There is a new charecter introduced this week: Otto Scratsburg, the lovable unshaven German drifter who was hired on as a pilot.

Back during our character concept planning days, we overlooked the need for a pilot. We knew that we wanted Angus the Coal-Shoveler. We also had a concept for the Professor's assistant and we were proposing an older cockney type to join the crew; these two characters were combined into Alexander Thronsbury. Katharina Meyer and the Metallic Butler were two charecters who were imagined perfectly from the start.

But we overlooked the need of an actual pilot for the dirigible. It was rectified. Otto was also visualized not that differently from how he turned out. We did a little research into dirigible military usages. They were used frequently for scouting and carrying messages during the Franco-Prussian war. The timing of the war puts Otto in his sixties. We figured he would be more likely to be Prussian than France, probably from a region that would later be Germany. Considering Saltine's last-minute need of a pilot, we knew that many of Britian's finest would be unavailble, so Otto became a drunken lout who stumbles from town to town telling his war stories.