Girl Genius

Well, it was a good plan. Was.

And now all that's left is what's in Agatha's head. The novels mention she has an excellent memory...

Know what else is in Agatha's head? Yeah you know what I'm gonna say.

Edited by shigmiya64 on Sep 18th 2018 at 2:16:17 PM

A simple stabbing, and at worst not dead for very long. Any reason this shouldn't be easily correctable?

I'm sure there will be one, but...

The most important thing, however, is: they have every justifiable reason to hunt!

When Lars died (of a similar wound, even), Maxim noted that zapping people back to life usually doesn't work.

And geez, Maxim, I know Oggie is this dumb, but I'm a bit disappointed in you.

Edited by Geoduck on Sep 19th 2018 at 4:46:21 AM

For ordinary Sparks, I'd imagine not. But even if none of them are Dr. Sun, I'd imagine Albia's garden has some pretty top ranked talent.

Not even counting Agatha, Tarvek, Gil and Klaus-copy.

To be fair, it's been emphasized a few times that Dimo was the one who was (more or less forced) handling the heavy thinking. Also, I think Maxim knows that a) it's not his fault, and b) Agatha will know it. He's not the one in trouble.

Alas, poor Smokes. Sonny, we hardly knew ye.

The inconsistency with which they flout death is rather annoying. Lars was a gonner, but Baron Selnikhov's severed head could be reanimated*.

Klaus reconstructed Olga from what, for all purposes, was a pile of ash (granted, we don't know how well it worked)

Agatha and Klaus!Gil were able to transfer Brother Ulm into a train after he'd been blown up.

And yet, I predict that for purposes of confounding the plot, Smokes will be unrecoverable.

• Granted, Lars was a long way from facilities capable of such a feat at the time he died, so there's that.

Perhaps by the time he can be revived, what information he could have given will no longer be useful?

In the novels, it's mentioned that not only did it take months, but Klaus basically spent the entire time inventing new resurrection techniques. Gil muses that they will revolutionize the industry. And even then, he only fixed her body; he was planning to put a replacement brain in, because the original was a complete loss.

Selnikov's head seemed to retain all, or at least most, of his memories and personality, meaning very little brain damage, and judging by the timeline it couldn't have taken more than a day or two, if even that. I don't see why they can't do that for Smokes in a giant dome chock full of Sparks and Spark labs.

Also, in regards to Lord Selnikov, his revival was stated to be tricky by one of the foremost medical minds in the setting, and even that was in near-ideal circumstances (within an hour or two of his death, to a top-notch medical facility). Granted, it's not totally unreasonable that Smokes here is in a similar situation, which I suppose why nobody in the comic has rules out the possibility (and, in fact, Oggie might be carrying the corpse around on the expectation/hope that it is possible).

Also, in regards to Maxim's comment years ago that zapping someone back to life doesn't work so good... he was a wild Jager for about 18 years, and prior to that, the Heterodyne Boys weren't keen on having them around (let alone we don't know if they were all that keen on revivification sciences). By my back-of-envelope estimation, it's probably been at least 30 years between when Maxim's been hanging with someone who would perform a resurrection (at earliest, Satyrnus Heterodyne) and when he said that about Lars. Maxim probably isn't working with the most up-to-date knowledge on the topic.

As Discar noted, even just within the comic, Klaus more or less just invented cloning, which really wouldn't help make a witness even if the time frame wasn't an issue.

As has been before, pages will tell.

It all depends on whether or not they have enough narrativium to power the process...

Judging from the novels and the comic, the tricky thing with resurrection is "what happens to the brain".

We know from our world's science that brain death occurs in about four minutes, under average circumstances, when oxygen is cut off. That's why (old-style) CPR is so important. (Hypothermia may slow the timing of brain death, but cause damage for other reasons.)

Lars never had a chance due to events. Olga's brain was toast. (I really wonder what Klaus did with her body.) Baron Selnikhov was taken to a premier medical facility within a short time of his death, and had one of the greatest doctors known work on him.

Mr. Smokes has a chance based on where he is, but it all depends on what condition his brain is in. I wouldn't put it past this really ruthless mystery character to jam a needle full of acid up through his nose, a la the methods of the Egyptian mummy makers.

While that is a possibility, it would be pretty gruesome from the narrative standpoint. The only reason for letting it happen is that the erased equations are so important to The Other that for the story line to continue, it drives Agatha & Co. to Africa. I'm hoping for some other, less nasty reason.

Still reasonable, but somewhat less dire, is that he can be revived, but his brain's a bit scrambled, just like most RL people who suffer a severe injury.

I guess that part's a bit personal for me because my Grandmama recently suffered a stroke. She's recovering, but she's still got a way to go before he becomes who she was before, if she ever does.

Anyhow, it would keep him from giving a direct answer, but still leave him alive to help with the summation.

Edited by FuzzyBoots on Sep 19th 2018 at 11:40:02 AM

My sympathies to your grandmother and your family.

There's much that goes into how much she will recover. The part of the brain, the size of the stroke, and how long before treatment started.

May she recover as fully as possible.

Those blackboards are only erased. Maybe a Spark like Agatha can restore or recover what was on them?

Possibly... there are a couple of real-world tricks to find what was written on them, depending on just how thorough the clean-up crew was.

Of course, if they were sneaky enough to swoop in, replace the blackboards, and get out before anyone besides their victim could have seen them...

Friday's comic [1]

Oh, that's just not fair. I checked at 9:15 pm PST! (/teasing)

Make sure you have on body armor. Backstabbing is inevitable at this point.

Thwart! Thwart! Thwart! Thwart! Catch the bad guys trying to escape!

I wonder where Violetta will be going now.

Of course, things won't go according to plan. They won't go their separate ways, but rather be forced by circumstance to stay partnered up, and the rest of Girl Genius will follow their adventures together.

Despite the scars not really matching up, I still say that our ex-pirate friend is the bald guy who appears in Zeetha's flashback when talking to Lady Steelgarter.