NAME.
Agatha Heterodyne AGE.
Unclear, adult but on the younger side. SPECIES.
Spark ABILITIES.
This is a hard one. As a Spark she has a lot of odd biological differences from base humans that may or may not count as powers. (Generally I don't list these as powers and put them under racial/species/biological abilities.) Sparks tend to have significantly higher than human endurance in a number of ways. They can take more damage than most humans, and when overly emotional, they seem to have a surfeit of strength. Kind of like the hulk, but depending on the Spark more or less control and for a longer or shorter duration. The visible physical changes that might warn others to be cautious however are far more subtle. Generally the only warnings for those not exceedingly familiar with the Spark in question or Sparks in general is a tonal shift to their voice, a mad look in their eyes, and often ranting. However, Sparks are prone to madness - usually seen in the eyes, ranting, and tonal shifts on their voices. Some Sparks, and Agatha in particular, can while in crisis mode go DAYS on no sleep or minimal sleep and no food or minimal food. Also Sparks seem to bounce back from being dead better than the humans around them.
Sparks have the ability to slip into the Madness place, and are generally geniuses in their fields. These are... often connected. While there are Sparks that aren't inventors (we have met at least one social sciences Spark and artistic Sparks have been mentioned), since Agatha's Spark is inventive/creative, I will stick with that to make things easier. Sparks are naturally gifted and incredibly intelligent, and are drawn to their field of study like iron filings to a strong magnet. There are levels of this, depending how strong a Spark they possess. Agatha is one of the strongest in the series. When she is just inventing, she can break the laws of physics with some effort, and can generally talk to people reasonably as she works. Well, reasonably for someone who thinks that a death ray is a perfectly normal thing to carry around as someone else might cary pepper spray. However if the project is tricky or interesting (or sometimes simply if it is a day/night/morning/evening/dusk ending in Y....) Sparks can fall into the Madness place. There is OFTEN but not always a progression. The Madness place can be recognized by extreme focus on the project at hand, rising pitch of voice, decreasing ability to be aware of other people as anything other than minions, frenetic frantic energy, possibly increasing anger, significantly increased ability to warp the laws of physics, and an utter lack of any sense of, well, sense. We're talking people who will decide to rebuild a flying machine WHILE IT IS FALLING, and decide to tear out the whole engine and start again rather than fixing it. We're talking about people who while trying to fix a coffee machine create multiple explosions that can be witnessed half a town away and this is just... expected. Sadly those are both canon examples.
Getting a Spark out of the Madness place (safely) can be... difficult. The best methods are generally to wait it out - when they finish the project they usually calm down, even if the project isn't what it stated out as - or to knock them out. Just be careful with the second because they have that higher endurance and can take and dish out a lot more damage when in the madness place.
(For scale, when angry enough, a Spark could probably go head to head against Hulk and have it be fairly even - for a short time and they will FEEL it after. The Hulk would probably win because he can maintain it longer. In the MADNESS, however, a strong enough Spark could probably throw the hulk through a few walls, yelling at him to get out of the way unless he wants to be PART of the project, get back to work and.... not remember it at all after.
And that is a side effect to the Madness. Generally after someone has come out of the Madness, they have little to no recollection of what they did, how they did it, or why they did it. And even if someone is watching them or filming, it is next to impossible to figure out how they did whatever it is they did (in terms of inventing) even for other Sparks. On the plus side, they feel little of the pain or exhaustion they should feel, but they might be wondering where their toaster went, and what exactly is this seven foot tall clank (robot) supposed to even do...?
Now one related thin that is unique to Agatha is that she tends to build in her sleep. While that is mostly creating Dingbots (small pocket watch like clanks that serve as her assistants when she works) sometimes she works on larger projects - like dismantling a fencing clank, half a robotic orchestra and a pneumatic nut cracker to create a flying clank that... as it turns out... was built just to save a genocidal maniac from captivity. Though to be fair, she had bought the hype and thought that he was a hero. With regards to her Dingbots, not only does she build them in her sleep, but they apparently build more of themselves as well....
One thing unique to Agatha's family on her father's side, that is also biological, is the ability to Heterodyne. (Not sure if the family was named for the ability, or the ability was named for the family.) Heterodyning is creating an atonal sound with her voice that cancels out every other noise, and shifts as the noise shifts. This is like breathing for her in that she does not consciously control it. This can be recored and with some difficulty reproduced, but never to quite the same effect. She claims it helps her think. Basically it is her shutting up the world so her Mad Girl focus can be amped up past "normal for Sparks" levels. She doesn't do it OFTEN, but when she does do it, she is likely building a wonder.
On her mother's side of the family, Agatha has one ability that probably won't come up but should be mentioned just in case (and one handicap that some mods leave her in game and some mods free her of. I am good with either, and will explain, just let me know! :D) Her mother, like her father is a powerful Spark. Her mother, unlike her father, is evil and **** bent on turning everyone into her loyal slaves. She keyed most of her inventions (and seemingly modified an entire species of worshipers from another world) to utterly obey her voice. Agatha's voice is nearly identical. The more complicated the thing/person the higher resistance it has to her voice after the first time, but there is always a hesitation, and that isn usually enough for Aggie to get in and stop whatever monster it is. (Seriously, her mother told one of her followers "Vrin, die," and Vrin died on the spot.) So should an event or should the Mods wish to have fun with the Other's creations (and I am happy to plot with the mods about this) Agatha can control the less complex ones - like the slavers - and at least make the more complex ones hesitate.
And this brings us to the handicap she has from dear old mum. See, Lucrizia Mongfish had contingencies in place for if she were to be killed. She had herself - mind, personality, voice, pretty much everything but her Spark (we think) - uploaded and saved. One of the times Agatha was kidnapped, her mother was downloaded into her brain. (Her mother has been downloaded into her cousin and a clank as well. So if Lucrizia is actually dead, and that is a biiiiiiig IF, there are at least three active copies of her in play.) Agatha's locket for long convoluted reasons can restrain her mother, leaving Agatha in charge of her own mind and body. When the locket comes off though, it becomes a war for control, one Agatha nearly always loses without outside help. So... I am perfectly fine to have mummy dearest in her brain, or to have her not. Agatha will not take off the locket in either case, just to be sure.
There are some other biological differences, like increased neural activity, increased adrenal production, but even in canon, no one knows them all. It is a subject of study pursued more in the beginning of the story than in the cascade of crisis after crisis that is the later comic.
Sparks can create minions, powerful Sparks do this more easily, and Heterodynes especially are good at that. However, I have never once used it as a "power" in all the years I've RPed her on DW. It is always a roleplay thing. The person falls in line or they don't, just like not everyone will become a minion in world. Other Sparks often minion for each other, and for MOST people, being a minion only lasts till the Spark leaves the Madness Place. There are two main exceptions to this.... Anyone from Mechanicsburg - this is still an RP thing, but if they accept her as the Heterodyne it is kind of bred into them to be her minion; and the Jägermonsters. Jägers all swore oaths of loyalty to House Heterodyne and other than Vole (a long story in and of itself) they MUST obey anyone of Heterodyne descent.
There are some personality traits that come with being a Spark, that should get mentioned, even if they are not powers. A lack of common sense is one. Sparks are very much invent a tank to squash a fly sorts. They have almost no sense of reasonable scale. Give a Spark a task to stuff fifty envelopes, and she will create a clank that stuffs envelopes and can probably level a small town. They also create a lot of monstrous things... just to see if they can. Megalomania is another huge one. Agatha avoids... most of this... mostly by having a town that is her birthright. But also by being herself. Her mother wanted to conquer the multiverse. Her mother's ex conquered most of Europe. But like her father and uncle, that... mostly skipped Agatha. They are satisfied with their little town and keeping it safe and protected. Their ancestors were more into expansion, of course. Oh, also on the lack of ability to be reasonable, they tend to run AT threats to get a better look than away from them.
I am adding this even though it was mostly covered above, just to make sure that it sin't missed. Agatha, like many other Sparks, can create LIFE. This is the pinnacle of mad science. Her dingbots are alive. There is an argument that some of them even have the Spark themselves. Well, multiple arguments. Her father and uncle created the Constructs (think Frankenstien's monster and his bride) that raised Agatha. Her castle is sentient. And evil. Just wanted to make sue that no one thought I was trying to slip that in under the radar. Some, like the Castle, have clearly defined personalities. Some don't. It varies.
