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{{Summary=You are Bangladesh DuPree, Pirate Queen of the Indian Ocean. You are a devoted follower of the goddess Kali. This means that your deity likes seeing you kill things. You are happy to have a god who you see so eye-to-eye with.

For a number of years now, you have been Baron Klaus von Wulfenbach's chief assassin, among other things. This sometimes distracts you from more important matters, but does tend to be a lot of good, healthy, violent fun.}}

{{NextTime=Bang may need to get completely rewritten. See the extensive discussion in the plot sheet for the [[Brigadoon Effect]].}}

{{Description=Another manically dangerous woman. DuPree works for [[Klaus]], but she is something of an uncontrollable force of destruction; she refers to herself (v3, p113) as a "pirate queen". She seems to have little regard for human life -- indeed, possibly even negative regard for it. She is gleeful about her killing. Indeed, she is almost always gleeful and chipper. But moreso when she is killing things. She is also [http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/cgi-bin/gg101.cgi?date=20060512 fond of torture].

The idea of putting her, [[Mell]] and [[Zeetha]] in the same game is both fascinating and scary. That said, I'm not sure we really have much *use* for her, save possibly as a bodyguard/foil for Klaus.

Bang has witnessed [http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/cgi-bin/gg101.cgi?date=20060515 several of the time distortions]. Note that [[Agatha]] refers to her as "Bang" here.

She is [http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/cgi-bin/gg101.cgi?date=20060821 fond of needling] [[Von Pinn]].

It really isn't clear how good a straight-up fighter Bang is. She seems to win her fights (v3, p113) through treachery and back-stabbing as much as anything. That may be worth reflecting as an ability. When she goes up against [[Von Pinn]] (v3, p114), she is clearly at a disadvantage. She clearly regards mayhem and torture as an integral part of getting things done (v4, p41). However, it's also clear that [[Gil]] is principally in charge of joint missions, and he intentionally keeps her on a tight leash. That said, she needles him constantly (v4, p44) while staying within the letter of his orders.

She is clearly a kick-ass tracker (v4, p41). She is insightful, and *very* hard to fool (v5, p107).

She is supremely confident in a confrontation (v4, p42), and loves to intimidate the hell out of people.

She follows [[Klaus]]' orders strictly (v4, p52). She doesn't mind bending the details, and she loves to tweak him, but everything we've seen indicates that she does *not* violate his commands. Given her personality, that's pretty interesting. Another example of their relationship: her calling him [http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/cgi-bin/ggmain.cgi?date=20060313 "his exalted crankiness"]. It's very important that he has given her very precise orders not to kill people unless strictly necessary. (Probably with [[Gil]] defining necessity.) Note that it is very rare for Klaus to let her go commit massacres -- note [http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/cgi-bin/ggmain.cgi?date=20060315 her surprise] when he *does* give tacit permission at the beginning of Volume 6.

Bang has [http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/cgi-bin/gg101.cgi?date=20060517 some kind of problem] that [[Klaus]] is helping her with. What is it? Do I even want to allude to that, or just steer away from it. ''Darker: You could make a stab at it, leave the how-long-has-this-been-an-issue nebulous, and mention "Klaus has helped you with problems in the past" - that way, if you're right, it's the same problem; if you're wrong, it's a new problem - no contradiction.'' Justin: that may well be the right way to go. If Bang is in the game, she clearly needs to have a plot, and this is a good hook to hang one on. That said, it has to be done with some care if Klaus isn't in the game. Perhaps there is something he needs in order to help her, which might be found at the Castle? I worry a little that the Castle is turning into a bit too much of a Hall of Infinite Wonders, but it's a possible way to go.

''One thing I've noticed: I seem to recall that Bangladesh is a Spark. (I may be wrong on this; we can check the card game for quick reference.) However, I don't think we've ever seen her go Spark-y? Given that Klaus is probably the continent's foremost expert on What Makes Sparks What They Are, he could well be helping her with some sort of power blockage.'' Justin: Curious. I'll keep an eye open for this as I do my detailed read, and see if I find supporting evidence. You might get it from implication on (v4, p43), where she has "tweaked" a medical device into a torture device. Indeed, if she *is* a Spark, devices of torture are probably her particular skill.

