Personal InformationName: Chicklet
Age: Over 18
Personal Journal: Chicklet
Email / AIM / MSN / Plurk:
Email: Dwlogs@writeme.com
Aim: Bardess Ookami
MSN: N/A
Plurk: ChickletLARP
Current Character(s): Clef (ascended)
Gabriel Agreste/Papillion
Me/Ashildr
Kaylin Neya/Elianne
Spark
Character InformationCharacter Name: Agatha Heterodyne
Fandom:
Girl GeniusCharacter History:
A link to my notes as I reread if you want (by no need feel obligated to read my notes. Just putting it here in case you wanted to)
(Also, please note that in some sections like the fight after Lars dies, and the fight in the castle, these are huge long sections that lasted months or years IRL, so I will be trying to tell them in an order that makes sense, rather than strict chronology)
Agatha remembers little of her childhood, and we are only shown in the webcomic slightly more. (The novel series has even more, but as this is a one source game, I will keep to the comics only as best I can. Please note Wiki pages that are linked may have info from both) She used to travel with her uncle Barry, never knowing he was the famous Barry Heterodyne of the Heterodyne stories. She just knew that she loved him and he was fun, and then one day he left her with Adam and Lilith and didn't come back.
What had happened, and she does learn most of this later, is that she started to break through (more on sparks below) as a Spark at an almost impossibly young age. Barry freaked out. He had good reason to. He and his brother were the only good Heterodynes in their whole lineage, she was too young, female Sparks tended to vanish, and she was really really too young. Both too young to understand that sort of power, even as brilliant as she was at that age, but also because the younger a Spark breaks through, the lower their chances of surviving their first big creation is. So he built a device that did what should have been impossible. He built into a locket with pictures of her parents a device that blocked her Spark traits without killing her or making her brain dead. It did, however, have some massive side effects. It made her stupid. It also dulled her emotions. Both working on the premise of a shock collar. Whenever she tried to focus, or felt anything too strongly, she got a pounding headache that broke her out of it and left her nearly crippled until it passed.
He left her in the care of Lilith and Adam, two constructs he and his brother made when they were much younger. They were known in the Heterodyne stories as Judy and Punch, but very few people knew that Punch and Judy were the same people as the Adam and Lilith Clay. (Again, the novel has much more on them, and her early childhood with them.) Agatha didn't know she was a Heterodyne, or who her parents were. Either set. Adam became like a father, Lilith like a mother, and she was Agatha Clay. To most of the town she lived in, they were humans and she was their daughter. No one thought much about the fact that she looked nothing like them, or that Adam was mute. Because Science. Really, Science is the answer to anything confusing in her world, and this all makes more sense if you accept that as you read, and realize that they are at the level of 'any sufficiently advanced science is indistinguishable from magic'.
Agatha lived with the Clays through to the start of University, and it was her only real HOME. She was, as so many in her world are, drawn by Science, fascinated by it but... it seemed... utterly unskilled at it. Nothing she built worked, but she couldn't rid herself of the desire to build, to try. The head of her town, Doctor Beetle was also the head of the university she attended and had taken her under his wing, because he knew who she really was and wanted to keep an eye on her. One of his assistants encouraged her and was like a mentor and friend. Sadly, he is the less important one here. The other one HATED her, and never understood why Beetle kept an incompetent student like her around his labs.
Everything came to a head one day for Agatha, and a million threads all wound together to start her awakening. There was an odd electrical anomaly in the streets when she was on the way to school, and through a rip in the sky she saw what she would later learn was the Muse of Time. It said "Like that" and Agatha, terrified, fled. And not paying attention to where she was going, she fell before two soldiers who were the last of their group. (Not atypical.) They were brothers, and one of them decided to mug her. He stole her locket. She learned later from the surviving brother (Moloch von Zinzer) that something about the locket killed him. But all she knew then was that she was afraid, and glad to have escaped with her life. Oh, and she was LATE.
So she ran as fast as she could to the university, and Doctor Merlot (the assistant who hated her) informed her that the Baron was coming and that she had a half hour to clean EVERYTHING incriminating out of the lab. Which basically meant EVERYTHING.
She wound up watching as the Baron had his son inspect the machine he had ordered Beetle (who had ordered his assistants) to build. The Baron's son, Gilgamesh Wulfenbach, wound up opening the closet she had shoved everything into, and the clonk to the head he took made him realize that the reason the project wasn't working was because the design itself was flawed. A test for him, pointless busy work for the minions..er.... assistants.
Beetle noticed that Agatha's locket was missing and panicked, trying to send her away, but the Baron heard that she had witnessed the electrical anomaly and ordered her to stay. Merlot, ticked that he had been wasted on something so pointless, ratted out Beetle. Beetle had been secretly working on forbidden tech of the Other, he had a Hive Engine in the middle of a populated town.
