A speculation about the Geisterdamen

[murgatroyd666]

I've been thinking about the Geisterdamen. They're rather unusual, aren't they? Some people have speculated that the Geisterdamen might be cave dwellers, or perhaps the inhabitants of another dimension

Comments

[dr_a_nightfall]

It does make a lot of sense... hmmm. Must consider this more!

[murgatroyd666]

Oh my! I'm familiar with the Shaver Mystery.

The point is that the Earth of Agatha Heterodyne's adventures isn't our Earth. The physics of Agatha's world seems to be quite a bit different from ours.

For that matter, the Mars of Girl Genius isn't our Mars, either. Theirs might be much more habitable than ours is.

The Geisterdamen could be from Mars, I suppose, but doesn't that hypothesis raise more questions than it explains? How did they (and their critters) originally get to Europa?

[murgatroyd666]

In the Girl Genius Novel, there's confirmation that The Other is extraterrestrial, with the attacks on the cities coming in from orbit.

Really? Or is this speculation by people on the ground?

As I said, if you have portal technology, it's easy to make heavy things fall from a great height: put one end of the portal where there's a bunch of big rocks, put the other end of the portal a few hundred miles up, and then shove the boulders through ...

[geekhyena]

They certainly do appear somewhat troglodytic. I like the idea of extensive tunnels more than a hollow earth, but it does make a lot of sense. Tunnels hidden below the permafrost, down where you would get higher levels of geothermal heat, maybe even something to allow for the kind of oxygen levels you'd need for spiders that big (book lungs are only so efficient, and though arachnids are more advanced in terms of respiratory systems than insects, there's still an upper limit) I wonder if the spiders are some carboniferous-era relic that survived hidden, or something engineered? There are also those dragon-ish creatures, too. Denser atmosphere inside the tunnels would help them fly, as well. *starts pondering* I -like- this idea!

[murgatroyd666]

I wonder if the spiders are some carboniferous-era relic that survived hidden, or something engineered?

One of the things I've wondered is whether Agatha's world still has living trilobites.

I wish ours did. Trilobites are cool.

[geekhyena]

Same here. Trilobites are amazing. In terms of beauty and also for their importance in evolutionary history and innovation. I wish we had living ones. Meganeura and Arthropleura would be nice to have around, too. I think it's in Secret Blueprints that Mechanicsburg has a lot of fossil trilobites in the local rock, hence the symbol being associated with that family, but the idea of living trilobites well, anywhere, is a nice idea.

There's a few sites north of where I live that my dear minion says have some nice deposits of that type of fauna. I might have to drive up there sometime and see if I can find myself a fossil or two. (Or buy one, but half the fun is in the hunt).

[murgatroyd666]

Perhaps the water in the Dyne kept them going ... (Does anyone know whether there were fresh-water trilobites?)

I have half a dozen dime-sized ones and a couple of big ones -- one curled and one flat. Purchased rather than found. I kept a horseshoe crab in my saltwater tank for a few months, but it's just not the same ...

An acquaintance is a professional illustrator, mostly medical but some biology and paleontology. She did a couple of beautiful drawings of Anomalocaris and Opabinia -- alas, the images aren't on the Web AFAIK.

[bunnyjadwiga]

See, I kept thinking of the ladies of Mars from the books by Edgar Rice Burroughs.
But hollow earth, or Moon, works well too. We know that Barry figured out where the attack was being launched from (in the book) but... where is it.

P.S. people keep saying that we have confirmation that Lucrezia had time travel based on some comment of Vrin's, but I can't find it.

[murgatroyd666]

P.S. people keep saying that we have confirmation that Lucrezia had time travel based on some comment of Vrin's, but I can't find it.

It seems to be a reasonable inference, based on what Vrin says here: http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php?date=20051230

[bunnyjadwiga]

It's an inference-- but it was only the visits when Vrin was a novice that The Lady came to them in the same guise, i.e. Lucrezia. So, we can't assume that it was Lucrezia 'from the beginning of all things.' It's equally-- or perhaps *more*-- likely that Lucrezia stumbled on the mystery cult and pretended to be The Goddess. Typical victorian fiction fare, too.

[murgatroyd666]

Well, there's also the panel on that page in which the Eternal Lady is choking a worshipper with seems to be Enigma's black mechanical arm. We know Enigma used a time window.

Did Enigma exist at the time of the events on that page? If so, does Enigma also exist at the current point in the story? Or is she a version of the Other who will at some point in the future inhabit a clank body and go back in time to visit the Geisterdamen?

[mneme]

Makes sense to me. Not the only possiblity, but a good one. I think probably -still- combined with Lu using time travel, but they're hardly contradictory.

[murgatroyd666]

Oh, I definitely believe that Lucrezia used time travel.