Gilgamesh Wulfenbach
From Girl Genius
| Gilgamesh Wulfenbach | |
 | |
| Name | Gilgamesh Wulfenbach, "Gil" |
| Age | early twenties |
| Occupation | despot-in-training |
| Residence | Castle Wulfenbach |
| First Appearance | The visit to Beetleburg. |
| Death | |
| Parents | Baron Klaus Wulfenbach, mother unknown |
| Relatives | |
| Children | |
| Marital Status | single, knows exactly who he wants |
- "What do I have to do! I just took down an entire army of war clanks! And I still get treated like a halfwit child!"[1]
Gilgamesh Wulfenbach is the heir to the rulership of Europa and a powerful Spark. Neither factor has made anything easy for him.
Contents |
[edit] Backstory
When Baron Wulfenbach returned from parts unknown, he already had a young Gil on his back.
Gil was raised not as a Spark and heir to an empire, but as just another student aboard Castle Wulfenbach. Although he broke through at an early age, Klaus managed to hide Gil’s spark.
He attended college in Paris, where he developed something of a ladies-man reputation, although he never found a girl he could really talk to.[2] In Paris he made friends with Ardsley Wooster and enemies with Othar Tryggvassen, Gentleman Adventurer. Although he knew Wooster was a spy for the British government, he hired him as his valet and personal secretary when his father recalled him home.
With his education over, Gil was introduced to the world as the Baron's son and heir. For Gil this meant having to put up with the myriad tests his father contrived for him, presumably to test his sparkiness and leadership capabilities. One of these tests was troubleshooting a particularly difficult piece of equipment that the Baron had commissioned from the senior faculty of Transylvania Polygnostic University. It was here that he first met Agatha, who was unaware that she was either a Spark or a Heterodyne and went by the name of Clay -- and that brings us up to the starting point of the story.
[edit] Recent history
Although Gil passed his father’s test du jour (by being willing and able to tell him that he was wrong), things went badly at TPU. Dr. Beetle was killed by one of his own bombs, and Agatha was dismissed from the university.
In Beetleburg, Gil and Klaus encountered the Search Engine clank, built by a sleep-sparking Agatha. Following the clank back to Agatha’s home at Clay Mechanical, Klaus had the building gassed with knock-out C-gas, and found Agatha in her underwear with the travel-worn Moloch von Zinzer. Thinking Moloch was responsible for the clank and Agatha his girlfriend, Klaus ordered Gil to bring them both to Castle Wulfenbach. Gil noticed what his father had missed: Agatha’s hands were grease stained, but Moloch’s were clean. He did not mention this to his father.
Aboard Castle Wulfenbach, Gil periodically teased Agatha about Moloch and hinted to her that he suspected she was a Spark. After the infamous Falling Machine episode he was even more convinced that he was right. When Agatha was finally fed up with Moloch, Gil offered her a job in his lab. Agatha, thrilled that she had been able to improve his falling…er…flying machine with by her suggestions, accepted. Gil decided to help Moloch pretend to be a Spark instead of ratting him out to his father.
Gil gave Agatha a warm welcome, showing her a work bench reserved for herself and dancing with her to his Mechanical Orchestra. He showed her his latest experiments: a lightning generator and a fencing clank, and a mysterious Heterodyne artifact.
Unfortunately, the pleasant creative arguments were interrupted by Klaus and a newly-escaped Othar Tryggvassen. Agatha didn't seem to understand Gil's animosity towards Othar, and was shocked when he hit him with a wrench. The Baron didn't seem to understand why Gil had hired Agatha as his lab assistant, and suspected him of just wanting to hang around a pretty girl. Klaus decided that it was time he found Gil a suitable bride, which did not make Gil happy.
That night, however, Gil helped Agatha build, in her sleep, some sort of clank. Before it could be tested, and before Gil and Agatha could really begin arguing about Klaus’s treatment of sparks, the lab evacuation alarms sounded. Agatha refused to leave without trying to rescue Othar. Gil decided to stay with her.
The alarms turned out to be due to the activation of the Hive Engine that Klaus had acquired from Dr. Beetle. The labs were now full of menacing Soldier Wasps, and the mind-controlling Slaver Wasps would not be far behind. Gil held off Soldier Wasps with a fencing foil while Agatha built Electric Foils from the Heterodyne artifact and the lightening generator. They decided to try and kill the Hive Queen and stop the swarm.
When they did manage to kill the Queen (due in part to Agatha’s unrealized ability to control the wasps), Agatha kissed Gil in a moment of triumphant exuberance. He was instantly smitten. After finishing off the wasps in the immediate area, Gil proposed marriage. Badly. Agatha was at first amused and then annoyed, and Othar showing up did not help. And then Gil was knocked unconscious.
In the aftermath of the Wasp infestation, Klaus learned that Agatha, who had escaped the Castle, had been the Spark from Beetleburg, and was in fact the daughter of Bill Heterodyne and Lucrezia Mongfish, making her a very dangerous spark indeed. He ordered Gil to go and bring her back, as a prisoner. This did not make Gil happy, but since there was no arguing the point he went. With Bangladesh DuPree and a squad of clanks, he tracked Agatha to a traveling circus. The circus told him that Agatha had died defending them from a rogue clank. When he was shown a charred body wearing Agatha’s clothes and the ring he had given her, he was convinced (and devastated).