Quick side trip, because this is crucial to understanding Agatha and her world. There was a mysterious Spark that vanished around the time Agatha was born known simply as the Other. We find out much later that the Other was Lucrizia Mongfish - Agatha's mother. What the Other did that was so dangerous was that she had invented Hive Engines that produced a variety of wasps (They were called that but look nothing like bees or wasps of any sort. The warriors looked more like those rolly droids from Star Wars, the Queens look like huuuuuuuge slugs, and the Slavers are small flying bugs that can just clear an open mouth, without clear stingers and too few legs) Slaver Wasps flew into people's mouths and made them mindless puppets called Revenants who were programed to serve the Other. What no one (other than those who had aided Lucrizia personally) knew until Agatha's time was that there were also Slavers that could make people seem like normal people until they were activated, rather than shambling zombies.
Okay, back to the main story.
So, the Baron was furious at Beetle for having a Hive Engine. He ordered Beetle arrested, and Beetle responded by throwing a bomb at Agatha and Gil. Gil knocked it back, and it exploded, blowing Beetle to bits. The Baron ordered the Hive Engine be seized and put Merlot in charge, warning him that even so much as one slip he'd be shipped off to Castle Heterodyne (one of the most feared punishments in the Baron's empire). Merlot's first act was to ban Agatha from the university forever. The Baron sent a Jager to escort her home, and once she was home she told her parents everything. (Adam and Lilith, obviously.) Surprisingly, they were more upset about her stolen locket, and the Baron's presence in town than about Beetle being dead. They sent her upstairs to pack while they went to search the black market for her locket, Lilith commenting cryptically about how this felt like old times.
Agatha, too wrung out, fell asleep instead of packing. She had an amazing dream and for the first time since she was a child, didn't wake up in the middle of the night whenever her dream got too intense. She did wake up, however, in Adam's workshop, in her unders, covered in machine grease. And she wasn't alone. Moloch was there, looking for revenge. After mere moments, a can of c-gas was tossed into the workshop, knocking them both out.
Agatha awoke in the same state of partial dress, in a nice bedroom, with Moloch's hand over her mouth as he spewed exposition and threats. Apparently someone had made an impressive clank (robot) and the Baron thought he had, and that given what she was and was not wearing when they were found together, that they were lovers. So the Baron had kidnapped him to assess his abilities as a Spark, and her to keep Moloch behaving. Moloch told her if she got him shipped to Castle Heterodyne, his last act of freedom would be to kill her.
While helping Moloch against her will, Agatha also had time to get to know the others in the Castle. She made some friendships that would last forever - Sleipnir and Theo (who it turns out is a cousin on her mother's side, but is a decent fellow despite that.) She also made some enemies that would later become allies - Princess Zulenna, and the construct Madam Von Pinn. She wore trousers for the first time, and wound up working with Gil. That... did not go smoothly. There was a lot of back and forth where they would get along and work well together for a time, then he'd put his foot in his mouth (not literally) or she'd mishear/misunderstand something and she'd hate him and rage and stalk off. She also got to know many of the Jagers, and she met Othar.
Working with Gil... she learned, as he did, that she was a Spark. And he was fascinated by the things she built in her sleep. He points out at one point that he helped her build something and still had no clue what it was for. Also, he showed her his falling/flying machine, which was when she learned that "Castle Wulfenbach" was actually an impressively large fleet of dirigibles.
And then they found the Hive Engine, because some of the kids got curious. And Agatha and Gil were in the wrong place at the wrong time when a reverent who seemed normal until it betrayed them all, activated it, because it heard Agatha's voice and thought she was her mother come back to power.
Agatha and Gil fought the warriors, trying to kill the Queen before it could birth any slavers. They worked well together, but when Agatha discovered that the creatures obeyed her, she wisely kept that to herself. They killed the Queen and gassed the chamber. Which was when she received her first marriage proposal from Gil. In which he basically said he wanted to marry her to claim her, and to tick off his dad. While she was laughing at and yelling at him, Othar swung in and dragged her off. There was a lot of arguing, and Gil shoved Othar off of the airship. Agatha screamed at him over that, about how much work she had gone to, to save Othar already.
And then things got even more chaotic. Adam and Lilith showed up and knocked Gil out, then asked Agatha who he was. When she explained who he was and that he had just proposed, they grabbed her and RAN.
Unfortunately they ran right into the Baron and his troops. One of the Jagermonsters called Adam "Ponch?!" and then got knocked out by the Baron, who upon learning who Agatha had to be (but still not knowing Lucriza was the Other) and who her parents had to be, ordered the three of them locked in different cells, and Agatha sedated. Adam and Lilith fought to get Agatha away, throwing her to her friends among the students, and telling her to get to Mechanicsburg, that it would help her... Her friends dragged Agatha off as Von Pinn tore her parents to shreds.
Zulenna, learning Agatha was a Heterodyne turned and gave her life to cover Agatha's retreat, and the others helped her get away. she wound up on a small airship with Othar, and with Krosp - a talking cat construct made by Doctor Dim, who she met on the airship during one of her many adventures there. Theo, thinking she would be safe with the great hero Othar, and knowing now she was a cousin, promised to get the others and meet her in Mechanicsburg.
