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Girl Genius

Otilia is the Muse of Protection, one of the nine Muses built for the Storm King by Van Rijn. Like all the muses, Otilia was designed to teach and inspire though she (or her body, at least ) proves capable enough in a fight if piloted by the right mental occupant. She was originally quite tall, and had large wings made from cloth feathers hung on a metal frame, as depicted in the fresco of the Muses at Transylvania Polygnostic University.

History[]

How Otilia passed the two hundred-odd years following the Storm King's downfall has not been detailed in the comic (see below in regards to the print novels), but as the current-ish era arrived, she somehow ended up in the clutches of Lucrezia Mongfish, who transferred Otilia's consciousness into a fleshly body, creating the construct Von Pinn. Lucrezia also transferred a piece of Castle Heterodyne's consciousness into the (now quite battered) Muse body. Neither Otilia nor the Castle appreciated this development.

As Von Pinn, Otilia became the nanny for Klaus Barry Heterodyne. When he was killed during the attack on Castle Heterodyne, she reportedly went berserk in some unspecified fashion and had to be locked up. Eventually Klaus Wulfenbach's ever-expanding empire reached Mechanicsburg, whereupon he also took charge of Von Pinn, and was able to assign her a new duty: caretaker for the royal students/hostages onboard Castle Wulfenbach, a task at which she excelled. (Her former charges Gil and Tarvek both testify to this.) As Carson von Mekkhan puts it, Klaus was always very good at matching the right monster to the right job.

Current Events[]

And then Agatha comes along. Already obligated to obey conflicting and possibly rather vague orders from her creator and her King, Von Pinn is additionally compelled by Lucrezia's programming to protect Agatha's life with her own as her new "container" was developed to obey her Mistress. She also feels compelled to return to Castle Heterodyne when Agatha finally gets there, and her construct body is severely injured after falling down a nearly bottomless pit while fulfilling this obligation.

The Castle/Muse meanwhile was kept contained in Lucrezia's secret lab in the depths below The Great Movement Chamber... until Agatha shuts down the main Castle's AI with Fra Pelagatti's Lion. The muse-body is then set free , possibly having been contained by the Castle's own systems. It confronts Agatha and Co. as they work to cure the various resident infectees of Hogfarb's Resplendent Immolation, and gets rather badly damaged by Higgs.

Leaning on each other

The triumphant soul of Otilia with her Heterodyne.

When Agatha descends to the lab, her Locket gets removed, freeing the copy of Lucrezia currently imprinted on her mind. In mid-gloat, she is interrupted by the barely-living but still highly dangerous Von Pinn, and forced to mentally flee. Gil and Tarvek are able to cobble together a medical table setup that keeps the construct alive long enough for her consciousness to be transferred to a more amenable body , a heavily modified Fun-Sized Mobile Agony and Death Dispenser. Meanwhile, the Castle fragment gets transferred as well, back into its normal position as the controlling brain of the physical building. (Not before Agatha severed the clank's head, which clearly houses the consciousness, from its mangled body.) The two of them proceed to assist Agatha, Gil and Tarvek as they defend the Castle and Mechanicsburg as a whole from the various attacking forces. Otilia's Devil-Dog body is however constrained in its movements, even before Klaus drops into Mechanicsburg and activates his Take-Five Bomb. She and the various pieces of her original body are presumably still trapped in the time-frozen city.

Additional Bodies[]

Von Pinn[]

Main article: Von Pinn.

Fun-MADD[]

As noted above, Otilia is transferred[1] from the dying Von Pinn into a dingbot-and-spark-improved Fun-Sized Mobile Agony and Death Dispenser. After this, she takes up the name Otilia once more.

Semi-Canonical Information[]

The prologue for Agatha H. and the Siege of Mechanicsburg indicates that following the original Storm King's downfall, Otilla spent over a hundred years chained up in some "forgotten hallway", before finally being "rescued" by Lucrezia and unwillingly used in the latter individual's consciousness-transfer experiments (which is what the prologue actually depicts.) When Lucrezia prepares to transfer the copy of the Castle into the now-inert clank-body, Otilla-in-Von Pinn warns her, that this attempt is akin to "pouring an ocean into a teacup, except that this time [Lucrezia] has found the cup sturdy enough to actually contain it", and then issues the warning/prophecy that Lucrezia is going to somehow learn first-hand what that imprisonment was like. Lucrezia ignores this, and Flips The Switch, resulting in some very big unspecified change...

The Girl Genius RPG sourcebook states that the aforementioned hallway was located in the cellars of Castle Heterodyne.

Possibly Relevant Outside Information[]

The dedication of Agatha H. and the Voice of the Castle is as follows (emphasis added):

To Our Dear Mothers, Ottillie & Rose, whom we often drove to despair, and no doubt, still do.

References

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