Despairing of ever finding true love, Gil threw his energies into resurrecting Agatha’s adopted parents, the Heterodyne constructs Adam and Lilith Clay (formerly Punch and Judy). They had been killed during Agatha’s escape. In between “marathon sessions in the lab” he rebuilt and then fenced with clanks that had been scavenged from the wastelands. Wooster commented that he seemed to be working himself into an early grave.
When Klaus discovered that Agatha had not died, Gil was elated. But Klaus, convinced that Agatha was truly dangerous, had decided to go and fetch her himself. Wanting to shield her from his father, but unable to leave the Clays, Gil recruited Wooster’s help. Revealing that he had known Wooster was a spy all along, Gil ordered him to take Agatha to England, but warned that she was not to be a prisoner nor a political pawn. In a fear and awe inducing rant, he threatened all of England if Wooster did not obey. He then sent Wooster, thoroughly cowed, on his way.
Gil continued to work on the Clays until he heard that his father had been seriously injured while trying to capture Agatha and contain the city of Sturmhalten. As soon as the Clays were in stable condition, he left for the Great Hospital at Mechanicsburg to watch over his father and try contain the chaos Klaus’s incapacity had caused. His job (running the empire while keeping his father alive) was further complicated first by the arrival of a false Heterodyne in a very pink airship, and then by news that another Heterodyne heir was in town, this one busy making coffee in a local coffee shop. Gil immediately knew this was Agatha. He sent Captain Vole, an ex-Jäger, to get her, not knowing that Vole would try to kill her. Fortunately for Gil, Agatha had a pot of very good coffee and a large wrench.
When his father regained consciousness, he warns Gil that Agatha is really Lucrezia Mongfish and the Other. Hearing that Vole had been sent, he was pleased with Gil’s handling of the situation, declaring that the time for tests was over. As Gil gives his father a more detailed report of the current situation, he realizes what is being planned by the people in the pink airship. Leaving Dupree to guard his father, he goes to the city walls. Before he leaves, his father warns him that a green-haired woman (Zeetha, Daughter of Chump) with twin swords may have been sent to kill him. “Father, what did you do?” Gil asks, to which Klaus responds “I kept you alive.”
A defeated Vole meets him there in time for the arrival of several very large war clanks. While people rush to the walls to see them approach, Gil goes out to meet them. Alone. He orders them to leave or die. When the commander of the clanks tries to fire on him, Gil calls down the lightning (thanks to the supercharged atmospheric ionization engines he had had installed around the city walls and his lightning stick) and fries the clank. Rejoicing to himself that his plan actually works, he fries one more clank before the rest surrender. Suffering from an overdose of adrenaline and bleeding from at least one gunshot wound, he has just enough strength to give orders to the captured troops before allowing himself to be more or less kidnapped by a group of wild Jägers (the same ones who had been helping Agatha). Knowing that if he collapses, the surrender may just be nullified, they decided that he is going to disappear mysteriously from the battle field. They enter Mechanicsburg through the “sneaky gate” for trauma care by Mamma Gkika. However, they find Captain Vole first, who insists on taking Gil to the hospital, at which point Gil displays an amazing amount of willpower and pique, and suffers a Dread Realization before collapsing from sheer exhaustion.
Gil awakens to find himself undressed and recovering in a dimly lit room, face-to-face with Zeetha. His initial distrust of her (because she matched the description the Baron gave to Gil earlier of someone who might want to kill him) changes to sharing with Zeetha his true feelings for Agatha. At one point, he distinctly states that he never anticipated falling in love with Agatha. His honesty and willingness to take criticism win Zeetha over. Zeetha agrees to help Gil as long as he does not give her a reason to kill him.
Gil discovers he is in the care of Mamma Gkika and the Jäger costumed barmaids of her establishment. He and Mamma Gkika are both surprised to find that Gil has healed rapidly from his injuries, thanks to a little help from a bottle of Jäger Battle-Draught. It is implied that Gil might have been modified in some way by his father to heal faster than normal humans through some Jäger based secret biotechnology. Da Boyz present the bewildered Gil with Jäger clothes to replace the ones ruined after his facing down the war clanks. Gil is not amused.
And, unfortunately, that’s as much as we know so far.
[edit] Creations
- Zoing, a buglike construct
- A fixed-wing aircraft
- A lightning generator (lab prototype that takes a long time to recharge)
- A mechanical orchestra
- A fencing clank
- A system of atmospheric collectors to generate massive directed lightning strikes via a "lightning stick".
[edit] The Works
The Gilgamesh Wulfenbach card in The Works lists the epithets Hero, Villain, and Spark. It depicts a large insect (perhaps a relative of Zoing?) on the back of his hand apparently speaking to him.
[edit] See also
Secret Blueprints: Gilgamesh Wulfenbach