They didn't get far when she told Othar she wasn't going to be his sidekick, because if she was a Spark herself, she was pretty sure she gets her own sidekick. Which was when Othar told her she had to die, because his goal is to kill all Sparks in the world, then himself, seeing Sparks as the root of all evil in the world. She tricked him, then shoved him off the airship. Guilt over that would haunt her until she could apologize to Gil for yelling at him much much later. Unfortunately for her and Krosp, as Othar fell, he shot the envelope of her small stolen airship.
They crashed, and came across a traveling Heterodyne show - basically a circus caravan that specialized in stories about Bill and Barry Heterodyne and their adventures as heroes. They didn't want to let her join, and most of them never fully trusted her, but she saved many of their lives with the death ray she had built out of the parts of the crashed airship. Because of her, only one of their number died. Madam Olga. To throw off pursuit, and as a thank you, they dressed Olga - who was too burnt to a crisp because the spider clank that attacked breathed fire - in Agatha's clothing, and left her death ray as a grave marker. Agatha joined Master Payne's traveling HEterodyne show, never telling the others who she truly was or why she was on the run. She also never told them she was a Spark, or about the dozen or so Dingbots that were with her, secretly aiding her work. They, on the other hand, never told her that most of them were low level Sparks. They agreed she could stay as far as Mechanicsburg, and most of them were eager to be rid of her.
Most. But not all.
Lars and Zeetha both became big parts of Agatha's history here. Zeetha was the warrior princess (yes, feel free to make all the Xena jokes you wish here) of a lost society called Skifander. She had been sent out on a diplomatic mission as a teen, but had gotten sick. HEr ship was attacked by pirates and she was kidnapped for sale as a salve because of her exotic hair. She recovered before they got to the slave market, and upon learning what had happened to her and the people that had been with her, she killed all the pirates and crashed their ship. Which was when she realized that everyone who could tell her how to get home was dead. She had started to think she had dreamed Skifander and that she was crazy, or some failed experiment. Agatha was the first to have heard of Skifander, and because of that, Zeetha decided to bless Agatha with a singular honour. Among her people, she was allowed to train only one besides her own daughters, and she chose Agatha, forming a bond closer than siblings, closer than friends. Training Agatha in fighting became her mission in life. Well, that and getting home somehow.
Lars however... was not lost royalty. He was not a Spark. He was a former apprentice cheesemaker and the resident coward. He was one of the forward scouts for the circus, because any town that didn't spook Lars was clearly safe enough for the ensemble. Lars... started to slowly fall for Agatha, and (more so in the novels) she started to feel like she might be able to fall for him one day, maybe. But he was certainly special to her. And she did care about him, more than she realized.
At one point Gil caught up to them, sure Agatha was with them. She was passing herself off as Olga. They tricked him into thinking Agatha was dead, and he went off with Abner to see the grave for himself. Abner returned, assuring Agatha that Gil and the insane pirate he had brought with him had been fooled. This was when they realized that young Wulfenbach was, as Bang put it "thinking fiancee when he should be thinking prisoner", and Zeetha had fun poking at Agatha over that.
One of the stops the circus made was town where three Jagers were being hanged until dead. Unfortunately for the locals, they weren't dying. They are Jagers, after all, and no simple noose could kill them. So the Circus had to perform alongside the hanging Jagers. It was one of the first times Agatha was to perform, and she was playing Lucrizia, because oddly they thought she'd be perfect for the part, and Lars was playing her father. She spotted Othar in the audience, and he cornered her later, telling her how clearly she was bound to be a hero, like her father and uncle. She refused, saying she just wanted a simple life, and wanted nothing to do with being a hero. When screams erupted outside, however, she grabbed a death ray and ran right for the danger. She still refused to see his point. She did, however, make a deal with the Jagers. She freed them, and in exchange, they chased off the giant bear and its rider to keep the town safe.
She learned much later that the rider was loyal to her, as the three were, as all Jagers who learned she was the Heterodyne heir were (with one massive exception). So Oggie, Dimo, and Maxim "Chased off" Jenka, explaining everything to her away from prying eyes. Then the tree boys returned and joined the circus.
As they grew closer to Sturmhalten, Agatha was introduced to Moxana, a clank that the Circus had that was meant to play chess. She wanted Agatha to repair her, they thought, and gave Agatha the notes of her master who had made her, the legendary Van Rijn. She was one of the Muses. And she had once had a sister, Tinka, who had been another Muse. Agatha later learned that Moxana had wanted her to BUILD her another sister. Sadly, she never had the opportunity. Tinka had been taken away on a previous trip through Sturmhalten, when the dancing Clank had drawn the attention of young Prince Tarvek. The Muses were created for the Storm King, way back when, and no one knew that Tarvek fancied himself the new Storm King. He had reason to, to be fair.