DuPree should have a combat special ability of Sneak Attack. When she is on *either* side of a combat with a particular person for the first time, she may take her first shot at +2 -- in terms of roleplay, she is slipping a knife out of her sleeve or something like that. She is not actually one of the better hand-to-hand combatants, but she has concealed weapons all over her person, each of which is good for a one-time bonus.}}

{{Potential=Excellent}}
{{PotentialNotes=Very dangerous to have in-game, but often requested, strong, good to roleplay and well-tied-in. Needs more plot, but I think she's probably in.}}

{{Picture=http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/cgi-bin/gg101.cgi?date=20060510}}
{{Picture=v3, p113}}
{{Picture=A bunch can be found on (v4, p42-43)}}

{{Special Ability=Anti-Cute}}
{{Special Ability=Sneak Attack}}
{{Special Ability=Interrogation}}
{{Special Ability=Torturesmithing}}
{{Special Ability=Resist Intimidation}}

{{Plot=Brigadoon Effect}}
{{Plot=Many Jaegers}}
{{Plot=Wulfenbach Interests}}
{{Plot=Mirror-World}}
{{Plot=Lab Rats}}
{{Plot=Children of Skifander}}

{{Blurb=You are Bangladesh DuPree, psychotically gleeful killer and Baron von Wulfenbach's more or less trusted agent in matters that involve mayhem.}}

{{Costume=You appear on this page: http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/cgi-bin/gg101.cgi?date=20060510}}

{{Text=You are Bangladesh DuPree, Pirate Queen of the Indian Ocean. And you're starting to run out of patience with a lot of people.

Of course, your original name was something conventionally Indian, but you've long since put that out of your mind: nobody is intimidated by a gobbledygook that they can't pronounce. Besides, you got that name over a hundred years ago now, and the world moves on. The name "DuPree" was given to you by Captain Marshall, and the "Bangladesh" part was a nickname based on where he stole you from. So what if it wasn't your idea? That name now strikes fear into the hearts of people across Europa, so who are you to argue?

Oh, you were a good girl when you were a child. Your tribe were devoted worshippers of Kali, and run the biggest temple in their region of northeast India. Ah, yes, Kali. Goddess of Death. She who is always seen with a sword in one hand and a severed head in another. She with the garland of 51 heads. She who walks all over her husband, the big god Shiva. She who is the Active Divine Energy.

Blah, blah, blah. Really, you never cared that much about the theology. You just like to kill things, so it's delightful to have a patron Goddess who is of like mind.

You were never cut out to be a temple priestess, and your parents always despaired of you -- you were always running off and getting yourself into all sorts of trouble. You weren't the modest girl they wanted: instead, you were always out beating up all the boys, and learning how to use their swords far better than they could. You never *quite* killed anybody, but there were a few close calls. Probably just as well that you didn't: they might have cramped your style before you could really blossom.

That came to a head when the British ship Fortitude came prowling around your neck of the woods, during one of your frequent forays away from home. They picked up the little canoe you'd been paddling downriver, and were amused enough by your ferocity to cage you up as a curiosity. Idiots.

You spent the next several months in chains as they sailed around the Ocean, but you were far from idle. You were talking all the time, and learning their language better. (English wasn't unknown in your area, but it took some practice to get good at it.) Eventually, you dared them to let you fight one of the ship hands, to show that you were as tough as they were -- and once he'd lost an ear and a hand in that duel, you convinced them that now they needed another hand on board.

It only took about a year to learn the ins and outs of shipboard life thoroughly, and you have to admit that it was pretty fun. You had no idea the world was so *big*, or that there were so many different tribes around to subdue and stuff to loot. Oh, it wasn't all fun and games. Two guys tried to rape you (and wouldn't ever being doing *that* again), and the ship was a bit too stuffily British to really satisfy your growing fondness for pillage. But it was the learning experience you needed, before the pirates came.

They were a motley bunch that attacked the Fortitude, and really, they wouldn't have succeeded on their own. But you knew that your opportunity had come, and it wasn't a hard decision to switch sides. Captain Marshall looked so *surprised* when you slit his throat -- bastard somehow thought that you had forgiven him for the months you'd spent in irons. As if that was likely: you *never* forget a slight, and especially not a captor.

