbies to stay in touch with their slowly-receding humanity. This extended even to the generals. General Goomblast was a historian, specializing in the Jägerkin. Zog studied the arts of war and, despite actually remembering what it was like to live as a horse-warrior, was adept at seeing the benefits of new technology—especially as to how it could be used to kill people. In his spare time, he was a frequent contributor to the Mechanicsburg Consumer Safety Bulletin. Khrizhan studied people and, thus, was very good at manipulating them.

  56 This exchange presents a tantalizing glimpse into the command structure of the Jägergeneral hierarchy. While the Jägers did seem to possess assorted levels of rank, it’s believed that up to a certain point these were acquired along with their hats since the ranks didn’t really seem to mean anything until they got to the rank of general. There were seven known
generals and, as far as we can tell, they were all of equal rank. This could cause obvious problems, however, as we mentioned earlier, each general had a field of expertise. This exchange seems to indicate that when certain categories of situation presented themselves, the general with the closest field of expertise would assume a temporary command position.

  57 Klaus always claimed that sparks were like artists with recognizable styles. One of his talents was in being able to differentiate and recognize them. This proved useful on more than one occasion. When someone sends a giant mechanical echidna to ravage a rival’s vineyards, for example, they don’t necessarily sign it. (Although it is not unheard of for a spark to do exactly that.) Klaus claimed there were other similarities between sparks and artists, such as an inability to deal with certain realities and the associated ability to construct a reality more to their liking. Plus, they tend to be terrible with money.

  58 Spoiler alert! This is the thrilling conclusion to “The Foolish Wizard Who Dared to Love A Non-Wizard,” one of the many stories to be found in The Collected, Vouchsafed, and Completely Uncursed Tales of the Wizard Folk of Finland (Foglio & Foglio/Transylvania Polygnostic Press). The Finns have an interesting reputation among the rest of Europa that they do not go out of their way to debunk. Although the intelligentsia of Europa scoff at this obvious canard, there is no denying it is aided by the Finns seeming ability to control the weather, the actions of plants and animals, ice and fire, as well as time and space. These are, no doubt, all simple parlor tricks used to terrify outsiders and make potential invaders think twice and will surely, someday, be revealed as such by science.

  59 When Klaus had absorbed the Valley of the Heterodynes and Mechanicsburg into the empire, he was told that the area’s leading family, the Von Mekkhans, were extinct. This left a power vacuum, so the Baron appointed a town council, which was headed at this time by one Stanislaus Zuken. He was, by all accounts, a very nice fellow who spent most of his time collecting butterflies and trying to stay out of everybody’s way.

  60 Be that as it may, it is still available from Transylvania Polygnostic University Press.

  61 Gaspard Masat was a contemporary of the Storm King and, indeed, was a member of his court, traveling the length of the king’s realm and reporting on what was happening. He was known for having an eye for significant details and an insightful knowledge of how people thought. Many of his reports were, for espionage purposes, written as stories. These were so popular that they were told long after the rulers he had written about had been conquered. After the fall of Valois, he found himself without a patron. To make ends meet, he produced a magnificent poetic cycle chronicling the rise, reign, and ultimate fall of the Storm King: A Villám a Korona. He folded the definitive versions of all of his stories into this work. This proved successful. Too successful, actually, as instead of writing new material, he spent the rest of his life rewriting it, changing the facts with every iteration in order to cater to the changing tastes of the public. Unfortunately, as your professors are all too aware, the public’s taste for the dramatic is a hole that can never be filled. It is said that in the final version, the climactic battle at Balan’s Gap had Andronicous leading warriors from the moon—mounted upon all the animals of the Earth—fighting an army of flaming Heterodynes that were each thirty meters tall, and that, after their defeat, their corpses formed the Transylvanian Alps. Good stuff, to be sure, but he tried to pass it off as history witnessed firsthand. Skalds may be able to get away with foolishness like that, but the universities of Europa and their various historical societies have no patience with out-and-out fiction. To make things worse, he insisted that all editions of A Villám a Korona retain the same title, marginalia, appendices, indexes, and bibliographies. This meant it was very easy to confuse the later, fabulist versions with the factual original—which was actually a unique, first-person chronicle of the Storm King’s reign. Eventually, out of sheer annoyance, all editions of his books were ordered destroyed. Thus today, while Masat is known as a great storyteller, none of his actual stories have survived. The irony!

  62 He did not get the job.

  64 The Wulfenbach Dark Fleet was supposedly a band of smugglers that operated from within the admittedly already-extensive airship fleet of the empire. They were legendary for being able to circumvent blockades, because they already had all the empires’ codes and passwords. They were, according to the numerous stories, ballads, and epic poems told about them, good-hearted philanthropists and crusaders for the justice that occasionally fell between the empire’s cracks. They were also completely fictitious and, at this point in our story, the Baron was getting rather impatient waiting for someone to fill this obvious ecological and sociological niche. He was beginning to think that, like so many other seemingly obvious things, he would have to do it himself.

  65 Mechanicsburg, as has been mentioned elsewhere, was a town not traditionally known for engaging in much commerce. Historically, they obtained their vast wealth by plunder and tribute. When they needed something they could not grow, produce, or build themselves they, as often as not, went out and stole it.

