Girl Genius XIV: A Lightning Arc in All But Speed!

[eee]

I guess that since most the immediate thread will be eliminated by that point, the Jägers and other minions (such as Franz) will be able to defend the town and allow Agatha to leave.

Actually it might be more the reverse: If Agatha leaves, THEN the town will be safe. Or safer. Right now the main reason Klaus is besieging Mechanicsburg is to get her. If she leaves, he'll probably stop trying to actively destroy the city and send most of his forces after her, cordoning Mechanicsburg so she can't get back in. That might be why he's brought everything he can there, now; he thinks she's going to run sooner or later, and he wants every available unit to be able to scatter and search for or attack her when she does. If der Kestel's revival is enough to cause a stalemate, the only way to break that stalemate and keep Mechanicsburg intact is for her to leave before Klaus grinds it down.

My guess is that Klaus will need to be killed, and it will be Gil's job to do it.

Klaus' fairy tale would suggest that's what he expects.

He may be underestimating his son. And Agatha.

[petersohn]

I read that as a joke, the funny thing being that after all this, he gets a handful of coins, and calls it winning.

I always read it as an ominous foreshadowing. But maybe you're right. He is too minor character to cause any serious trouble. Even if he would appear again with a bigger plan, he would probably end just like Tiktoffen.

[Kurald Galain]

Did it actually make such prediction? When?

I've looked, but have been unable to find the castle saying anything about defiance on the highest tower.

[datalaughing]

It mentions screaming defiance from atop the walls of Mechanicsburg. I don't remember, offhand, the tower thing, though.

[Eldan]

Just for the records, my preferred thread title is still "These are no ordinary mecha-narwhals!"

[petersohn]

New page.

The awesomeness has begun.

[Traab]

Am I the only one who thought those were jaegers at first?

[HandofShadows]

Zombies that want to stay dead?

[sihnfahl]

Zombies that want to stay dead?

Well, yeah. After all, look at the benefits they enjoy. They get full pay like a normal trooper, but they don't have to worry about putting into the employee health plan.

And as long as they stay dead, they're not obligated to fulfill any contracts that were active while they were alive. Like those pesky marriage agreements.

[The Glyphstone]

Zombies that want to stay dead?

As opposed to re-dead, maybe?

[petersohn]

They want to stay dead. They will be destroyed.

[Brother Oni]

Zombies that want to stay dead?

Maybe they're afraid of the lightning re-animating them?

[sihnfahl]

Maybe they're afraid of the lightning re-animating them?

I say they're quite animated enough as it is.

[Landis963]

I say they're quite animated enough as it is.

I think it's a bit simpler than that:

They want to stay dead. They will be destroyed.

(Emphasis his)

This. Why are the Heterodynes feared? Because no matter how badly they're beaten, they always escape to Mechanicsburg, which incidentally was only taken while the Heterodynes in residence were gone, and they can recuperate, regroup, and try again. Part of this is definitely due to our Dear Kestle. The zombie grunts know this (although I'm willing to suspect they didn't imagine that der Kestle could reach to the streets). They also know that lightning strikes are perfectly acceptable ways for Sparks to charge up their toys. Their mission is to "stop that Heterodyne girl", according to their commander. Two plus two equals...

[Persephone_Kore]

This is all entirely sensible. Good job.

Ten bucks says that Agatha will figure it out and find a way to ally with the Baron.

That would be quite the accomplishment, seeing as he's currently being controlled by Lucrezia, and even if he wasn't, he knows he's been wasped and that Agatha has (or might have, he can't be sure) the power to control him. Under the Other's control, he'll stop at nothing to capture or kill her. Under his own control he won't want her within a million miles of himself. So either way, an alliance would be pretty difficult to set up.

No, I think Kizor's right, or at least, has a decent chance.

Spoiler

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Check out the comic where the Baron suddenly insists on rearranging the entire battle plan to focus on capture instead of kill, to the consternation of his strategists, evidently based on what Boris told him. Which is that with the help of the locket -- the one he put back together -- Agatha's fighting Lucrezia.

I don't think this is Lucrezia's idea. Neither of her has shown any sign of wanting Agatha taken alive. I don't think Klaus misunderstood Boris's message to mean "queen revenant". I think he decided that with the Other already giving him orders, he had to gamble on Agatha to counter her, and was trying to stall to give her time and/or get her to him alive.

[Xel]

No, I think Kizor's right, or at least, has a decent chance.

Spoiler

Show

Check out the comic where the Baron suddenly insists on rearranging the entire battle plan to focus on capture instead of kill, to the consternation of his strategists, evidently based on what Boris told him. Which is that with the help of the locket -- the one he put back together -- Agatha's fighting Lucrezia.

I don't think this is Lucrezia's idea. Neither of her has shown any sign of wanting Agatha taken alive. I don't think Klaus misunderstood Boris's message to mean "queen revenant". I think he decided that with the Other already giving him orders, he had to gamble on Agatha to counter her, and was trying to stall to give her time and/or get her to him alive.