And so the Fortitude became a pirate ship, and you served its captain loyally for, oh, about eight months before you killed *him* and took over. The crew were kind of put out at the notion of serving a fifteen-year-old girl, but a little bit of "stern discipline" dealt with that (the best mutineer is the one with a sword in his gut). And after you started leading them on more successful raids than they'd ever had before, they fell into line loyally.

*Those* were the days. Looting all over the subcontinent, getting filthy rich, and eventually coming back home triumphantly. A few people disapproved (and your parents were of very mixed minds), but to most of the people you were a hero. You gave lavishly to the temple and people -- there was always more loot to be had out there, and the fun was really in getting it, not keeping it. And so the legend of the "Pirate Queen" began to grow.

It was good times for eight years or so, until that idiot al-Hami went and screwed things up. You never met him, and there's a part of you that admires anyone who can mess up that many lives so comprehensively, but overall he was an inconvenience. The only real pity is that he was killed before you could get to him.

You were 23, well-established as the Terror of the Indian Ocean, when the Jumps started -- what the westerners call "the Brigadoon Effect". After the fact, you found out what had happened. Some lunatic towelhead Spark named al-Hami had decided that his Poor Muslim People were being corrupted by the West (which was true, but it's the nature of people to get corrupted by *something*), and that he would save them by "jumping" them forward in time until Western civilization collapsed. In the land of idiots, he was truly the King, but he was a talented Madboy, and when he decided that he would jump a lot of people forward, he wasn't kidding. The Effect not only covered all of Persia and Afghanistan, but most of India as well, including your people.

At first, you had no idea anything was wrong. The Ocean is unchanging, and looked exactly the same ten years later as it had the night before. But word got through to your tribe a few weeks later: that the entire rest of the world had moved forward by ten years, while you had stood still. No one knew what it meant, so you set out to sail for answers. You were at sea when the next Jump happened, exactly a month after the first, and in New Delhi when the third did, a month after that.

India is ancient and timeless, and really wasn't that perturbed by the whole thing: life for most people was continuing as normal, never mind that the rest of the world was getting very strange very quickly. But you began to hear that things were collapsing across Persia. It was five months (or fifty years, depending on your point of view) before the Iron Sheik emerged as a new leader, and went to do something about it.

You were back home at the time, taking stock of the situation, when the next Jump happened. And the funny thing was, this time you were the *only* people who Jumped. Persia, Afghanistan, even most of India had moved on this time, but your end of it was still Jumping. Everyone hoped that it was a fluke -- that whatever had saved the rest would catch up to you next time -- but a month later you all Jumped again, and everyone else had continued to move on.

Now you were getting pissed off, and your tribe was starting to fret. It was one thing when all of India was moving in synch: people could still travel to your temple as normal, so the economy was good. But if you were the only people moving ahead, and the rest of Hindustan couldn't get to you most of the time, that was going to screw up everyone's habits. That was bad for the temple, and bad for your people. And by now, you were starting to think of them as *your* people. No, you weren't some fancy Brahmin or a noble or something, but everyone was looking to you to save them. And while heroing isn't really your thing, you don't like it when the world is slapping you in the face like that.

So you left, knowing that it would be ten years before you could go back in. You partied hard that last night, took advantage of as many fancy temple boys as you could, then grabbed enough gold to get by and went outside the area of the Jump. At exactly midnight, the air shimmered strangely, and you saw the dome effect everyone had told you about: as if your land was completely covered inside a silver plate cover. For the first and last time in your life, you muttered a heartfelt prayer to Kali -- and then you set out to do something about this.

It didn't take very long to find out what had changed: it had only been two months in your area, but twenty years everywhere else, and the story had become legend. The Iron Sheik, fresh from uniting his people, had set out just as you had to find a solution to the Jumps. In the space of a month, he had gone out into Europa, teamed up with some local heroes called "the Heterodyne Boys", and gone all the way across the continent to the "West Pole" to find an artifact called the Time Ruby. He got it back to Persia just before the window closed, and grounded his lands in normal time with it. Saving everyone except *your* people -- the Ruby wasn't quite powerful enough to cover the entire area of the Jumps.

