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Tropes pertaining to the faculty and students of Transylvania Polygnostic University.
Tarsus Beetle
Doctor Tarsus Beetle, Tyrant of Beetleburg
"Know Enough to Be Afraid"
Ruler of Beetleburg and Headmaster of the Transylvania Polygnostic University. Agatha attends TPU under his supervision and acts as his assistant.
- Alas, Poor Villain: Agatha is genuinely distraught when Beetle is killed, enough so to trigger her breakthrough.
- Ambiguously Evil: Not much is known about Beetle's ultimate goals or motivations. He greatly disliked the Baron's rule, and seemed to be planning to use Agatha to further his goals, but at the same time, Barry trusted him enough to entrust Agatha to his care, and apparently gave him reason not to trust the Baron
. - Big Bad Wannabe: Was preparing to mount a challenge to Klaus' power... With his forces being completely outgunned, and the Baron fully aware of his plotting.
- Compensating for Something: Gil notes that his clanks are ludicrously oversized, Beetle's way of compensating for his lack of height. Beetle objects to this assessment, loudly.
- Cruel and Unusual Death: His favored means of dealing with criminals in his city is to stick them in a giant bell jar to die of exposure, starvation and/or dehydration. He then leaves their bodies there until he needs to reuse the jar.
- Curb-Stomp Battle: His defenses get effortlessly swatted down by the Wulfenbach forces.
- Deader than Dead: His demise is used to showcase that in the Girl Genius universe 1) being dead need not be permanent, and 2) it still can be.
- Hoist by His Own Petard: Killed when Gil knocks his own bomb back at him.
- Humongous Mecha: His greatest creation is a twenty-meter clank named Tock.
- Mad Scientist: Third generation Spark.
- Master-Apprentice Chain: Had at various points in his life taught Klaus and Lucrezia, along with Bill and Barry Heterodyne, and later Agatha.
- Pet the Dog: Beetle's sheltering and care of Agatha certainly appears to be this. It's only much, much later that the audience learns he intended to use her as a weapon.
- Screw the Rules, I Make Them!: As the Tyrant of Beetleburg, his word was law. This was why Agatha was allowed to attend whatever lesson she pleased, even if her teachers didn't like her.
- Secret-Keeper: He knew Barry had returned to Beetleburg with Agatha, and knew who she, Lilith, and Adam were.
- Starter Villain: To the point where Agatha never even faced him, since he got thwarted by the Baron before he even got to the part of his plan that involved her.
- Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Beetle was the one who inspired Lucrezia's experiments with mind-transferal, meaning a good deal of issues in the story can in some way be traced back to him.
- Still later, his ill-advised plot against Klaus Wulfenbach ultimately attracts the Baron's attention to Agatha, thus kicking off the plot.
- We Have Become Complacent: He's universally acknowledged as the greatest clank engineer of his generation. Unfortunately, he failed to take into account that later generations would use his designs as the starting point for their own work. Thus, when he tried using them to rebel against Klaus, he was trying to fight state of the art Wulfenbach Battle Clanks with models that were thirty years out of date, and the obsolete models quickly lost.
- We Used to Be Friends: Resents his former protege Klaus for annexing Beetleburg into the empire, despite the fact that the takeover was peaceful and he was allowed to remain in control of local affairs.
- The Worf Effect: Klaus figures out his plot to use a Hive Engine to strike against the empire and crushes it effortlessly well before it was ready to go, establishing just how smart and powerful the Baron truly is.
Silas Merlot
Silas Merlot, Beleaugred Professor
"That... that was Miss Clay! It's her fault I'm here! She ruined my life!"
Assistant and second-in-command to Tarsus Beetle.- Be Careful What You Wish For: He seems to finally breakthrough as a spark out of sheer rage of seeing Agatha again. He always wanted to be a spark and was jealous of their abilities. It gets him killed like many other sparks as he can't control his obsession and the Castle murders him to protect Agatha.
- Didn't Think This Through: After discovering Dr. Beetle's hidden notes about Agatha's heritage, he burned down Beetleburg's hall of records with the Baron's cryptography team inside, fearing the Baron would punish him if he knew the truth while not expecting the Baron to punish him for his actions in covering the truth. Agatha would later point out that had he gone straight to the Baron after making the discovery it's likely it would have gotten him into Klaus's good graces and netted him a big reward.