Before they got to Sturmhalten, however, they came to Balan's gap, which was crawling with reverants. Agatha wanted to go save the town, Payne said no, flatly. But that meant they couldn't avoid Sturmhalten, and so they made a plan to use the Jagers to get them through faster without stopping for a show. But Tarvek's father remembered that circus, and they were ordered to perform, but the Jagers were sent on ahead. They decided to do their most risque show to get kicked out of town, but as they were preparing, a note came from the king to "tart it up". After seeing the show, Agatha was all but ordered to attend a special dinner with the king, the prince, and the princess, the last of which turned out to be a human transplanted into the body of a clank. Agatha was drugged with a chemical that made her spill her life story, and then was thrown in a cell with a few Geisterdamen - pale spider riders who were traditionally her mother's most loyal followers. They decided Agatha was the lost child... but rather than mean that they followed or supported her, it meant that she was who they wer elookign for to follow Lucriza's last orders. Between the machinations of them and Tarvek's family, with a lot of convoluted backstabbing and betrayal, Agatha had her mother uploaded into her head, and Lucrizia took over.
The control wasn't absolute, and whenever Lucriza needed sleep, Agatha would awake, and the other way around. Tarvek was kept on his toes trying to play both sides. Agatha learned her mother was the Other and filmed a recording to tell the world, Lucriza found the recording and changed it to tell the world that the Baron was the Other. Back and forth they warred for control until they came face to face with the Baron. Not knowing Lucriza had possessed Agatha through advanced science, he offered Agatha one chance to turn herself into his care. Lucriza used a special slaver wasp made to enslave a Spark, and sent it into him. She gloated in whispers while pretending to give him CPR, about how she was going to play Good Heterodyne and that there would be a nice neat Heterodyne Wulfenbach alliance, but that it would be controlled by her. She found Agatha's locket, which had the Heterodyne seal on it, and put it on the play the role. The locket, rather than blocking the Spark... blocked Lucriza. Agatha was herself again in time for the Baron to try to kill her.
Lars got in the way. And died.
As he died, he told Agatha that maybe it was for the best, because he was a normal guy, what chance did he have with a Spark like her?
Agatha broke. She went BALLISTIC! She had spent her time in the circus quietly weaponizing every wagon. Using the one that was like an organ, she used music to command all the wagons and the battle became a warzone. The Baron pulled back his troops so he could bomb the whole area from above. A Spark made calming pie was used to pull Agatha from the Madness, and then a still experimental hallucinogenic gas was used to cover their escape, showing the world the Heterodyne boys returned, along with some of their known companions, announcing Agatha as the new Heterodyne, and thanking their good friend Klaus (the Baron) and then they escaped on a Wulfenbach airship that Payne had stolen.
Agatha sent most of them on to England where Wooster (Gil's manservant who was actually a British spy with orders to take Agatha to England) promised they'd be safe. Agatha promised she would go to England... some day, but that she first had to go to Mechanicsburg.
So she, Wooster, Zeetha, and Krosp headed to Mechanicsburg. While they were being subtle and trying to learn about what the city was, and what was left of Castle Heterodyne (which involved trying to convince the people actually in charge of the town that she was actually a Heterodyne, and making coffee) a blond slip of a girl in pink frippery landed in the townsquare, declared herself the HEterodyne and marched into the castle.
Again, Agatha went subtle, and was sent in as a prisoner, since that wouldn't draw suspicion, since there had been fake HEterodyne claims before (none so dramatic, flashy, or convincing though) and supplies had to still be sent in, dangerous criminals still had to be taken off the streets. Of course, she first got to watch Gil defend her town impressibly with a zappy stick, and might have been a little too excited by the show. She asked Zeetha to keep him safe, for her.
She learned that the Castle was dangerously broken. It was built by her ancestors and was sentient, so psychopathic wasn't really a surprise. However the castle's mind had fragmented. So she had to help repair the castle, take down Pinkie (Zola - who actually is a cousin on her mother's side and was working with a branch of Tarvek's family), and convince every part of the castle that SHE was the true Heterodyne. Oh and survive all of the criminals that were in there. Like Moloch. He would through this adventure unwillingly wind up as her head minion.
Having fallen in with the
Fun-Sized Mobile Agony and Death Dispensers, she was saved by Tarvek and a woman with him named Violetta. They helped Agatha get free, Tarvek insisted he was in Agatha's side and that this was NOT his plan. "My plan was so much more elegant."
Turns out Tarvek is very ill, and they need help. Which is about when they find out Gil has entered the castle. She goes to find Gil, but he's with Zola. A lot of back and forth in which Zola is an absolute jerk, and Agatha learns that Gil was in the habit of saving Zola which makes her ticked off and jealous, she gets Gil to help her heal Tarvek. And learns that Gil and Tarvek HATE each other. But she gets Gil with the science, and he's too stupid in love with her to say no to anything she asked, anyway. So he agrees to help save his rival for her hand. Except that Tarvek was too far gone, and all the medicines and tech they had on hand was too broken or too old. "It would be easier to kill him and revive him!" so they decided to kill Tarvek to bring him back to life, basically a full reboot. But for that he'd need two things - al his blood run through a filter, and another life source to be hooked to, in order to prevent brain loss.
