Much like that TicToc on the river bank. Thus, it's like a technological forest, with the TicTocs and Robots (and possibly the Horsebot) as the local "wildlife". The Gunnerkrigg staff merely colonized the Court, converting it into a school (among other things). This would explain the labyrinthine architecture.

• That last bit has been Jossed by page 373: Humans were present at the Court's founding. But considering Jones' choice of words, it's possible those first humans were the ones who grew the Court in the first place.
• Furthermore, if the Court really did grow, perhaps the Tic Tocs are a sort of larval form. The Court unleashes them into the world where they eventually settle down and start growing into new Courts. Alternatively, they merely grow into new buildings at the Court's edge, allowing it to expand.
  • So where do snow globes and shopping trolleys fit into this?
    • TicTocs eat snow globes like parrots eat nuts?
• The "element that began the creation of the Court" was known as Seed Bismuth.
  • And this is◊ how bismuth crystals look. Very similar to a man-made structure, aren't they? Could it be that the Court is, in fact, a gigantic bismuth crystal?
    • More specifically, it looks very similar to the Court as seen from above (example: Annie's first ride in the trams that took her on an elevated track).

All but confirmed

Zimmy's project that disgusted Annie (and that was remarked on as a sign of intelligence on the Cast Page) was an obviously modified microorganism. Most likely, her reality-warping helped this process.

• Perhaps Zimmy created the butt above the head creature in this webcomic.
• Considering the fact that Zimmy was clearly upset at Annie when she suggested that Zimmy should try to control her power, it seems unlikely that it was used in the creation of her project.

First, there's Eglamore's advice to Annie to be more careful about not getting caught. Second, the setup of the dormitories' motion detectors is "pretty lame" (as Tom himself said): the terminal is in a location where anyone inside the dorm can reach it without stepping into the range of the sensor. It's almost as if it were arranged specifically so the clever students would be able to hack it.

Due to the Court's high technology and concentration of supernaturally-talented individuals, the government has a vested interest in making sure the Court doesn't abuse its power. The government is particularly worried about Zimmy; due to her Reality Warper Power Incontinence, she's one freakout away from posing a serious threat to herself and others. The Agency's means of spying include:

• The TicTocs. Zimmy and Gamma, due to their prior experience with the MIBs, know that these birds are the MIBs' eyes and ears. This is why Zimmy is so nervous about them watching her, and why Gamma refers to them as "The Thousand Eyes".
• Jones. She's a double agent, and possibly a robot built from technology similar to the TicTocs.
  • Jones is not a robot.
• That white circle on all of Zimmy's shirts. It's a tracking device, so the Agents know her status at all times.

These spies (and possibly the entire agency) are sympathetic to the Court, for the time being. Hence why the TicTocs rescued Antimony.

• Possibly Jossed by Tom: the Men in Black are Court staff.

Not necessarily Jeanne, as stated in an above guess, but it's possible. Antimony is chemically similar to Bismuth, and Bismuth is used in some cosmetics (which provides a relation to Antimony, or kohl, and Surma's name being a type of eyeshadow as stated above). Antimony's place in the Court is to replace whatever would have died along with Surma (in this guess, not Surma herself, but rather whatever Bismuth Seed did or was). It's going to be revealed that Annie is such a powerful medium, naturally able to see psychopomps and befriend ghosts, etc., because of what she is - that which is to provide balance between the technology of the Court and the magic that it has forsaken in recent decades.

The North and South designations should also be important but I don't know how. This explains why Aly got sorted into Queslett for his week at the Court. And the opposite is in effect about the Foley house (the house the fairies got sorted into).

• Very unlikely. Remember that Queslett also has Antimony, Kat, Andrew Smith, Jack, Janet, Winsbury - are they going to turn into wood creatures too? As for Foley House, I'm pretty sure it's confirmed in canon that it's a hous for former forest creatures, so it's not much of a Wild Mass Guess.
  • it just makes sense that if Foley house is for incoming residents of the court that are from the wood originally, that there should be an outgoing house that is Foley's inverse, if there is an outgoing house, then who have we seen who has left the court for the wood? only Aly who was in Queslett for his short stay at the court. QED: Queslett house is the outgoing house.
    • Gosh and golly! Does that mean Annie, Kat, Willie and others are all going to Gillitie-ify in the future?
  • There's another problem with this theory; Surma and Anja were both in Queslett when they were at the Court. Surma died without becoming a forest person, and Anja is now teaching at the Court.

They study mysterious energies powering gods-knows-how-many mysterious items, they have a reality warper and a power nullifyer, a half-fire elemental, a Valkyrie, a teleporter, a guy with all of the luck (all of it), a pair of pan-dimentional sapient crabs, various AIs, a captured nature spirit, a minotaur, at least two ghosts, a dragon (formerly), one very mysterious and heavy lady, not to mention strained diplomatic relations with a physical god, elves, fairies, and other magical beings.

Special Containment Procedures: SCP-—- is to be housed in a standard-sized dorm room with its caretaker, along with whatever items the caretaker requires (see SCP-___). SCP-—- itself (henceforth refered to as "Reynard") does not requre anything other than what a normal plush toy needs for maintainence. Internet access is denied.

Description: SCP-—- is a 2 foot (.61 meter)-tall white plush wolf. Contained within the apparently normal toy is the soul of Reynard the Fox....

Judging from the recent story about students finding the CURSED INSTRUMENTS room, the Court's containment procedures are horrible. It's amazing they haven't caused an XK world-ending-event yet.

The records of the original incident were destroyed, but the Court Powers That Be (minus Jones, obviously) are well aware of the event. Furthermore, what Annie has learned of The Plan is only the tip of the iceburg, and the Powers That Be continue to carry out the plan into the present day.

• Annie is getting dangerously close to the truth about the Court. As such, she will soon butt heads with the Court's Powers That Be, who will attempt to stop her snooping at any cost, for fear she will learn too much.

The Court's current goal is to resurrect people, probably starting with Jeanne. Because harnessing supernatural powers and science to bring someone to life never ever goes wrong.

The suicidal fairies needed to die to cross it. All of the people in Gunnerkrigg Court are dead.

• Unlikely. Several of the guides have shown up to take spirits away from the Court. Antimony's dead mother is nowhere to be seen, and she was fairly strongly linked to the Court before she died, so it would seem reasonable for her to be there if this was true. Also, there's Mort. If everyone's dead, what's the point of introducing a ghost?
  • It doesn't seem like Mort has ever been a human. He's just young spirit whose task is to scare people. But the theory still seems improbable, when you take Joanne's fate into account.

Or rather, one of them, since it tends to originate wherever people need to travel to the land of the dead (various places in Greece, Japan). Coyote could have called in the most useful "dividing line" power that he controlled at the time (Coyote occasionally has something to do with causing or allowing death to occur properly), or from which he could afford to call in a favor (he does things like that all the time, asking for something seemingly insignificant then putting it to really devious use later).

Gunnerkrigg and Gillitie are an alternate-universe London. And the Gunnerkrigg Underground is The London Underground.

It's a real river, in Dumfriesshire, which features in several folksongs. Gillitie is also a Scottish surname (though unusual).

• On the other hand, Kat writes to Annie from her summer holiday that she's "having a good time here in Scotland" — which would indicate that the Court, and Gillitie Wood, aren't in Scotland. Apparently, the Court is in an alternate universe where the River Annan flows further south, passing through northern England. (Northern England, by the way, has a more pronounced Scandinavian influence than the rest of the UK, due to past Viking invasions. And the name "Gunnerkrigg" looks Scandinavian...)
  • Perhaps it's an Alternate Universe where Gunnerkrigg Court is on the Annan Waters as they are in real life, but has the Court and Woods being another separate region of the UK unto themselves.

Gillitie Wood is the Forest Queen's domain and Gunnerkrigg was built on the other side of the river.

Coyote or Ysengrin gave a Robot a tree-arm, leading to that Robot's possession by a Shadow Man. That Shadow then successfully infiltrated the Court, and possessed the Robot society's central computer. It caused numerous AI's to malfunction or go rampant; the Robots' numbers were decimated by the time the Shadow was purged from the computer. Many Robots' computing power were adversely affected by these events. The Robots are still recovering, hence:

• The use of transparent deceptions like "NO Robot Parts" and "Boring door" to hide their presence from humans,
• Doorbot actually believing Annie that robots never lie,
• The Guardbots not being properly equipped to deal with intruders who run away, and
• The barber-bot that looks like a repurposed, battle-scarred warbot. Meanwhile, the Robot's tree-arm was cut off and planted in the artificial habitat room. It grew into that cherry tree.

Possibly created by Coyote or some other powerful being at some point as a place for the magical things of the world to live in response to the encroachment of human civilization and technology. At some point after it's creation, humans refugees showed up and eventually resulted in the creation of the Court. After some initial problems, Coyote split the pocket dimension in half with the Annan Waters, giving each a nearly infinite space to work with. This neatly explains both the location and scale of the Wood and Court.

The placard on Jones' door (panel one of this page) does not have a first initial. The placard on Eglamore's door (panel three of the same page) does. And she does insist on being addressed without the honorific "Miss".

• Obligatory name derivation, for what it's worth: Jones originated as a Welsh surname, originally ap Jones = "(child/son) of John". It's the second most common English surname, after "Smith", and unfortunately I can't find any equivalent to the "Smith that blows on the coals" for it. Yet.
• Confirmed.
  • However, Coyote disagrees. Jossed.
    • Coyote says nothing to the point on that page. Antimony says "Ms. Jones!", and Jones says "Just Jones will do". If anything, that looks like a confirmation to me.
    • Coyote calls her by a completely different name and goes on to basically state that Jones is a name she adopted. Even ignoring that, dropping the Ms. in no way indicates that she has one name. All it suggests is that she doesn't like the formality of Ms. Jones.
    • However, the linked comic could be taken just as easily as a confirmation: if "Jones" was a name she "stole", she might not have bothered with a first name.

During the meeting, Coyote let Ysengrin do most of his talking; Ms. Jones let the Headmaster (and the teachers, and the students) do all of her talking. And she's very knowledgeable about shapeshifting and its effects on sanity. Her neutrality between the Court and the Wood comes from her being far older than either.

• Possible further support appears on page 380: Either she's using magic to deflect the sword, or she stopped the blade with her face.
  • It seems more like she dodges it: notice how her hair moves as if she were sidestepping. And the blade bending? Fish-eye perspective: notice the action lines. Also, she doesn't grab the blade, she presses against the flat of the blade, probably showing off some mad aikido skills. That would make her Badass Normal, only it seems that the glancing cut she received while dodging closed up immediately.
  • Jones may any number of things, but she's not Badass Normal: she's too dense to either swim or stand on a rickety dock, and punches through brick walls as a matter of course. If it hadn't been Jossed repeatedly, she'd be a rather more collected Terminator.
  • There are sparks flying off Jones's face, where the blade (would have) struck her. Dodging blades doesn't do that.
  • It's entirely possible that Jones's medium power is to simply reject harm. It fits in with her untouchable and unflappable personality, and also explains why Eglamore gets routinely thrashed by her in close combat, on account of her being able to judo his sword back at him by gripping the blade with no risk of injury.
  • Note when she goes to collect Antimony from the Wood, she flat-out tells Coyote "You know I can take her if I wish." Considering that Coyote was right there, she'd have to be near his power level to be able to do something like that.
    • It may not be a pure power thing, knowing how many rules and laws there seem to be governing interactions between the Court and the Forest, there may be a 'Jones may pass freely from one to the other with anything she can carry.' It would also explain how she got in when Eglamore was stopped at the bridge.

As mentioned above, she has Only One Name — because she didn't take a name until she came to the Court. She's not a fairy, as she lacks the grey eyes and pointy ears the other former fairies have. Instead, she's one of the "bunch of different stuff" that Red mentioned. Her past with Gillitie would explain her knowledge of the Woods and her neutrality between the Court and the Wood.

• She could easily be one of those "traitors" that Ysengrin mentions here, a creature from the forest who decided to become Human.

Hence the single name and the being able to grab swords by the blade.

As Antimony suspects. This is why she's relegated to instructing future Mediums instead of serving in that capacity herself: the technophobic Gillitie denizens would never accept a robot diplomat. Some kind of super-tough synthetic skin enabled her to deflect that sword with her face.

Considering how much she looks like a real human, Jones was probably built by the same party who built the TicTocs; her true alliance lies with them rather than the Court or the Wood. Either way, Jones isn't part of the Robot Society shown in Chapter 12, as she looks far more human (yet acts more robotic) than any of those Robots.