(Not sure what if anything characters are allowed to bring with them into this game, once I know I can give a break down of all that for you.)
One more handicap that must be mentioned. One of the OTHER times she was kidnapped (actually by the nephew of the man who had her kidnapped to download her mother into her brain) her biochemistry was altered so that she would die without her captor's touch. She knocked him out and as a stopgap fix altered herself so that instead of needing him biologically, she was bound to a six legged sharp toothed weasel bred specifically to hunt her mother's Slavers. So she kind of needs her weasel to live.
Canon point: CRAU, her canon canon point is from a mix of the catacombs of Pais and that odd alternate future in the spin off story about the Jäger detective, bbecause at the time I apped her to 10F I thought that was ACTUALLY what was about to happen in the main storyline, if I recall correctly. Canon Puncture: Please ask first, but... probably.
HISTORY: As it says in the wiki above: "As the main character, a summary of every event in which the protagonist is involved would be impossibly long." The series has been running since 2002, updates mostly regularly, has 12 print volumes (I think it is 12 currently), and 4 novels. So while I will be as succinct as I can be, this may be longer than you were expecting, and I am sorry. Okay, here we go.
At a young age, way younger than most Sparks breakthrough, Agatha was Heterodyning and building impossible things. With her father missing and her mother and younger brother presumed dead, she was being raised by her uncle who panicked as the younger a Spark breaks through (Goes from human to Spark) the less likely they are to survive, and as most female Sparks seem to just... disappear... he created a device that inhibited her Spark to hide and protect her. Unfortunately it also gave her migraines whenever she had any reasonably strong emotion or tried to think.
Not sure how to handle his now stupid and dull niece while on dangerous adventures he left her more and more often in the care of the Constructs his brother and he created in their youth, Punch and Judy who went by the name Adam and Lilith Clay. One day he dropped her off, promised to be back in a few months, and vanished.
Agatha grew up thinking her name was Agatha Clay. Her family was famous, so this also hid her. The Clays did not allow any Heterodyne stories (and the stories of her father and uncle's adventures were a whole genre onto themselves) in the household. She snuck out to see Heterodyne stories performed by traveling troops and read in the library when she could.
Despite a desire to create and build, nothing she built ever worked. She grew up feeling stupid and useless.
She was allowed to enroll in University, and took many of the classes Sparks could take, and worked in the lab of Doctor Beetle who ran the school and the town. She thought this was out of his affection for her. He knew who she really was and agreed to watch her planning to use her against the baron someday.
On her last day of university (not a planned last day) an odd electrical storm happened in town and a rift in time - not that she knew it then - opened before her for a moment. Shaken she stumbled along and wound up getting mugged. Her locket - which was the device that suppressed her Spark - was stolen by two washed up soldiers from out of town, Moloch and Omar Von Zinzer. She arrived at Beetle's lab distressed, and it turned out that was the day that Baron Wulfenbach, leader of Pax Transylvania was coming for an inspection. Beetle, seeing her locket was gone tried to send her away. The Baron insisted she stay, intent on busting Beetle for hiding a Hive Engine. (I swear all these aspects of this day are crucial.) One of Beetle's assistants, Merlot, sold Beetle out. Beetle panicked and threw a bomb at Agatha and Gil (The Baron's son). Beetle was killed, Merlot was punished for being a snitch and causing the death by being put in charge with the threat that one mistake and he'd e sent to "Castle Heterodyne". The Baron sent one of the Jägermonsters to escort Agatha home. He did so, noting that she smelled "verra nize". Agatha told Lilith and Adam everything that happened. Lilith told her they would find her locket, she was to pack her bags and theirs, they were leaving as soon as they had her locket back.
Agatha fell asleep in the middle of changing, crying. She woke up in Adam's workshop. Moloch was there for revenge because after stealing her locket, his brother died of mysterious causes and he's sure she's to blame. A giant clank that Agatha created in her sleep and has no recollection of creating burst in on them. Each of them was sure the other created it, but before they could figure it out, C-gas (knock out gas) flooded the workshop. The clank had gotten the attention of the Baron.
The Baron ordered his son and the Jägers to bring them both to Castle Wulfenbach, as he collected Sparks and was sure Von Zinzer was a new Spark that Betle failed to report to him. Agatha was taken under the presumption that she would be leverage to force Moloch to work for him. Gil started ton suspect that she was actually the Spark, and more comments from Jägers about her scent.
Agatha woke up in an unfamiliar room. Moloch informed her that the Baron thought he was a Spark and she was going to help him fool the Baron and escape. If she did, she could have her locket back, fail and he'd see her dead.
The ruse... worked for a little while on the Baron. Not at all on Gil.
Agatha wasn't the only hostage on the ship, and she quickly was befriended and taken in by a ragtag group of kids who were being held against their parents behaviour - some being in single digits, some being around her own age. One, she would find out later would turn out to be her cousin, Theo.
Gil tested his theory that she was a Spark more and more with... less than harmonious results. Sometimes they got along brilliantly, sometimes he put his foot in his mouth so badly she wanted to kill him.
She met a talking cat named Krosp who agreed to help her escape. She met the Jäger generals who seemed a little too interested in her, but were mostly nice about it for large scary monsters known to rend flesh for fun. She found a prisoner held under gaurd... Othar. Othar was a folk hero who like her father and uncle (who she knew then only as the famous Heterodyne Boys or the "good" Heterodynes) fought evil Sparks to end tyranny and free captured townships. He offered to make her his spunky girl sidekick, she declined, but was determined to free him anyhow.
At one point some of the kids and she went to spy on the Baron to see if he really had captured a Hive Engine. He had. Unfortunately one of the Sparks working for it was a Reverant (a slave tom Lucrizia under the control of a slaver **** (which I will just call slavers from now on for triggery reasons). He heard her voice, mistook it for Lucrizia's, and thinking she was back, followed his last orders. He activated the engine, flooding the Castle - which is actually a battalion of airships) with slavers.
Agatha and Gil were together when it happened, and she discovered that contrary to every story she'd ever heard, he didn't have any death rays. This puzzled her no end. A lot of fighting later, they build something out of an old Heterodyne device that served as sword like weapons for the both of them. They got close to the hive, and Agatha discovered quite by accident that the slavers listened to her. She did not share this with Gil, but it did make killing the birthing queen possible, and it should not have been.
Almost immediately after they killed the queen and warriors (and foiled a plan that would have had them accidentally gas themselves to death) Gil proposed. Citing how much it would cheese off his father if he married her. She laughed in his face. Which was all the cue Otha needed to swing in - her Clank had rescued him - and start fighting Gil to "Save" her. Her main response was that Othar needed to back off because she wasn't done yelling at Gil yet. Gil wound up shoving Othar out a window. Of the airship. His cry of "FOOOOOOOOOOUUUUUUUL" rang out as he fell to his almost certain doom. Agatha then yelled at him about killing Othar after she'd gone to so much effort to save him. Which was when Adam and Lilith showed up, knocking Gil out. When they found out who he was and that he wanted her to marry him they high tailed it out of there, but got stopped by the Baron and the team he had with him to fight the slavers. The Baron identified them as "Punch" and "Judy" and then realized - after knocking out the only Jäger with him - that she must be Bill and Lucriza's kid, the lost Heterodyne. He ordered them all imprisoned and her knocked out and kept separate and sedated. Punch and Judy fought, tossing Agatha clear of the fight. She watched them get torn to shreds, killed by a construct named Von Pinn. She fled, and with the help of the other kids, including discovering that Theo is her cousin, she and Krosp got on an abandoned escape dirigible, with a promise to meet up with the other kids in Mechanicsburg, since Lilith/Judy had told her to go there.
Othar, somehow alive, was on the ship with them. They launched and she found out his true mission. Genocide. He decided that all Sparks were inherently evil, himself included. His plan was to kill all Sparks and then suicide. She lied, told him she wanted to be his partner, and when his guard was down... she shoved him off the side of the air ship. His cry of "FOOOOOOOOOOUUUUUUUL" was accompanied by a lucky shot from his death ray that clipped the envelope. the ship crashed in the wastelands.
Agatha built a death ray out of the wreckage and she and Krosp set out. The first people they found was a traveling Heterodyne show. Master Payne refused to let them join and sent them off because they were being hunted by the Baron. As they left a giant clank attacked the circus. Agatha ran back and destroyed it, but not before it killed Madam Olga. She was allowed to join the circus, and she was made to swap clothes with the late fortune teller and leave her death ray behind.