So they hook Gil up to Tarvek, and mad science ensues. Agatha gives each boy a light kiss on the lips for encouragement. But they get interrupted of course, and manage only to split the illness between the two. They escape the attack.... and that's when Agatha started changing colours herself. (First sign of the illness). She caught it kissing Tarvek for luck. So they were going to have to link her in, and kill her as well.
The Castle REFUSED to allow that. So... Agatha had to temporarily kill the Castle. And then each other. Unfortunately, all metal had to be removed for the process, which meant letting Lucrizia back out. And she managed to keep control for a while, but Agatha finally got her under control again.
They wound up having to fight what they thought was Otilla, the Muse of Protection, but turned out to be Otillia's body, but a broken subsystem of the Castle was inside instead. Otilla... whoops... was inside Von Pinn. Who had returned to the Castle, and Agatha kind of... nearly killed her. Tarvek and Gil went on and on about how could anyone hurt Van Pinn. Agatha pointed out that in her defense, Von Pinn had killed her parents. Which was when Gil told her that actually he had repaired them and brought them back to life. Agatha then helped them get Von Pinn set up for a transference from her body into one of the larger Fun-Sized Mobile Agony and Death Dispensers, and left Theo and Sleipnir - who had come in with Gil - to finish the process with some of the minions while they went off to settle Pinkie's hash.
In the middle of all of...everything... in the castle, Agatha ran into Merlot again. He had been sent there, and blamed her, because once he figured out who she was, from Beetle's notes, he set the university on fire to hide the evidence and killed everyone who might have known. Totally her fault. He didn't survive much after Gil got through with him.
Zola turned out to be better than Gil or Tarvek realized, both of them thinking of her as a harmless damsel in distress who had gotten conned into this role and was in over her head. Instead, she managed to get a copy of Lucriza uploaded into her own mind, but in such a way that she could keep utter control. (At this point, there is also a copy in what used to be Tarvek's sister). After a fight in which Zeetha gets VERY badly injured, Pinkie manages to escape, nearly dead.
Then they got news... the Baron was dead. She sent Gil out to solidify his hold on the empire, and to hold off the foes that were attacking Wulfenbach and Mechanicsburg people alike. Agatha, Tarvek, and some of the others went back to repairing the Castle. She quickly learned that all of the town was part of the Castle, but that the Castle was running on the last dredges of energy.
A long, hard, and needlessly chaotic battle ensued, and she managed to repair the castle, except it kept saying "I need a Spark, I need a Spark." But none of the Sparks there seemed to be able to be enough for it. Agatha realized that it meant a jolt of lighting, and while trying to utilize the building storm, Gil appeared and told her it was over, that he was going to save her. But that she needed to give up and come with him. She could tell something was wrong with him and had one of the monsters take him away. She then regretted not taking him prisoner so she and Tarvek could have figured out what was wrong with him.
Whe also wound up running through the town trying to build what she needed to revitalize the Castle, and wound up getting help from Othar of all people, being reminded that he is actually a Spark as well.
Moloch led most of the convicts to do the repairs that didn't need Sparks.
As things were starting to come together, she wound up face to face with Professor Tiktoffen, who was apparently everyone's inside man. But he had his own agenda, he built a device that forced the Castle to obey him. But it couldn't violate its core programing and hurt Agatha, so they had to fight it out themselves. He had a knife, she had a spanner. He taunted her that it was stupid to bring a spanner to a knife fight. She pointed out that it was harder to break things with a knife, and shattered the control device with the spanner. The Castle liked him, so made his death quick and painless.
With the Castle fully repaired, and Agatha acknowledged as the Heterodyne, she was told there were some ceremonial things she had to do in the Red Cathedral, because not even HER family was mad enough to entrust ALL the systems to the Castle. While there, Tarvek's cousin Martellus poisoned Tarvek and kidnapped her through a gate that was supposed to transport her instantly to his hideout. Violetta (another cousin of Tarvek's who was ordered to protect Agatha and serve her, by Tarvek) and Krosp (The talking cat construct) followed. Just then The Baron arrived in town, apparently still alive, and set off a time bomb, freezing the town and all who was in it, in time.
This messed up the translocation, and they arrived... 2 and a half years later.
Martellus wasted no time genetically modifying Agatha to require the presence of him in order to survive. If she was too angry, or away too long she'd suffer withdrawal, and if he didn't touch her, die. He told her that this would make her a loyal vassal to him. She knocked him out, and transferred her dependance to a Wasp Eater - a 6 legged wesal that can detect revenants.
She, Violetta, and Krosp escaped. With Science. And she was taken to the underground area where the few who were loyal to Mechanicsburg but weren't trapped in it were holed up. Including Adam - who could now talk, Lilith, and their child. Apparently Gil did better than just repair them. Agatha got filled in on the situation, including the fact that they all thought she was locked in the town as well, and that no one had seen Tarvek since. Also, Gil was acting odd. Even for a Spark. Agatha vowed to free her town and her people. To that end she set off to the greatest library in the world, the incorruptible library in Paris.