• Before you can say Jossed, Word Of God says that Reynardine can tell untruths to Annie if he believes them himself... so this theory still holds some water.
• Chapter 22 indicates that Jones was a classmate of Surma et al. — one, incidentally, who Eglamore apparently quite liked but Surma couldn't stand. Unless you argue that she takes Ridiculously Human Robot to the point of growing up....
• Word Of Tom: Jones was not taught at the Court. She knew Surma and pals back in the day, but she wasn't a student.
• Well, it has been proven that Jones is most definitely NOT a robot. This page and its author's comments can not be any clearer.
  • Unless he's lying to us...
• Could still be an android (gynoid, technically). I wouldn't put it past her to leave that out.
• Jones is not a robot, but technically she might be a Golem.

Both of them are thin blondes. Both (presumably) have combat prowess. And both of their names are derived from the name "John".

They aren't exact matches because Jones altered her appearance and changed her name over the years. Possible reasons for this:

• Jones developed her own personality and has sought to distance herself from Jeanne.
• Jones' robotic nature is a closely-guarded secret. She changes identities every generation so others in the Court won't start wondering how old she is.
• But Jones has brown eyes. I think that if she was a copy of Jeanne, she would keep the eye color (rather than hair color) when she switched forms. A lot of the robots have green eyes, especially prevalent in the chapter Skywatcher and the Angel and especially in this comic which compares the color of Jeanne's eyes in the painting to Skywatcher's eyes. I think Diego did that on purpose, which suggests to me that either Diego would do the same to a goldfish or that the author would keep the color for symbolism's sake (he does love cryptic clues).
• I'm posting this in all "Jones is a robot" theories to cover all bases. It has been proven that Jones is most definitely NOT a robot. This page and its author's comments can not be any clearer.

The best of both theories. And it would be awesome.

• I'm posting this in all "Jones is a robot" theories to cover all bases. It has been proven that Jones is most definitely NOT a robot. This page and its author's comments can not be any clearer.
  • Unless he's lying to us...

Just so all our bases are covered. Jones's neutrality is simply a mindset necessary to serving as Medium. Her strange knowledge is the result of years of study. Her bare-faced blade block was magic that any human in the Gunnerverse can learn. Her strange personality is just her strange personality.

• Normal people may or may not be able to block blades with their face (see Eglamore). However, normal people cannot punch through brick walls and can stand on rickety docks.

At least some portrayals of her incarnations post-martyrdom give her an ability to reject harm. While Joan of Arc is known for taking up the sword, either this Joan (and many others since the original) have an aversion to swords, or can only take up a sword for a just cause. Giving Eglamore a few (potentially fatal) whacks to entertain some students isn't a particularly just cause.

• Perhaps Jones is to Jeanne as Annie is to Surma, although maybe with some kind of moving moving of the spirit/phlebotinum thingie that's passed down moved to a different bloodline as Jeanne did not seem to have ever had a child and the fact that the court covered up her death seems to suggest that if she even had one, they would have killed it as well.

Just a hunch.

• He-he. There were coincidences.

Jones<->Jeanne (Note: Jones="Son of John", Jeanne=John). Seems perfect for a Medium between the Court and the Wood, but for some reason can't be, or isn't impartial enough. Has physical similarities to Jeanne. Can deflect swords with her face (or at the very least, she can deflect swords with her face indoors[1]). And, interestingly, she was struck by Eglamore's sword in a mirror of where Jeanne cut Antimony, though I'm not sure what that means, if anything (and if it's not just subtle hindshadowing). I thought for sure that this was/would have been here already.

Jones is deliberately putting others in harm's way in order to teach Carver a lesson. When things get worse, Antimony will try calling her out over what happened — and Jones will calmly turn all those accusations back on Antimony, outlining how Annie's distrust of authority made the situation worse. After all, Antimony has been withholding information and acting on her own — how were Jones and the others supposed to know the very facts she kept from them? They don't have a full picture of how dangerous Jack is, or what he's up to, or how Zimmy factors in... And while Annie has a clearer view of the whole picture, she hasn't been sharing that information. Sort of a Right Hand Versus Left Hand scenario, presuming both sides want the same thing.

...Whether or not this makes an immediate positive impression on Antimony's behavior is a crapshoot. Antimony may very well take this as further proof that she can't work with the staff, as they're willing to let others be hurt or worse just to "teach her a lesson". And given what she knows of the Court's past...

More recent issues have shown Jones to be strong enough to break through solid rock with her bare hands, and Reynardine implies that she doesn't step onto a rickety pier because she is heavy enough to just break through it. This might suggest that she is some kind of magical construct made from stone or other heavy material, perhaps even a kind of Magitek. While that might make her technically a kind of robot, Reynardine would still insist that she isn't, as he seems to be fairly insistent on drawing a line between magic and technology (or at least unable to comprehend a similarity).

Kind of out there, I know. But there are the facts that her head isn't rectangular and her skin isn't steely gray. A few other hints include the whole "Reynardine says she's not a robot" thing, and that t-shirt with Eglamore on, but really, do we even need to go further than the lack of a rectangular head? ...Mantisbot isn't a robot either. Grey skin, but a triangular head.

• Jones is for sure not a robot. If she says she wasn't a robot and really was, that would be lying, and of course, robots never lie. So she's telling the truth on page 728. And the robot who Annie met up with when she went to retrieve S13's CPU did not have a rectangular head, and he confirmed that he was a robot, so a rectangular head is not a requirement.
  • He was obviously not a robot, but just a metal golem like the mantis. That's how he didn't know that Annie didn't meet the requirements for being a robot like the rectangular head (sort of) or steely grey skin, and thought that all robots had antennae. Knights and Knaves, kiddo. Knights And Knaves.

Since the symbol has been showing up everywhere from the beginning, it's got to be of some significance. Traditionally in mythology, lead has Anti-Magic properties. Being a soft metal, it would explain why she can bend around a sword, and being, well, heavy, it explains why she walks across the river instead of swimming. She's just a little "touchy about her weight".

You know, from the Neil Gaiman novella? There's no saying Coraline's experiences with the supernatural stopped the second the left the Other World for good. Maybe she stuck around the supernatural, found her way into Gunnerkrigg and, what with her previous experience with dark forces, made herself useful.

...What?

And "that boy" that Reynard killed getting out of was Fox Mulder, if A is true.

• A: The X-Files show is a matter of the Literary Agent Hypothesis. Scully is so vehemently believing in the Christian god and nothing else super-scientific or magical because she was traumatized when one of her friend's powers went out of control, or something from the woods attacked. She was mindwiped or lost her memories on her own, and sent to live a (monitored) civilian life under a new name (Jones was a Doorstep Baby Name, and Dana Scully was the name they gave her when she was sent to the orphanage or a foster family). Shortly after she began regaining her memories once she was assigned to be Mulder's partner and acted as a Weirdness Magnet for their investigations, the two of them had their deaths faked to leave the FBI for Gunnerkrigg Court and a show was made starring Gillian Anderson and David Duchovny (originally) based on their declassified investigations.
• B: Dana Scully was seen as the perfect face for Gunnerkrigg Court during early episodes of the series, contrasting Mulder (or for Gillitie Wood and Coyote). Jones was an artificial human being raised to succeed the Headmaster, and they simply focused her mold as the character of Dana Scully rather than try to fine-tune the individual characteristics themselves. It didn't turn out too well, and the "everything is some sort of hoax" clashed too much with the "almost nothing is a hoax" mindset she would need dealing with Gillitie Wood and its inhabitants, which is why she acts in such a reserved (repressed?) manner.
  • But the X-files is shown to exist within the GC universe, to the extent that Kat has a Mulder action figure.
    • That's why, in both versions of the guess, the X-Files show exists within the GC universe.

She's not a robot, she's an android.

Well, she has the looks and weird power. She is weirdly not mentioned at all when Jeanne descends to the river, but maybe the Court didn't want to kill her?

It's how she smashed her way through the wall — she transmitted energy through her hand into the wall, which looked like she just smashed a hole in it. It's also how she won the sword fight with Eglamore — she could just make his hands loosely grip it so she could pull the sword off him.

She is not emotionless nor always bored, but rather jaded and broken.

This is mostly based on the apparent lineage of expressionless faces that flows through Jones to Carver the Elder to Carver the Younger, along with the general calmness when exposed to odd situations. In this situation, Jones is, of course, not her real name, but rather a handy all-purpose monicker.

The fact that Jones was not educated at the Court despite the fact that Surma's group knew her (it'd be weird even considering having a faculty member in a students' group photo like that) combined with the new fact that she "steals names" indicates that the person we know as Jones is really an entity who may have stolen the identity of a student in Eglamore's age group. This is further supported by the fact that she knows much about the inner workings and history of the Court, familiar with Coyote, seems to not have much by way of human emotion but still privy to it, and has strange abilities such as the famous sword deflection. She may in fact be a much older entity on par with Coyote, Ysengrin, and Reynardine.

Surprised nobody said this earlier.

Note what Coyote calls her — 'Wandering Eye'. Seems like a pretty appropriate name for a spy. Possibly she was on good terms with the Forest and the treaty was altered to let her go into the Forest whenever she wished — after all, with the powers she was given, you wouldn't want to tell her she couldn't do what she wanted. Her powers also include the power to change shape — she stole the image of another woman called Jones, and took her name too. Whether the real Jones is alive or dead at this point in time is unknown.

It's also possible that she was formerly a student at the same time as Surma, Eglamore, Anja, and Donald who was in training to become a medium alongside Surma and thus was her rival — it explains why Surma 'couldn't stand her' — if Jones was an equal candidate to become the medium, Surma may have hated her for that. Surma became the medium and the Court, feeling that Jones' talents were too good to waste, decided to give her new powers. Jones, stung by losing to Surma, agreed and stole the identity and image of someone who may have been much more beautiful and powerful than her, and has kept it ever since as a warning to those who know her secret that she can do the same to them.

Hence why Coyote calls her "Wandering eye". If he can make knives out of his teeth, it stands to reason that he could have made someone to spy on the court for him.

• The one that got stuck and became a star perhaps

She insulted a condemned man and had been paying for it for 2,000 years. Not sure how this accounts for her density problem, though.

A sort of combination of some of the theories above. Some time ago when she was a child, Jones was Curious as a Monkey — hence the nickname "Wandering Eye" — and somehow wandered into the forest without being killed. Charmed by her innocence and magical potential (again akin to Annie), Coyote took her in, granting her powers and possible immortality during her stay. However, considering the way the forest works, by the time lil' Jones was out, she'd become a stoic Zen Survivor.

Whether or not she knew Surma and Eglamore's gang by then is up for debate; she could of stolen the name of the Jones they knew and took up her identity with her abilities, or simply took the name to let go of her past and had already come out of the forest and adopted the name by the time the picture was taken.

Coyote calls her Wandering Eye and a Valkyrie specifically doesn't like her. Not a strong argument, but it could be the case.

• Seconded, probably Thought.
• Minor quibble. Brinnie (Brynhildr) wasn't the one who disliked Jones, but Surma.

Just covering all our bases.

The eye Coyote threw so high that it became a star is her, thus he calls her Wandering Eye. Arcturus is just another name that she "stole".

• Seconded. This could also explain why she's so heavy.

Just like Annie is part Fire-elemental. It would explain the strange density, the Made of Iron abilities, and the stoic personality.

Maybe it's way too early to tell, but Jones seems to be drawn to the newly 3-Dimensional Shadow 2. Possibly it's a completely stoic version of the Cuteness Proximity, but she shows affection to him as seen when she pet his head (similar to how she pet Eglamore's 9 chapters previously) and gives him treats. She refers to him as unique in response to Annie thanking her for helping him all while he is being cute as a button.

• Shadow eating candy is the cutest thing in this comic so far. I can easily see that getting under Jones' skin.

In other words, a being existing in the etheric plane which can influence and/or manifest in the physical plane. Would explain her unique physical attributes, and the reason she can't use a blinker stone. Also may mesh with the "She's an Earth Elemental/Part Earth Elemental" theory.

In Chapter 36, we see that it's possible to astrally project while still being able to perform tasks with one's body. However, the examples shown were uncharacteristically stoic-faced, to the point Red barely spends a moment to glance at Annie. So, maybe Jones can't use a blinker stone because she's already astral projecting, that her physical feats are being augmented by her psychic presence, and that this is why she seems so stoic?

In Egyptian mythology Ra once grew so angry with humanity that he was determined to punish them; he took one of the eyes from his head and turned it into Sekhmet, the lioness headed goddess of war, and sent her to punish mankind. The problem was, Sekhmet wouldn't do as she was told, and when Ra tried to tell her she'd done enough she evaded all his attempts to reclaim her and turn her back into his eye, desiring to kill all of mankind. Ra had to get her smashed off her gourd before he could rein her in. Obviously she's calmed down a bit since then. Besides, look at her eyes and hair; don't they look leonine?

• But when Sekhmet was reigned in, most accounts had her turn (or revert back) into Hathor, the goddess of music, love, motherhood, beauty, and drink. That really doesn't fit her it at all.