While in the circus she met a number of people that she came to love like family, but three need to specifically be mentioned here. Master Payne who is a slight of hand illusionist married to "the countess". He's in charge of the whole show and it bears his name. Lars was a former cheesemaker's apprentice who fell in love with the circus when it passed through his town, ran away to become an actor and never looked back. He was scared of pretty much everything but would fall in love with Agatha while she was with the show. The third is Zeetha. A warrior princess from a hidden land called Skiffander. She was sick on her voyage from her homeland, and on the trip her airship was taken by pirates. Zeetha had been kept to be sold as an "Exotic" and everyone else killed. When she was well enough to move again, Zeetha killed every pirate on the ship and scuttled it. At which point she realized that everyone who knew how to get her back home was now dead. Agatha was the first person who had ever heard of Skiffander and the pair became close quickly, Zeetha deciding to train Agatha and forging a special bond with her in doing so as she is only ever allowed to train one person aside from her own daughters.
At one point while posing as Olga, a ship from Castle Wulfenbach descended. Gil had tracked Agatha to that circus and the pirate captain Bangladesh Dupree (Just called Bang most of the time) tracked the circus to the town. They staged a little performance for their benefit, their lead actress Pix spinning out a story they wouldn't believe to make the second story into one they would, with them telling him finally that Agatha had died saving them from the spider clank, and she was buried with honors. Gil made one of the circus folk travel back with him to prove it. He did. They exhumed the body while the circus moved on. Gil brought the body back to his father and fell into a depression sure she was dead.
The circus themselves had secrets that Agatha wasn't privy too at first. She was given busy work of repairing the unrepairable to keep her from finding it out. That gave her access to all the wagons (all of which were more elaborate than just multi axeled wood with wheels) and tools. She found out the secrets eventually though. When a killer horse injured Lars and they all had to fight to destroy the thing, she discovered that most of them are Sparks! She also discovered (through Krosp) that the circus had one of the legendary Muses - nine clanks created by the late Van Rijn for the Storm King of his time. She was broken and gave Agatha Van Rijn's notes, wanting to be fixed. They used to have one other clank, Tinka, who would come up later.
There were a few other notable adventures while with the circus. In one town where they were meant to perform they were told to set up beside the gallows. Which were occupied. By three Jägers. Who despite being hung for three days were not yet dead. During the performance - which was one of the first times Agatha would be on stage - she spotted Othar in the audience. He cornered her in her fortune telling tent after the show and made it clear he knew who she was. Their tense conversation was broken when an idiot at the gate fired his crossbow at a Jägermonster mounted on a large bear. The bear and Jäger (Jenka) went nuts and started ripping through the town. Hearing the commotion, Agatha grabbed her death ray from under the table and ran out there. She made a deal with the three hanging Jägers (Dimo, Oggie, and Maxim, also known as De boyz. She cut them free and they swore on their honor to House Heterodyne to stop the rampaging Jäger. They had caught her scent by then and knew exactly who she was. They swore, and confused the life out of Jenka when they made a huge show of rushing at her and Faüst (her bear). She agreed to meet them later and left. Othar told Agatha to contact him if she ever wanted to be his sidekick again. She insisted she's not a hero and just wants a quiet normal life. He pointed out that she ran AT the danger to save people, kissed her cheek and left saying he'd check in with her in a few months and see how normal her life was then.
The Jägers joined the circus soon after, and were there when the advance scouts discovered a whole town full of some sort of shambling monsters. The Jägers got the advance scouts - and their horses - clear and Agatha blew up the bridge. She then stated to make a plan for how to investigate the town to see if anyone was still alive that needed rescuing. Payne shut her down HARD. They put trail markers and agreed to report it at the next town, but that was ALL they were going to do. Aggie didn't like it, but reluctantly accepted it.
The biggest and pretty much final adventure with the circus happened at the next major town, Sturmhalten. That was where Tinka had been stolen from them previously, and they had been trying to avoid it. It was the ancestral home of the Storm King, hence why a Muse was recognized and claimed. They tried to use the Jägers, and most sane people's fear of them, to get a fast pass through. Which almost worked. The Jägers wound up sent on ahead and the leader of the town, Prince Aaronev demanded a command performance. While they preformed his machines registered Agatha's voice as being almost exactly Lucriza's. She was actually playing the role of Lucrizia on stage and when she commanded people to kneel... everyone in the audience did. An "invitation" was issued to the actress who played Lucriza that she could not avoid. The circus helped her prepare as best they could - sewing her into her dress so tight it couldn't be easily removed, making her less pretty, and Lars gave her a fake wedding band that unfolded into a lock pick. She met the prince's children. His son, Tarvek, a strong Spark about her age and heir to the throne, and his "Daughter" Anevka, who was actually a clank that his now dead daughter's mind was uploaded into.
Agatha was drugged into telling the truth and captured. The Circus was ordered to leave. There was a lot of intriguing here back and forth that can be summed up as such: everyone in the family had their own agenda, Agatha met her mother's minions the Geisterdamen, and finding out that she is their "holy lost child" and that they saw Lucrizia as their goddess. Agatha was put in to a machine and her mother's consciousness was loaded into her. Anveka killed her father, Tarvek powered down his sister and the whole city was poised for war, Tarvek claiming loyalty to both Agatha and Lucrizia, whoever had the body at any given moment. Agatha built a signal to warn the Baron about the Other's presence during one of her phases, and Lucrzia discovered it and altered it. By the time Agatha was "Saved", Tinka was dead, and the signal was telling the world that the BARON was the Other and ordering the people to rise up against him. More back and forth and there was a confrontation between the circus defending Agatha and the Baron with his crew, and in the mix was Gil's second in command assigned to get Agatha out of there to safety because now that he knew she was alive he wasn't about to let his father change that.
Of course during the confrontation, Lucizia had the body and she sent a specially made Slaver out at the Baron without anyone catching her. Pretending to be Agatha and concerned she rushed to his "aid" so she could gloat as he became her slave. She found he brought Agatha's locket, which was in the shame pf a trilobite - the crest of House Heterodyne and donned it for the ruse. But whatever had suppressed her Spark now suppressed Lucrizia all together. Agatha came back to herself just as the Baron - temporarily freed from control by the swap of the dominant mind, was about to kill her. Lars jumped in the way and took the blow. The battle started in earnest as Agatha held him as he died. Lars said it was just as well, now that he knew she was the Heterodyne, because what chance could a normal guy like him ever have with a girl like her.
Agatha... SNAPPED. She dove headfirst into the Madness and used the Silveradon (a musical instrument she'd been tasked to fix because it was impossible, that she fixed anyway) to trigger the improvements she had made to EVERY SINGLE WAGON. They were all weaponized. The circus wagons themselves began to attack. The Baron cleared his troops back, planning to bomb the place, and the circus only got her out of the Madness enough to escape by use of a "calming pie" made by another Spark. They stole one of the Baron's airships and used a chemical that made people suggestible along with a bit of theater to cover their escape with a show of the Heterodyne boys appearing, thanking their good friend Klaus (the baron), and announcing their daughter, the new Heterodyne. With the Baron's forces in disarray, they pulled it off, escaping with Agatha, the Jägers, and oddly... Gil's man Wooster. Wooster was not so secretly a British agent posing as a manservant, and they worked out a deal. The circus would go to England to perform for the Queen, Agatha - promising to go to England at SOME POINT - went with Wooster, Zeetha, and Krosp to Mechanicsburg. The Jägers, by the Baron's law, are not allowed in Mechanichsburg until a new Heterodyne is fully acknowledged, at which point their contract with the Baron ends.
The Baron, badly injured, was taken to the hospital in Mechanichsburg, as it was the best in the accessible world, where while he recovered his doctors, guards, and eventually Gil would have to defend him against countless attempted assassinations.
Agatha's party was subtle about entering the city and trying to learn, but still drew the attention of the former seneschal of the Castle. While he was trying to determine if she was the Heterodyne or not, a woman in a giant pink air ship bedecked with Herterodyne insignias, dressed much as her ship was, descended upon the town, declaring herself the heir and true Heterodyne. She and her entourage entered the Castle. (She will henceforth be called Zola or Pinkie). Agatha went to talk to the current political powers that be in her town and was given coffee for the first time in her life. While they mentioned the usual coffee engine was broken. Hyped up on caffeine she minionized the townsfolk in the coffee shop, read and corrected the book on how coffee is made, and rebuilt the whole coffee engine. There were three explosions. From this, Gil was able to deduce which of the supposed Heterodynes was Agatha.
