Gunnerkrigg Court

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.
Every symbol is significant.
Within the first week of my attendance, I began noticing a number of strange occurrences. The most prevalent of these oddities being the fact that I seemed to have obtained a second shadow.
Antimony

Gunnerkrigg Court is an Urban Fantasy/Science Fiction Web Comic by Tom Siddell about a strange young girl attending an equally strange school. The intricate story is deeply rooted in world mythology, but has a strong focus on science (chemistry and robotics, most prominently) as well.

Antimony Carver begins classes at the eponymous U.K. Boarding School, and soon notices that strange events are happening: a shadow creature follows her around; a robot calls her "Mommy"; a Rogat Orjak smashes in the dormitory roof; odd birds, ticking like clockwork, stand guard in out-of-the-way places. Stranger still, in the middle of all this, Annie remains calm and polite to a fault.

Meanwhile, Annie befriends the technically-minded Katerina Donlan, whose parents both teach at the Court. The two serve as foils for each other: Kat's energetic, outgoing personality plays off Annie's initial reserve, which enables much of their character development.

Kat soon gets roped into Annie's investigations of the Court's mysteries, but every answer they receive raises more questions: about the school, about their fellow students, about the woods just across the river, and about their own parents. Soon, they start stumbling on creatures and intricate symbols from all possible mythologies -- as well as plain old chemistry-- topped off by the Mesoamerican trickster god Coyote, who has his own designs for Antimony and the school premises. Throughout all this, Annie and Kat uncover the story of a truly frightening ghost woman, whose portrait is worshiped by Gunnerkrigg's crew of golem robots and who seems to be the key to some of the school's greatest mysteries.

Each chapter is a self-contained Story Arc. However, after several chapters, connections begin appearing between seemingly unrelated plot threads -- but the exact nature of their link remains tantalizingly (or frustratingly) unclear for now. Although the story draws on some dark childhood fears, there is more than enough optimism (both innocent and realistic) to offset it.

You should start from the beginning. Don't be put off by the style -- the comic's art evolves quickly.

The comic is also published in hardcover form.[1] So far, the volumes include:

  • Gunnerkrigg Court: Orientation (January 2009) collects the first 14 chapters.
  • Gunnerkrigg Court: Research (March 2010) collects chapters 15 - 22, plus the City Face bonus comic.
  • Gunnerkrigg Court: Reason (August 2011) collects chapters 23 - 31, City Face 2.
Tropes used in Gunnerkrigg Court include:

Setting

  • Academy of Adventure
  • Aerith and Bob: There are people named Surma, Antimony, Gamma and Zeta and Sir Eglamore as well as Jack, Janet, James and Andrew Smith, whose magic power is to make things orderly.
    • Well, Eglamore is his family name, and his given name is James.
  • Arc Number: 113. It appears many times across the comic.
  • Boarding School
  • Campbell Country
  • Circus of Fear: Mort's creation to scare Paz.
  • City of Adventure: Gunnerkrigg Court -- a school resembling an industrial complex the size of a city (with its own park!), just next door to a creepy forest.
  • Dark World: A dark city, the evil twin of Birmingham.
  • Eldritch Location: The Forest and the Court don't exactly fit in normal reality. For one, the Court is an enormous city, with multiple parks, lakes, and power stations, but it's virtually completely abandoned, and seemingly stretches on forever.
  • Extranormal Institute: The Court. Virtually everyone inside it is some manner of bizarre, or related to people who are. There seem to be a few baseline Muggles but they typically have oddities in their jobs, like Eglamore being a Dragon Hunter.
  • Floorboard Failure: Jones averts this by bypassing the rickety floorboards altogether.
  • The Lost Woods: Gillitie Wood.
  • No OSHA Compliance:
    • The Year 7 dorms.
    • The bridge to Gillitie Forest. It's wide enough to not be immediately dangerous unless people walking on it do something unusually stupid, and it lacks railing, since any shadow cast on it would allow the Glass-Eyed Men to cross it at night.
  • Raygun Gothic: The plot of Dr. Disaster's simulator.
  • Scenery Porn
  • Urban Fantasy
  • Spirit World: The Aether, which Annie enters when she uses her blinker stone.
  • Staying with Friends: Invoked but not implemented. Yet.
  • Where the Hell Is Springfield?: We've been given just enough information about Gunnerkrigg's location to know it doesn't fit anywhere on the map of the U.K.
  • White Void Room: The inactive holosimulator.
  • Wizarding School: The court is a subversion. Even though magic occurs on school grounds, the court considers any and all phenomena as scientific.
  • The World Tree: A Cherry Tree (from Gillitie Woods) in the artificial habitat room; it is there Annie starts to open up to Kat. In "Divine" there is a callback to the tree as a place where Annie can put aside her "mask."


Narrative / Themes

  • Aborted Arc: The paintings from Chapter 2: Schoolyard Myths, as seen in page 7 were supposed to be part of a sub plot, but Tom has since dropped the concept.
  • Absurdly Sharp Blade: The tooth Coyote gave to Annie in Chapter 26: The Old Dog's Tricks. On Kat's official sharpness classification, said blade is "Really damn sharp", to the point of cutting a shadow from the floor. But it doesn't cut Shadow himself, fortunately for him.

Coyote: The keenest blade you will ever find! Be careful with it, because it could cut the very earth!

"She died and we did nothing."
"The court grew from the seed Bismuth."

  • Awful Truth:
    • Annie and Kat learns that the founders, especially Diego, were responsibles for Jeanne's death in Chapter 25: Sky Watcher And The Angel.
    • Annie learns that she's responsible for her mother's death by her sole existence in Chapter 31: Fire Spike.
  • Batman Gambit: Mediation involves noticing hints and predicting people's reaction.
  • Blah Blah Blah: From Chapter 21: Blinking: "Chatter jargon strange words."
  • Blowing a Raspberry: A truly epic one starts in Page 21 of Chapter 36: Red Gets A Name, and goes all the way through Page 22.
  • Big Damn Heroes: Eglamore and Kat, on three separate occasions. Two were played straight, one was a subversion.
  • Body Motifs: Lots of emphasis on the eyes.
  • Brain Bleach:
    • Kat after meeting Ketrak.

"I need new eyes and a new brain!"

One day I saw a pigeon fall from a tree, its body twisted and broken from an attack somewhere above. It writhed on the floor in silence and eventually died. It had no expression, just as I have no expression. I have never relayed this story to anyone.

  • Break the Cutie: Chapter 31.
  • Breaking the Fellowship: Surma, Anthony, Eglamore, Anja, Donald and (presumably) Brinnie were one inseparable company as students and perhaps for some time later, but before the story started, Surma left the Court and broke all contact with the rest except Anthony, and it's unknown yet when and where Brinnie gone.
  • Brick Joke:
  • Bug Buzz
  • The Cavalry: The TicTocs
  • Chekhov's Gun: The etheric scar which Annie received from Jeanne's sword in Chapter 8 has been repeatedly alluded to throughout the story, as it remains on her face, clearly visible to all etherically sensitive individuals. Its true significance still remains a mystery.
  • Chiaroscuro
  • Clingy MacGuffin: Blinker stones...but only when the owner wants them to be.
  • Comically Missing the Point: Jones basically gives a compliment to Annie in this page comparing Shadow's open-mindedness to her's, but Annie still takes it literally.
  • Cosmetic Catastrophe: The results of Kat's first attempt to use makeup were not pretty.
  • Country Matters: Ouch.
  • Cringe Comedy: The strips of Jack trying to hit on Annie after he was freed from spider control were painfully awkward for the both of them and the audience.
  • Crossover Cosmology: Reynardine and Ysengrin are based off Reynaerde/Renard the fox and Ysengrimus the wolf, respectively, from Medieval European folklore. Muut, Coyote, and the Glass-Eyed Men are from Native American myth. There's also several ghosts, fairies, and, for good measure, a flashback montage featuring every psychopomp, ever. Chang'e, Brynhildr, and the Minotaur (of Chinese, Norse, and Greek mythology, respectively) have also made appearances.
  • Cryptic Conversation: Invoked by Coyote:

Antimony: Coyote, can you tell me, what is Gunnerkrigg Court?
Coyote: Why... It is man's endeavor to become God! How is that for an enigmatic answer?

Tom: Reminder: Coyote ain't your bro.

Bob: Hmm, there's a lesson in all this... (...) Never let sixty angry kids use a herd of laser cows to take over your house.

"Very impressive! And such a good view from down here!"

Coyote: What an interesting first union that must have been...

  • Hug and Comment: Chapter 32 ends with Annie and Kat hugging, and then Kat saying "Annie ... I love you and everything, so ... it is with love that I must inform you that you really gotta take a shower."
  • Humans Are Flawed: Chapter 29:

Paz: The Court isn't a big monster that does as it pleases. Es a collection of people, working to do what they think is right. And, over time, other people see what is wrong, what mistakes were made, and work hard to fix them.

  • I Need to Go Iron My Dog: Annie needs to go... find... a book. To the left. Or to the right. Whatever.
  • Important Haircut:
    • Both Annie and Kat start wearing their hair differently after the incident on the bridge.
    • Later, half a chapter is devoted to a visit to the barber.

Tom: Thank you for reading this chapter about girls getting haircuts.

    • Played with more than played straight.
    • Kat gets another one after her opinion about the Court changes in Chapter 29.
    • And once again, Annie and Kat have noticeably different hair after the summer holiday between chapters 31 and 32, Annie having grown hers longer than it ever was and begun to tie it back, and Kat having cut hers shorter than it ever was, accentuating the growing rift between them.
  • Inconvenient Summons: Parley, to herself.
  • Incredibly Lame Pun:
    • Kat completely unabashedly tossing off this line is just one of the many ways she's so very lovable.

"It may be empty but it's full of potential!"

    • Annie's attempts at humor are a bit more...forced.
  • Insult Friendly Fire
  • Interspecies Romance: Robots have a... tendency for crush on humans. But even other than this:
    • Sort of. Poor, poor Kat...
    • Reynardine, with an unrequited love.
    • Jeanne and her elf lover.
    • And Antimony's ancestors.

Coyote: I admire man's ability to see beauty in everything! Even a flame!

    • Juliette is interested in Kat's project about organic robot bodies because uhh… (INTENSE BLUSH).
  • Intoxication Ensues: Cherry-induced tipsiness.
  • Ironic Echo: Eglamore responds to the students' complaints about camping in the cold with "Good question. Night!" At the chapter's end, the sleeping arrangements have reversed, and Annie tells Eggers: "You know where the tents are. Night!"
  • Is That What She Never Did Tell You: Annie collected a heavy basket of this looking for answers in all the wrong places. Now this began to hit her, mostly in the face. When she finally talked with her mother's best friend directly, she made some... little discoveries. Like why Surma left the Court to never return, or related to Annie the tales of Coyote but didn't mention knowing him or say anything about other notorious inhabitants of Gillitie Wood she knew at least as well.
  • It Was a Gift
  • Jigsaw Puzzle Plot
  • Letter Motif: Gunnerkrigg, Gillitie, Good Hope: the letter G seems to be important. One wonders what this implies about Miss Gamma Czarnecki.
  • A Light in the Distance: Annie, lost and alone in the Annan gorge, sees a light on the opposite shore. Then it gets worse.
  • Limited Wardrobe: Averted. The characters wear all kinds of clothes, appropriately to the situation. And the two female protagonists even change their hairstyle regularly.
  • Literal Metaphor: Both Renard and Coyote repeatedly told Annie almost word for word "You have a fire in you, fire that belonged to your mother". This turned out to be not a runaway compliment, but a fairly straightforward, concise and accurate statement.
  • Living Emotional Crutch: Kat to Annie, Gamma to Zimmy, Annie to Renard.
  • Love Transcends Spacetime: Hello Parley! How did you get here?
  • Magic A Is Magic A: It's implied that all magic follows specific rules. So far, the best covered is Rey's Demonic Possession -- e.g. he's able to occupy a toy simply because it has eyes.
    • Reynardine is also bound in the wolf toy and forced to obey Antimony because it has her symbol on it, which is why he hasn't just jumped to something else.
    • Also, when Coyote gives away a power, it gains a side effect it didn't have when Coyote had it, like Ysengrin's artificial tree-body and his atrophied real body, and the fact that if Renard takes over a body, it dies when he leaves and the original owner is extinguished when he enters.
      • There's also the fact that any power Coyote gives, he can't use until he takes it back.
  • Magic Versus Science: Mostly because their philosophical disagreement between their practitioners. Ironically, mixing the methodologies seems to bring the most impressive results and according to a history lesson by Jones may have been the Court's purpose in the first place.
  • Magical Underpinnings of Reality: Where psychopomps are concerned.
  • Meaningful Echo:

"I'll save you, little girl!"

"Love makes you act in strange ways."

Antimony: We've seen worse. What about that cursed teapot?
Kat: Yeah, but that was... I.. I don't even KNOW what that was about.

  • Oh Crap: A Giant Enemy Crab Kat believes Annie arranged as an apology ? Creepy, but manageable. Noticing that Annie is staring in horror and clearly had nothing to do with it? Yeah, time to be scared. Complete with Wide Eyes and Shrunken Irises.
    • Kat's father is very happy when he realizes that the coded message Antimony's father sent makes sense once you include him saying Antimony's name at the start. Untill he realizes the Unfortunate Implications this has for an already upset Annie.
  • Our Demons Are Different: Reynardine, and Zimmy were called demons at some point. No guarantee in the first case it was not a popular simplification and the second was confirmed to be only an invective.
  • Our Dragons Are Different: Rogat Orjaks ("horned giant" in Slovenian) are explicitly stated to be dragon-kin, but not the same as "usual" dragons. One is quoted making a distinctly Take That remark on the subject of "those [common dragons]".
  • Our Fairies Are Different: "Regional Fairies" are so-called because they have spots on their shoulders showing which "region" they're from. They learn little kinds of magic (like rusting metal) and are said to come of age when they make their own clothes. "Red" and "Blue" are the only ones introduced in the main story. Others appeared only after becoming humans, as students in the Foley house.
  • Our Ghosts Are Different: Mort, the Ghost with the Sword, and the boy in the hospital are all different from each other. It will probably all be explained eventually. Also, a blind man's ghost mentioned by Kat in her letters over the summer break.
  • Overly Long Gag: Red's ridiculous reaction to Blue wanting to hang out with her lasts one whole page, dedicated to the Red simply going "PPPPBBBTTTTHHHHHPPBPTHTHHHH"
  • Paper-Thin Disguise: Annie said she was clearly a robot. Just look at her antennae! And robots never lie.
  • Parental Abandonment: After Surma's death, Annie's father sends her to Gunnerkrigg Court and then vanishes without bothering to tell her. We are told that she will not hear from him again for two years. Every so often we see beneath Annie's stoic facade to see how much this hurts her. There are hints here and there that he might have always been distant (to everyone but Surma).
  • Perspective Magic: Coyote uses this, being one of the fundamental trickster deities.
  • Pop Cultural Osmosis Failure:

Kat:"I love the Princess Mononoke look you got going on!"
Antimony:"My what?"

Diego: She died. And I did nothing.

Just like real cows! Only with lasers.

"Always remember one thing..."

Coyote: If you tell anyone in the forest about the tooth, even Ysengrin, this bind will snip off your hand.

  • Trickster Mentor: Seems to be the Court's established modus operandi, at least to a degree: it's the playground for the individual initiative, even if it's occasionally acting "against" the rules or teachers. The unwritten rules seem to include "It's your project, tell me when you finish it" and "Not Cheating Unless You Get Caught". They also teach reasonable level of cooperation.
    • They have security measures clearly designed to provide a reasonable level of challenge for students inevitably bypassing them, such as obvious and regularly hacked motion detectors, or security robots that we saw circumvented with tricks, hacking and plain outrunning -- compare this to their outrageously advanced and subtle technologies like the tracking system.
    • Giving less than waterproof mundane explainations for weird events with a straight face -- that's combined with teaching good enough to reap Mad Scientist grade inventions.
  • Unfortunate Implications: In universe: The first time Annie's father contacts her in years and it turns out to be a coded message. A coded message that doesn't make sense unless you include her father calling her name at the start of that message.

Annie: So... my name was just part of the message? He wasn't really calling me at all?

Antimony: She never loved you.

    • Reynardine's reply:

Reynardine: You are the reason Surma died!

    • Finally, Coyote's own revelation to Antimony:

Coyote: Don't tell me no one has told the girl she isn't exactly human!

    • When Annie tells Kat about her mother in Chapter 21:

Muut: The day Surma died...none of us came to take her.
Annie: I had to do it myself.

    • Annie's first word in her telephone conversation at the end of Chapter 36.

Annie:: ... Father?

Kat: Say, uh... I don't see him.
Annie: Do you want to?

Zimmy: It's only as real as you let it be.


Characters

For a more complete rundown, see the spoileriffic Character Sheet.


Meta

"Thank you for reading this chapter about girls getting haircuts."
"Thank you for reading this comic about magical boots and awful hats."

  • Double Meaning Title: All over the place with the chapter titles. One of the most prominent is the title "Fire Spike", which uses meanings for both the noun (a surge in power) and verb (to add a small amount of one substance to another) forms of "spike".
  • Fish Eye Lens: When things aren't quite normal and/or there's an actual camera involved, and to emphasize Annie's Heroic BSOD.
  • Flashback Effects: Textured backgrounds and rounded panel corners.
  • Foreshadowing:
    • Most of the stuff is related to the events and reveals of Chapter 31: Fire Spike. Chapter 3: Reynardine introduces us to Renard himself. At one point, he recognizes Annie as Surma's daughter, and is sad when he concludes that Surma is dead. At some other point, in a flashback in Chapter 18: S1, the one who is sad is Anja, after reading Annie's transfer letter. In Chapter 20: Coyote Stories, Coyote tells Annie of the origins of both the Court and Gillitie Forest. At some point, he says "There were some humans and creatures living on both sides. Many of the current inhabitants are descended from those humans". It turns out that Annie is a descendant from a fire elemental. From Chapter 21: Blinking, page 28: "The day Surma died, none of us came for her." and "I had to do it myself." From Chapter 23: Terror Castle of the Jupiter Moon Martians, Renard does a comment towards Annie: "You have a fire in you, child, a fire that belonged to your mother!". This turns out to be a Literal Metaphor.
    • In the bonus page of Chapter 11: Dobranoc, Gamma, Zimmy wants to chase spiders. Cue Chapters 27 and 28: Spring Heeled, where it's revealed why they need to be chased down.
    • In Chapter 18: S1, Tom, once again, makes a snarky comment about someone, this time it's Diego. ("You see he probably had a good personality") Cue Chapter 25: Sky Watcher And The Angel.
  • Girl-On-Girl Is Hot: Invoked by Reynardine when Kat and Antinomy are having a heartwarming moment. Plot point, too, because it's the reason Antimony orders him not to speak until she commands it.
  • Goggles Do Nothing: Averted, and then lampshaded in Tom's rant here.
  • Invoked Trope: In case Zig-Zagging Trope just isn't awesome enough, here's a recursion: Tempting Fate in What Could Possibly Go Wrong? way via intentionally invoking Tempting Fate and What Could Possibly Go Wrong? (as tropes), snickering.
  • Kudzu Plot: Comes with the Jigsaw Puzzle Plot.
  • Lampshade Hanging: Just take a look at this page.
  • Loose Canon: Bonus pages are distinctively one step away from the main continuity and may bring extra Exposition, or teasers, or comedy, or something wild -- or all at once.
  • Mind Screw: Samples this whenever the characters end up in Zimmingham, particularly in chapter 28 (which has triggered so much Wild Mass Guessing and speculation among the fanbase that it can only be described as the Epileptic Trees equivalent of the Cambrian Explosion).
  • Mood Whiplash: Much.
    • Chapter 6: A Handful Of Dirt - Our characters go from laughing their heads off to bawling their eyes out in a single page. Yay.
    • Chapter 19: Power Station - is dark and depressing, but still manages a genuinely heartwarming moment on page 468... then yanks the rug out from underneath Annie and the readers on the very next page.
    • Chapter 25: Sky Watcher And The Angel - "Oh no!" "A sad face!" "The saddest face!" Due to the phrase's use as an Ironic Echo.
    • Chapter 27: Spring Heeled Part 1 - A guard robot is the subject of a joke about learning to whistle--then gets Killed Mid-Sentence.
    • Chapter 30: The Coward Heart - Goes from being reasonably upbeat, to horrifying revelations about a character's death, then the same character trying to kill the protagonists... and finally then ends with two characters admitting their love for each other.
    • Chapter 31: Fire Spike - It begins with undefined unease, explodes into anger, and ends in tears.
  • Narrator: Two of them, Annie for the main story and Tea for bonus pages and announcements from Tom.
  • Never Trust a Title: Chapter 34: Faraway Morning (And Three Short Tales), where some characters tell three short tales. Sounds like a short chapter, right? It's the longest chapter to date thanks to all of the Character Development and plot revelations going on between each of the tales.
  • No Celebrities Were Harmed: Parley Sr. won millions of pounds for successfully completing the "Eugene Gould" Psychic Challenge.
  • Odd-Shaped Panel: Pages where Annie looks into the ether tend to have no panels borders at all. Even more trippy is when the etheric forms of characters themselves become the panel borders. Annie's flowing red hair goes from one "panel" to another, reconnecting with her head multiple times one one page. In "Fire Spike", the perspective starts to warp after The Reveal, in order to convey Annie's Heroic BSOD.
    • Frame Break: When Annie puts up a wall of flames between herself and the Court, it burns the panel dividers up.
  • Reclusive Artist: Tom Siddell, the author of Gunnerkrigg Court, is very reclusive. There are no confirmed pictures of him on the internet. He lives in Birmingham, and used to have a job as a graphic artist at an undisclosed video game company. He's pretty good friends with Magnolia Porter. And that's just about all we know about him. He is possibly the only Web Comic example of this trope, considering just how open you can be on the internet.
  • Running Gag: Tom's comments below each comic sometimes are variations of Epileptic Trees, the line "Oh. It's that guy." or "[Obvious event in-comic]! ([Obvious event in-comic])"

"If Jones keeps beeping like that people are going to get the wrong idea."

  • Schedule Slip: Not the webcomic itself -- Tom has maintained a 30-page Strip Buffer since day one -- but both published volumes didn't hit shelves until months after they were scheduled to come out. The delay of Orientation was bad enough that Tom thought Archaia was defaulting on the publishing contract.
  • Series Hiatus: Several times, each one lasting, at least, two weeks, and coinciding with the end of each book.
    • The first was after the end of Chapter 14: The Fangs of Summertime. In the timespan between this chapter and Chapter 15: Red Returns, bonus material and guest comics filled that void.
    • The second hiatus occured after Chapter 22: Ties, and this time it was the Omake City Face, featuring the titular bird.
    • The third hiatus happened after Chapter 31: Fire Spike, and, like the second time, it featured an Omake of City Face, City Face 2.
  • Shout-Out: Check the page.
  • Shown Their Work: Attention to fine details in itself became yet another layer of fun. If something looks dubious, usually this get fixed by more research on the viewer's part. Mongolian draw and archery bracers? Baby pigeons? Canine skulls? Moon pools? A girl musses her hair up after removing the hair tie? Check-check-check...

fan 1: Well, this is the same guy who knows that baby pigeons look really bizarre.
fan 2: New theory. Tom knows EVERYTHING.

  • Silent Scenery Panel: Often used to signal scene transitions.
  • Sliding Scale of Silliness Versus Seriousness: Entire chapter can be either silly and hilarious or serious and downright horrifying. Compare Chapter 24 to Chapter 27-28.
  • Speech Bubbles: A subtle example of Medium Painting: the background color in speech bubbles is different for different characters.
  • Stealth Pun:
    • Jack got HIJacked.
    • A very subtle one. One of the strips is just a random collection of real photos. One of the pictures is of a mineral called Stibnite (it's easily identifiable by it's bladed crystal habit). Not only is that briefly mentioned as Surma's maiden name at one point, there's also the fact that the mineral contains an element that isn't found in many minerals; Antimony.
  • Strip Buffer: A nice thick one of 30 strips.
  • Take That: A regular occurrence.
    • This, directed at someone who complained that the flashbacks weren't made obvious enough. There were a few "helpful" notes for those who get disoriented by the Art Evolution, take jokes too literally or both at once.
    • Tom's reaction to a weekend of speculation that Jones is a robot, months after Reynardine told Annie that she isn't.
    • The second panel of strip 540 is hard not to interpret as a Take That against the fans who speculated that Jones was the third girl in the photo after Tom Siddell quite clearly said that she wasn't.
    • "City Face" -- placing the birdspeak into the beaks it belongs to. If it's not enough, there were Fourth Wall-dissolving comments (Tom said more than once that he doesn't like Leet Lingo and internet loonies).
    • One at our very own wiki, via formspring.me:

"Here it is. The best page of Gunnerkrigg Court."

  1. For those interested in minutia, this isn't the first print version of GC. Back in 2006, Tom published the first seven chapters as a paperback through Lulu.com's print-on-demand service. This is the reason for the "Treatise" page at the end of Chapter 7. This paperback was discontinued months before Orientation was announced.