[Profile] Agatha Heterodyne, Girl Genius

[imaketheclanks]

{ A g a t h a H e t e r o d y n e lab assistant, adventurer, actor, madgirl
	THE BASICS~ Decorative, but evidently damaged. Held in contempt by those she worked with. Obviously not what we're looking for. FULL NAME: Agatha Heterodyne. ALIASES: Agatha Clay. AGE: 18. CANON: Girl Genius. APPEARANCE: Tall (about 5'10") with waist-length blonde hair, green eyes, and glasses. She has worked with machinery for a long time, and is fairly muscular. Her world is victorian-steampunk styled, so she is often in dresses, but with various tools, pouches, belts, and gadgets. And goggles too, of course. STARTING ITEM: A Heterodyne trilobite sigil from Lilith Clay (as seen on the ray gun). PULL POINT: The very beginning of Volume 4, immediately after the airship crash.
HISTORY~ You're the last of the Heterodyne family. As long as you're around, the Baron and every other major power in Europe will want to control you. And everyone else will either want to follow you-- or kill you. Warning: the rest of this application has Girl Genius spoilers, primarily for the first three volumes, but also some significant later reveals. Agatha lives in a world where the Spark is everything. Ordinary people live their lives relatively quietly, but the Powers That Be are the ones who built themselves a death ray and, literally, took power with it. Europa is fragmented into towns inside fiefdoms, and most of those fiefdoms have sworn allegiance to the incredibly powerful Baron Wulfenbach-- if only because the alternative, spark civil war, was becoming expensive. Some people nostalgically wish for the return of Bill and Barry Heterodyne, folk hero sparks who, to hear the stories, could topple any tyrant and build anything imaginable. They faced down a mysterious, rampaging spark known as the Other, who had both military might and dreaded slaver wasps that could turn an ordinary person into a shambling revenant. After the Other's full-scale attack on Castle Heterodyne nearly two decades ago, both the Other and the Heterodynes disappeared-- so perhaps the brothers won? But since then, the world has gotten colder-- even their old traveling buddy and partner in crime, Klaus Wulfenbach, has hardened his demeanor and made himself someone to be feared. Meanwhile, Agatha Clay is a bumbling lab assistant at Transylvania Polygnostic University who feels the pull of mad science, but simply doesn't have the chops. She can't concentrate and the only time her projects don't explode is when they're supposed to. Some of the professors treat her kindly, as she so obviously means well (and because she is so obviously under the protection of the Master of the University, Dr. Beetle), but some mock and even loathe her for her incompetence. Raised by her adoptive parents Adam and Lilith Clay, the only keepsake she has of her birth parents is a locket with their pictures, given to her by her since mysteriously vanished Uncle Barry. In accordance with his wishes, she has never taken it off since he gave it to her, but it is forcibly taken from her when she is mugged. The day goes downhill from there-- Baron Wulfenbach makes a personal visit on the (correct) suspicion that Dr. Beetle is hiding a hive engine, an enormous mechanized lizard-insect hybrid that functions as a slaver wasp factory. In the ensuing confrontation, Dr. Beetle is killed and Agatha is expelled. She goes home enormously upset, and as she sleeps someone builds a mysterious clank and sets it loose in the streets. This attracts the attention of Wulfenbach and his son Gilgamesh, who round her up along with the man they think is responsible. Once on Wulfenbach Castle, it becomes increasingly obvious that Agatha is a strong spark making a gradual and astonishingly non-traumatic breakthrough. Gilgamesh is the first to suspect, and transfers her to his lab where between them they make several charming clanks and one hair-raising escape from slaver wasps (emerged from Dr. Beetle's hive engine, which had been brought back to the castle for study and then sabotaged by a secret revenant). Gilgamesh, equal parts smitten with Agatha, rebellious against his father, and trying to keep the first female spark on his level that he's found, proposes marriage. At this point Agatha's parents find her again. Adam and Lilith, legendary construct servants of Bill and Barry Heterodyne, have arrived to free their charge from imprisonment (admittedly an imprisonment offering significant educational and romantic improvement) on Castle Wulfenbach. They snatch her from Gilgamesh and are interrupted by Klaus, at which point everyone figures out more or less simultaneously that Agatha is the long-lost daughter of Bill Heterodyne and Lucrezia Mongfish. Agatha, Adam, and Lilith run while Klaus gives chase, along with an airship's worth of minions and monsters under his command. Adam falls back to hold them off, and then Lilith does, until Agatha is left in a small airship rocketing towards the wastelands with only a talking cat and Lilith's last words: "Get to Castle Heterodyne. It will help you. We love you! Now RUN!" In the space of a day, Agatha's fought off slaver wasps, received a rather poor marriage proposal (which she neither accepted nor rejected), discovered she is one of the fabled Heterodynes, escaped from Castle Wulfenbach, seen her parents sacrifice their lives for her, and saved a man's life only to have him almost immediately try to kill her. She's rattled, grieving, and only just starting to come to grips with the idea that "every major power in Europe will want to control you, and everyone else will either want to follow you or kill you." Her mother told her to go to Castle Heterodyne, and she intends to, but right now, she's pretty sure all she wants to do is survive the next week.
PERSONALITY~ I am Agatha Heterodyne. You are in my town. In my castle. And in my way. AGATHA'S PERSONALITY GOES HERE
POWERS~ In my experience, a strong Heterodyne will take about two hours to truly warp the laws of Nature. She is very, very sparky, the canon term for the mad science trait. (It includes an ability to bend the normal laws of science, and generally does not give much in the way of practicality or ethics.) So far, her particular spark shows the Heterodyne inclination towards clockwork and clanks, rather than the Mongfish gift for biology and living constructs. However, having spent years in a university lab, she has a solid medical background as well. Moreover, she has inherited her family's habit of absent-mindedly heterodyning (humming a particular tune in a particular manner to focus her concentration) when in the "madness place." Not only does this help her spark along, it also identifies her, to those who know, as a Heterodyne. Though she isn't fully aware of it, she has also inherited her mother's commanding voice (if angry, she can issue commands in a tone that forces obedience), although that tends to work best on those who have explicitly pledged allegiance to Lucrezia Mongfish, been infected by Lucrezia's slaver wasps, or are very weak-willed. Again, to those who have experienced it before, it marks her as the Other.
Writing Sample~ What's more important-- what the Heterodyne Boys actually did... or the dreams they inspire in us? WRITING SAMPLE GOES HERE
OOC INFO~ Who thought having two boyfriends was a good idea?! NAME: vitupera TIME ZONE: EST CONTACT: vitupera on plurk, twitter, gmail, and LJ