Agatha eventually, after finishing the coffee engine and being denied more coffee, entered the Castle. Unlike Zola who entered as a whole production number, Agatha entered under the cover of being a prisoner. Caster Heterodyne was a sentence worse than death, and the Baron used it for the worst of the worst. The Castle was alive but... broken. It wanted to be fixed, but was more likely to kill the repair crew than aid them. It was insane. And dangerous. So Agatha got in no problem. She had to convince all the disparate parts of the Castle that she was the Heterodyne. Easier said than done, and often involved blood.
through various methods the following people all wound up in at different points: Gil, Tarvek, Tarvek's cousin Violetta (a smoke knight, think Ninjas but deadlier), Zeetha, Theo, Slepnier (Agatha's friend and Theo's girlfriend), Krosp, and a man called Airman Higgs. Lots of drama was revealed - Tarvek and Gil know and hate each other, they're both in love with Agatha that doesn't help. They both knew Zola and took her for a vapid damsel in distress and had to learn better. Tarvek's family was behind Zola's presence in the Castle, though this wasn't his plan specifically. There were also two prisoners of note. Moloch Von Zinzer who was sent there for impersonating a Spark and lying to the Baron continuously and Merlot, her former professor. Who immediately tried to kill her upon seeing her. It turns out Othar's sister was also there.
Ages were spent on the Castle arc, trying to repair it. this was not made easier by the fact that Tarvek managed to catch a super rare illness that would kill him if unchecked and they had no cure. Agatha and Gil figured out how to rig up a bunch of torture equipment to filter his blood, but he'll have to kind of die for it to work. This all leads, thanks to shenanigans and mad science, to Tarvek, Gil, and Agatha all hooked together biologically to spread the illness between them so Tarvek can have enough healthy life force to survive. But ultimately the only way to save any of them is to kill all of them. The Castle objects, so Agatha kills it. Then they roll their deaths, the problem being that Agatha can't be wearing the locket.... So Lucrizia gets to play for a bit with the post revivification rush. But they're eventually brought back, the Castle is brought back to life - with some help from Von Pinn who turns out to be both pat of the Castle AND a Muse. A copy of Lucrizia gets uploaded into Pinkie's head, and Pinkie, after poisoning Agatha badly, escapes. In all this there are near death experiences on top of the actual deaths. There is the discovery that the Dingbots might actually be Sparks and a small dingbot civil war. And Moloch becomes, against his will and a little at a time, Agatha's main minion.
They get the Castle partially functioning, enough that they learn that the Castle also controls part of the town. As if rearranging rooms and dropping ceilings on people wasn't enough, it can now open up the roads and smash people together between buildings. The Doom Bell is rung, announcing Agatha as the official heir. This allows the Jägers back, and releases the other monsters. Agatha and her team rush around like mad ones trying to repair every part of the town they can. More drama and angst, including getting help from Othar, a crashed ship of Slaver eaters (not the official term) being saved by Tarvek, Tarvek and Gil in turns winding up on Castle Wulfenbach controlling the empire in the short term, the Baron presumed dead, countless attacks on the city....
Finally they get the Castle and most of the town's controls under, well, control. Agatha has to go onto the roof at one point during a storm to make sure the lightning collectors are working, which is when Gil comes back from the Airship and she discovers something is very very wrong with him. The Baron is not dead and did something to Gil's mind. They have a huge almost deadly fight, around lightning rods, during a storm. Gil is escorted out of the city. Agatha and Tarvek have a sweet moment where it is clear they both want to save Gil. Agatha is informed that not even the Heterodynes trusted the Castle enough to give it ALL the defenses, she has to go to the Red Cathedral across town to inform the rest of the defenses she's the new Heterodyne. While there two crucial things happen at once. The Baron lands outside the cathedral with a time bomb (As in a bomb that stops time, why what were you thinking?) and Tarvek's cousin Tweedle (also known as Martellus) knifes Tarvek with a poisned blade and kidnapps Agatha through a portal that was meant to transport them instantaneously to his hideout.
they arrived two and a half years later.
Tweedle took advantage of her inventing while asleep to make her fix his wounds - specifically they work together to make him a prosthetic hand - then he alters her biochemistry so she can't love without him. He informs her she'll have a good life so long as she marries him and does whatever he says and is good little mad arm candy. She knocks him out and steals his key, unlocking her own chains and locking him up in them. Some mad science later and she has patched the dependency to one of the slaver eaters. She then works on escape and discovers that Violetta and Krosp wound up getting through the portal as well before the time bomb went off. Agatha reworked some devices she found in the dungeons, and they escape on a swan pulled by a mechanical reindeer.
Big race/fight/chase/escape scene and Agatha winds up reunited with Zeetha but seperated from Violetta who is found by a now quite insane Gil. Zeetha gets Aggie to where the refugees from Mechanicsburg are, including Adam and Lilith who Gil had not only rebuilt and brought back to life, but he had fixed some glaring flaws, like Adam's inability to talk - now he can't seem to shut up - and gave them the ability to procreate. Agatha now has a sibling.
Agatha learns what happened to her city, about the time bomb, about how Gil is now the Baron and how he walled the city off - with huge statues of her that she HATES and were clearly designed by somebody who spent waaaay too much time fantasizing about her.
She promises to save the city and sets off to follow a lead - there is an expert in temporal mechanics in Paris.
The train ride to Paris, like every freaking thing else... is fought with drama. More schemes by Tarvek's family, an ancient Heterodyne train is set free and tries to devour everything - they eventually transfer its mind into a small clank body that lacks a mouth - a pack of intelligent bears vowing fealty to Krosp, non ferrous magnetism! More fights with Tweedle. And oh yeah, cake with Gil and Bang that turns into the Baron and Lucrizia having cake together after an EMP fries their kids. The cake is poisoned and knocks them out, Violetta who is immune sneaks Agatha and Zeetha and Dimo off on another train to Paris. Gil and Bang are left behind. Krosp sends some of the beara with them but goes off on a mission of his own, and Tweedle manages to get to Paris with them.
In Paris, Agatha discovers that her name and likeness are being used for marketing just about everything. While having cake - Zeetha declared it training since she was taken down by cake so now they must defeat cake - Agatha was kidnapped again. She wound up getting into Paris' central systems and discovered that a fragment of the mind of Castle Heterodyne was in there. She transferred it to yet another small clank. The Master of Paris informed her that she had a strict time limit in Paris before she was going to have to leave.
Agatha and team bartered on the black market for information on the Doctor they were looking for, dictating a treatise on the ***** eaters (their proper name), which the dealer was then going to sell...to EVERYONE. So win win since that helps confound her mother's plans.
Along with a team of Parisians, they head into the catacombs below Paris. More drama, several heartwarming moments, someone getting Xray vision who really shouldn't be given that power, lots of traps trying to kill them, the usual. It is at the start of this voyage into the deepest part of the catacombs that is her canon point.
Info about her CRAU is available upon request. (I wasn't sure where to put that.)
Thankfully a lot of the racial personality traits are handled under powers or this would be almost as long as History.
Agatha Heterodyne is a driven young woman who still thinks what she wants is a normal and quiet life. But she can't stop herself from feeling EVERYTHING is on her shoulders. In some cases - saving Mechanicsburg - it kind of is. Other cases - Saving Tarvek and Gil - are perhaps more personal. But she keeps rushing forward to help people. She took stewardship over the demon train's clank body so no one else would have to do so. She is the sort of hero who complains every step of the way that she is NOT a hero. Even in other games when she was told time stopped for all her world and she'd go back the moment she left, she didn't stop. She used the time trying to figure out how to stop her mother, save Tarvek, fix Gil, save her town....
When not in the Madness, Agatha is a sweet and sometimes thoughtful young woman who would rather make friends than foes. She's learning to not be quite so trusting in some ways... but in other ways, she is opening up sooner to people. She's learned how to ask for help, and when to ask for help.
She still keeps some secrets, of course, and learned the hard way that somethings while not secret should be kept private - she killed someone for science on the network in Wake. He agreed to it. She was a pariah for a year or more after, save for a few close friends.
Agatha loves to help others with small things. She'll complain she's not a hero, but will then happily turn around and fix or build nearly anything requested of her. Though part of that is just a love of having projects.