To get there, she had to take the Corbettite Railway, a train system run by monks for whom the schedule actually is gospel. They board separately, her, Zeetha, Violetta, Krosp, Dimo, and Wooster. There they meet yet another one of Tarvek and Violetta's relatives, an aunt Violetta doesn't actually hate. So of course that aunt is part of yet another deep and intricate plot, and this one gets them all into a lot of trouble with the railroad, and gets her killed (agatha gets from her body the Van Rijn book back, but with more notes added) when she accidentally lets loose a 'demon' train that had been built by the Heterodynes (before Bill and Barry's time) and locked away by the Monks. Of course Martellus conveniently arrives in time to help save them all, with a plan to bypass sanctuary so he can kidnap Agatha after it is all done. But it takes a lot more than any of them anticipate to decommission the demon train.
During the fight, the large bears that had attacked earlier in the train ride (Not Jenka's bear, Faust) catch up to them and declare that Krosp is their true leader. They help them fight the train, and Agatha shoves it in a tiny clank body without a mouth.
Feeling guilty, because her family had made the train that nearly killed them all and that ate half the depot, Agatha offers to help build a new train. Martellus, lured by science and hoping to kidnap them, joins in. Gil catches up around then, has the Depot surrounded JUST outside the grounds that are sanctuary, and then goes in and helps.
While they're working, and Zeetha, Violetta, and Bang are sharing tea, a pulse goes out from their project shorting out all devices for a short time. Including the locket. Which is when the heroes learn why Gil is off and insane. The Baron had grafted his personality on top of Gil's to take over when needed to stop Lucriza. The monks knock most of them out with drugged cake. Violetta and Martellus, both having Smoke Knight training are immune, so Violetta knocks Martellus out the old fashioned way.
Agatha awakens on the train she helped build. She's caught up and told Krosp left for a while but would catch up with them. They finally get to Paris, and Zeetha declares that after being defeated by cake, eating cake is now training, to face her fears. Accepting that logic they all go for cake while Agatha tries to cope with the fact that she's famous in Paris... but maybe not the way she'd want to be (Operas and lurid novels about her, Tarvek, and Gil... as well as dozens of products with her likeness on them) they get attacked, and Agatha gets kidnapped. She discovers that someone was using stolen Heterodyne tech to hack all of Paris. Specifically part of the Castle, with it's own fragment of the Castel's fractured personality. She takes that over, and that was when the Master of Paris stepped in and dragged her into the Awful Tower. After some negotiations, she's given THREE days and one small lead.
Following that lead turns up information on one of Violetta's uncles, Dio Zardeliv, known to her as Uncle Tick-Tock, the foremost Spark on the mechanics of Time. They trade information about the Wasp Eaters and some samples from it (nail clippings and fur) for information, and go down below the library to get into it through the catacombs, picking up various new friends along the way, and finally shaking Martellus and his sister.
They find a hidden room that scholars have spent generations searching for, and Agatha is shown secrets to the Van Rjin book. In the hidden room, she and Aldin find Van Rjin's corpse, another whole book of notes, and Agatha accidently releases the Muse of Time from stasis.
They go back to the Master's house, where they were staying under the watch of his daughter Colette. After a good sleep, a full meal, and a bath each, they head out again, Agatha armed with the small clank the Castle fragment she had to remove from the Paris' system is in, the Demon Train clank, Dibgbots, the weasel, the two books, and as many tools as she thought she'd need in her pockets, she heads in using the first book as a map to get past the traps. This is where I am taking her from, heading in. The Castle and the Train were walking alongside, so she's not going to be surprised to have missed them, figuring she fell into a trap all on her own....
Powers and Abilities:
I moved this section up, because the next section will make much more sense if you read this first. I hope that is okay....
Agatha is a Spark. As addressed in the questions I asked, I am writing this based on the answer I was given. So treating the Spark as a species/condition, because as we discussed at length there, it is an open question in canon.
Sparks have certain basic shared qualities, some of which may or may not be seen as powers by people from other worlds. They are all EXCEPTIONALLY gifted mentally, usually (but not always) with a focus in one specific branch of Science or math or art, and very VERY driven to pursue that avenue. There are levels to Sparks, and while I will be speaking here of Strong Sparks, since Agatha is one, realize that ALL of this is subject to scaling based on Sparkiness and the individual.
Agatha's Spark tends to fixate on machines. Clanks and other semi-sentient and full sentient devices, and deathrays mostly, but other machines like coffee engines as well. She is an exceptionally strong and gifted Spark, and she can build things that physics says should not be possible.
the last panal summerizes this nicely. Agatha builds in her sleep, anything from small dingbots to large clanks, and she pretty much ALWAYS has some form of deathray stashed somewhere on her person, and can make one from nearly anything. Even her Castle has begged her to use less powerful ones... mostly because she tends to do property damage as well as hurting people when she shoots. And... her aim isn't always the best. She also tends to shoot in her sleep.