  Still, even among brigands, one will find artisans and so, in the unique crucible that bubbled within the shadow of the Heterodynes, the people of Mechanicsburg occasionally brought forth things that other, ostensibly sane, people actually wanted. For example: about four hundred and seventy-five years ago, one Simaeous von Uǘrsk brewed up “a rather amusing little herbal digestive” that relied on local ingredients, including assorted vegetation and insects that had originally been mutated into existence by imbibing the toxic waters of the Dyne. It quickly became the Other Thing the town was known for: Snezek. Snezek (the name came from the noise that a person invariably made the first time they tasted it) was soon being served at late-night dinner parties across three continents. Its presence at a gathering indicated the hosts were madcap bohemians who dared to dance along the edges of propriety and that, pretty soon, those present could expect someone to be tossed into the fountain wearing naught but their unmentionables.

  66 The story of the commercialization of the Mechanicsburg snail is a fascinating one in its own right and deserves its own book. But, in brief, it started when a merchant from Mechanicsburg discovered that a colony of hometown snails had bred within the bedding of leaf mulch he had used to cushion a fragile load of machinery he was delivering to Amsterdam. By the time he arrived, he had enough snails that he could prepare a respectable feast for his buyer, who was so impressed that he ordered more. The rest is history.

  67 When Baron Wulfenbach took over Mechanicsburg, the van Mekkhan family resolved to not give the Heterodyne secrets to an outsider. Therefore, the Baron was informed that all of the Heterodyne’s seneschals were dead and their knowledge lost. As an additional subterfuge, the family adopted the name of “Heliotrope.” Of course everyone in town knew who they really were. Now, an outsider might say that a secret of this magnitude being kept from Baron Wulfenbach (of all people) for over fifteen years strains credulity, which is fair, considering the Baron’s reputation for ferreting out secrets. Mechanicsburg, however, is a very insular place, and telling Klaus the van Mekkhans were still around would have gone against the best wishes of the Heterodynes. This was something that any Mechanicsburg native would have been almost incapable of doing. Besides, “putting on over” on outsiders is considered a fine sport.

  68 Longer than that, actually. People began to do the math regarding the House of Heterodyne’s lopsided balance sheets as early as the 1300s.

  69 Kleegon had been in charge of the count’s forces and had choreographed a battle against the Baron that, while appearing formidable, had allowed the Wulfenbach forces to win handily. What had caught the Baron’s eye was that, when the battle was over, the defeated enemy lines spelled out: “HELP. I AM A PRISONER IN THE CASTLE. SECOND FLOOR, THIRD DOOR FROM THE LEFT.”

  70 Drakken horses were an unusually successful cross between regular horses and lizards, with the added “be
nefit” of breathing fire if properly coaxed. Unlike regular horses they grew torpid in the cold and could only move quickly in short bursts. Like regular horses they tended to explode if allowed to eat clover, which they will bite through concrete barriers to get at. This campaign was one of the few on record where they were actually deployed.

  71 Herr Doktor Eeliocentric Chouté (MD, MEN, Cambridge) was often accused of not having a brain in his head. This was technically true, as it was located in a fortified container atop the staff he carried with him at all times. This had two noticeable effects: On the one hand, he now had a brain that could be tuned so it could ignore the thousand-and-one distractions a messy organic body produces that interrupt one’s thinking. As a result, Chouté was a brilliant intellectual, capable of clear and fast insights that easily propelled him into the Baron’s inner circle. On the other hand, he was a man desperately afraid of losing his humanity and, thus, he allowed himself to thoroughly embrace his emotional responses. This made him overly loud at times, but Klaus liked the fact that he was entirely incapable of subterfuge.

  72 Professor Julius Senear [Litore Aquilonaris Elementary (advanced program), ScD, DVM] specialized in creating flying anthropoids. Many sparks have a favorite field of study, to be sure, but few were as dedicated to a central concept as Professor Senear. He wanted viable flying apes, did everything he could to make this dream come true, and succeed he did. It is thanks to his tireless efforts that at least three separate and distinct species of Aeroapes® can be found today, infesting the towers and roofs of Europa’s cathedrals, castles, and opera houses.

  73 Ethics in Government was one of the groundbreaking classes students on Castle Wulfenbach, many of whom were destined to be rulers or the advisors to rulers, were required to take. Sometimes over and over again until they could pass it or at least fake it convincingly.

  74 There is some argument as to what mechanica vitæ actually is. At first glance, most engineers assume it is an antiquated term of the Heterodyne’s devising for simple electricity. However, one must remember that, when dealing with the Heterodynes and their creations, nothing is ever simple. The Castle has intimated that several of its more arcane mechanisms are powered by the mysterious energies it extracts from the River Dyne. These are the same energies that mutated wild animals, served as a component of the Jägerdraught, and killed almost anyone who dares to drink the water. It was also instrumental in the Lady Heterodyne briefly achieving a state of being that no one really wants to call “Godhood,” but there you are. From this we are forced to conclude that there might be something more in the water than can be understood by conventional science. Since all of this mysterious energy is extracted by the Castle before it is allowed to proceed out into the world, examination is impossible at this time.