She is, as I alluded to before, driven. Very. She wants to find a cure for Tarvek, a fix for her town and Gil, a way to stop her mother once and for all. And now she also wants to help the myriad people she's met on other worlds. She wants to help Billy and the other Power Rangers. She wants to help Connie and meet this Steven fellow. She wants to help Princess Leia. But you know, totally not a hero. Right?
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chiming
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Date: 2020-10-04 10:49 am (UTC)From:AGE. Unclear, adult but on the younger side.
SPECIES. Spark
ABILITIES. This is a hard one. As a Spark she has a lot of odd biological differences from base humans that may or may not count as powers. (Generally I don't list these as powers and put them under racial/species/biological abilities.) Sparks tend to have significantly higher than human endurance in a number of ways. They can take more damage than most humans, and when overly emotional, they seem to have a surfeit of strength. Kind of like the hulk, but depending on the Spark more or less control and for a longer or shorter duration. The visible physical changes that might warn others to be cautious however are far more subtle. Generally the only warnings for those not exceedingly familiar with the Spark in question or Sparks in general is a tonal shift to their voice, a mad look in their eyes, and often ranting. However, Sparks are prone to madness - usually seen in the eyes, ranting, and tonal shifts on their voices. Some Sparks, and Agatha in particular, can while in crisis mode go DAYS on no sleep or minimal sleep and no food or minimal food. Also Sparks seem to bounce back from being dead better than the humans around them. Sparks have the ability to slip into the Madness place, and are generally geniuses in their fields. These are... often connected. While there are Sparks that aren't inventors (we have met at least one social sciences Spark and artistic Sparks have been mentioned), since Agatha's Spark is inventive/creative, I will stick with that to make things easier. Sparks are naturally gifted and incredibly intelligent, and are drawn to their field of study like iron filings to a strong magnet. There are levels of this, depending how strong a Spark they possess. Agatha is one of the strongest in the series. When she is just inventing, she can break the laws of physics with some effort, and can generally talk to people reasonably as she works. Well, reasonably for someone who thinks that a death ray is a perfectly normal thing to carry around as someone else might cary pepper spray. However if the project is tricky or interesting (or sometimes simply if it is a day/night/morning/evening/dusk ending in Y....) Sparks can fall into the Madness place. There is OFTEN but not always a progression. The Madness place can be recognized by extreme focus on the project at hand, rising pitch of voice, decreasing ability to be aware of other people as anything other than minions, frenetic frantic energy, possibly increasing anger, significantly increased ability to warp the laws of physics, and an utter lack of any sense of, well, sense. We're talking people who will decide to rebuild a flying machine WHILE IT IS FALLING, and decide to tear out the whole engine and start again rather than fixing it. We're talking about people who while trying to fix a coffee machine create multiple explosions that can be witnessed half a town away and this is just... expected. Sadly those are both canon examples. Getting a Spark out of the Madness place (safely) can be... difficult. The best methods are generally to wait it out - when they finish the project they usually calm down, even if the project isn't what it stated out as - or to knock them out. Just be careful with the second because they have that higher endurance and can take and dish out a lot more damage when in the madness place. (For scale, when angry enough, a Spark could probably go head to head against Hulk and have it be fairly even - for a short time and they will FEEL it after. The Hulk would probably win because he can maintain it longer. In the MADNESS, however, a strong enough Spark could probably throw the hulk through a few walls, yelling at him to get out of the way unless he wants to be PART of the project, get back to work and.... not remember it at all after. And that is a side effect to the Madness. Generally after someone has come out of the Madness, they have little to no recollection of what they did, how they did it, or why they did it. And even if someone is watching them or filming, it is next to impossible to figure out how they did whatever it is they did (in terms of inventing) even for other Sparks. On the plus side, they feel little of the pain or exhaustion they should feel, but they might be wondering where their toaster went, and what exactly is this seven foot tall clank (robot) supposed to even do...? Now one related thin that is unique to Agatha is that she tends to build in her sleep. While that is mostly creating Dingbots (small pocket watch like clanks that serve as her assistants when she works) sometimes she works on larger projects - like dismantling a fencing clank, half a robotic orchestra and a pneumatic nut cracker to create a flying clank that... as it turns out... was built just to save a genocidal maniac from captivity. Though to be fair, she had bought the hype and thought that he was a hero. With regards to her Dingbots, not only does she build them in her sleep, but they apparently build more of themselves as well.... One thing unique to Agatha's family on her father's side, that is also biological, is the ability to Heterodyne. (Not sure if the family was named for the ability, or the ability was named for the family.) Heterodyning is creating an atonal sound with her voice that cancels out every other noise, and shifts as the noise shifts. This is like breathing for her in that she does not consciously control it. This can be recored and with some difficulty reproduced, but never to quite the same effect. She claims it helps her think. Basically it is her shutting up the world so her Mad Girl focus can be amped up past "normal for Sparks" levels. She doesn't do it OFTEN, but when she does do it, she is likely building a wonder. On her mother's side of the family, Agatha has one ability that probably won't come up but should be mentioned just in case (and one handicap that some mods leave her in game and some mods free her of. I am good with either, and will explain, just let me know! :D) Her mother, like her father is a powerful Spark. Her mother, unlike her father, is evil and **** bent on turning everyone into her loyal slaves. She keyed most of her inventions (and seemingly modified an entire species of worshipers from another world) to utterly obey her voice. Agatha's voice is nearly identical. The more complicated the thing/person the higher resistance it has to her voice after the first time, but there is always a hesitation, and that isn usually enough for Aggie to get in and stop whatever monster it is. (Seriously, her mother told one of her followers "Vrin, die," and Vrin died on the spot.) So should an event or should the Mods wish to have fun with the Other's creations (and I am happy to plot with the mods about this) Agatha can control the less complex ones - like the slavers - and at least make the more complex ones hesitate. And this brings us to the handicap she has from dear old mum. See, Lucrizia Mongfish had contingencies in place for if she were to be killed. She had herself - mind, personality, voice, pretty much everything but her Spark (we think) - uploaded and saved. One of the times Agatha was kidnapped, her mother was downloaded into her brain. (Her mother has been downloaded into her cousin and a clank as well. So if Lucrizia is actually dead, and that is a biiiiiiig IF, there are at least three active copies of her in play.) Agatha's locket for long convoluted reasons can restrain her mother, leaving Agatha in charge of her own mind and body. When the locket comes off though, it becomes a war for control, one Agatha nearly always loses without outside help. So... I am perfectly fine to have mummy dearest in her brain, or to have her not. Agatha will not take off the locket in either case, just to be sure. There are some other biological differences, like increased neural activity, increased adrenal production, but even in canon, no one knows them all. It is a subject of study pursued more in the beginning of the story than in the cascade of crisis after crisis that is the later comic. Sparks can create minions, powerful Sparks do this more easily, and Heterodynes especially are good at that. However, I have never once used it as a "power" in all the years I've RPed her on DW. It is always a roleplay thing. The person falls in line or they don't, just like not everyone will become a minion in world. Other Sparks often minion for each other, and for MOST people, being a minion only lasts till the Spark leaves the Madness Place. There are two main exceptions to this.... Anyone from Mechanicsburg - this is still an RP thing, but if they accept her as the Heterodyne it is kind of bred into them to be her minion; and the Jägermonsters. Jägers all swore oaths of loyalty to House Heterodyne and other than Vole (a long story in and of itself) they MUST obey anyone of Heterodyne descent. There are some personality traits that come with being a Spark, that should get mentioned, even if they are not powers. A lack of common sense is one. Sparks are very much invent a tank to squash a fly sorts. They have almost no sense of reasonable scale. Give a Spark a task to stuff fifty envelopes, and she will create a clank that stuffs envelopes and can probably level a small town. They also create a lot of monstrous things... just to see if they can. Megalomania is another huge one. Agatha avoids... most of this... mostly by having a town that is her birthright. But also by being herself. Her mother wanted to conquer the multiverse. Her mother's ex conquered most of Europe. But like her father and uncle, that... mostly skipped Agatha. They are satisfied with their little town and keeping it safe and protected. Their ancestors were more into expansion, of course. Oh, also on the lack of ability to be reasonable, they tend to run AT threats to get a better look than away from them. I am adding this even though it was mostly covered above, just to make sure that it sin't missed. Agatha, like many other Sparks, can create LIFE. This is the pinnacle of mad science. Her dingbots are alive. There is an argument that some of them even have the Spark themselves. Well, multiple arguments. Her father and uncle created the Constructs (think Frankenstien's monster and his bride) that raised Agatha. Her castle is sentient. And evil. Just wanted to make sue that no one thought I was trying to slip that in under the radar. Some, like the Castle, have clearly defined personalities. Some don't. It varies. (Not sure what if anything characters are allowed to bring with them into this game, once I know I can give a break down of all that for you.) One more handicap that must be mentioned. One of the OTHER times she was kidnapped (actually by the nephew of the man who had her kidnapped to download her mother into her brain) her biochemistry was altered so that she would die without her captor's touch. She knocked him out and as a stopgap fix altered herself so that instead of needing him biologically, she was bound to a six legged sharp toothed weasel bred specifically to hunt her mother's Slavers. So she kind of needs her weasel to live.