Sparks also tend to minionize people. There is some debate in canon if this is a power, in Mechanicsburg we are told point blank that for those people it isn't, it's just in their nature to serve a strong Spark. For RP purposes, I have never once used this as a power. I simply play as Agatha expecting people to fall in line when she asks for assistance, and have her be surprised, but move on if they don't.
Megalomania - This is one place where Agatha almost reads as a weaker Spark. Most Sparks have a need to conquer. Not necessarily to rule. Many are the Sparks who took over a kingdom just to prove the viability of their lobster clawed sheepdog army, that utterly ignored their people once the conquest was over. Others want to claim and rule as much as they can. Few are actually successful. The Baron is, as is Albia (England), and the Master of Paris. Agatha, on the other hand, never set out to conquer or rule. But Mechanicsburg is full of people who need her. She originally went there to find safety, having met the people though, they became hers. In part because of a base territorialism, yes, but more because they NEEDED her. She was responsible for them.
The madness place - This is one of the CORE traits of a Spark, and the primary way to tell a Spark apart from a gifted scientist who doesn't have the Spark. Sparks already tend to have a lack of scale and often thing horrible dangerous ideas sound fun, but in the madness place, any chance to reason with them is GONE. While this is usually focused on inventing, other strong emotions can trigger it as well - like Agatha going to the madness place when Lars died, or Gil going into it when he fought Vole the first time. Until they have killed, kissed, punched, built, or repaired whatever pushed them over the edge, they cannot be reasoned with. Things that they might normally back off of seem like BRILLIANT ideas. Why NOT add actual weapons to the sentient half mad Castle? OH! If we filled every third horse with corrosive poison, the merry-go-round would be that much more exciting! In the madness place, they'll work with their mortal enemies if they have something to contribute. Multiple Sparks in the madness place together can be a disaster or a wonderful abomination of science. There are states on the border of it - like when everyone was talking about how to get Agatha and the others down a deep hole and some are suggesting directional explosives, or building her a set of spider legs, and Molch - a non-Spark suggests they just use the platform beside them already set up on a pulley. Or when they are all trying to figure out how to shut down an overloading machine with more and more complex methods, and he pulls the plug. For some Sparks, like Agatha, the ledge between sanity and madness is very narrow indeed. Very nearly anything can tip her over. But once she finishes her project, what little sanity she has returns to her.
Heterodyning - this is a trait unique to her family. Agatha's brain can process all the sounds around her as they shift, allowing her to hum in an atonal fashion so that it produces the exact noises needed to block out other noises, increasing her ability to focus. This doesn't actually make it harder to focus, all the calculations just happen as if instinctively.
Strength/Endurance - Sparks tend to be physically stronger than they appear, and to hold up better and survive more. Of course, in a world full of Sparks, Constructs, and Jagers, people in her world aren't overly surprised to see someone normal human sized picking up a clank large enough for another man to have ridden inside it comfortably. Though Gil really shouldn't have done that right after being shot through the arm....
http://girlgenius.wikia.com/wiki/Spark <---- Additional info on Sparks.
Agatha is specifically well trained in combat, thanks to Zeetha and to a large book in the Heterodyne Library called "using found objects as weapons" that she fittingly enough used to hit Zola. Zeetha is impressed from day one of their training how much endurance and strength Agatha has, and she works very hard with her on training. Including "princess lessons" which mostly amount to coordinating armor, using polearms, and commanding armies.
Character Personality:
Agatha is from a world where the expectations of what makes a hero are very different from those in most worlds. Heroes are usually Sparks, but so are villains. Both sides are expected to have anger issues, rant and rage, chew the scenery, create abominations of nature and science, and it is considered understandable if even a hero kills people, so long as they make some attempt to bring them back. What makes someone a hero in this world is not what you do or don't do, but how you are perceived. Which is why Othar who is a genocidal racist is considered more of a hero than the Baron who brought peace to a war torn Europa. It is why even though no one can deny that the Heterodynes (Before Bill and Barry were born) were complete and utter monsters, they still held Mechanicsburg, because they were THEIR monsters.
Agatha does not see herself as a hero, she does not want to be a hero, she actively argues when someone calls her one. But she is, in fact, a hero. Because people have seen her defend her town, have seen her defend the helpless in other towns. Aggie grew up on stories of Othar, and before she met him thought he was the hero everyone else takes him for. She was never allowed Heterodyne stories that all the other kids grew up with, but she snuck off to Heterodyne shows or to read Heterodyne stories in the library. So before she ever knew Bill and Barry Heterodyne, Punch and Judy, and Lucriza were family, she knew them (except Lucriza, who was always a villain that Bill was trying to reform) as heroes. They went out LOOKING for trouble to stop it. If Agatha is nearby when people need help, she will go help, but she never will go out of her way to hunt for people who need help, and to her mind that stops her from being a hero, despite how hard she's worked and how many people she's saved.
