Dame Aedith

From Girl Genius

Dame Aedith
With secret admirer!
Name	Aedith
Age
Occupation	vampire hunter, knife thrower
Residence	With the Circus.
First Appearance	Watching Gil go bonkers. (Though an indistinct figure in a pointy hat can be seen earlier, it may or may not be her.)
Death
Parents
Relatives
Children
Marital Status

Dame Aedith is an Agent of the Forces of Good against the Foul Undead- not constructs, but vampires. No one else seems ever to have seen any trace of vampirism anywhere, including the authors^[1] (although Ardsley Wooster and Carson von Mekkhan have a ... disturbing ... exchange^[2] on the possibility), but she hasn't let that stop her. She's been traveling with Master Payne's Circus of Adventure for reasons of her own, where her skill with weapons is appreciated both on and off the stage despite a regrettable knife throwing incident.^[3]

She dresses for her Mission, in red with a high collar marked with a cross, and possesses an interesting Gatling-gun-like weapon which appears to fire wooden stakes.^[4] This may indicate that she too is a Spark, since it's exactly the sort of thing she would invent if she were.

[edit] The Works

The Works Includes a card for Dame Ædith which depicts her holding a large wooden stake and apparently warding off the bat (i.e., member of Microchiroptera) that accompanies her (as if it were a familiar). Her epithets are Mad and Vampire Hunter.

The rules for The Works are at pains to point out that they adopt a literal text-based mechanism for determining to what cards the "Instructions" on a given card apply, and thus (this is the actual example cited) Dame Aedith^[5] should be considered a Vampire as well as a Vampire Hunter. Of course, hers is the only card in the deck that actually makes reference to Vampires, and thus the card can only ever affect itself.

[edit] Possibly relevant outside information

Dame Aedith is no doubt a backhanded homage to (not to say travesty of) Vampire Hunter D.

References

1. ↑ WoG: Dame Ædith is insane. There are no vampires in the Girl Genius universe
2. ↑ Beneath Castle Heterodyne
3. ↑ "How was I to know that guy was joking?"
4. ↑ Seen here used against the Monster Horse Beastie.
5. ↑ sic; the ae ligature appears only on the card itself