She obviously possess power beyond a normal human and beyond what we're used to seeing from students with special abilities. Maybe Coyote gave her a power or two, but they have a terrible price just like with Ysengrin and Reynardine.

In some narratives, shapeshifters can change shape, but keep the same mass because mass can be neither created nor destroyed. So if Jones is really something larger that has taken human shape, that could explain why she is so heavy.

• Renard as a doll doesn't seem to have problems with this.

For the following reasons:

• Rogat Orjak are cool
• As seen in the above WMG, Eglamore's armor links him to lead, where as the Rogat Orjak make me think of Godzilla, who has nuclear breath, and so this is contained as by lead.
• Eglamore has a glowing sword for no reason (but which he seems to like to use as a projectile more than a melee weapon).
• It would seem a potent counter to Coyote's awesome (natural based) powers. (i.e. possession = infection, which also explains why Reynardine kills when he leaves a body, creating a chasm = earthquake.), and the headmaster seems far to relaxed during the confrontation with Coyote.

It just hasn't been shown yet. This is also why Jack mentioned that his father said Surma was nice.

They actually save the world often, that's why he interrupts them during class.

• It would also have to be a time machine, since they've now gone back to before the Court existed. (And Jones would have to be actively lying about the seed bismuth.)

They have similar names and Dr. Disaster seems to share some of the appearance of older doctors with the more manic, brooding mentality of later ones. Alternatively this could be a second Chameleon Arc binge.

Oh-oh! Saviour of the universe!

• Now you're just being silly.

If he acted flustered or angry, Coyote would draw things out and withhold information just to watch the silly human squirm; I bet it took the leaders of the Court a long time (and a lot of wasted meetings) before they figured it out...

Story-wise, this will kill two birds with one stone. It will provide an emotional moment, due to the kindness of the being(s), and it will also show how powerful that which killed her/him/them is, due to their sheer size and presumable strength.

• I think they're probably safe and will just stay in the background, but if one or both of them does get killed, I hope to god it's not by a sapient cosmic horror-trash heap.

He may be a lover of science fiction whose wish is to be a real-life sci-fi hero, but he also has another, more precious fantasy. To paraphrase Tim Burton, "Randall Disaster thought science was nice, but he wanted to be just like Vincent Price..."

Reynardine wasn't just being sarcastic about a romantic relationship between her and Kat. She silences him because she herself is in denial. Kat and Annie's depiction in the Second Treatise would also support this theory.

• On the other hand, Annie was quite supportive of Kat's feelings for Alistair, and Kat was trying to set up Annie and Mort. ("He loooooves you!") Considering Rey's tendency for snark, his comment about kissing probably wasn't intended seriously.
• Ahem.
• Tom Siddell is evil.
• A recent Formspring question answered by the author:
  Q: Is Annie considered attractive by her classmates? A: They don't really think about her —>like that, but yeah kinda. What about Kat?
  Yes Kat thinks Annie is very attractive
  • ...and Kat is a natural-born shipper.
• Second Treatise? Every single one except the First has something like that, with Kat wearing fairly masculine clothes and Annie in a dress, and holding hands at least. Let's wait and see...
  • There was no third treatise yet when this was written.
    • And there's still no fourth treatise, so "every single one except the first" here means "two out of three".
    • Now that there is a fourth treatise, the pattern is continued. Annie in a dress, Kat in work clothes, and Annie's hair wrapped around Kat's wrist as she holds two intertwined pink doves.
• The pairing makes more sense if you take into account the series' embracing of opposites attract. Annie's mother was a medium, her father (implied) more scientifically inclined. Kat's mother is clearly more magically inclined, her father (implied) more scientifically inclined. And hey, look at that! Annie is magical, Kat is scientific.
• Lindsey the merostomatazon helped Annie apologize to Kat and save their friendship. A page later, we learn she's an "accredited couples therapist".

Reynardine had been imprisoned in Sivo's body for a long time. He must have known that Eglamore would never let him escape, at least not for long. When he first met Annie, he took special note of the doll she was carrying with her and her resemblance to Surma. Later, when Annie visited him in his cell, he put his plan into action, pretending that he wanted to steal Annie's body and then pretending to be dismayed when Annie was dragged out of his reach (this was all an act put on for Eglamore's benefit). You've got to admit that this all turned out well for Reynardine — he escaped from captivity, gave him the perfect excuse to hang around with the girl he is interested in protecting, and (since he is under Annie's direct control) the teachers at Gunnerkrigg Court aren't going to throw him back in jail (it's a compromise that they and Reynardine are willing to live with). One of main arguments is that normally he's unwilling to kill humans and tried possession only due to being smitten with Surma utterly, so trying to pull this on Antimony who resembles her and is of interest to him is a bit too much even if he's desperate.

• Extremely unlikely. Rey gets very close to Annie's eyes before Eglamore intervened — way too close to be faking it. Not to mention the fact that Annie straight up accused Rey of trying to kill her and he conceded the point. Even though he was trying to get on Annie's good side.
  • But he didn't truly concede! Rey just brushed this issue aside, implying "yes". As lady Jones cautioned, nothing should be just assumed when dealing with Trickster Coyote... Shouldn't it be extended to his Trickster cousin? Note that he also denies he's eager to spring to Annie's defence — though it's obviously so (and conceals any emotions towards her in general, for that matter). Which would be one of his motivations for such a plan.
  • Getting that close to Annie's eyes would likely also have placed Reynardine within possessing range of the doll, however; and while we don't get the full sequence, the subsequent strip appears to show that the possessing doesn't necessarily require a headfirst plunge. There's also the possible double meaning behind "your body": it could mean Annie's real body, or it could mean the lifeless doll body that Annie possesses.
• He could simply try to possess that doll, not expecting to get a leash with this new body — after all, it's not his own power and he has a limited experience with it. Otherwise, this plan worked perfectly: he was written off as dead once the possession attempt "failed" and later he didn't reveal himself until he was caught. Apparent "clumsiness" of the attempt speaks in favor of this theory.
• For that matter, all his "leash" can be a long-term ruse (he's a scheming Trickster, and not distracted as easily as Coyote). What he said about his condition while facing the one who can verify his honesty could be interpreted as merely being unwilling to harm Annie's property. What he said without being checked is not necessarily correct — just like his statement of powerlessnes in this body (which are soon revealed to be... not quite true) or not trying to defend Annie (which turns out to be a pile of bullshit when she faced the dominated robot and Ysengrin). Then he just claims to be weak and limited to avoid scaring her away, that's all.
  • Tom has said several times that Rey is indeed under Annie's control and unable to deliberately deceive her.
• To be fair, it's possible that he could have tried to possess her while not trying to kill her. There could be some special quality Annie has that makes it possible for Rey to possess her without her dying at the end, and he could know about it because it might have been passed down from Surma. Out there, I know, but possible.
• The author does really like to mess with the audience. This could be more of a case of him wanting Reynardine to be an morally ambiguous character. He wants to take over Annie: she's not Surma, after all, and is a sort of representation of who Reynardine lost out to (she isn't just Surma's daughter, she's Anthony's too); besides, he's desperate. But as he gets to know Annie he recognizes more and more of Surma, and develops a parental attachment to her, especially after finding out about how her father abandoned her. This fits with his prior actions when he possessed that guy to get to Surma. He loved her deeply, sure, but he was willing to kill some whom she probably cared about to get to her. He's not precisely evil or good, which is what makes the comic interesting and unpredictable.
  • Coyote stated that Reynardine loved humans, and he was clearly incredulous at the notion that Rey would have tried to possess and kill Annie, of all people. He seemed to indicate that it was because Rey cared for Surma's daughter so deeply that he ended up with her in the first place. Rey's special treatment of her at their first encounter on the rooftop, and his mental confirmation that she was indeed Surma's daughter upon seeing her necklace after she passed out, suggest that he didn't simply view her as just another human, let alone another body to steal. To be sure, Rey is a criminal due to his deliberate killings of an unnamed man (being blinded by passion) and Sivo (possibly considering his life to be less valuable than a human's?), but that doesn't mean he's evil to the point of murdering the daughter of the woman he loved simply to escape captivity. Besides, Tom has stated that Rey regrets his murders "every minute of the day" and that his current enslavement "gives him the opportunity to easily hide from the consequences". If Rey were truly that indifferent about the loss of a human/sentient life, how would he come to such a state of chronic regret when he can so easily hide from the consequences of his actions?
• Tom is trolling us all. He says he planned to have the readership split in two over this very issue.
• Further justification: if Reynardine was REALLY planning on taking over Annie's body, he would have waited until Eglamore far enough away that he wouldn't notice the switch. He certainly wouldn't have loudly announced his intentions to Eglamore who just happened to be conveniently close enough to push Annie out of way and witness the "failed" attempt.

Eglamore said that the Court was researching a way to remove Reynardine without killing the host. Since it was shown that he could leave a host without dying here. He could have left the body at any time, but didn't because he was hoping for a cure for HIS condition. Taking over Carver would maybe put a greater sense of urgency on the task.

Anthony could still technically be her father if Reynardine had possessed her father at the time. Coyote comes out and says that Reynardine had a thing for Surma and asked to steal bodies just so he could be closer to her. After a while, he probably got bored with human life, which was when Annie's father disappeared... Reynardine left his body and killed him.

• Tom's word on the subject: "Oh, also, Reynardine is not Annie’s dad in any way, shape or form."

She dies, Annie gets sent to Gunnerkrigg Court, a few weeks later Reynard shows up at GC and "accidentally" breaks through the roof of Annie's bunk (not just her dorm, her bunk), and ends up possessing a doll that Surma pre-treated to be (or at least appear to be) a trap for Reynard or some other being with Coyote's bodysnatching power? It seems a bit like a Contrived Coincidence. If Sivo was supposed to have been known to be possessed since before Annie's mum died, Reynardine made a deal with him that Sivo gets him to the court and provides him with an alibi for not being Surma, and Reynard provides Sivo with an alibi for anything he did shortly before his possession. "Oh, also, Reynardine is not Annie’s dad in any way, shape or form." Just like Loki was not Sleipner's dad in any way, shape, or form.

In his normal form in the spirit realm, and from what little we've seen of him communicating from inverted Sleep Mode Size, he acts wise enough to know how little he understands, wise enough to inform instead of pointlessly rant about how little others understand, and sympathetic to at the very least Surma and Antimony. In Sivo's body he was a straight-up Manipulative Bastard from what we saw, and from what we heard acted like a Flying Brick. In the wolf doll he is sarcastic, snarky, can be caught off guard by things his spirit realm self would probably find irrelevant... Whether he is as he is like his Spirit Realm self these days and got some Character Development since the stories of Reynard or if his body makes him feel more Tricksterish than his mind alone may yet be determined. The Mind Is a Plaything of the Body is likely one of Coyote's nerfings, hence the Pot Hole, but since Coyote (as far as we know) hasn't really done much body surfing, it may be inherent in any use of the power.

We know Annie isn't exactly a normal human. Maybe the part of Surma that was passed down to Annie can't be forced out of her body to make room for Reynardine unless she has a child first.

Being a fox, Renard didn't stick around after Moro had cubs. The events of the movie may or may not have happened, but Moro definitely died at the hands of humans. Time passes and word reaches him about the Court. Bitterness ebbs away when he meets Surma. She is very much like his beloved Moro... And for sake of lightening up this WMG, Moro is the daughter of Ammy or her son Chibi.

Ysengrin's purpose was to plant those seeds in the Court. His plan to do so was to call a diplomatic meeting between the Court and the Wood and to make spurious accusations (which he knew to be spurious) against the Court. The Court's denial of these accusations would give Y a pretext to fake indignation and storm out of the hall, then drop the seeds once he was out of sight. (Since Y was escorted to and from the meeting, this was his only hope of getting away from prying eyes to drop the seeds inside Gunnerkrigg unnoticed.) Y believed (rightly or wrongly) that Coyote would never approve of his plan, so he kept it a secret.

In order for this to work, Y could not have used a legitimate grievance, such as Robot S13 being sent into the forest, or the apparent kidnapping of Shadow2. If Y had, then the Court would have attempted to solve things diplomatically. Y wouldn't have been able to storm out without either coming across like a warmongering ass, or alerting the Court (or Coyote) that something else was up. Y's plan specifically needed a grievance that (1) was false, (2) that he could convince Coyote was legitimate, and (3) that he could convince the Court that he believed it legitimate. The dead TicToc and the uniform sweater that Annie left behind provided Y with exactly what he needed: he could claim Anthony Carver had planted the bird, and it would look plausible, but it was still completely false and would be denied by the Court. So he planted the bird (and killed the two fairies who saw him, so word would not get back to Coyote), waited a few months, and then "discovered" that it had taken root, and demanded the meeting.

Coyote didn't want to be at the meeting; he only attended because protocol demanded it, or because he didn't trust his right-paw wolf-tree to behave himself. Finding the entire affair boring, he quickly focused on the only interesting person in the room and struck up a conversation with her.