Canon point: CRAU, her canon canon point is from a mix of the catacombs of Pais and that odd alternate future in the spin off story about the Jäger detective, bbecause at the time I apped her to 10F I thought that was ACTUALLY what was about to happen in the main storyline, if I recall correctly.
Canon Puncture: Please ask first, but... probably.
no subject
Date: 2020-10-04 01:34 pm (UTC)From:As it says in the wiki above: "As the main character, a summary of every event in which the protagonist is involved would be impossibly long." The series has been running since 2002, updates mostly regularly, has 12 print volumes (I think it is 12 currently), and 4 novels. So while I will be as succinct as I can be, this may be longer than you were expecting, and I am sorry. Okay, here we go.
At a young age, way younger than most Sparks breakthrough, Agatha was Heterodyning and building impossible things. With her father missing and her mother and younger brother presumed dead, she was being raised by her uncle who panicked as the younger a Spark breaks through (Goes from human to Spark) the less likely they are to survive, and as most female Sparks seem to just... disappear... he created a device that inhibited her Spark to hide and protect her. Unfortunately it also gave her migraines whenever she had any reasonably strong emotion or tried to think.
Not sure how to handle his now stupid and dull niece while on dangerous adventures he left her more and more often in the care of the Constructs his brother and he created in their youth, Punch and Judy who went by the name Adam and Lilith Clay. One day he dropped her off, promised to be back in a few months, and vanished.
Agatha grew up thinking her name was Agatha Clay. Her family was famous, so this also hid her. The Clays did not allow any Heterodyne stories (and the stories of her father and uncle's adventures were a whole genre onto themselves) in the household. She snuck out to see Heterodyne stories performed by traveling troops and read in the library when she could.
Despite a desire to create and build, nothing she built ever worked. She grew up feeling stupid and useless.
She was allowed to enroll in University, and took many of the classes Sparks could take, and worked in the lab of Doctor Beetle who ran the school and the town. She thought this was out of his affection for her. He knew who she really was and agreed to watch her planning to use her against the baron someday.
On her last day of university (not a planned last day) an odd electrical storm happened in town and a rift in time - not that she knew it then - opened before her for a moment. Shaken she stumbled along and wound up getting mugged. Her locket - which was the device that suppressed her Spark - was stolen by two washed up soldiers from out of town, Moloch and Omar Von Zinzer. She arrived at Beetle's lab distressed, and it turned out that was the day that Baron Wulfenbach, leader of Pax Transylvania was coming for an inspection. Beetle, seeing her locket was gone tried to send her away. The Baron insisted she stay, intent on busting Beetle for hiding a Hive Engine. (I swear all these aspects of this day are crucial.) One of Beetle's assistants, Merlot, sold Beetle out. Beetle panicked and threw a bomb at Agatha and Gil (The Baron's son). Beetle was killed, Merlot was punished for being a snitch and causing the death by being put in charge with the threat that one mistake and he'd e sent to "Castle Heterodyne". The Baron sent one of the Jägermonsters to escort Agatha home. He did so, noting that she smelled "verra nize". Agatha told Lilith and Adam everything that happened. Lilith told her they would find her locket, she was to pack her bags and theirs, they were leaving as soon as they had her locket back.
Agatha fell asleep in the middle of changing, crying. She woke up in Adam's workshop. Moloch was there for revenge because after stealing her locket, his brother died of mysterious causes and he's sure she's to blame. A giant clank that Agatha created in her sleep and has no recollection of creating burst in on them. Each of them was sure the other created it, but before they could figure it out, C-gas (knock out gas) flooded the workshop. The clank had gotten the attention of the Baron.
The Baron ordered his son and the Jägers to bring them both to Castle Wulfenbach, as he collected Sparks and was sure Von Zinzer was a new Spark that Betle failed to report to him. Agatha was taken under the presumption that she would be leverage to force Moloch to work for him. Gil started ton suspect that she was actually the Spark, and more comments from Jägers about her scent.
Agatha woke up in an unfamiliar room. Moloch informed her that the Baron thought he was a Spark and she was going to help him fool the Baron and escape. If she did, she could have her locket back, fail and he'd see her dead.
The ruse... worked for a little while on the Baron. Not at all on Gil.
Agatha wasn't the only hostage on the ship, and she quickly was befriended and taken in by a ragtag group of kids who were being held against their parents behaviour - some being in single digits, some being around her own age. One, she would find out later would turn out to be her cousin, Theo.
Gil tested his theory that she was a Spark more and more with... less than harmonious results. Sometimes they got along brilliantly, sometimes he put his foot in his mouth so badly she wanted to kill him.
She met a talking cat named Krosp who agreed to help her escape. She met the Jäger generals who seemed a little too interested in her, but were mostly nice about it for large scary monsters known to rend flesh for fun. She found a prisoner held under gaurd... Othar. Othar was a folk hero who like her father and uncle (who she knew then only as the famous Heterodyne Boys or the "good" Heterodynes) fought evil Sparks to end tyranny and free captured townships. He offered to make her his spunky girl sidekick, she declined, but was determined to free him anyhow.
At one point some of the kids and she went to spy on the Baron to see if he really had captured a Hive Engine. He had. Unfortunately one of the Sparks working for it was a Reverant (a slave tom Lucrizia under the control of a slaver **** (which I will just call slavers from now on for triggery reasons). He heard her voice, mistook it for Lucrizia's, and thinking she was back, followed his last orders. He activated the engine, flooding the Castle - which is actually a battalion of airships) with slavers.
Agatha and Gil were together when it happened, and she discovered that contrary to every story she'd ever heard, he didn't have any death rays. This puzzled her no end. A lot of fighting later, they build something out of an old Heterodyne device that served as sword like weapons for the both of them. They got close to the hive, and Agatha discovered quite by accident that the slavers listened to her. She did not share this with Gil, but it did make killing the birthing queen possible, and it should not have been.
Almost immediately after they killed the queen and warriors (and foiled a plan that would have had them accidentally gas themselves to death) Gil proposed. Citing how much it would cheese off his father if he married her. She laughed in his face. Which was all the cue Otha needed to swing in - her Clank had rescued him - and start fighting Gil to "Save" her. Her main response was that Othar needed to back off because she wasn't done yelling at Gil yet. Gil wound up shoving Othar out a window. Of the airship. His cry of "FOOOOOOOOOOUUUUUUUL" rang out as he fell to his almost certain doom. Agatha then yelled at him about killing Othar after she'd gone to so much effort to save him. Which was when Adam and Lilith showed up, knocking Gil out. When they found out who he was and that he wanted her to marry him they high tailed it out of there, but got stopped by the Baron and the team he had with him to fight the slavers. The Baron identified them as "Punch" and "Judy" and then realized - after knocking out the only Jäger with him - that she must be Bill and Lucriza's kid, the lost Heterodyne. He ordered them all imprisoned and her knocked out and kept separate and sedated. Punch and Judy fought, tossing Agatha clear of the fight. She watched them get torn to shreds, killed by a construct named Von Pinn. She fled, and with the help of the other kids, including discovering that Theo is her cousin, she and Krosp got on an abandoned escape dirigible, with a promise to meet up with the other kids in Mechanicsburg, since Lilith/Judy had told her to go there.
Othar, somehow alive, was on the ship with them. They launched and she found out his true mission. Genocide. He decided that all Sparks were inherently evil, himself included. His plan was to kill all Sparks and then suicide. She lied, told him she wanted to be his partner, and when his guard was down... she shoved him off the side of the air ship. His cry of "FOOOOOOOOOOUUUUUUUL" was accompanied by a lucky shot from his death ray that clipped the envelope. the ship crashed in the wastelands.
