I think the Jaegerdraught sounds far more Sparky than a decades-long breeding program.
Mmm, the question is whether they need breeding programs. Can a Spark create a construct that will reproduce its own kind? If so, then the original Jägers could have been constructed in the lab. They might have taken a while to produce a large enough population to use in battle, but there would've been other uses for them earlier. (It helps that, according to some hints, Jägers are apparently very long-lived; one of the wild ones mentions hunting with the Heterodynes about 200 years ago.)
And remember Phil is the grandson of a Jaeger, and he doesn't have Jaeger characteristics.
Except one: he always wears a hat.
Maybe Phil's a hybrid (or adopted, for that matter). Or maybe most Jägerkin are hybrids, and the blood thins out over the generations—that would explain why their appearance varies so widely. (Note that Phil's grandfather looks a lot more human than most Jägerkin.)
Here's a hypothesis. Hundreds or thousands of years ago, an early Heterodyne created the Jäger generals. They're big and tough, and don't grow old; but they're hideously difficult to create in the first place. So, they were created fertile, so that they could make more Jägers the usual way. Their half-human children turned out to be less, er, Jägerlich than they were, but still useful. Today, there are thousands of Jägerkin, all of them descended from the original generals. Those that have too much human blood are indistinguishable from human, and don't get conscripted into the Jägermacht. Hence Phil.
One problem with this: it doesn't explain the reference to "the ancient contract". Perhaps some other spark created the generals, and a Heterodyne suborned them—perhaps by offering them the ability to reproduce.
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Re: Details
Date: 2007-03-05 06:40 pm (UTC)Mmm, the question is whether they need breeding programs. Can a Spark create a construct that will reproduce its own kind? If so, then the original Jägers could have been constructed in the lab. They might have taken a while to produce a large enough population to use in battle, but there would've been other uses for them earlier. (It helps that, according to some hints, Jägers are apparently very long-lived; one of the wild ones mentions hunting with the Heterodynes about 200 years ago.)
Except one: he always wears a hat.
Maybe Phil's a hybrid (or adopted, for that matter). Or maybe most Jägerkin are hybrids, and the blood thins out over the generations—that would explain why their appearance varies so widely. (Note that Phil's grandfather looks a lot more human than most Jägerkin.)
Here's a hypothesis. Hundreds or thousands of years ago, an early Heterodyne created the Jäger generals. They're big and tough, and don't grow old; but they're hideously difficult to create in the first place. So, they were created fertile, so that they could make more Jägers the usual way. Their half-human children turned out to be less, er, Jägerlich than they were, but still useful. Today, there are thousands of Jägerkin, all of them descended from the original generals. Those that have too much human blood are indistinguishable from human, and don't get conscripted into the Jägermacht. Hence Phil.
One problem with this: it doesn't explain the reference to "the ancient contract". Perhaps some other spark created the generals, and a Heterodyne suborned them—perhaps by offering them the ability to reproduce.