When Antimony claimed the jumper as her own, she unknowingly threw a socket wrench in Y's plan. Y rolled with this and accused Annie of planting the bird, knowing that she would deny it. Y was working up to the dramatic outburst that would precede him indignantly storming out, and Coyote was just about to declare everything a tremendous misunderstanding and end the meeting, when Reynardine revealed himself.

Rey had misunderstood the situation and thought that Annie was in danger; his intent in revealing himself was to distract Coyote and Y's attention away from her. Unfortunately, this had the opposite effect: Coyote inferred from his cousin's past with Surma that there was a connection between Rey and Annie. He attempted to test this by provoking Annie so he could observe Rey's reaction. Annie's reaction to this was perfectly justified.

Y's original plan was shot to hell by this point, so he was desperately looking for some opportune cover to drop the seeds. Annie unwittingly provided him with one — he promptly faked an overreaction to the spankies, hoping that no one would notice that he was simultaneously dropping the seeds. The fact that this overreaction would kill the brat who had just humiliated him — who by all rights ought to have died falling off the bridge — was the icing on the cake that no doubt prevented Y from realizing what a bad idea his new plan was. He got a bit carried away with the act (or maybe by this point it was no longer an act) before Coyote smacked some sense into him.

At this point, Coyote realized that the meeting was a diplomatic disaster and that he wasn't going to get any more information about Rey or Annie. He put the best face he could on the situation by apologizing for his and Y's actions, and by extending Annie an invitation to the Wood. Whether he actually expected her to accept, or was just acting on desperation, is uncertain. He returned to the forest, where he no doubt administered some spankies of his own to the wolf-tree who had talked him into calling a meeting on spurious charges, then had ruined Coyote's chance of getting information on Renard and that Abalone girl.

• I just thought of an interesting extension of this theory: This was not the first time Ysengrin had tried to pull this trick. He already tried, and failed, to deposit seeds in the Court once before without success; the seeds were found and either they were moved to a different room to safely contain them or the room they were dropped in was repurposed to hold them; this room was, of course, the room with the cherry tree from chapter six, which the staff failed to make clear enough was dangerous and off-limits. These seeds were exactly the same as the seeds used to create S13's wooden arm, which makes them markedly dangerous and to be handled with care, but not if dealt with early enough (Robot was rendered unconscious for the growth period; Ysengrin couldn't do the same inside the Court). At the end of that episode, the arm, having seemingly fixated itself on Robot enough that it was safe to touch, was moved to the tree room in case it could still possess someone else. What this means, of course, is that both girls are very, very lucky to still be in control of their bodies after eating from that tree, and if they'd eaten too much more they'd have been possessed.
  • It's unlikely that the trees themselves (or anything from them) are capable of possessing bodies. Tom stated that the dog-trees in Chapter 22 were being directly controlled by the shadow-people inhabiting them, suggesting that shadow-people have the power to manipulate trees. Since there was a shadow-person accompanying Robot when he returned, the shadow-person was probably controlling Robot via the tree-arm that was fused with him.

• Rey just tried to show off his new wolf body to annoy Ysengrin (no love lost between them). Otherwise, quite possible, as the planted TicToc is about the only "offence" imaginable that wouldn't be bounced back to his own actions.

First, Coyote is an admitted Trickster. Attaching unpleasant conditions to his gifts—either as part of some grand scheme, or just for the hell of it—is a very trickster-ish thing to do.

Second, consider Jones' warning: "Coyote is no liar. Therein lies the danger." Apparently Coyote, the Trickster, deceives others by creative and selective use of the truth, rather than through outright lies. In light of this, Coyote's description of these gifts becomes rather ominous:

Coyote: The power I gave Renard was imperfect. Why, I could possess anything with eyes and leave them unharmed when I'd had my fun! But for some reason, when Renard had the ability, any body he took that was not his own would die when it was used up.
Ysengrin, too. I gave him power over the trees, but look how he shakes like an old man!

Coyote's words clearly imply that he doesn't know why Rey and Y's gifts were imperfect, but he doesn't say so outright.

It (under the premise of this WMG) created the Annan ("could cut the very earth"), and with a working knowledge, it can reverse its original purpose and undo the rift. All I'm sure of so far is that nothing could ever go horribly, horribly wrong with a gift from Coyote, and that teaching Jeanne to wield the knife would have very bad consequences.

It has been implied that her father was possessed at one point; however, we only know two beings capable of doing this, and although Renard did have a crush on her mother, her father is still alive. It has already been stated that he'll show up later.

Additionally, Coyote's behaviour towards Annie bears little resemblance to how he acts towards other cast members. He answers her questions (somewhat), and he actually seems rather protective. Not something that trickster gods are normally known for. Let's not forget his giving her the moon on a string, too.

Lastly, it would explain why her father has gone missing. If you were possessed for a period of several years, then woke up to find you had a new daughter and your wife was dead - wouldn't you?

• But according to Word Of Tom, Coyote was genuinely confused about whose child Antimony was— and he wouldn't have assumed it was Eglamore if he had done it himself.

This strip implies that Jeanne and her elf lover were causing severe rumblings between the leaders of both sides, with Coyote watching from afar. It is possible that he believed it may have eventually led to violence, which caused him to seperate both sides.

Alternatively...

. Because he seems like enough of a dick that he'd break the very earth just to mess with two Star-Crossed Lovers.

Ysengrin is already trying to find an excuse to attack the Court, as previously seen when he allowed the TicToc grow into the cliffside. He will succeed, and war will start. Over the course of the conflict, Siddell will invoke Anyone Can Die, and something will happen to John. It would explain why Margo is crying over John in this doodle◊.

We have seen Coyote shapeshift into a forest elf. Okay, this one is a bit of a stretch.

Think about it. A proper, raucous, everyone goes a little crazy party? Who do you want, some boring manifestation of order, or the universe's single greatest party animal? He's basically there to cause pranks and havoc, exactly what a party needs to become legendary.

It would be pretty neat.

This is the first strip he appears in. Look at the strip number.

He's got a candidate for the position of medium there, who is also a promising student and the daughter of ex-students. He might feel that the Court would trade her for Renard. He may not want to harm her, but he can still use her.

Notice the similarities between her lover and the form Coyote took to greet Anne.

• Hmmm... might be Jossed, because that would mean that Coyote no longer exists, and he still exists.
  • It's COYOTE. Stealing a girl's heart, faking his death, and going back to pretend everything is normal sounds like something he would do.

Ysengrin's ear has been cut off, and stylised pictures of him show the Bismuth symbol over that ear, implying that he was wounded by Court technology. Dragon Slayers wield a glowing sword of unknown origin or nature, which is probably Court technology designed to destroy etheric beings (consider how that sword was able to quickly cut through the tree-arm of Robot, and disintegrated a tree-dog, whereas a regular sword wasn't even able to scratch a Gillitie tree). Hence, Ysengrin probably got his wound in a battle against a Dragon Slayer, which would explain his particular antipathy toward Eglamore (he seems to particularly relish the oppurtunity to attack him, and mocks him over taking orders from a young girl).

Surma's sickness was not caused by anything natural. Dealing with spirits on a regular basis like she would is bad for their health for some reason, most likely that human bodies were not meant for regular contact with them. Why else would she die from a chronic illness when the Court clearly has high technology? Annie will eventually suffer this fate as well. Anthony Carver abandoned his daughter because he realized there was nothing he could do to save her and he didn't want to grow any more attached to her. The Court went without a true medium for such a long period of time (and only had one before that) out of a desire to minimize the deaths. They're facing diplomatic problems with the Woods now, so they're training three mediums out of desperation.

• One note: We don't know whether or not Good Hope had access to the same technology that the Court has.
• Now that we know that the transfer of Surma's spirit to Antimony caused her death, we understand the inherent dangers of being a Medium. It also gives a reason for Anthony Carver's disappearance.
• Jossed. The reason Surma died is that she is (most likely) part fire elemental. Her "fire" was passed on to her daughter, and the same thing will happen to Antimony.

This is odd, as one would assume that a medium would induce unreality, but the evidence doesn't bear out. Being near a medium causes reality to assert itself (for instance, when Antimony touches the burned boy). This explains why Zimmy needed Antimony around when her eyes were going weird; for some reason, she is tainted with some sort of Lovecraftian darkness which periodically acts up. Gamma can somehow dampen the stuff, probably due to her deep connection with Zimmy, but Antimony is a strong enough medium that she can temporarily keep the horrors from escaping by being nearby.

Similarly, this explains why the ghost with the sword only managed to nick Antimony's face; Antimony's natural medium-ness repelled her unreality. If you look on the previous page, the arc the sword travels between the last frame there and the first frame of the link involves going through about half of Antimony's head; this would explain why she wasn't scalped. The mere fact that the ghost managed to wound Antimony is a testament to the strength of its unreality; after all, when she was dealing with the gecko as a child, Antimony could easily repel its fires. The sword-ghost's wound disappears when outside of the ghost's strongly unreal influence, as Antimony's natural medium-ness asserts itself. Notice, however, that the wound re-appears just before the rain washes Zimmy's horrors away, when (due to the pacing of the comic) it seems that there is a large amount of tension in the air, magical or otherwise.

• Alternately, Zimmy's illusions are different from those in Chapter 15. In Ch 15, Annie acted as latent Anti-Magic, dispelling the illusions in her immediate area, as noted above. However, Annie's (and Gamma's) dispelling effect on Zimmy's illusions seemed to be a Power Nullifier dependent on how close she is to Zimmy, while Zimmy can cause these illusions from any distance. Notice that the first time Zimmy saw the cut on Annie's cheek, it disappeared when Zimmy tried to touch it. Then the cut reappeared right before the rain came, even though Annie and Gamma were standing right next to each other — they were on the opposite side of the courtyard from Zimmy.
  • This has given me the idea that Zimmy might be an anti-Medium, who instead of asserting reality, inflicts unreality into the area, normally in the form of Eldritch Abominations and other horrors.
  • Also, by extension, this implies that Gamma may have some aptitude as a potential Medium, though her inability to speak English and her continuing presence near Zimmy may cause Court officials to either discount her as a candidate or prefer that she remain near Zimmy as a safeguard.

It explains why Annie had to take her own mother. Because mediums deal extensively with the Guides and restless spirits, they may not fall under the jurisdiction of any of them.

• Expanding upon this theory, Jeanne is a Medium.
• Mediums are shown to mediate disputes between psychopomps. I posit that this is the purpose of mediums. One could not be an impartial mediator to one's own psychopomp. Therefore, no medium has their own psychopomp, and must be guided by another medium. This also means that the skills of being a medium can never be truly lost, because the spirit of the last medium cannot move on until a new medium is trained.

Note the "chk chk" sound on this page: Martin was using a lighter, rather than matches. The Salamander burnt him, making him drop the lighter. The house burned down, and the Salamander made sure Martin alone survived long enough to be hospitalized. (When a building burns, the hottest part is the room where the fire starts. Martin's surviving while his family died is rather unnatural.) This is why Annie could see the Salamander even after understanding the symbolism and seeing the burning room. Judging by Martin's reaction, it's possible that he saw it as well, before he lost consciousness.

There seems to be an assumption that Mort used to be human and is now a ghost. However, that isn't necessarily true - Muut refers to him as a "young spirit", which doesn't mean he was human; you could call the psychopomps spirits, too. We've seen that All Mythology Is True (or at least most) - so something has to fill the role of Scary Thing That Goes Bump In The Night, and sure enough, Mort's purpose seems to be to scare people. If he'd been human, he might've had a better idea of how to do that- but picture him as an inexperienced spirit (newly popped...) who hasn't really got the hang of how people think yet and it all seems to click together. Not saying he couldn't have been human, but I think this is just as likely...

• This is all pretty much jossed.

Mediums get one shot not to screw things up. If they succeed, they get real assignments. If they fail, they die, but nobody gets their afterlife eternally mucked up. The obstacle is something that would be effectively impossible to get past if it wasn't the medium-to-be's element/style. See also what Surma told Annie.

Same as above, but with a bit of Real After All due to timely necessity.

The resemblance is uncanny, and his name begins with the right letter. Unfortunately, his experiments on hand-held portable fusion went drastically awry.

She's forsaken by her father. She is responsible for Reynardine's apparent Heel Face Turn. And just try to tell me this isn't symbolic. (That's the Annan Waters on that page, which, as shown above, is really the River Styx.)

• Uh, OK, here's how it isn't symbolic: It's necessary. How else would two small birds hold her? It's either her arms or her legs, and Tom didn't want to draw a schoolgirl's knickers, least of all when they're still on the schoolgirl.
  • But were they African or European?
    • Nobody knows.
• And the Court is Purgatory?