Agatha built a death ray out of the wreckage and she and Krosp set out. The first people they found was a traveling Heterodyne show. Master Payne refused to let them join and sent them off because they were being hunted by the Baron. As they left a giant clank attacked the circus. Agatha ran back and destroyed it, but not before it killed Madam Olga. She was allowed to join the circus, and she was made to swap clothes with the late fortune teller and leave her death ray behind.
While in the circus she met a number of people that she came to love like family, but three need to specifically be mentioned here. Master Payne who is a slight of hand illusionist married to "the countess". He's in charge of the whole show and it bears his name. Lars was a former cheesemaker's apprentice who fell in love with the circus when it passed through his town, ran away to become an actor and never looked back. He was scared of pretty much everything but would fall in love with Agatha while she was with the show. The third is Zeetha. A warrior princess from a hidden land called Skiffander. She was sick on her voyage from her homeland, and on the trip her airship was taken by pirates. Zeetha had been kept to be sold as an "Exotic" and everyone else killed. When she was well enough to move again, Zeetha killed every pirate on the ship and scuttled it. At which point she realized that everyone who knew how to get her back home was now dead. Agatha was the first person who had ever heard of Skiffander and the pair became close quickly, Zeetha deciding to train Agatha and forging a special bond with her in doing so as she is only ever allowed to train one person aside from her own daughters.
At one point while posing as Olga, a ship from Castle Wulfenbach descended. Gil had tracked Agatha to that circus and the pirate captain Bangladesh Dupree (Just called Bang most of the time) tracked the circus to the town. They staged a little performance for their benefit, their lead actress Pix spinning out a story they wouldn't believe to make the second story into one they would, with them telling him finally that Agatha had died saving them from the spider clank, and she was buried with honors. Gil made one of the circus folk travel back with him to prove it. He did. They exhumed the body while the circus moved on. Gil brought the body back to his father and fell into a depression sure she was dead.
The circus themselves had secrets that Agatha wasn't privy too at first. She was given busy work of repairing the unrepairable to keep her from finding it out. That gave her access to all the wagons (all of which were more elaborate than just multi axeled wood with wheels) and tools. She found out the secrets eventually though. When a killer horse injured Lars and they all had to fight to destroy the thing, she discovered that most of them are Sparks! She also discovered (through Krosp) that the circus had one of the legendary Muses - nine clanks created by the late Van Rijn for the Storm King of his time. She was broken and gave Agatha Van Rijn's notes, wanting to be fixed. They used to have one other clank, Tinka, who would come up later.
There were a few other notable adventures while with the circus. In one town where they were meant to perform they were told to set up beside the gallows. Which were occupied. By three Jägers. Who despite being hung for three days were not yet dead. During the performance - which was one of the first times Agatha would be on stage - she spotted Othar in the audience. He cornered her in her fortune telling tent after the show and made it clear he knew who she was. Their tense conversation was broken when an idiot at the gate fired his crossbow at a Jägermonster mounted on a large bear. The bear and Jäger (Jenka) went nuts and started ripping through the town. Hearing the commotion, Agatha grabbed her death ray from under the table and ran out there. She made a deal with the three hanging Jägers (Dimo, Oggie, and Maxim, also known as De boyz. She cut them free and they swore on their honor to House Heterodyne to stop the rampaging Jäger. They had caught her scent by then and knew exactly who she was. They swore, and confused the life out of Jenka when they made a huge show of rushing at her and Faüst (her bear). She agreed to meet them later and left. Othar told Agatha to contact him if she ever wanted to be his sidekick again. She insisted she's not a hero and just wants a quiet normal life. He pointed out that she ran AT the danger to save people, kissed her cheek and left saying he'd check in with her in a few months and see how normal her life was then.
The Jägers joined the circus soon after, and were there when the advance scouts discovered a whole town full of some sort of shambling monsters. The Jägers got the advance scouts - and their horses - clear and Agatha blew up the bridge. She then stated to make a plan for how to investigate the town to see if anyone was still alive that needed rescuing. Payne shut her down HARD. They put trail markers and agreed to report it at the next town, but that was ALL they were going to do. Aggie didn't like it, but reluctantly accepted it.
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Date: 2020-10-04 01:34 pm (UTC)From:Agatha was drugged into telling the truth and captured. The Circus was ordered to leave. There was a lot of intriguing here back and forth that can be summed up as such: everyone in the family had their own agenda, Agatha met her mother's minions the Geisterdamen, and finding out that she is their "holy lost child" and that they saw Lucrizia as their goddess. Agatha was put in to a machine and her mother's consciousness was loaded into her. Anveka killed her father, Tarvek powered down his sister and the whole city was poised for war, Tarvek claiming loyalty to both Agatha and Lucrizia, whoever had the body at any given moment. Agatha built a signal to warn the Baron about the Other's presence during one of her phases, and Lucrzia discovered it and altered it. By the time Agatha was "Saved", Tinka was dead, and the signal was telling the world that the BARON was the Other and ordering the people to rise up against him. More back and forth and there was a confrontation between the circus defending Agatha and the Baron with his crew, and in the mix was Gil's second in command assigned to get Agatha out of there to safety because now that he knew she was alive he wasn't about to let his father change that.
Of course during the confrontation, Lucizia had the body and she sent a specially made Slaver out at the Baron without anyone catching her. Pretending to be Agatha and concerned she rushed to his "aid" so she could gloat as he became her slave. She found he brought Agatha's locket, which was in the shame pf a trilobite - the crest of House Heterodyne and donned it for the ruse. But whatever had suppressed her Spark now suppressed Lucrizia all together. Agatha came back to herself just as the Baron - temporarily freed from control by the swap of the dominant mind, was about to kill her. Lars jumped in the way and took the blow. The battle started in earnest as Agatha held him as he died. Lars said it was just as well, now that he knew she was the Heterodyne, because what chance could a normal guy like him ever have with a girl like her.
Agatha... SNAPPED. She dove headfirst into the Madness and used the Silveradon (a musical instrument she'd been tasked to fix because it was impossible, that she fixed anyway) to trigger the improvements she had made to EVERY SINGLE WAGON. They were all weaponized. The circus wagons themselves began to attack. The Baron cleared his troops back, planning to bomb the place, and the circus only got her out of the Madness enough to escape by use of a "calming pie" made by another Spark. They stole one of the Baron's airships and used a chemical that made people suggestible along with a bit of theater to cover their escape with a show of the Heterodyne boys appearing, thanking their good friend Klaus (the baron), and announcing their daughter, the new Heterodyne. With the Baron's forces in disarray, they pulled it off, escaping with Agatha, the Jägers, and oddly... Gil's man Wooster. Wooster was not so secretly a British agent posing as a manservant, and they worked out a deal. The circus would go to England to perform for the Queen, Agatha - promising to go to England at SOME POINT - went with Wooster, Zeetha, and Krosp to Mechanicsburg. The Jägers, by the Baron's law, are not allowed in Mechanichsburg until a new Heterodyne is fully acknowledged, at which point their contract with the Baron ends.
The Baron, badly injured, was taken to the hospital in Mechanichsburg, as it was the best in the accessible world, where while he recovered his doctors, guards, and eventually Gil would have to defend him against countless attempted assassinations.
Agatha's party was subtle about entering the city and trying to learn, but still drew the attention of the former seneschal of the Castle. While he was trying to determine if she was the Heterodyne or not, a woman in a giant pink air ship bedecked with Herterodyne insignias, dressed much as her ship was, descended upon the town, declaring herself the heir and true Heterodyne. She and her entourage entered the Castle. (She will henceforth be called Zola or Pinkie). Agatha went to talk to the current political powers that be in her town and was given coffee for the first time in her life. While they mentioned the usual coffee engine was broken. Hyped up on caffeine she minionized the townsfolk in the coffee shop, read and corrected the book on how coffee is made, and rebuilt the whole coffee engine. There were three explosions. From this, Gil was able to deduce which of the supposed Heterodynes was Agatha.