One of the big things, personality wise, that has come up in every instance of my playing her is another fundamental worldview difference. To her mind, death is not to be feared, because with proper science and someone you trust on hand... it is not permanent. She didn't know enough to save Lars, to bring him back, but she knows that in theory she can, once she's saved Mechanicsburg, go and dig up his body if she can find it and revive him. She's died herself already. Her mother vanished, presumed dead and is now alive in three heads. So she will be utterly baffled by people's fear of death and will come across as dangerously reckless, especially once there is someone she trusts that she thinks will bring her back. Once she learns that the world itself will bring her back, she'll no longer have any hesitations at all about throwing herself into danger.
But she isn't stupid about it. She's no intention of being a meat shield. She will throw herself between someone and a weapon... while raising her own weapon. She is always armed, and always confused whenever I have her in a game, why people freak out about her always having a deathray. To her mind that's basic equipment. A good strong deathray, a spanner, a handful of parts. Who in the world would go out without the essentials? She even says at one point early on, "people keep giving me rings, but I think a small death ray might be more practical." And she even is horrified when Gil doesn't have a deathray early on. <http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php?date=20040510">here. It is worth noting that she expects him to be a heavily armed future despotic ruler, and yet is talking casually and (for her) calmly with him.
In addition to all the Sparky personality traits listed in the powers section, Agatha tends to be surprised by her successes and by things working out for her, since they so rarely have in her life, and is pretty much always prepared for what she thinks is the worst case scenario. Of course sometimes her world outdoes even her imagination. She does get good at adapting to a situation in time, but not always immediately.
Loyal. That is a great word to describe Agatha. To those she loves she is unflinchingly loyal. But there is one use of that word that most people would complain about. And that's romantically. Because she's kind of half in love with both Gil and Tarvek, and there is still Lars back in her mind somewhere. But it isn't breaking loyalty to love all three of them, because of the culture of her world. In the betting over which she'll pick, someone invariably points out that she's a Heterodyne, she'll probably "keep" both. There are harems and reverse harems and Sparks who build their own mates rather than finding them. So if all parties allow for it, she isn't being disloyal by failing to chose between them. And she still won't fully admit that she's in love, but she kind of is. With both of them. But for other loyalty, that's about where you would expect it if someone called her loyal. She would die for the people that are HERS. But more, she'd live for them, and that is always harder.
Agatha can ultimately work with anyone, even people she hates. She's worked with Martellus after the kidnapping multiple times, and she's even worked with Othar. Not liking someone will not stop her from doing what needs to be done.
SamplesTDM posts (unless it's for Network), links, and examples for posts from other communities are not accepted.
Network:
"Okay, look, before I fell into the trap that dropped me here, I had been researching the nature of time and looking for Prende's Lantern. Until I figure out what I need to build to get home, I might as well see if TickTock found anything about time here. Always possible this wasn't a trap, but a side step. So, looking for any doctor or professor with knowledge of time. I am willing to trade knowledge for knowledge. I... might also have some chocolate covered mimmoths, but they're probably half melted. Anyway, I'm going to check the library, so if anyone has info and would meet me there, I'd appreciate it. Thanks."
Third Person:
Agatha looked around her room in the welcome house, and took inventory. The big spider constructs had attacked her, so she didn't feel the least bit bad about the fact that she took a few legs and a spinnerette when she killed the ones that came after her. The legs would add good tension, and there had to be something she could do with the spinnerette. There was her wesal, which obviously she wasn't dismantling. And Dingbot. Same thing. If anything, she needed to make more of those soon.
The two books, which she wouldn't dismantle, even for a death ray or cake. She had her boots, but no Train, no Castle... Wait... she had her boots. What was the Train always threatening? To eat her aglets. Grinning, Agatha pulled off her boots, popping off the metal bits and changing the lacing so she just had the tops tied and cut the string from the rest of the laces and set that all on the bed.
What else?
Oh. Of course. The bed itself! What was the mattress made of? Foam? Perfect! Down pillows? She could work with that. Good sturdy sheet. Now all she needed was a power source of some so.... the light.
She got up on a chair and pulled down the light fixture and put it on the bed. She grinned and set to work. IT took almost an hour, and Dingbot helped, but after she had a small metal coil that went around her arm like a bracelet with a long spiderleg that pivoted back to lay against her arm or forward for targeting. The foam insulated, the feathers heated...
She pulled the spider leg forward, aimed, and took a test shot. And blew a hole in the wall.
Agatha looked at the wall, looked at the bracelet and grinned. She held it up for the weasel to sniff. "What do you think of my new death ray?" she asked, smiling, unaware someone has walked past the room or the hole in the wall and heard that.....
300 word minimum. This is the place to show your character's inner thoughts within the setting. Give us a nice third person narrative of your character doing something, plus how they feel about it. This doesn't have to be blatant "
this is what my character is thinking, designated by italics!" but should rather show your character's self via their actions and interactions with their environment.
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