Фил Фоглио - Agatha H. and the Siege of Mechanicsburg

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

56 This exchange presents a tantalizing glimpse into the command structure of the Jдgergeneral hierarchy. While the Jдgers did seem to possess assorted levels of rank, it’s believed that up to a certain point these were acquired along with their hats since the ranks didn’t really seem to mean anything until they got to the rank of general. There were seven known

generals and, as far as we can tell, they were all of equal rank. This could cause obvious problems, however, as we mentioned earlier, each general had a field of expertise. This exchange seems to indicate that when certain categories of situation presented themselves, the general with the closest field of expertise would assume a temporary command position.

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

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

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

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

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