Фил Фоглио - Agatha H. and the Siege of Mechanicsburg

115 Ladies and gentlemen, the Bernoulli Equation: P1+1/2+pv2/1+pgh1= P2+1/2pv22+pgh2. We must confess that neither of your professors really understand what it signifies. When an equation starts adding those little letters and off-register numerals, we just throw our hands up and have another drink. This is why, on those rare occasions in our classes when actual math is required, we flaunt university policy and allow our students to bring in their own abacus.

116 Augustнn Betancourt (GDE, San Isidro Royal College): In addition to his infamous, life-ending submersible, Betancourt had a long career as an engineer, aeronaut, and intelligence agent. All careers that called for speed.

117 Four-gear landwalkers were once a common sight at Europa’s universities and were frequently trotted out for homecomings, pep rallies, and assorted pranks. Today, of course, they’ve been replaced by the much more efficient coal-powered third-wheel flex-rod-and-bucket walkers that now dominate what remains of the academic landscape.

118 At this time, chemistry was still a hodgepodge of alchemy, zymurgy, necromancy, metallurgy, and cooking. As a result, chemicals still retained the older and, some would say, more romantic, names from antiquity. This was unfortunate, because some names were so popular they were applied to any number of different concoctions, depending on where you were and who wrote down the recipe, often with hilarious/tragic results. One of the great advances of the current empire was the systematic codification of chemicals, which has saved many a researcher’s life and dignity. We have, for assorted reasons (mostly because they sound cooler), retained the old naming system whenever possible.

119 For quite a long time, lightning was the power source of choice for your more over-the-top mad science needs. Unfortunately, one cannot just assume you’ll have a sufficiently pyrotechnic storm at the same time one has a potential abomination of science slowly decomposing on the slab. Thus the Lightning Futures Exchange, which banked gigawatts during Mechanicsburg’s frequent lightning storms and then parceled them out to its clients when needed. Closed for over a decade at this point, the building was still standing only because the vast rooftop array of lightning rods and assorted accumulators provided a tourist-pleasing show whenever a thunderstorm blew through.

120 While they do have a town watch, many of your smaller municipalities do not have the resources to support a permanent standing army. Even Mechanicsburg, which has a sizable standing force of assorted monsters, clanks, and semi-autonomous death machines, has the Mechanicsburg Defense Force. Every adult citizen is expected to be able to serve either under arms or in a support capacity in an emergency. They are further required to spend one week out of the year performing maintenance or repair and another week brushing up on military exercises. In recent years, standards had begun to slip badly, and many citizens were able to fulfill their yearly requirements simply by volunteering to deal with tourists.

121 The Heterodynes have not given a lot of things to the world that the world has actually wanted, but the monster wagon that is now part of the standard equipment of almost every town in Europa is one of the rare exceptions. These stout conveyances have been engineered to contain creatures capable of any number of deadly attacks and, if properly maintained, have never been known to fail. The Mechanicsburg Monster Wagon Works is one of the few local industries that is highly regarded throughout the civilized world and has been for over two centuries. A suspicious person might wonder why the Heterodynes of old allowed this unarguably beneficial export to thrive. The answer is that each wagon secretly signaled whenever it was used and, as often as not, agents of the Heterodyne, suitably incognito, would appear and offer to buy the now-captured monster from the victimized town. These they brought home and they were studied by the Heterodynes, incorporating any particularly nasty innovations into their own future creations. The Heterodynes knew that staying as feared as they were required capital outlay and continued hard work and were afraid of neither.

122 A scene that has been thrillingly detailed in our first textbook: Agatha H and the Airship City.

123 Kolee-dok-Zumil is the contract that bound the lady Heterodyne to the Princess Zeetha. A rough translation could be read as “Teacher trains student,” but there is a great deal more to it than just that. A better understanding can be gleaned from the unfortunately titled: Lust, Honor, Sex & Death Among the Lost Warrior Women by Professoressa Kaja Foglio. Which, she wants made perfectly clear, hit the publisher’s doorstep with the title An Ethnographic Overview of the Societal Mores and Underlying Philosophical Principals of the Skifandrian Warrior Queens. The fact that, under its current title, it is currently in its twentieth printing, is irrelevant.

124 Fafflenarg beasts (Fafflenarg gigantus skifandrus) were unknown to Europa at this time. These days, of course they have become a familiar part of every Europan’s table, known to us as Tasty Breakfast Beasts™, even though they are, by law, only eaten at lunch.

125 Othar Tryggvassen did tend to run through female assistants rather quickly. Contrary to scurrilous rumors promulgated by his detractors, hardly any of them were killed in the line of duty. Most of them simply discovered the job looked a lot less glamorous up close. One of the principle reasons for this seems to be that while there is no denying he was a great lover of women, Othar was unshakeable in his resolution to never dally with an assistant. For many of his companions, that had rather been the whole point.

126 The Court of Gears is the section of the town where one will find not only the great central factory, but hundreds of individual manufacturers and workshops.

127 Doctor Jupiter Bren (MD, PhD) was the driving force behind the development of the creatures known as wasp weasels.

128 This had, in fact, been a popular fad amongst sixteenth-century eastern European blacksmiths

129 The G. M. C. C. P. M. S. B. S. S. J. is but one of approximately twenty organized street gangs that roam Mechanicsburg. Many of them are hundreds of years old. While most cities labor endlessly to eradicate this sort of thing, the rulers of Mechanicsburg long ago coopted and deputized them. They are considered an integral part of the town’s early warning system.

130 Known colloquially in the Mechanicsburg region as “the madness place.” When a spark is in this state, they are blind and deaf to almost any outside influence that would interfere with what they are doing at the moment.

131 We, your professors, have tried, for quite some time, to receive permission from the proper authorities to detail within these books the actual mechanisms and processes by which the creatures known as slaver wasps infiltrate and control their hapless victims. We have been informed we will not be allowed to do so under any circumstances, as they do not want us to “give anyone any bright ideas.” While we rail against this dictate in the abstract, the real world sensibility of it is inarguable, and thus we shall continue to portray this process in a way that ignorant and shortsighted critics will no doubt continue to call “fabulist hogwash.” This is simply yet another way that we, your professors, suffer for our art. We hope you appreciate it.

132 Herr Docktor Getwin Mittelmind (PhD, MD, BFA, University of Salzburg) was a spark who specialized in mad psychology. A specialized field to be sure. He was not locked away in Castle Heterodyne because he built giant anteaters. No, he was locked away in Castle Heterodyne because he could take a perfectly ordinary group of people and within six days they would build a giant anteater—because it was the logical thing to do.