Skifander

A flashback of Skifander

The Lost City of Skifander, “the Warrior Queen's Hidden Jewel”, is primarily known as the homeland of Zeetha, Daughter of Chump.

Sociology

Skifander is a matriarchal polytheistic society with a strong warrior tradition, but most things about it are mysterious — so mysterious that hardly anyone (nowadays) has even heard of the place. It is known that Skifander is ruled by a Queen, Zantabraxus , but what other structures its ruling class may have are unknown outside of the city.

According ✣ to Zeetha, its matron goddess, head of the Skifandran pantheon, is Ashtara — goddess of love and "she who controls fertility". Legendary figures such as Gwangi are also invoked ✣ in oaths.

Skifander has its own language called Skiff.

The Skifandran culture holds a negative view of twins. Twins have a special place in many mythologies, both negative and positive aspects.

History

Again according ✣ to Zeetha, Skifander's original inhabitants came to settle the city via one of the Queen's Mirrors. They were ruled by Queen Luheia, who was a member of a society of similar immortal and unaging women, who communicated with one another extensively via the Mirrors. At some point the Mirror system went dark, cutting Luheia off from her fellow Queens, followed by her dying while thwarting an attacking menace, leaving the city in the hands of her mortal successors.

While it still hasn't been explicitly revealed in the actual comic, it's been pretty clear for some time now that Skifander is where Lucrezia Mongfish sent ✣ Baron Klaus Wulfenbach to get him out of the way upon accepting Bill Heterodyne's marriage proposal. Another semi-revealed fact is that Klaus was known as "Chump" during his stay in the city, and so, yes, he married Zantabraxus and he is Zeetha's father.

On a related note, it has also been almost officially established ✣ that the city's resident Mirror, now bearing Luheia's name, is in fact not completely dormant.

Knowledge in Europa

And so.. Characters with apparent first-hand knowledge of Skifander include Zeetha herself, Klaus, Lucrezia, Barry Heterodyne and Queen Albia of England. Agatha and the members of Master Payne's Circus of Adventure have all heard about it second-hand. Klaus reacts ✣ strongly when he sees Zeetha for the first time. Lucrezia, by contrast ✣ , just sees Zeetha's Skifandrian roots as another thing to be exploited — as usual. Shurdlu the Geisterdamen also recognizes ✣ her on sight as being from Skiff, and appears to relish the thought of facing (and beating) her in unarmed combat, though the language barrier leaves some ambiguity. Albia is saddened ✣ to learn of Luheia's death, but claims despite her previous contact with Skifandar, she does not know where it is located. We don't know anything about Barry's views, except that he once told Agatha a story about the "Warrior Queen's Hidden Jewel" ✣ .

Characters from Skifander

• Zeetha, of course
• Warrior Queen of Skifander in flashback ✣ (Madame Olga's telling of Zeetha's story).
• Queen Luheia (long deceased).

Novelization

In the novelization, Olga is more specific about the hallucinations Zeetha had when traveling to Europa: “Floating around, furniture on the ceiling—wild stuff.” Also, when answering Zeetha's initial question about having heard of it, Agatha adds an additional title for the place, as told to her by Barry: "Guardian of the Red Mountain." Carson von Mekkhan does not recognize Zeetha's background specifically, but when she shows disapproval of Mechanicsburg's status as a town full of minions, comments "..you yourself are obviously from some proud, warrior culture somewhere that hones its fighters and insists on things like honor and self-reliance. It's hardly unique. But I'm curious- who carts away your night soil? Your rulers? No, I thought not."

The Works

In addition to Zeetha and Zantabraxus, The Works contains a card showing a fairly young girl, Noopta, dressed in a manner consistent with the little known of Skifandrian royalty.

Possibly relevant outside information

"Skif" is a Russian word for Scythian[1] — militaristic, semi-nomadic tribes that ruled the Eurasian steppes in antiquity. It can also refer (again, in Russian) to a supposed ancestor, Scythes, a son of Hercules in a legend reported by Herodotus or a son of Zeus in a legend reported by Diodorus Siculus. In passages 4.28.2-4 to 4.28.4 of Diodorus Siculus's (partially surviving) work of universal history, Bibliotheca Historica ("Library of History"), the Scythians join forces with the Amazons (a nation of all-female warriors, in Greek mythology) against Theseus. The Amazons that survive the battle renounce their native home and return to Scythia to live among the Scythians. [2].

Lost matriarchal cities are common pulp and Victorian fiction tropes - H. Rider Haggard's Kôr and Edgar Rice Burroughs' Opar are good examples.

The movie The Valley of Gwangi featured an independent-minded cowgirl as its heroine, and the lost valley of the title was located in a remote area of California. Zeetha's own dialog has, on occasion, included idiomatic expressions of the kind one would associate with teenagers, and perhaps even teenagers from the San Fernando Valley.

Also, Gwangi in "The Valley of Gwangi" was an Allosaur or Tyrannosaur (sources differ) who put up an impressive defense of his valley. Skifandrians might well think of the beast as a quintessential Noble Warrior. Or, y'know...Human sacrifices. Whatever.

Questions and theories

Quite a bit more has been hinted at than actually spelled out in canon. For example, as noted above, it has been confirmed in an interview that this is where Lucrezia sent Klaus; this renders the hidden city the presumed birthplace of his son. (The same interview confirmed that the protagonists will indeed travel to Skifander.)

Baron Wulfenbach's statement that he "kept [Gil] alive" hints at the old story that Amazons (to whom the tribeswomen of Skifander bear more than a passing resemblance) kill all of their male children. Whether this is accurate, of course, would be known only to Zeetha, to whom the question has not yet been put. Klaus has been shown in flashback grimly crashing through a Mirror gateway with an infant in his arms, indicating that for whatever reason his departure from Skifander was not a peaceful one,

See Forum:Gil's mother for further discussion of what effects Skiff blood may have.

Zeetha’s reported “hallucinations” in the novelization suggest that at least part of her “fever” was due to motion sickness in a low-gravity environment, implying that Skifander may be extraterrestrial, cf. The Heterodyne Boys and the Dragon from Mars .