Consider the eye symbolism. Consider that her mum, Surma, is named after an eye-shadow that was used in the Middle East to protect infants from the "evil eye". And consider that both times Annie was supernaturally attacked (first by Reynardine, then by the Ghost with the Sword), she wasn't wearing her eye-shadow. And her eye-shadow was runny due to the rain the one time that Zimmy teleported her into Evil Birmingham.

She's on friendly terms with Ketrak, and seems to merely tolerate Muut. Muut is her most significant contact with the psychopomps, being both the first she met and seemingly high up in the hierarchy (or at least the more knowledgeable of the ones she will contact), so it is likely a combination of familiarity and necessity that she interacts with him as she does. She blames all of them except Ketrak and possibly any other non-human reapers for refusing to guide her mother, and did not want to risk that the fairies would be taken by one that she could not handle meeting at that time.

Haven't double-checked the evidence, but: Annie can visit an astral plane, which sets up two distinct types of encounters, the real and the ethereal (which covers dreams, visions, the stone's scrying, and such). She encountered the river girl on the astral plane, and there her cheek was wounded; this is why her cheek is not wounded in real life, but the wound shows up again when she's in the astral plane.

The time when Zimmy saw the wound on her cheek, it was Zimmy's astral vision asserting itself, and then Zimmy made her vision get back to reality, so she couldn't see the wound anymore. Any time the wound shows up, it's a cue to the characters being in the astral plane, or at least being able to see part of it at that time.

• To be more precise I'm guessing Annie etheric body, the body that manifests on the etheric/astral plane, was the body that was injured.

Because he called out Surma's name while she fell down from the bridge.

• Before that. They did get along only until he dropped a disparaging remark about her father. Anja says "James...", Annie deftly tramples Eglamore into mud and sends with Kat her apologies to Donlans who had to hear this all. Though mixing her with her mother definitely didn't help his case at all.

We've only seen two people who couldn't have the Guides lead them into the afterlife, Surma and Jeanne. And combined with the previously mentioned theory that Diego is an ancestor of Kat's...

• Not possible. She would have died before the events of her actual death had she had a child beforehand. She doesn't show any sickness or weakness before her death, so she couldn't have given birth to a fire-elemental child. She also doesn't have red hair, which everyone mentions is one of the things that identifies both Surma and Annie's nature.

At some point after Surma discovered that she had fire elemental ancestry, she told the rest of the group (i.e. Anja, Donald, Eglamore, maybe Brinnie, possibly Jones) — along with the information that having a child would kill her. When she decided to become pregnant, the rest of the group was utterly furious — both at Surma for basically deciding to kill herself, and at Anthony for letting her. Surma and Anthony decided to leave rather than stay in the Court among people who could not respect their decision.

Because she'll be horrified over the Orange And Blue Morality of the Forest's denizens. I mean... Sure, Coyote seems friendly... But he's also the kind of person to withhold vital information all for his own amusement. Then there were the faries and not to mention of Ysegrine's methods of diplomacy (fangs bared, snarling, etc.) and Annie will learn that while the Court has its glaring flaws, so do the woods, and that's why it's important for her to be a Medium.

We're so Genre Savvy that we discussed every possible scenario from Training Montage to Avatar-style nature-bonding, and now there's nothing Tom can write/draw that will satisfy us.

The comic said that Kat will never see him again. It said nothing about Annie seeing him — and even if she doesn't see him, she might see his family.

When she left Reynardine in Jones' care, she gave Jones temporary ownership. Thus, in the first page of chapter 32, Reynardine is back in his wolf form because Jones gave him permission to change.

I would never have suspected this, but for a few things: Annie was the one who led her mom to the afterlife, her father probably hinted at it, and what she said when she was told was: "They knew?" The second is the biggest thing. Her first reaction should have been denial, but Annie seemed more guilty and ashamed. If she didn't know, she probably at least suspected something like that was up and hoped no one at the court guessed.

To prepare her of things to come and to make it easier to allow Annie-JR to send her off. Alternatively, Annie is telling her story while her daughter is taking her to the afterlife.

She will finally run into her father and at some point need to catch him up with everything that has happened to her.

And it will be after another visit to the Forest, where Coyote would tell her to let her feelings go, despite her inevitable fate.

As sad as knowing she's going to die would be, she couldn't bear to put her kid (especially a kid who kinda-sorta is herself) through what she went through. She'd want her kid to be at least moderately prepared when the time came.

Throughout the Treatises, Annie and Kat have literally started going in different directions. In Treatise One, they both face the same way - towards the viewer. In Treatise Two, Kat is looking over her shoulder at Annie, who has her head turned towards Kat. In Treatise Three, Kat is dragging/leading Annie into the Court, not looking at Annie, who has turned her head to look back at the woods. In Treatise Four, they are turned three-quarters away from each other, although Annie's hair keeps a grip on Kat. If that pattern continues, Treatise Five should have the girls facing fully away from each other (back to back?). The Treatises are based on "secret recipes" for alchemy, with everything included being symbolic of what is to come. Annie has been spending more and more time dealing with the Woods, and Kat has less and less patience for her stunts. It seems that some sort of reckoning is being built up here.

That thing has been a Chekhov's Gun for ages. Zimmy was fleeing from that scar before she finally agreed to deal with whatever Annie was suffering from. All and all, it's a pretty good bet that whatever etheral poison that the dead woman's blade carries is finally starting to take its toll.

• The cut got part-healed after Coyote licked it. He only commented on the power of whatever left this, so most likely there's nothing more to it. It didn't look worse the last time it was seen. And slow "bleeding" causing a sudden collapse doesn't fit well after all this time and with her current power level.
  • The idea that Coyote would have healed the wound has been Jossed by Tom himself. Nothing has been done to treat or otherwise study it, as far as we've been shown. And Coyote doesn't always tell everything.

Perhaps Surma was dying, and the world felt she was still needed. Perhaps a second life was a gift from one of Surma's otherworldly friends. Muut has bent the rules to help Annie, it would not be surprising that he did the same for Surma. For whatever reason, Annie is Surma, and as Annie grew up, Surma grew weaker. Surma's death meant that Annie is entirely 'alive'. For whatever reason, Surma must remain alive, so she is reborn as her own daughter. This is why Surma is so willing to send Annie off as a medium for dead spirits. This is also why everyone likens Annie to Surma all the time, and why Annie's father refuses to see her: he can't bear the sight of his wife as his child. More importantly, this is why none of the dead spirits came for Surma's spirit when she died; Surma was still alive as Annie, so it was Annie that sent her Surma self/memories to the afterlife. Or perhaps Annie's guiding of Surma only symbolized Annie letting go of her Surma self, and sent the memories to Annie's subconscious. It is uncertain how much Annie remembers of her life as Surma, especially since Annie views her Annie and Surma selves as separate entities, but it is possible that Annie's distaste for Eglamore is related to her past life. Annie's uncharacteristic maturity may also be (partly) attributed to her subconscious experience.

It is also possible that Surma's death and departure for the afterlife left Annie entirely bereft of her past incarnation's memories. Annie is still Surma, she is simply a clean slate. Annie has the potential to become a medium, and retains whatever spiritual aptitudes Surma possessed, such as using a Blinker Stone. Annie may have the potential to regain her memories as Surma, or she may be forced to rediscover her previous life through Surma's acquaintances.

Regardless of either possibility, it remains to be seen whether Surma has been reincarnated for a greater purpose, or simply to have another chance at life.

• Somewhat unclear at the time of writing (1/4/11) but this seems to be confirmed.

A) Surma and Annie are decedents of a phoenix who left the Woods and became human (possibly Surma herself), hence Annie's literal Fiery Red Headedness. The phoenix's regeneration powers were warped when she/it became human, so instead of the "parent" returning to the egg and becoming a "child", the parent's life is passed to the child.

B) Surma and Annie are descendents of The Phoenix, and the Blinker Stone is a tiny Encron Chrystal. Annie has touched the moon, and soon she will eat the sun.

• Partial confirmation: Annie's not completely human, and the red hair/fire powers seems to be pointing to "phoenix". Nah, now it's too obvious and it'll turn out her dad's a kappa or something less flashy than a phoenix. ...What? Anthony Carver is a surgeon and kappas are known for being bone-setters and purveyors of medicine and medical knowledge.

She couldn't pass on until a new medium had been trained, and Carver (Sr.) had it arranged that the hospital room in which she died would be made his office so that Antimony wouldn't be bothered while she was in the twilight between life and the spirit realm with Surma. He disappeared because he was no longer needed to keep up the charade, and left to pursue his own interests and/or his other responsiblities.

See above, but more so.

• Confirmed, but not in the traditional sense.

Mort somehow knew Surma (not to imply that he is Annie's dad, highly unlikely). Mort gave Annie the blinker because he felt it should rightfully be hers. Mort never brings up Surma because it would lead to mass conclusion-jumping, including that Annie would assume the two had something to do with each other's deaths.

• Second part is thoroughly jossed. He has no idea what it is and why he should give it to Annie.

Anja claims that Surma was only PRETENDING to love Renard in order to trick him into coming to the Court. Maybe that's what she told everyone else; maybe it's even what she told herself. But she gives him the nickname Reynardine, which suggests that she really was taken in by his charms. Presumably, she must have been rather turned off by his possession (and by extension: murder) of the man that he possessed to gain entry to the court, but before that she probably loved him at least as much as Anthony Carver and/or James Eglamore.

She's as mortal as any human otherwise. No one else has understood this, although it's possible some of them did but still mourn her death anyway, but Antimony ultimately will.

Consider: They have the same last name. Anthony is identified as her father by Kat's parents, Eglamore, and Annie herself. Him being Annie's father would also explain a lot about Annie: Her personality is influenced by his stoic disposition, and her interest in biology came from having a surgeon for a father.

• Confirmed by Tom here.
• How is this even a Wild Mass Guess? It seems like more of a Perfectly Reasonable Assumption, (almost exactly, with even similar evidence,) like assuming James Potter is Harry Potter's father.
  • (sigh) It seems to be a GC in-joke. Epileptic Trees are that well acclimatized around it, that a single tree that just stands straight...

Surma fell in love with him because her medium abilities allowed her to see his feelings anyway.
Thinking back on it, this could simply be a form of autism.

• From what we learn about him in Chapter 37, this looks really, really likely... or depending on your reading, all but Jossed.

The prospect of death is still hanging over Antimony, and he already feels a failure for not saving his wife. Given his inability to save Surma, he no doubt thinks that all the time between now and when Antimony actually has a child, plus growing up time, should not have a second wasted. He knows it will be difficult.

He's been driven mad by grief, and his idea of "saving" his daughter involves destroying (physically or otherwise) her or the court. The other main characters will rally to fight him, but ultimately Antimony will be the one who faces him down.

He and Surma left because they found out something they weren't meant to know (much like Antimony and Kat). His return will kick off the conflict that will either heal the Court or destroy it, the main characters will all take sides, and Antimony will be both the wild card and the key to ending everything, for good or ill.

Elgamore was training to become a knight, Donny was an inventor, Brynnie was a Valkyrie, Anja was magic, Surma was fire, and Tony... well, he eventually became a surgeon but a future med student isn't much help in high school, especially one where wood-botic dogs can attack at any moment. Heck, we don't even know if he wanted to be a doctor as a kid or became one just to save Surma.

The Donlans knew their daughter was flying down to the river bank, and they must have known about the dangerous creatures down there. It would have been criminal negligence to allow Kat to go down without something to protect her. And Anja made Kat take that scarf. Therefore, Anja must have put some protection magic on the scarf to keep Kat safe. (This suggests that it was the scarf that drove away the ghost with the sword.)

She will never see again, thus letting her marry Alistair.

• How does going blind allow her to marry a bird?
  • "And she never saw him again". Thus, if she goes blind, they will be able to meet again.

Kat created the ticktocks and sent them back in time, to record what happened.

look at THEM, clearly after all the interaction with hybrid tree people, Kat decides to start merging humans with technology, and a transhumanist is born.

• Thank you, I just read the whole comic in one binge and came to this page specifically to look for or add the WMG that Kimiko is related to one or both of Kat and Annie. Kat shares her interests in a lot of ways but Annie is closer in personality.
• Hey, isn't it Robot at the end of that comic? He's got those wings, and is referred to as "Robot"!

Practically confirmed in-universe.

• Except the SCP-808 page has been moved above our security clearance. Care to elaborate?
  • SCP-808 was a technopath that could communicate with and manipulate machines telepathically. Based on the photo on her article, she actually did look a little bit like Kat. She was removed from SCP Foundation canon with the departure of her author, however, so the article no longer exists (except perhaps in Google Cache, but I can't find the cached version of it.)
  • Ah, isn't she the one that eventually ascended?
  • Korodzik has a saved version of SCP-808 if anyone is interested.
• More proof: Kat can read the robots' programming language, which should be impossible for a human because it's basically too complicated for reality. Which means:

Being able to read the robots' programming language took her from Bad Ass Normal techno-genius. Maybe she's an android, bioroid (an android made with artificial biological parts), or cyborg and she gets upgraded during summer vacation, or maybe her parents' etherical/technological devices "irradiated" her and had a weird effect on her brain.

