Girl Genius XIII: "Gott's Leedle Feesh in Trousers!"

[Imgran]

Tarvek is not the Other. He doesn't have the proper voice. He could have tried with an artificial voice box like Anevka's, but it doesn't work that well on strong-willed people. See how Lady Vrin could resist Agatha's orders, despite Agatha's voice being the perfect command voice, simply because she knew Agatha wasn't the Other. Sure, it staggered her a bit, but it wouldn't be useful for actual control.

you're forgetting that Clankrezia's voice works perfectly -- as demonstrated by the Baron.

Who do you think built that voicebox? Don't you think he could build another?

The reason Vrin could resist (and that Von Pinn could as well) is that they knew that Agatha was not The Other. This would be Tarvek using his mastery of voice harmonics to FORCE the Other to give orders. If it was just abbout the voice harmonics, then Tarvek wouldn't need to bother with the sparkwasp -- he could have confused matters a great deal just by using a combination of the voicebox technology he devised for Clankrezia, and a technology with some resemblance to the sonovox.

From what we know now, taking over Lucrezia with the sparkwasp could have been very possible. Tarvek could have spring it on Lucragatha by complete ambush. He's not quite at the same level of master sneakster as Lucrezia, but he can win against her when he knows something she doesn't. The only risk is that Lucrezia could be spammed into another young girl via the beacon engine -- and if they did, that Lucrezia wouldn't have the right voice harmonics to do any damage.