Spoiler

Show

Wow. You just made a connection for me. All this time, I've been assuming that Agatha's locket shutting down The Other was something of Barry's doing. But Klaus studied The Other's work extensively. And fixed the locket!!! What if he deliberately set it up to take out/suppress The Other? How much does he really know? And how long has he known it?

And does this really need spoilering?

Also, looks like we have time to make popcorn. The next few panels look to be der Kestle taking out random Wulfenbach forces. Can't wait for the big clank outside the main walls to wake up.

Edit: Fixed the clank link.

[petersohn]

First, that's a clank, not a construct. Second, you screwed up your link.

[Persephone_Kore]

Spoiler

Show

Wow. You just made a connection for me. All this time, I've been assuming that Agatha's locket shutting down The Other was something of Barry's doing. But Klaus studied The Other's work extensively. And fixed the locket!!! What if he deliberately set it up to take out/suppress The Other? How much does he really know? And how long has he known it?

And does this really need spoilering?

Heck if I know if it needs spoilering. In this forum I pretty much err reflexively on the side of caution, but probably speculation that's not about Rich's stuff is okay. Still, I'll go ahead and hide the next bit because it's from a conversation with the authors and I think I know people who don't want to hear that kind of thing....

Spoiler

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Somebody asked the Foglios a few years ago why the locket killed Omar von Zinzer but not Violetta, and Kaja apparently replied that Klaus hd recognized the locket's purpose and not only repaired but improved it, as he tends to do, and that this had to do both with its not harming Violetta and with its no longer shutting down Agatha's Spark.

I was thought that was an odd way to put it at the time, since I was assuming the locket's original purpose was to keep Agatha from breaking through -- probably very conspicuously -- at age five when Barry was trying to hide her from the Other's people. But when Lucrezia is ranting to Zola about Barry's interference, the locket seems to be a separate issue from the Geisterdamen's failure to find her. So I wonder if it was actually an anti-Other measure all along. The book timeline suggests Agatha was probably 2-3 years old by the time she was taken away from them; if Barry thought or knew something had been done to make her susceptible to Lucrezia....

[Grif]

Wow. I actually felt sorry for those men in the clanks.

[tyckspoon]

Wow. I actually felt sorry for those men in the clanks.

To be fair, they were really stupid looking clanks. I'm not sure anything of value was lost.

[Turalisj]

They kinda had it coming. It's implied they killed anyone and everyone they came across that wasn't one of the Baron's men.

[Alias]

The last panel of this previous comic from 5 months ago turns out to be prophetic...

[Kislath]

By the devil and his hat, NOW we get all the cool would-be thread titles?

I wonder if the whole town can be controlled like this? I'm thinking ...yes.

[Traab]

To be fair, they were really stupid looking clanks. I'm not sure anything of value was lost.

From certain hints we have seen, the baron has intentionally been sending in his daffiest sparks and their stupidest toys to directly attack agatha, as a distraction most likely. Why throw away your useful pieces when you have an army of one armed punching clanks to sacrifice?

[Xel]

From certain hints we have seen, the baron has intentionally been sending in his daffiest sparks and their stupidest toys to directly attack agatha, as a distraction most likely. Why throw away your useful pieces when you have an army of one armed punching clanks to sacrifice?

Except for the dreen. Then again, the dreen didn't do much. Messed up a big clank, but we don't know how strong those really were (regardless of the implication that those were the "real" players the baron was waiting for - we never saw them being effective at anything).

Hmm. Wonder what the dreen is doing now?

[GaeasSon]

Why throw away your useful pieces when you have an army of one armed punching clanks to sacrifice?

Heck Mechanicsburg is the perfect chipper-shredder into which to throw all the empires most annoying whackos. Maybe they win. (YAY!) Maybe they get mulched (YAY!) A tactical victory, or the (in)human relations office gets streamlined. No Down side!

I wonder if there's something about this in Klaus' banned monograph?

[Traab]

Now im curious. Is that seven sequential popes, meaning the pope died or was replaced 6 times since the baron wrote his monograph? Or has the world changed so that there is a council of popes and they all agreed the monograph was evil?

[Eldan]

Now im curious. Is that seven sequential popes, meaning the pope died or was replaced 6 times since the baron wrote his monograph? Or has the world changed so that there is a council of popes and they all agreed the monograph was evil?

I think our world achieved up to four popes at the same time and having two wasn't that uncommon. They would usually call each other Antipope and other nasty words and go to war with each other. I'm guessing that's the situation here, the church is as fractured as the worldly politics.

[HandofShadows]

Heck Mechanicsburg is the perfect chipper-shredder into which to throw all the empires most annoying whackos. Maybe they win. (YAY!) Maybe they get mulched (YAY!) A tactical victory, or the (in)human relations office gets streamlined. No Down side!

The Baron could give Xanatos a run for his money if he wanted to methinks.

[smuchmuch]

... I amnow persuaded that Cave Jhonson is a Heterodyne ! That would explains so much.