Note the proper methodology. For Science!!

Her hair "goes up" in flames! "Your hair... it goes up!"

Any argument Kat can make to Zimmy and Gamma is bound to backfire:

Kat: My friends think I'm weird!
Zimmy: You have other friends?
Kat: What if my parents think I'm weird?
Zimmy: You have parents?
Kat: What if Annie leaves?
Zimmy: Does your mind poison reality if she's not there? etc.

Kat's lucky that Zimmy and Gamma are just amused at how silly she's being instead of dangerously insulted like Jeanne was with Parley.

The chaotic mess that the diplomatic mission from Gillitie Wood turned into was ultimately resolved in a relatively neat manner: Coyote just quickly knocked out Ysengrin just when it looked like a major fight would happen and departed with him in peace. Why? Because Andrew was there. As soon as all order dissolved and the fight began, he subconsciously manipulated events to be resolved as quickly and as straightforwardly as possible.

Also, note how we can only see him smile twice — the first time we can see his face after his demonstration and the first time we can see his face after Coyote's departure. Smiling doesn't seem to be something he does very often, as can be seen... every other time we see his face. Now, in that more recent example, it might seem that this was because of Jones' compliment, but it might as easily be the satisfaction one gets out of "subconsciously creating order where there was none". I imagine that sort of thing would feel pretty good.

• This is pretty much confirmed by this comic. Note the smile again.
  • He smiles again here. Could it be that the encounter of Randy and Jones would end on a less positive note, had Smith been absent?

Similar to the earlier Andrew's powers are greater than they appear WMG.

We have a recognisable entity of Chaos in the strip, the Coyote of Gillitie wood. So it stands to reason that there should be an entity of Order on the Court side of the Annan Waters as well. So who do we have within the Court, whose abilities - the scope of which have never been fully delimited - amount to manipulation of reality to promote both Order and the interests of the Court? Who is the opposite of the Coyote in that he is serious instead of playful, hidden instead of visible, and apparently young instead of ancient? Exactly.

Suppose Smitty is the true power behind Gunnerkrigg Court. The headmaster would be effectively a figurehead, descended from Steadman (who was, after all, essentially a passive character that allowed himself to be manipulated by others). As merely a student, Smitty can go places the teachers cannot, can involve himself with Annie and Kat that all the rest of the Court leadership are unable. And he can deal with things the apparent rulers of the Court are all too willing to forget about.

How long has Smitty been at the Court? Who are his family? What does his room look like? How can he be a medium, if he doesn't have access to the ether? If you think about it, there are a lot of suspicious unanswered questions. I'd be very interested in seeing what Smitty looks like in Annie's etherial vision, but so far he has been conveniently elsewhere...

Her father's prediction wasn't wrong, in a sense. She's beautiful, statuesque, extremely curvy... all the criteria for an AIS woman. She just has XY DNA, that's all.

Is just a pin. While she probably wasn't confined to a horrible orphanage like real-life orphans from Eastern Europe, she clings dearly to the few things she can call her own, like the pin and her friend/madness-dampener Gamma.

• See a pin, pick it up, all day long, you'll have a pin.
• Maybe not: high-tech tracking devices don't work on Zimmy, so something as crude as a faintly radioactive button should do the trick.

I mean, just look at his stuff.

In one of the rainiest places on earth.

She's as real as Zimmy wants her to be. That's why she's so worried about other people touching Gamma.

• This does, however, raise the question of how Zimmy could create someone who can speak a language Zimmy herself doesn't know.
• Zimmy did know it, but unconsciously blocked it out when she made Gamma, just as she suppressed her own memory of making her, and Gamma's true nature.
  • Zimmy doesn't know it. Her power is extensive enough to let Gamma be willed into existence as a Polish girl with knowledge of the language and lack of knowledge of English. The author has stated that he made her Polish, because "there is a large Polish community in Birmingham, the city Zimmy came from" — had Zimmy lived in some other place, Gamma would be of different nationality. Further implied by how she "doesn't think about her parents", she just has none. No knowledge of English, in normal circumstances, would be believable only if she had just immigrated, but in such a case, it'd be quite a stretch to believe her parents would just let her go like that.

There was a real Gamma, who befriended Zimmy as we saw in the Chapter 11 flashbacks, but sometime after that, she was killed by one of Zimmy's hallucinations. Then, during Zimmy's next visit to Evil Birmingham, she ran into a Nobody making a (near?) perfect imitation of Gamma, and the two have remained together ever since. Maybe Zimmy didn't learn of the Nobodies' mimicry abilities until meeting Copy-Kat, so she just thinks Gamma miraculously returned somehow. Or maybe Zimmy does know (if only subconsciously) that Gamma is a Nobody, but she accepts Copy-Gamma because she wants it to be real.

The fact that Zimmy has lost Gamma once already — and, depending on the circumstances, her guilt over the Real Gamma's death — is why she's so protective of Copy-Gamma.

This sort of relies on the "Mediums channel reality" Guess up near the middle of the page, here, but it makes sense so whatever.

Whenever Gamma is separated from Zimmy, Zimmy has to rely on Antimony to keep her head straight. However, Zimmy notes that Annie isn't as good as Gamma is for nulling her powers. Gamma therefore could possibly be an extremely strong Medium, but cannot ever be chosen because she needs to keep Zimmy in check. If Zimmy wasn't around, Gamma would probably be chosen for the school Medium, no contest.

Of course, it is unknown if Gamma's power only works on Zimmy or not, but hey, it's not called Wild Mass Guessing for nothing, right?

She uses the masculine form of the surname "Czarnecki", so she most likely wasn't born in Poland. Also, here a sleep-deprived Gamma laughs at the word "butt", implying she understood it. There are two possibilities:

• Gamma is pretending she doesn't know English for some reason that hasn't been revealed yet.
• Her inability to understand English most of the time is caused by her connection to Zimmy.
  • Or, after years of being around English speakers, she has picked up a word or two of English. She interacts near-exclusively with Zimmy, with whom she can speak telepathically. The only other person she's seen talking to, if I remember correctly, is Antimony, and Annie speaks Polish. Ockhams Razor, people.
    • And it sometimes happens that females in Poland use masculine form of surnames.

That would explain why she's so perfect, looks so bored, knows so much and is readily acknowledged as Seen It All. And then both the list of things she doesn't give a damn about and the list of things she's invulnerable to are so long they can be entwined and then used to encircle the Court... which so far fits into the story well.

Zimmy's nightmare world is a bleak urban landscape, where the only living things are twisted machine-animal-monsters and faceless humans. The only thing that relieves her psychic static is rainfall — natural rainfall, the only piece of nature she's exposed to in Birmingham or at the Court. The reason she's so tortured is that her environment is literally hurting her. Her issues would go away entirely if she were able to go live in the Wood.

Either as the aforementioned "demon" or as a weapon made by the Court, Zimmy hungers after nature. This is why the raindrops evaporate when they touch her and it also explain her reaction to it: She devours the only natural/magical thing in the court by merely touching it and doing so makes her happy, cause her subconscious urge to destroy this natural/magical phenomena is being fed. Also, she's a friend to the main duo, looks evil and has an exploitable weakness (her dependency on Gamma). I'm not saying she's the Big Bad, but she might be his weapon or persuaded/forced to act like it.

She died, possibly murdered while wandering around the city alone, but never left her body since she wasn't covered by any psychopomp's territory. Gamma was to help Zimmy like Antimony helped the boy in the hospital, but unlike Annie, Gamma gave up (though in her case, it was likely because she couldn't stand to let Zimmy die, rather than fear of the visions. If it was fear of the visions, this is why Zimmy is so protective of her even though she's the one the visions don't physically affect). Antimony has to touch the things from Zimmy's world to banish them while Gamma keeps them at bay like Antimony with the fire because Gamma has been alongside Zimmy since she first died, before they started getting stronger, and her power to banish them (either specifically Zimmy's, or the visions in general) grew in strength as they did. The reason Zimmy does not sleep is that death is "the ultimate sleep", and the dead don't require sleep.

Suggested here. Note how, in Zimmy's first apperance, she has apparently surrounded herself with books while Gamma was asleep. This would explain why Zimmy hangs out in the library so much, and why they were going to the library in this episode.

• This is actually fairly likely, seeing as Gamma can't speak or read English and Zimmy can't read either.

The strong connection to reality that the science texts have keeps things "real", to a point. In page 73, Kat finds Zimmy and Gamma at the end of a shelf that has an alchemical symbol on it, and she's carrying a book entitled Important Stuff (Like Science), which implies that they were in part of the Science area.

She's/it's a construct. That's how she can talk into Annie's head.

Gamma can talk to her, and thinks she's Zimmy, because she technically is Zimmy from the outside. Zimmy is running away because there are two levels of inside Zimmy's head (the construct town and literally inside her mind), and she and Annie (unlike Gamma) are currently in both of them.

Gamma can't notice when someone else is in ZimmyWorld if they are in her head. That's what happened to Jack. He accidentally hitched a ride inside Zimmy's mind, but for the most part Zimmy suppressed him while she was with Antimony. Whether she generally runs off when someone else spooks her and Jack was for some reason the exception or it's closer to an even mix (because some people cower in terror, some people try to ask what's going on or atttack Zimmy) doesn't really matter (yet).

See the latest pages.

No logic to support this. Just... look at them.

Code names are given to all children "adopted" by the Court; for instance, "Zeta and Gamma" could have been named "Zoe and Gina". The parents are given Class-A amnesiacs to ease (or accelerate, in Zimmy's case) the loss of their children.

More exactly, Annie will want them to control their powers so that they (with the help of Parley, Andrew, and possibly Kat and Jack) can rescue and/or "control" Jeanne from her ghost status.

She knew that he might eventually develop a crush on her thanks to the influence of the Whitelegs, but also knew that he initially might develop similar feelings for Annie for trying to help him out. As Zimmy is not interested in Jack, she might've tried to paw him off on Annie. So she tried to plant the idea in Annie's head by calling him her boyfriend.

Jack was pulled into Zimmy's nightmare world in ch 19. The only other people to get pulled in were Gamma and Annie—both of whom are known to have extranormal mental abilities. Clearly, when Zimmy flips over to Evil Birmingham, she pulls any mentalists within her vicinity with her.

• Specifically, Jack is a Technopath. He hacked the motion detector in the Queslett boy's dorm so he and the others could slip away, just like Kat did. Unlike Kat, Jack doesn't have a knapsack full of electronics with which to do any hacking. Because he doesn't need any electronics — he hacks the motion detector with his mind.

In comic 614 Jack has cobwebs and a glowing spider-mark, though it's probably an actual 3-D spider shape, on his face in the etherium. Gamma doesn't perceive him as a human, even though he was stuck inside Zimmie's world at the same time as them and Antimony, and it's been shown that he can unknowingly see into and possibly enter the etherium under power from no obvious outside source.

• Check out his distinctly Coyote-like grin in this page.
  • Not to mention, the student who had the temerity◊ to snort at a tiff between gods looks awfully familiar these days...
  • But isn't that guy canonically the gardener?

In the above comic you can see a glowing "copy" of his head starting to separate from his body. Maybe the spider and the webs are signs that his soul became "infected" or "decayed" since going into (and becoming obsessed with) Zimmy's world.

No real evidence for this, but it would explain this freaky image. And, with a bit of a stretch of this, now that he's in the real world he can semi-cancel Medium powers; look at the page again, whenever Antimony enters the astral plain to connect to her Blinker Stone her 'hair' is continuous, yet when Jack turns to face her in that comic, it breaks. It's a bit of a stretch, but not impossible in this universe.

The faceless nobodies in Zimmy's world are contagious, which is why she's so afraid of them. Since Gamma and Annie can make them go "GOP", they're immune, but Jack wasn't. He came in contact with one of the nobodies and is now becoming one.

• Evidence!
  • That is not evidence. That Jack is actually not the real one; the real one appears on the next page.

After a visit to Zimmingham, he somehow realized that he is just a fictional character in a webcomic. Initially, the shock of this discovery rendered him near catatonic, though now he got a bit better. He's still halfway insane, however.

This explains a lot of his behavior. He treats Annie and Kat without respect because he figures that if his world isn't real, he can do anything he wants without consequences. Also, his unique Medium Awareness makes him a megalomaniac - he believes that, as the only one who knows the true nature of the world, he has the right to treat everyone else with contempt.

• Jossed by Word Of God here.

...Unless it's a trap.

• You mean, Jack is a girl? Just like Shell?