- Disproportionate Retribution: Claims his sentencing is this. Historians would later argue that it was actually disproportionately low, because among the things he burned in the archives was all records of what the Heterodyne Boys had been up to between their disappearance and Agatha being settled in Beetleburg, but the Baron had outlawed more appropriately harsh punishments.
- Evil Is Petty: The first thing he did after becoming in charge of Beetlesburg was expel Agatha simply because he didn't like her.
- Expose the Villain, Get His Job: What Silas presumably was hoping for by revealing the Slaver Engine his master was hiding. If it was, it worked in the worst way possible.
- For Science!: In likely an attempt to imitate Sparks, his big experiment at the start of the series was trying to turn chalk into cheese. It just earned him mockery from his peers and subordinates.
- Green-Eyed Monster:
- He lives in bitterness and jealousy over the fact that he's not a Spark and feels that he gets overlooked and left out of Beetle's important plans because he's "a mere mortal."
- The novels would later suggest that his erratic personality and his odd experiments is him trying to emulate Sparky traits.
- Hated by All: No one in Beetleburg really liked the petty, ill tempered man. The novels theorize that the main reason Dr. Beetle took him on as his main assistant was that his poor reputation made him the target of everyone's ire while the tyrant doctor looked all the more benevolent in comparison.
- Impossible Task: At the start of the comic, he and Glassvitch were given plans to build a contraption for Wulfenbach...well, really, Tarsus shoved it on the non-Sparks while he kept working on his own projects. At any rate, after three months of work without getting the gadget to operate, it turned out the whole thing was a test for Wulfenbach's son Gilgamesh to see if he could recognize the deliberately faulty construction. Merlot is understandably upset to see three months of his life, which he could have used for his own projects wasted for a test and flips out.
- Insane Troll Logic: When Agatha meets him again in Castle Heterodyne, he thinks it's "unfair" that Klaus sent him there just for arson and killing his inspectors.
- Jerkass: As the novelization puts it, even without the jealousy and having to work under Dr. Beetle, he was just "born mean".
- Kicked Upstairs: Klaus puts him in charge him not as a promotion but as a punishment, threatening to ship him off to Castle Heterodyne at his first mistake.
- Killed Off for Real: Crushed by Castle Heterodyne while trying to kill Agatha and her friends.
- Laser-Guided Karma: The Baron sent him to Castle Heterodyne for arson and murdering his research team. Agatha straight up tell him he deserved what he got.
- Never My Fault: Blames Agatha for him getting sent to Castle Heterodyne, despite him being the one who burned down all of Beetle's records and murdered the Baron's men in a vain attempt to protect himself.
- Pet the Dog: He gave Agatha a genuine (if mildly startled) compliment after she managed to clean the lab in a remarkably short timeframe.
- Sanity Slippage: He was never all there to begin with, but his fear of Klaus and hatred of Agatha turns him into a bitter, paranoid murderer.
- Spanner in the Works: The Baron wanted to interrogate Beetle and had some unspecified plans for him, but Silas's early reveal of the Slaver Engine that Beetle was hiding resulted in Beetle fighting and dying. Likewise, Silas's burning of Beetle's records kept the Baron from learning about Agatha months ahead of time.
Hugo Glassvitch
Headmaster Beetle's chief of research, he along with Merlot work under Professor Beetle.
A really nice guy, if a bit of a worrywart.
- Impossible Task: Like Merlot, quite upset to learn that he was basically window dressing for Gil's test, but he doesn't react as badly.
- Nice Guy: Encouraging of "Agatha Clay's" initially unsuccessful inventing efforts, and capable of being friendly to even Silas Merlot.
- No Celebrities Were Harmed: Bears an intentional resemblance to Ron Glass
- Put on a Bus: Not seen after the Beetleburg portion of the story. The last time he was mentioned he'd learned her true identity and sent her academic transcripts to Paris a couple of years before she actually got there.
The Professoressa
Dr. Kaja Foglio, Professor of Interpretive History, Artist, Official Biographer of the Lady Heterodyne
A professor at the Transylvania Polygnostic University who decides she will interview Agatha and write her official biography when they run into each other in Paris. She is the presenter behind the stories in the "Radio Play" side stories, and co-writer/director of the Cinderella sidestory.
- A Day in the Limelight: The December 2020 side story focuses on the Professoressa and the Storyteller and is set after the main comic.
- Author Avatar: She is a stand in for Kaja Foglio, just as the Storyteller is the stand in for Phil.
