The Other War

The Other War is so called not to distinguish it from some better-known original Europan wars, but because the enemy (of pretty much everyone) was the mysterious Other. The first (atypical) battle, if something so apparently one-sided can be describe as a "battle", was an attack on Castle Heterodyne, in which the Lady Lucrezia (Mongfish) Heterodyne disappeared for reasons still unknown, and at least sixty-four people died as a result of the Other's attack — including infant Heterodyne heir Klaus Barry. The Other primarily targeted sparks all over Europa, working through slaver wasps and the resulting revenants, and managed to exterminate forty-three major houses and terrorize the whole continent. Bill and Barry Heterodyne are reported to have led the resistance while searching for Lucrezia.

The war ended about a year later (which is to say for unknown reasons the Other stopped attacking), concurrent with the Heterodyne Boys' disappearance, but after nearly two decades the aftershocks still haven't died away. Leftover revenants roamed the countryside until the Baron returned from exile in a very bad mood (and even after he eliminated those, there turned out much later to be a distressing number of sleepers); the disruption of the status quo must have been a major factor in the reigning violent chaos that prompted him to go conquering.

Print Novels

According to the prologue of Agatha H. and the Airship City, the Other seeded attacking swarms of slaver wasps by dropping them via parachutes from someplace Way Up High, followed by a bombardment of boulders upon the targeted Spark's lair and the surrounding countryside. Bill and Barry learned this by predicting and observing the attack on one Lord Womak, the so-called "Lightning Eater". They were able to kill the wasps, but the boulder bombardment went off as scheduled. Assisting in the clean up and recovery was the last time the duo was seen in public.