This is shown because in this comic Jack is shown with spiderwebs and a spider, but only in the spiritual plane. In this one, See that second panel? Zimmy has one of those same spiders on her, only this time it's real. Also, Jack's eyes don't seem so much as "Losing-sleep" anymore so much as "Starting-to-ooze" in this comic. Just like Zimmy. He's been so deperate for answers because he wants to know both what's happening to him, and, well, because that world is batshit terrifying.

• Although it's just probably due to the lighting, look at Jack's eyes here in the fourth panel. They look exactly like Zimmy's.

• Related: Jack and Zimmy have been set up as avatars for other things. Zimmy's world is an in-between place that brings in people who a) can easily travel into the astral realm, and b) are receptive to being taken over. Gamma and Antimony have decent defenses (Gamma naturally, Antimony from her heritage and training), but Zimmy's only real defense is her relationship with Gamma (the relationship part os important, it's not just Gamma's powers), and Jack's going to fall even faster and faster as he doesn't eat, goes through a bunch of strenuous escapades, and lets whatever-it-is influence him further and further away from what most people consider sanity. Because they're spirit/energy/information-based Eldritch Horrors, sitting in the science wing of the library helps since it's full of information on what we understand reality to be. Running about outside the school and muttering conspiracy theories to yourself does the exact opposite of sitting in the science wing of the library.

He was just trolling her when he said that he likes Zimmy, the reason he didn't take the kiss is because he was nervous about actually kissing her.

First the thing with Mort and now this? The Court pulled her because she attracts either the restless dead or ghosts that aren't actually dead people, in a way that makes her an unfit medium (since it would cause more trouble than it solved). However, the power is still useful for assisting where spirits are hiding, or determining if a ghost is not a dead person, or at least needs to be kept suppressed in a place such as the Court to avoid problems.

Possibly to form a bridge, or to fire a device that requires two arrows launched simultaneously. It may or may not be required to help Jeanne. Also, symbolism: it took one person to divide the Forest and Court. It takes the cooperation of two to reconnect them. Janet and Willie may play a role in saving Jeanne as well.

Also, it's entirely possibly that it was Janet and Willie's ancestors who murdered Jeanne and hid the evidence. The archer could be either one, but the man who watches could easily be the Headmaster, and therefore is more likely to be Janet's ancestor. This way their descendants would be correcting their mistake. Gunnerkrigg Court is already big on Generation Xerox, so this fits with the themes so far.

• Convinced that Steadman is Willie's ancestor. They've got similar hair. Also, this theory sounds a lot like something Tom would do, with the symbolism and all that.

...it has a red fletching. And red wunz go fasta!

• Three times faster, to be precise.

The red fletching is just to throw people off.

Bud says that Janet's dad would go crazy if he knew about her and Winsbury. Maybe Llanwellyn is just a typical overprotective father, but the way Tom dropped in that detail makes it seem like a clue to me. If Janet is descended from an elemental, then motherhood would presumably be fatal to her, just as it was to Surma. What's the only foolproof way to keep a young woman from becoming a mother? Keep her away from anyone who could theoretically get her pregnant.

• Is motherhood fatal to all elementals? I got the impression Surma was a special case.

Hence the "DD" sign. The lab by the canals used to be his — Anja had access to it because she was dating Donald. And Donald got his near-sightedness from Diego's side of the family.

• Plus, since Tom seems to believe that Lamarck Was Right, it would explain why Kat is so good with technology.
• Additionally, in keeping with Generation Xerox tendencies, Kat has been made fun of for having a "big nose". Sound Diego-esque to you?
• Actually, if this were true, it could have a crushing effect on Kat's morale, given her recent disenchantment with the court and growing cynicism. Heroic BSOD, anyone?
• OH MY GOD. THIS IS TRUE, I'M CONVINCED.
• I love this theory, but Diego considered his robots his children, and they were the only ones at his deathbed. This combined with his grief over Jeanne makes me think he never had flesh-and-blood children. If he had siblings, it's still possible that he is, say, Kat's great-great-great-great etc. uncle or something.

That way, anyone who reunites the CPUs with their original robots (probably requiring the release of Jeanne's soul (Annie), Diego-level knowledge of the robots (Kat) and the passing of a number of Secret Tests of Character) can "fix" or replace anything that requires a "reboot" of the Court. For example, Ysengrin (or his predecessor) rendering the Court unusable when the Gillitie Wood inevitably overflows it (Gunnerkrigg Court being founded before Coyote made the chasm) or counterattacks the humans infringing the Wood's territory.

It is very big, was entirely blocked with mortar (or whatever) and Seraph 1 only cut open a big enough gap to reveal the tunnel to the shrine. Diego has probably walled away more guilty secrets, or perhaps, devices to strike back at those that he ascribed responsibility for his actions to.

Her soul would be left trapped on the shore, and he'd have a pretty soulless doll who'd never be able to deny his love again all to himself. "She died and we did nothing" wasn't him deluding himself into believing he had nothing to do with what happened, and wasn't even really about Jeanne as the person she really was, who loathed him and loved another; it's just about her body, which Young and the others refused to let him "rescue", because even if they're willing to do some nasty things to preserve the Court, they wouldn't just stand back and allow him to rape her shell.

Hear me out here. In the blueprints, their power source is marked by a heart symbol. Knowing about the natural/magical vs. artificial/technological conflict that's gone on throughout the story, and Diego's willingness to cross the Moral Event Horizon, it really wouldn't surprise me if Diego had used actual hearts — possibly harvested from creatures of the forest — to power his machines. Hell, just look at the current chapter and its title. Kat talks about the "power source" being linked to the brain, limbs, etcetera. The chapter is called "Give and Take." What does a heart do, exactly, hmm?

• Jossed, the robots' hearts, while anatomically correct, are mechanical.

Diego built Boxbot after Jeanne's death, and the reason why he made it so terrible, is because of his guilt.

The way the robots react to her... on the other hand... Hair colours match too.

Well, the robots probably do mean the assumed "We did nothing to stop her from being killed," but the statement did not hold the same meaning for Diego. Instead, he was saying "She died, and I had nothing to do with it." Basically, he is denying any involvement he had in orchestrating her death.

• Another interpretation: She died, and they did nothing to avenge her. "We did nothing to stop her being killed" should really be "She was going to die, and we did nothing." The actual phrasing, to me, indicates a lack of response, rather than a lack of preventative action.

More precisely, her corpse is the Bismuth Seed that the Court grew out of, like what happened to the Thousand Eye bird that saved Annie from dying in the Annan Waters. "She died and we did nothing." And what are they doing here? Jeanne's ghost can't cross over the river to Gillitie Wood because Coyote created a divide that stopped the Court from overtaking the forest (she is literally part of the Court and is subject to its limitations). This also explains why Diego created a robot in his image and a robot in Sir Young's, but despite how much he loved her, there is no Jeannebot. She's all around them. She doesn't need a robot.

To make it extra sentimental/creepy/whatever, the place where her body would be if it was still in human form is where her memorial is.

• Mostly Jossed. Jeanne is alive after the founding of Gunnerkrigg Court, and after the divide.

It's obvious that Jeanne doesn't feel for Diego what he does for her. Since Dego's defining character trait is his obsessive love for her, the Court could have seen this as a problem, as Diego's robotics made him a huge asset. If Jeanne rejected him, then Diego could have lost heart and possibly left the Court altogether. Not being able to let this happen, the Court silently ordered Jeanne not to reject, if only to keep him happy. They were nice enough to let her decide what else she could do about him. She chose to be indifferent.

• Jossed to the Jossiest Josses of Jossland. Any civility between Jeanne and Diego is now lying next to Penny.

Due to something about the Kudzu Plot she overlooked, she will either fail horribly, or succeed just to make the situation worse.

• Jossed for now. While it depressed her for a while, Annie shows no signs of doing such a thing. However, we might want to keep an eye on Kat...

Jeanne abandoned her assault on Annie the moment Kat entered the scene. Something about Kat (maybe the connection to court technology or the fact she was using very advanced technology) drove the ghost off before she could do lasting damage to Annies etheric form. The question is... what? Was it something unique to Kat, a Gamma-style nullification power? Or was it the technology? Or did Jeanne just change her mind. Has Jeanne already achieved her objective in whatever that scratch was?

She's a woman more comfortable with a sword than finery. Reynardine knew that she was clearly a soldier. Plus Jeanne, Joan; it's fairly obvious!

• In fact, Joan of Arc is an English translation of the French Jeanne D'Arc.

Jeanne said "you come here to mock me with your shining heart". Look at the the chests of the two girls: only Parley's chest is truly glowing. Parley, being in love, offended Jeanne beyond measure. Had Parley not touched Antimony, we'd have seen a much different interaction between Antimony and Jeanne.

• I don't think so somehow. Jeanne's reaction to Annie the first time was to almost kill her: Word Of God says that she was lucky to get away with only a spiritual scratch. If Annie had been left to fend for herself, I think we'd be down one main character.
• Confirmed. Jeanne was pissed not because Parley was in love, but that she was too chicken to tell Smitty (the chapter's called "The Coward Heart" after all). All Parley would've had to deal with was embarrassment if she was rejected, while Jeanne had to watch her lover get killed and her spirit trapped as a sentinel.

In particular, it might mean Jeanne was under the same spell Annie is under now.

• You mean the binding? Hmm... that might also be where Ysengrin had seen it before. Then again, Coyote's bindings are black with a strip of red - Jeanne's is just RED.

Again, the way the robots react to her.

Annie might not have put two and two together, but given that he certainly could be called a tree elf, it's definitely possible...

• The Court guys referred to Jeanne's lover as a "traitor" so he was probably a human who became an elf. Then again it's possible that they regarded a forest-dweller who chose to be with a human to be just as bad as a human who chose to go to the forest.

Both Muut and Mort thought the ghost isn't supposed to cross Annan Waters, yet here she is. We know the stone provides not just a projection, but some sort of spirit travel, so if she was an owner, she could retain some access and use it to cross the river. Also, it was a main reason of her interest in Annie—just because she's the stone's new owner. After all, Muut set it up specifically to resolve Jeanne's issue, so it may be it's not just a necessary power-up, but also a direct connection that was supposed to put Annie in contact with the ghost in question sooner or later (presumably in other circumstances).

But she didn't understand the significance of her role. She served as a sacrifice of the Anaan Waters, which is between the Court and the Forest. This sacrifice was so that the Court could demonstrate their truce with the Forest.

Shocking as the idea may be, evidence does show that Boxbot has been through several design iterations, and remains in working order, meaning somebody must have been motivated to upgrade and maintain it.

• Word Of Tom tells us that there is more than one Boxbot. Unless "more than one" means "exactly two: Boxbot and Boxbot Prime", it's possible the Boxbots are just repairing each other. Which would explain why they all look so terrible.
  • Kat apparently thinks "Robox is pretty awesome".
    • Well, yeah. Everybody loves Robox.

He's only pretending to be incompetent.

• Alternatively, he really is that incompetent; so incompetent that his every attempt to do evil has failed. That's why no one knows he's the Big Bad.

Why else is Tom Siddell so needlessly hostile to the robot? Supporting this theory is the simplicity of his design; it looks like the kind of thing he could've drawn as a kid.

Boxbot has only arms, Robox only has legs. Their bodies can easily stack on top of each other's, with Boxbot's wheels serving as a connection mechanism. Boxbot's failure and Robox's awesome will combine like matter and antimatter, creating a new source of power known as Getter Rays.

• "Heaven itself may tolerate your brutality, but WE will NOT!" "My clumsy robotic pinser is burning! It's telling me to defeat you!" "Super brotherly combination... ROBOXBOT!"

Or at least half of it. He had someone enchant it with a "make people think Robox is pretty awesome" spell so people would at least like the Marty Stu version of him. However, he's better at making Original Characters like Seraph 1 and Life Embellished characters like the Taurobot (not the Minotaur, but the not-Eglamore bot). Boxbot was Diego's "pity me" Author Avatar, but nobody bothered to put a spell on poor Boxbot.

S1 might have been used as there was no Diego bot, unless that bot is Boxbot. That play down below was setup by the robots after Diego's death when the original line began to realize they too were passing on. The following generations were, like the humans, unable to pass on all the knowledge of what happened. So as the original line began failing they setup that scene in hopes someone will find it. That someone will rediscover this knowledge. The Seraph, the Jeanne line, was given the greatest glory of being the activator/key to activating the play. This would all reveal mostly Jeanne. The small painting of Diego was left in there as well leaving a way for a person or robot to research what happened. However, the robots being "children" and deeply in love with Jeanne due to Diego's programming didn't get the story 100% right. It is a mixture of what happened, what Diego insisted happened in denial and the robots' inability to understand what happened.

We still don't know how he ended up there, but it's possible that he was born to the Shadows and abandoned, or that he got lost in the Court and never rejoined the others.

He started by spreading the 'angel' title around the robot community. Then he convinced Sky Watcher, who convinced King Robot to go to Kat for help. Now he's preaching that she's got the power of life and death to the other robots. This can't end well.

• Robot is sincere: Robot truly believes Kat is the robo-messiah and will have a huge crisis of faith when she inevitably fails him. Genius aside, she's still a teenager and teens make mistakes.
• Robot is a manipulative bastard or being manipulated himself: His increasingly creepy behavior isn't kosher and he's either using the robots' gullibility to stage an uprising or he's being influenced by, for instance, the Zimmingham spiders.
  • Robot has shown some creepy behaviour, yes, but if anything, it emphasizes how sincere he is in his belief in Kat; he is so enthralled with her that he feels the need to follow her everywhere and protect her from everything he perceives as harmful. All this indicates that he's seriously taking her for an angel/liberator, and has great, possibly unrealistic expectations for her in the future.

If Robot's view of Kat as a robo-messiah goes too far, he could influence the other robots to include "killing mankind" as part of their pleasurable physical activities.

Right now it is still in the accidental, minor or very subtle foreshadowing gray area, but look at how much of the story is focused on two opposing worlds with a few people acting as mediums who can remain unbaised. Unbiased is usually defined as being untouched by either side of an argument. But note how each side is, well, so full of jerks and jack asses. Take the two most recent arcs as of writing this. Skywatcher and the Angel which setup an evil court allowing for a big opening for the great and nice Forest, only look what Coyote does? A great many reminders about how he is not good, but chaotic neutral at best, whose actions caused great strife and a cold war for the "lolz".

At this point look at how many singularity like beings and events exist. Reynard when possessing the doll takes a robotic angelic cyborg wolf look, and frequently displays cyborg/robotic appearances in this body. Ysengrin went the other way, instead of becoming "one" with tech, but the woods and nature. The Bird With a Thousand Eyes, mistaken for a living creature at first, then revealed to be robotic, but then shown it's remains can "grow" like living thing. Robot is becoming more human in personality as Kat works on perfecting his Android body. The whole test concept of forest creatures becoming humans, or pretending to be in Marcia's case, and humans becoming forest creatures.

The absolute divide of the river isn't. The whole story is about the falling angel meeting the rising ape and having a three way with a robot.

This idea is long and kind of crazy, so bear with me. It also incorporates a bunch of ideas from this page and a lot of chemical/alchemical symbolism. The Court, we have been repeatedly told was grown from the Bismuth Seed. As it has been said before, bismuth is a chemical element. But I will go further and put everything into chemical symbolism: The Gillite Woods, etc., being natural and organic, can be represented by either carbon or oxygen, both non-metals. "Straight" humanity's symbol/ability seems to be technology, symbolically represented by transition metals, such as iron: Diego's robots, Jeanne's sword, Steadman's arrowheads, Kat's inventions.

Eglamore is a special case: his 'dragon slayer' armor (which coincidentally, is more like dragon RIDER armor, considering his friendship/partnership with the closest thing to a dragon we've seen) bears the alchemical symbol for lead, is both the material humans use for modern weapons (bullets are made out of it), and in addition to being toxic to living things, it is also used to shield from as well as the result of nuclear radiation. He also posses a glowing sword, the only real example of [2] in the technological Court, reinforcing his connection to nuclear power. (To me, this symbolizes both his role as the Court's counter to the Wood's, and specifically Coyote's, power, and the source of his power, (another WMG, see below).)

Jones, as has been previously guessed on this page, is linked to the Court itself, and thus to Bismuth. Since she is one with the court, this explains why Eglamore thinks/knows he will lose if they fight "indoors". (Or he may just be faster/more agile than she is, given her weight, and so would benefit from the natural obstacles, much like his also specifies "at close range") This also explains/reflects her close relationship with Eglamore, as lead and bismuth are right next to each other on a periodic table. Bismuth is a transition metal, and so is her purpose, and that of the Court: to commune, negotiate, and transition between the "metallic" humans, and the "organic" woods.

Antimony is another transition metal, and as a medium, that is Annie's role. Also, she is mentored by "Bismuth" Jones, which is in the same period as antimony, one row down.

Word Of Tom says that the story takes place in "a current year", and that Britain's queen is not Elizabeth II, but a fictional queen. This could easily be Her Undying Majesty, Queen Albia. Presumably, schools like Gunnerkrigg helped unusual children channel their talents for constructive purposes, preventing the destructive infighting that had ravaged Europa from taking root in the British Isles. This, and Britain's independence from the Wulfenbach Empire, allowed the U.K. to evolve into a society nearly identical to ours.

The name "Gunnerkrigg" already exists in the Girl Genius 'verse: it's the name of a guesthouse in Mechanicsburg. Either the school in Britain and the inn in Mechanicsburg are both named after some third source (probably Scandinavian), or the Mechanicsburg innkeepers fled the city (possibly during the turmoil that's arisen since Agatha returned). Seeking to start a new Court as far from Sparks and Technology as possible, they settled in a magic forest in northern England.

And Kat is obviously a Spark.

• Kat and Annie are the long-distant descendants of Tavrek and Agatha, respectively. Just look at this (symbolism-laden) page. On the same side as Kat is: a radio tower and a rocket, something that looks a lot like the Aaronev sword-and-gear heraldry, the symbols for mercury and bismuth (symbolizing Tavrek's unpredictable allignment), and she's also dressed almost as a Bifauxnen. Annie mainly just looks a lot like Agatha.
  • Thus essentially making her Antimony Heterodyne? On a semi-unrelated note, however, this troper would love to see a Fan Fic wherein Jaegermonsters show up at the Court, claim Annie as the long-lost Heterodyne heir and try to get her to make the Court the new Castle Heterodyne. Hilarity would ensue, as it so often does when Jaegers are involved.
    • But Kat is way more sparky than Antimony...
• The Minotaur under the library is obviously a construct. He may or may not be as old as he claims.
• Jones and Higgs could well be either related or otherwise sharing a common origin. Think about it. Jones; unflappable, superhuman abilities, mysterious, breaks walls, blonde. Higgs; unflappable, superhuman abilities, mysterious, breaks walls, blond.

Tom Siddell is himself a student at the Court. (See page 296 and the picture of Tea on the Art page.) Tom Siddell beat up Sonic the Hedgehog once.

This ties in nicely with the aforementioned Girl Genius crossover theory, as WMG has proven that Sonic is also the future of the GG-verse.

Science! Magic! Mysterious spirits! Even more mysterious family backstories (complete with photos of the last generation looking a lot like this generation)! A castle that's as damn well big as the plot damn well needs! A suspicious lack of clearcut villains in the recurring cast!

In both stories, the Minotaur is a misunderstood son of Minos who is victimized by Jerk Jock Theseus. This also cements the "Johnny is nuts" theory, since the Minotaur is clearly a nice guy (a "homie", in his words).

The author has said Hellboy is one of his influences. Eglamore's office is very Mignola-esque, and Mort has obviously seen a few of the in-universe Hellboy comics.

• More on that...

I have absolutely no evidence, other than this would be really, really cool. Maybe the Court is linked to the Ogdru Jahad somehow?

The robots are wonders and the inhabitants of the woods are manes.

Annie is a developing Stand user and somehow related to the Joestars. Jones is a Pillar (Wo)Man who achieved "Ultimate Lifeform" status (which is why she can be in daylight), except she's not evil like Cars. Ether is just a different way of saying "the Ripple". The Blinker Stones are related to the Red Stone of Asia. Eglamore and the previous Dragonslayers are Ripple Warriors.

Bear with me. When Annie uses the blinker stone, we can often see her hair swirling around. Note that before she starts the blinker stone, her hair is straight, but after, it has a slight curve at the base. Her mother's hair is a freaking bush. Mrs. Donlan's is calmer but very swirly. Kat gets similar swirls, and while she doesn't seem to be etherically sensitive she might be repressing it due to her science-only biases. Parley had a swirl at the tip of her ponytail (not in the current chapter, however) and Andrew has what appears to be lively, possible curly hair. Jack had straight, spiked hair until his excursion in Zimmingham, where he gained curls around his face. Zimmy's hair is perpetually tangled, and when you see the transformation from Annie to Zimmy you see that Annie's hair starts curling more. On the other hand, Gamma, who is an etheric sink of sorts, has perfectly straight hair, and Jones, who cannot use a blinker stone, has very straight hair as well.

It's in some distant, forgotten corner of the robots-only area where pollution is so bad that it's deemed unsafe for human habitation, and it has slowly been forgotten by the human inhabitants of the Court, even as its robot inhabitants have forgotten the existence of humans.

I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one who didn't notice that the sigils used in the "sky messages" can be seen as a very abstract way of representing certain messages and ideas. Cubish tripod shapes that vaguely look like computer monitors, flowing lines that resemble giant bird-ish shapes... ect.

The figures look like two computers with feet standing next to a vague winged figure. From a distance, it also looks like a face with monitors serving as eyes and the shape at the middle being a nose and mouth. Possible rough translation: "Will you let us speak?"

This figure in the last panel looks like a bird with outstretched wings. Possible rough translation: "You can enter."

This page shows the same sigils, but sent up in the opposite order. This means that the sigils being used change meaning based on when they are sent. Specifically: these mean "can a representative come" and "a representative can come".

On this page, the shape looks a lot like Khepi and her hair. It could mean something like "Tree-mother" or "Protector Matron". The hair looks like it is curling around a dot, which could represent one of her children. In this case, the sigil could mean something like "Protector Matron welcomes you" or "Protector Matron will house you". The flowing symbol on the blue banner with the dot on the end looks a bit like the one used when we see Khelpi. Considering the streamers, I wouldn't be surprised if it the flowing with the dot did mean "welcome".

Basically what I'm saying is this: each generation that has lived at the court has had some sort of role to play. It starts with Steadman the Archer, Sir Young the first Dragon Slayer, Diego the robotics guy and Jeanne who I think was the first medium (she lived at court, but communed *ahem* with the forest as well). Fast forward to the current time of the story. Either Llanwellyn or Winsbury are the Archer(s), Eglamore is the Dragon Slayer, Kat is the robotics whiz and Annie is the prominent medium who communes with the forest.

Like Diego, Kat has a very close personal relationship and devotion to the medium, Annie. Their friendship is mutual, but what if things are headed in the same direction as before? Annie will become increasingly sympathetic for the forest (perhaps take a lover there?) and turn away from Kat who will become distraught and angry. Perhaps the ghost at Annan will be released; Annie is attempting to figure her out and that could lead to releasing her from the waters. Without a ghost, whatever seal was made so long ago would likely expire. They would need a new seal. Maybe where things are headed is that Annie and Kat must make very difficult choices about where they stand. Maybe they will find themselves in the same situation as Diego and Jeanne where Kat might be placed have to consider killing the person she loves the most (but who has spurned her) for the good of the Court. Maybe the crux of this narrative will be that these people are faced with the same choices, but hopefully don't make the same mistakes.

• Gunnerkrigg Court appears to be home to a long series of recurring roles, and Eglamore is clearly the Dragon Slayer from the kids' parents' generation. We know that by the time he was Kat and Annie's age, he'd been singled out for the role; perhaps we should be looking for Eglamore's successor.
  • Oooh! What if Parley was Eglamore's successor? She's got the skills, and I doubt she'd turn down being a Dragon Slayer!

The Court and the woods represent Order and Chaos respectively. The two sides are engaged in an eternal conflict behind the scenes, with both sides wishing to have a leg up on the other. The purpose of the mediums is as diplomats to prevent this conflict from turning into a full-scale war. The three current mediums represent different facets of the war; Smitty is Order, Parley is Chaos, and Annie is a mix of both. The conflict is dying down, but there are elements on both sides that want it to flare up again. Ysengrin is obviously one of these people, although there may be others.

There are traitors in the ranks of both sides. Reynardine was originally on the side of Chaos, but Surma managed to get him captured as a prisoner of war. He then swapped sides under Annie's control. Zimmy is a being of Chaos, but is not interested in the war; Gamma is Order, and is there to stop Zimmy from destroying reality. Jeanne and the Elf were tired of the war when it was at its strongest. The last traitor... is Anthony Carver.

Carver was originally on the side of Order as a Gunnerkrigg student. However, he later swapped to Chaos without telling anybody. This is why he's so distant, and also why his Microsat 5 appears to be killing Annie. Annie is the key to ending the war, being in between the two sides. Anthony wants it to go all-out, so he needs to take out the biggest tool Order has.

If Robot's tree-arm was removed after hardly more than a year, if that, the cherry tree (as big as it is) is likely to have required much more purification and observation before the staff could be sure that it was safe to move to the park. My specific guess? The fruit contains a weak Elixer of Truth, and anyone who doesn't know about, notice, or try to resist the effect starts saying what they feel needs to be kept within, and the tree will intentionally never be purified so that the effect (be it this or something else) can be made use of.

• Sort of confirmed in "Divine"- the tree is powerful because of the memories it evokes in Annie.