You sought out the Iron Sheik, explained where you were from, and demanded that he help. In retrospect, that might not have been the best approach: while he was sympathetic, he wasn't impressed by your threats. And he was even less impressed when you tried to steal the Ruby the next night. You had never encountered a ninety-foot-tall Clank before, and you don't really want to do so again unless you're the one driving it. When he kicked you out of his lands, he did so literally: it took a month to recover. So that plan had to be written off as a failure.

So you headed west -- overland, which isn't your usual mode, but there were no seas to take you where you needed to go. It was a rather depressing exercise, really. The legend of the Pirate Queen DuPree had faded in the seventy years since the Jumps had started, and as you went West nobody had even heard of you. But everything indicated that this was the best route to go in. The Time Ruby had been created by a German Spark named Amagog a couple hundred years ago, so your best shot was to find something similar by him and bring it home.

You slowly gathered up a small band of brigands around you, and that made travel easier: you went from traveling on foot, to horseback, to having a small but well-armed caravan of your own. And being well-armed proved important. Everyone assured you that these lands had been peaceful ten years earlier, when the Heterodyne Boys were around: they had driven peace treaties, beaten down a bunch of rogue Sparks, and generally been the sort of hero that always sticks in your craw. But they'd then disappeared, and of course it all fell apart, even worse than before. Everyone was at war with each other, and every damned Madboy was tearing the place up. Really, it was enough to make you long for the relative peace and sense of home.

As you got to Germany, though, you discovered the depressing truth. Yes, Amagog was a great legendary Spark. Yes, he'd done all kinds of messing with time and space. But he'd up and disappeared two hundred years ago, and taken his castle and everything in it with him. You visited the site, and everyone assured you that it was the great mystery of the place. One day there had been a mighty Castle overlooking the countryside; the day, *poof*, it was all gone. There was nothing there but villagers and cows -- nothing that was going to help you.

So you changed strategies. There was a new force on the horizon: Baron Klaus von Wulfenbach, who had been slowly conquering half of Europa. He had been an old buddy of the Heterodynes; after they vanished, he decided that a more forceful approach was needed to keep the peace. He was a man after your own heart, clearly. So you mounted a publicity stunt, invading his big floating Castle Wulfenbach and getting him at swordpoint. The temptation to run him through and take over yourself was pretty high, but you were after his brain, not his Empire. So you made him an offer: help you find a solution to the Jumps, and you'd help him as he beat up all the surrounding Nobles and took over their territories. You figured it was a win-win proposition, and he agreed to it.

That was almost ten years ago, and they've been mostly good years. You've worked for Wulfenbach, mostly loyally, but you've kept your own irons in the fire. Indeed, you'd managed to build up a pretty good fleet of ships on the side, from the booty you had quietly looted from cities Klaus asked you to pound into ashes.

Of course, *that* went completely to hell a few years ago. Klaus had a bee in his bonnet about his wife, who he hadn't seen in ages -- she was from some foreign place called Skifander, way off in Africa somewhere, and he had left her behind to come back and conquer Europa. Not getting laid in that many years got under his skin, though, so he sent an expedition to Skifander to contact them, establish peace, and blahblahblah like that.

Well, the rumors of this rich hidden city had a lot of appeal, and you knew that expeditions like this usually brought home lots of loot: exchanges of jewels and stuff were routine. So you figured you'd get in on that deal. You sent your secret fleet off to loot the expedition after they left Skifander, and grab any treasure they might find there.

And after that, you don't know *what* the heck happened. The expedition never got back to Castle Wulfenbach, so you're pretty sure your fleet did its job. But when you next visited the fleet's base, it was in ruins: *everybody* was dead, the ships blown up, wreckage all over the place. You kind of admire the thoroughness of the work, but you're still pretty furious about the whole thing. If you ever figure out who destroyed your fleet, there's going to be a reckoning.

His Mighty Crankiness is now master of more or less everything he surveys -- he's still missing England and bits of Spain, and he's only got tense alliances with the East, but most of what people traditionally call "Europa" is his territory now. He's gradually learned to trust you, putting you in charge of more and more important missions, and given you a freer and freer hand. He can be a drag sometimes -- in particular, he has gotten pretty stuffy about you killing people -- but in general it's been a hoot. You may not have quite as free a hand as you had as The Pirate Queen, but he gives you such *great* toys, including the biggest guns in the entire world.

Still, you get the feeling that he's mostly forgotten about his end of the bargain. He keeps telling you that he's working on it, and he probably is, but he's busy running his Empire. And you're nearing the end of the current Jump, and not getting any younger. If you've tracked the time right, the window should be opening in just a few days, and will be open for one month. You're impatient for a solution, so you can get things back to normal again. So it may be time to take matters into your own hands.

The news came in just a week ago, and it couldn't have been better: Amagog's Castle had reappeared, as suddenly as it had vanished. Already, various Sparks and adventurers were trying their hand at it, to get inside and take control of it. Klaus and his army were busy putting down a rebellion in the middle of France, so he couldn't do anything about it, but he decided to send his son Gil to look into it. You demanded to go along (and he knows perfectly well why), so he assigned you as a bodyguard to Gil, and to help him find out what was up with this Castle. He wants to know everything he can about Amagog, the Castle, and whatever else might be interesting here.

So you have your orders, and they're pretty specific:
* Highest priority is protecting Gil, from himself if need be. The kid is a headstrong eighteen, and pretty damned cranky himself ever since his fiancee got killed a few months ago.
* Second is following his orders: Gil is in charge, and you are to consider his orders as if they came from Klaus himself. Of course, you've never been too strict about how you follow Klaus' orders (it's not as if you're one of his little slavies), but you try to stick within the letter of the law.
* Third, don't kill anybody unless absolutely necessary. Klaus is a real spoilsport that way sometimes.
* And as always, keep your eye open for interesting technologies and phenomena, and bring any cool toys back to him. Especially interesting Constructs. Klaus is mad for biology, and he's always enchanted by interesting creatures that he can dissect. You've brought him back a lot of these toys over the years, and nothing makes him happier. But he's made clear that he wants the things intact -- he has been *very* unamused when you've brought back Filet of Squirrel-Ape and things like that. He wants these critters alive and well.

Meantime, though, you have your own priorities. You don't have much time to find a way to stop the Jumps and get back home, and if you miss this window, that's it for another ten years. You've tried to bone up on everything you can find about Amagog, but there isn't much. His original name was Friederich von Zinzer, and he had one kid before vanishing -- his descendants moved out to the Rock of Gibraltar, and they were the ones who had the Time Ruby when the Iron Sheik came and collected it. He had worked for the Storm King briefly a couple hundred years ago, before getting frustrated and setting off on his own. And he terrorized the nearby peasants around his Castle with something he called "the Perfect Construct", which you gather was some sort of big monster.

So who knows what you're going to find here. Hopefully, something to deal with the Jumps problem. If not, you may have to resort to nastier measures...
}}

{{Personality=On the surface, you are utterly carefree and cheerful, and you despise showing weakness to anyone. When you were very young, you sometimes wondered if you were a bad person for your enjoyment of killing. Now, you're reasonably sure that you are. Sometimes, you regret that -- there's a little part of you that is simply afraid of letting even a shred of decency through, and you despise that weakness in yourself: you wonder what it would be like to be "good". But what the hell: being the bad girl has certainly given you a good life.

You are very hard to anger: when someone pisses you off, you prefer to get as cold as possible. But you don't like being scared. On the rare occasions when that happens, you usually blow your cool.}}

{{Contacts=http://jducoeur.org/GirlGenius/klaus-icon.jpg
'''Baron Klaus von Wulfenbach''': The Boss, His Majesterial Moodiness, Rule of Europa, etc, etc. Really, a pretty tough son of a bitch, one of the few people who you really don't ever want to cross for real. He's a hell of a hand-to-hand fighter, but mostly he has the biggest army anybody has ever seen. That's enough to cramp your style pretty seriously if you get on his bad side.

http://jducoeur.org/GirlGenius/gil-icon.jpg
'''Gilgamesh von Wulfenbach''': Boss Jr. The kid's a halfway talented fighter himself, and not a *total* fool, but he doesn't have his Dad's stones, and he is *way* too trusting. He either has to learn to be a lot tougher, or he's going to lose that whole Empire. Raised with the Castle hostages, which probably has something to do with him being too sympathetic towards the underdog.

'''Boris''': Klaus' butler, a four-armed Construct. The very model of stuffiness, and perhaps the most fun person to mess with.

http://jducoeur.org/GirlGenius/wooster-icon.jpg
'''Wooster''': Gil's butler. Nearly as stuffy as Boris, with this whole More British Than Thou thing going on. He returned with Gil when he came back from finishing school in Paris, and you haven't quite figured out what his game is. You're pretty sure that there is more to him than meets the eye, though.

http://jducoeur.org/GirlGenius/jenka-icon.jpg
'''Jenka''': Gil's other bodyguard on this little expedition. She's a Jaegermonster, and probably the only one who isn't a complete nitwit. (Her real name is "Eugenia", and you discovered a few years ago that she *really* doesn't like it. So it makes a fine way to needle her when you are in the mood.) Jaegers are more or less immortal, and that makes them careless in some strange ways: frankly, most of them are better for comic relief than anything else, but they make good cannon-fodder. But Jenka is sharp and dangerous, one of Klaus' most prized agents. She is up to *something* here -- she insisted upon coming along on this almost as hard as you did. That has your curiosity up. What does she want out of the Hidden Castle? Is there something you can use in it? What's she up to?

http://jducoeur.org/GirlGenius/agatha-icon.jpg http://jducoeur.org/GirlGenius/helen-icon.jpg http://jducoeur.org/GirlGenius/baroness-icon.jpg
'''Agatha Heterodyne''': The great mystery. About four months ago, she was brought on board the Castle as a little nobody named Agatha Clay, the lover of a newly discovered Spark who Klaus wanted to use. Gil fell for her, and apparently even proposed. But it turned out that she was fooling everyone -- she was actually Agatha Heterodyne, daughter of one of the Heterodyne Boys and Lucrezia Mongfish (a sometime villainess and enemy of theirs, who has always sounded like a woman after your own heart). She escaped from the Castle, and you went with Gil to hunt her down. Turned out that she had gotten herself fried by some wandering Clank in the Wilderness, though, and Gil has been moodier than ever since then.

The weirdest thing, though, is that before you ever met her, you saw her, several times, simply appearing in strange holes in the sky. When you told Klaus about that, it clearly scared the hell out of him.

http://jducoeur.org/GirlGenius/moloch-icon.jpg
'''Moloch von Zinzer''': The Heterodyne girl's supposed lover. Of course, he wasn't *actually* a Spark: she was the Spark, and Klaus had simply screwed up. He was a cannon-fodder soldier in the wrong place at the wrong time, and for his pains he got shipped off to a fate worse than death in Castle Heterodyne.

Of course, it wasn't until much later that you found out Amagog's real name. It can't be a coincidence -- he's got to be a descendant, and might have been able to help you. Some of the stories say that there was a "reality stabilizer" in the keeping of the Amagog family, which he might know something about. And now he's completely out of reach. Kali take them all, these Westerners are such a *pain*...

http://jducoeur.org/GirlGenius/vonpinn-icon.jpg
'''Von Pinn''': The keeper of Castle Wulfenbach's rugrats. Klaus has a policy that you admire for its ruthlessness, although it's a pain in practice -- whenever he conquers some noble, he grabs their first-born and raises them on board the Castle, as a hostage to their parents' good behaviour. Von Pinn is part jailer, part teacher to the bunch of them. You don't know *what* the hell she is, but she's tough: strong as a Jaeger, and much smarter and nastier. You mixed it up with her in the Heterodyne girl's escape a few months ago, and didn't get to play that out -- Klaus gassed the both of you before it could go anywhere. Not someone to treat to a fair fight, though: if you ever need to take her down, it has to be in the back.

http://jducoeur.org/GirlGenius/theo-icon.jpg
'''Theopholous DuMedd''': Oldest of the Castle hostages, and Head Boy. Nice enough kid, and a good troublemaker in his own right. (Second best after Gil himself, when he was living with them.) Escaped at the same time as Heterodyne did, and you have no idea what happened to him after that.

http://jducoeur.org/GirlGenius/sleipnir-icon.jpg
'''Sleipnir O'Hara''': Your favorite of the kids -- a tomboy who was always up for anything. You took her under your wing a few times and encouraged her to make a little trouble in the Castle. She tried to run away with DuMedd, but didn't manage it; she's been stewing in the Castle ever since.

http://jducoeur.org/GirlGenius/z-icon.jpg
'''Z''': All the Westerners get scared by the length of his name (Zami Yahya Ahmad ibn Suliman al-Sinhaji -- really, it's not that bad), so he just introduces himself as "Z", and who are you to argue? He's the kid of the Iron Sheik, and he might just be your backup plan if you can't find something here in the Hidden Castle. After all, his Dad controls the Time Ruby. So if he just *moves* the Ruby a few hundred miles, it would cover your people. He wouldn't do that willingly, of course -- it would mean a few hundred miles of his own land starting to Jump again -- but if his son's got a permanent dagger to his throat he might be more willing to negotiate.

http://jducoeur.org/GirlGenius/zulenna-icon.jpg
'''Zulenna Luzhakna''': The hoity-toity Princess of Holfung-Borzoi, and the kid who always kind of got up your nose. Hell of a fencer, but doesn't have any idea how the world really works. When Heterodyne was escaping, Zulenna threw herself at you, all determined to stop you from preventing it. And in a fair fight, she might even have succeeded. But of course, a dagger to the heart kind of slowed her down. Klaus brought her back to life, but you hope she got the lesson that she is *not* as good as she thinks she is.

Now, she's off to claim her throne from her Poor Dying Father. Von Pinn is bodyguarding her (in a dress that is positively comical with her usual tight leather ensemble), as are Sleipnir and Z. You haven't seen them since they left Castle Wulfenbach a few weeks ago.

http://jducoeur.org/GirlGenius/beetle-icon.jpg
'''Dr. Tarsus Beetle''': The head of Beetleburg, the town where the Heterodyne girl was found, and Transylvania Polygnostic University. Got blown to bits that day. You understand that he's been replaced by his assistant, Dr. Silas Merlot.

http://jducoeur.org/GirlGenius/silas-icon.jpg
'''Dr. Silas Merlot''': New head of TPU. You met him once, when the Baron was visiting: he was a loudmouthed ass. But you've recently discovered that he's the biggest expert on Amagog and his work, so he may be someone you need to find, to help you figure out a way to stabilize your lands. With any luck, news of the Hidden Castle has brought him here.

http://jducoeur.org/GirlGenius/othar-icon.jpg
'''Othar Tryggavassen''': Klaus' arch-enemy, and probably the biggest idiot of them all. He fancies himself some sort of hero, and Klaus the big villain. He keeps attacking and attacking, and each time Klaus takes him captive, tries to experiment on him, and he escapes. (You first encountered him in Klaus' laboratory a few months ago, and he tried to get you to help him escape. Twit.) Another of your standing orders is to Deal With Tryggvassen. Klaus wants him alive if possible (he really, really wants to examine his brain, and figure out what makes him tick), but dead would do.

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'''Embi''': One of the strangest people you've ever met. Back in your days as an *active* pirate queen, before the Jumps started, you were out looting ships one day when you found this odd little passenger: a tiny black man who seemed more curious than terrified. You were charmed by someone who wasn't all that scared of you, so you threw him in the brig instead of killing him. Over the next month or so, you wound up talking with him a lot -- frankly, he was smarter than the pirates under your command, who were fun but kind of thick.

After a while, you let him out and gave him the freedom of the ship, as you compared notes. He claimed to be on a lifelong mission to see the whole world, no matter how long it took. You laughed and started to tell him just how big a project he had taken on -- his long face was worth sparing his life, all by itself. So you brought him home, gave him a good party, and set him on his way.

You sometimes wonder how much he managed to see. That was a long time ago (over 80 years, anyway), so unless he got caught in the Jumps himself he's long since dead. Too bad -- he was fun, in his weird way...
}}

{{OldToDo=DuPree needs at least one serious ally. Who? Lateral thinking is needed here. LATER: Answer proved to be [[Mirror-Agatha]] and [[Embi]].}}

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