Agatha eventually, after finishing the coffee engine and being denied more coffee, entered the Castle. Unlike Zola who entered as a whole production number, Agatha entered under the cover of being a prisoner. Caster Heterodyne was a sentence worse than death, and the Baron used it for the worst of the worst. The Castle was alive but... broken. It wanted to be fixed, but was more likely to kill the repair crew than aid them. It was insane. And dangerous. So Agatha got in no problem. She had to convince all the disparate parts of the Castle that she was the Heterodyne. Easier said than done, and often involved blood.
through various methods the following people all wound up in at different points: Gil, Tarvek, Tarvek's cousin Violetta (a smoke knight, think Ninjas but deadlier), Zeetha, Theo, Slepnier (Agatha's friend and Theo's girlfriend), Krosp, and a man called Airman Higgs. Lots of drama was revealed - Tarvek and Gil know and hate each other, they're both in love with Agatha that doesn't help. They both knew Zola and took her for a vapid damsel in distress and had to learn better. Tarvek's family was behind Zola's presence in the Castle, though this wasn't his plan specifically. There were also two prisoners of note. Moloch Von Zinzer who was sent there for impersonating a Spark and lying to the Baron continuously and Merlot, her former professor. Who immediately tried to kill her upon seeing her. It turns out Othar's sister was also there.
Ages were spent on the Castle arc, trying to repair it. this was not made easier by the fact that Tarvek managed to catch a super rare illness that would kill him if unchecked and they had no cure. Agatha and Gil figured out how to rig up a bunch of torture equipment to filter his blood, but he'll have to kind of die for it to work. This all leads, thanks to shenanigans and mad science, to Tarvek, Gil, and Agatha all hooked together biologically to spread the illness between them so Tarvek can have enough healthy life force to survive. But ultimately the only way to save any of them is to kill all of them. The Castle objects, so Agatha kills it. Then they roll their deaths, the problem being that Agatha can't be wearing the locket.... So Lucrizia gets to play for a bit with the post revivification rush. But they're eventually brought back, the Castle is brought back to life - with some help from Von Pinn who turns out to be both pat of the Castle AND a Muse. A copy of Lucrizia gets uploaded into Pinkie's head, and Pinkie, after poisoning Agatha badly, escapes. In all this there are near death experiences on top of the actual deaths. There is the discovery that the Dingbots might actually be Sparks and a small dingbot civil war. And Moloch becomes, against his will and a little at a time, Agatha's main minion.
They get the Castle partially functioning, enough that they learn that the Castle also controls part of the town. As if rearranging rooms and dropping ceilings on people wasn't enough, it can now open up the roads and smash people together between buildings. The Doom Bell is rung, announcing Agatha as the official heir. This allows the Jägers back, and releases the other monsters. Agatha and her team rush around like mad ones trying to repair every part of the town they can. More drama and angst, including getting help from Othar, a crashed ship of Slaver eaters (not the official term) being saved by Tarvek, Tarvek and Gil in turns winding up on Castle Wulfenbach controlling the empire in the short term, the Baron presumed dead, countless attacks on the city....
Finally they get the Castle and most of the town's controls under, well, control. Agatha has to go onto the roof at one point during a storm to make sure the lightning collectors are working, which is when Gil comes back from the Airship and she discovers something is very very wrong with him. The Baron is not dead and did something to Gil's mind. They have a huge almost deadly fight, around lightning rods, during a storm. Gil is escorted out of the city. Agatha and Tarvek have a sweet moment where it is clear they both want to save Gil. Agatha is informed that not even the Heterodynes trusted the Castle enough to give it ALL the defenses, she has to go to the Red Cathedral across town to inform the rest of the defenses she's the new Heterodyne. While there two crucial things happen at once. The Baron lands outside the cathedral with a time bomb (As in a bomb that stops time, why what were you thinking?) and Tarvek's cousin Tweedle (also known as Martellus) knifes Tarvek with a poisned blade and kidnapps Agatha through a portal that was meant to transport them instantaneously to his hideout.
they arrived two and a half years later.
Tweedle took advantage of her inventing while asleep to make her fix his wounds - specifically they work together to make him a prosthetic hand - then he alters her biochemistry so she can't love without him. He informs her she'll have a good life so long as she marries him and does whatever he says and is good little mad arm candy. She knocks him out and steals his key, unlocking her own chains and locking him up in them. Some mad science later and she has patched the dependency to one of the slaver eaters. She then works on escape and discovers that Violetta and Krosp wound up getting through the portal as well before the time bomb went off. Agatha reworked some devices she found in the dungeons, and they escape on a swan pulled by a mechanical reindeer.
Big race/fight/chase/escape scene and Agatha winds up reunited with Zeetha but seperated from Violetta who is found by a now quite insane Gil. Zeetha gets Aggie to where the refugees from Mechanicsburg are, including Adam and Lilith who Gil had not only rebuilt and brought back to life, but he had fixed some glaring flaws, like Adam's inability to talk - now he can't seem to shut up - and gave them the ability to procreate. Agatha now has a sibling.
Agatha learns what happened to her city, about the time bomb, about how Gil is now the Baron and how he walled the city off - with huge statues of her that she HATES and were clearly designed by somebody who spent waaaay too much time fantasizing about her.
She promises to save the city and sets off to follow a lead - there is an expert in temporal mechanics in Paris.
The train ride to Paris, like every freaking thing else... is fought with drama. More schemes by Tarvek's family, an ancient Heterodyne train is set free and tries to devour everything - they eventually transfer its mind into a small clank body that lacks a mouth - a pack of intelligent bears vowing fealty to Krosp, non ferrous magnetism! More fights with Tweedle. And oh yeah, cake with Gil and Bang that turns into the Baron and Lucrizia having cake together after an EMP fries their kids. The cake is poisoned and knocks them out, Violetta who is immune sneaks Agatha and Zeetha and Dimo off on another train to Paris. Gil and Bang are left behind. Krosp sends some of the beara with them but goes off on a mission of his own, and Tweedle manages to get to Paris with them.
In Paris, Agatha discovers that her name and likeness are being used for marketing just about everything. While having cake - Zeetha declared it training since she was taken down by cake so now they must defeat cake - Agatha was kidnapped again. She wound up getting into Paris' central systems and discovered that a fragment of the mind of Castle Heterodyne was in there. She transferred it to yet another small clank. The Master of Paris informed her that she had a strict time limit in Paris before she was going to have to leave.
Agatha and team bartered on the black market for information on the Doctor they were looking for, dictating a treatise on the ***** eaters (their proper name), which the dealer was then going to sell...to EVERYONE. So win win since that helps confound her mother's plans.
Along with a team of Parisians, they head into the catacombs below Paris. More drama, several heartwarming moments, someone getting Xray vision who really shouldn't be given that power, lots of traps trying to kill them, the usual. It is at the start of this voyage into the deepest part of the catacombs that is her canon point.
Info about her CRAU is available upon request. (I wasn't sure where to put that.)
no subject
Date: 2020-10-04 03:02 pm (UTC)From:PERSONALITY
Thankfully a lot of the racial personality traits are handled under powers or this would be almost as long as History.
Agatha Heterodyne is a driven young woman who still thinks what she wants is a normal and quiet life. But she can't stop herself from feeling EVERYTHING is on her shoulders. In some cases - saving Mechanicsburg - it kind of is. Other cases - Saving Tarvek and Gil - are perhaps more personal. But she keeps rushing forward to help people. She took stewardship over the demon train's clank body so no one else would have to do so. She is the sort of hero who complains every step of the way that she is NOT a hero. Even in other games when she was told time stopped for all her world and she'd go back the moment she left, she didn't stop. She used the time trying to figure out how to stop her mother, save Tarvek, fix Gil, save her town....
When not in the Madness, Agatha is a sweet and sometimes thoughtful young woman who would rather make friends than foes. She's learning to not be quite so trusting in some ways... but in other ways, she is opening up sooner to people. She's learned how to ask for help, and when to ask for help.
She still keeps some secrets, of course, and learned the hard way that somethings while not secret should be kept private - she killed someone for science on the network in Wake. He agreed to it. She was a pariah for a year or more after, save for a few close friends.
Agatha loves to help others with small things. She'll complain she's not a hero, but will then happily turn around and fix or build nearly anything requested of her. Though part of that is just a love of having projects.
She is, as I alluded to before, driven. Very. She wants to find a cure for Tarvek, a fix for her town and Gil, a way to stop her mother once and for all. And now she also wants to help the myriad people she's met on other worlds. She wants to help Billy and the other Power Rangers. She wants to help Connie and meet this Steven fellow. She wants to help Princess Leia. But you know, totally not a hero. Right?
SAMPLES
3rd person past tense.
Flux
Web.
Wake
NAME. Chicklet
TZ. EST
PB. N/A
CONTACT. best method
AVAILABILITY. Nothing is usual, I vary a lot.
no subject
Date: 2020-10-06 12:34 pm (UTC)From: