Queen's Wellspring

A Queen's Wellspring is a source of power for the Ancient God-Queens and is associated with a Queen's Flame. A place were a Queen's Wellspring arises is regarded as holy—or cursed. ✣ Bathing in or drinking the water from a Queen's Wellspring is very dangerous. Most people who try it will die. A few, with the proper physical or mental preparation and/or potential (possibly having a Spark) may live. Some of those who survive may be able to derive great power from the water, although if they can't control this power they may explode. Those who succeed in imbuing themselves with the power of the water then need to step into a Queen's Flame to somehow seal the power within themselves.

The spring that was the power source source of an defunct Ancient God-Queen and was the source of a Cursed Water outbreak could be used to power a Queen's Mirror, created by the Great Ancient Civilization.

Cursed Waters

Various substances, when added to a Queen's Wellspring, can contaminate it and produced Cursed Water or Cursed Waters. This is water with extremely deleterious effects, up to and including death, but also causing horrifying transformations. This term was first used in the comic by one of the Great Cetaceans. There may be a connection between Cursed Water and the the River Dyne.

Cursed Waters and the Great Cetaceans

Cursed Water is first mentioned (as Cursed Waters) by Ahnkokanth (a Great Cetacean, communicating through his Deepspeaker). He tells Agatha that they are "imbued with poison…and madness" and "corrupt… twist, and usually… kill whatever… swims there." The Great Cetaceans have been troubled by Cursed Water more than once over their very lengthy history. Recently, a new curse is spreading, which has corrupted the Great Cetaceans' Song Keeper, causing the rest of them great emotional anguish and mental distress.

Cursed Water and the Dyne

The effects of the Cursed Waters sound very similar to what the waters of the Dyne did to beings who inhabited it before Castle Heterodyne started using all of its special properties to power itself.

When Agatha is given a cup of Dyne water to drink, and zapped with some sort of energy jolt by the Castle-intellect currently inhabiting Otilia's body, she starts to undergo a process that appears to be very similar to ascending to Queenhood, but she instead channels off the excess energy to heal and cure Gil and Tarvek. As they all recover and return to (relatively) normal, she cheerfully notes that if she not done so, she would likely have "exploded or something". It is commented during all this that her ancestor Igneous Heterodyne did in fact explode, though it is not explicitly stated that he did so by initiating the same process.

And, of course, water from the Dyne is also an ingredient in the Jägerdraught, which is a key part of the procedure used to produce Jägermonsters. The trusted soldiers of the Heterodyne who are allowed to drink it risk a high chance of death and those who survive (almost) always undergo horrifying transformations (horrifying to others, not the Jägers themselves).