- Be Careful What You Wish For: The December 2020 side story involves her inquisitiveness about the Mechanicsburg Solstice resulting in her stumbling into filling in for Agatha as the "Heterodyne". It results in her getting a lot more than she bargained for, and she only reason she gets away unscathed is thanks to the Castle's help.
- Identical Stranger: Not quite identical, but she looks sufficiently like Agatha for the Revelsmeister to comment on it when he ropes her into the Solstice celebration.
- Meet Cute: A filler image depicts her meeting Phil Foglio's in-comic character by having her accidentally drop a book on his head from the top of a high shelf. The book is titled "How They Met".
- Missed Him by That Much: In the Solstice story, she comes even closer to meeting Agatha than the Storyteller has, but is unconscious at the time. Later (real-world time) we see she met Agatha in person in Paris.
- Signature Headgear: Her top hat with winged goggles is quite nice, and even gets complimented by one of her husband's cousins.
The Storyteller
Prof. Phil Foglio, Storyteller and Creative Historian
Now, this isn't a Heterodyne Story like your mama tells you when she tucks you into bed at night ... well, not exactly.
An incredibly unlucky traveling storyteller who by strange coincidence always seems to end up near the latest disaster.
- A Day in the Limelight: The December 2020 side story focuses on the Professoressa and the Storyteller and is set after the main comic.
- Author Avatar: He and the above-mentioned woman are the stand-ins for the Foglios.
- The Bard: The storyteller is a traveling bard who has multiple random encounters with the protagonists throughout their journey; they first find him when they hear him singing while imprisoned in the local dungeon. He's memorized a great number of tales in addition to spinning his own.
- Black Sheep: The rest of Oggie's descendents definitely act more Jäger-adjacent than he does, and most think as little of his profession as everyone else.
- The Bore: The Great Hospital at Mechanicsburg hires him to help get difficult patients to sleep, much to his disgruntlement. This gets him volunteered to help get Klaus to sleep soon after. About the only person who doesn't find his storytelling dull is Tarvek (who realizes that the unwitting bard is being used by the Baron to pass along a message to Gil).
- The Chew Toy: He's arrested and thrown in an oubliette in Sturmhalten for "unflattering portrayal of a royal", mocked for being boring, pestered by Oggie, frozen in the time-stop, used as a guinea pig from removal from said time-stop by Wulfenbach scientists...
- Deadpan Snarker: When listening to a Wulfenbach troop reciting what he thought happened at Sturmhalten (thanks to having inhaled some of the Circus' hallucinogenic gas).Trooper: It was unbelievable!
Storyteller: (glowering at the man) That, I'll grant you. - Direct Line to the Author: The novelization confirms that the Storyteller is supposed to be Phil Foglio, and the series is him re-telling what he knows of Agatha's rise to power. Though he also admits in-story that he's been exposed to so many mind-altering chemicals and energies that he can't be sure exactly what happened.
- Horrifyingthe Horror: A mild example, but his "About the Author" blurb in one of the print comics states that his family's "rather bizarre choices in the way of ancestors" makes them considered odd...by the people of Mechanicsburg.
- Meet Cute: A filler image depicts him meeting Kaja Foglio's in-comic character by having her accidentally drop a book on his head from the top of a high shelf. The book is titled "How They Met".
- Missed Him by That Much: On occasion, the Storyteller comes very close to Agatha, without ever interacting with her (being nearby when Agatha saw the Muse of Time, being present when Agatha unleashed her dangerous Carnival on the Baron, being at Mechanicsburg during the siege).
- Shared Family Quirks: When he turns something the Professoressa says into a sex joke, she smirks "It is so obvious that you two are related." When Oggie does the same thing, she repeats it.
- The Storyteller: Well, duh. The comic begins with him telling a story (presumably the Girl Genius story) to some kids.
- Tempting Fate: He tells Oggie he'll get married as soon as Oggie finds a Heterodyne. And then he sees the giant hologram of Agatha bursting out of Prince Aaronev's castle...
- Unwanted Assistance: Is a great-great-great grandson of Oggie. It's Oggie's "assistance" with trying to help the family line along that has in fact led to the Storyteller being one of the last of said line. This is either a dramatic exaggeration or is referring to the Storyteller's particular branch of the family tree; judging by the rest of the family seen when the Storeyteller and his wife visit for the Solstice, Ognian's bloodline is quite robust.
