Parson the Hippiemancer

[Maldeus]

You can't use Sizemore as a training timeframe; it's made very clear that he has no ability outside of his field.

Further, with any given skill, it is exponentially more difficult to get better as you get more experienced. The better you already are, the harder it is to get better still. This is true in real life as in video games. Potentially Sizemore already knows the basics of Hippiemancy, but not enough to be really useful. Parson could similarly pick up the basics of Hippiemancy in a week but not be able to get any further for months, even if he didn't have a war to fight in the meantime.

[surrealhorizon]

Parson is most certainly a Hippiemancer because he's The Perfect Warlord. As Sun Tzu points out, great strength wins battles but the greatest strength wins without battling at all. As Parson continues to grow into his destiny, he must transcend the perpetual combat of Erfworld and break the system. If Hippiemancy includes anti-war sentiment--and Sizemore's conversations with the Grand Abbey suggest that it does--then it's an obvious category for any latent magic in The Perfect Warlord. Also fits with Parson's name, a possible reference to clergy. (So what's Gotti? A possible reference to mobsters and rule-by-might: Parson's dark side.)

I very much look forward to seeing how Parson evolves. Casting away his Ruthlessness was a big step, I'm sure, but he's not done acquiring new powers. That's my theory as to why he can't see his stats: they're not yet decided.

[Bobby Archer]

Also fits with Parson's name, a possible reference to clergy. (So what's Gotti? A possible reference to mobsters and rule-by-might: Parson's dark side.)

"Parson Gotti" is also an anagram for "protagonist." As for parsons being a source of peace, remember that many wars have some religious basis. Just look at what decrypted Ansom wants to do.

[Anton Gaist]

I've been trying to figure out what will happen in Book 2. The Coalition suffered a mayor defeat, Stanley's side has come out of the battle in a position of power and with abundant resources, so the tide of this war has definitely been turned.

Parson as a Hippiemancer makes sense if you look at it as him having the potential to end all war in Erfworld, not by conquering it but instead pulling another massive "not it the rules" strategy into play.

Since he's just become the only Player in an NPC world, he can now do pretty much whatever he wants. So the question is, what will his choice be?

[Firefly]

Re: the comment that Parson's Mathamancy came from his bracer, not from him
- incorrect. The bracer (which was, you recall, just a plastic sleeve into
which his own calculator watch snapped) enabled him to be more precise, but
he's quite capable of doing at least rough mathamancy on his own. He
predicted (for Charlie) that his odds of not losing the city on that turn
would be about 3 to 2 IN HIS HEAD, then verified it on the bracer and
turned out to be accurate to 1.1 percent (58.9%).

Remember, Mathamancy is knowing *how* and *when* to apply the formulae, not
just being able to do multiplication in your head. Or, as Parson and
Sizemore put it, "Analyzing probabilities, predicting outcomes, AND the raw
calculations of that work."

I think a good case has been made for Parson being a signamancer. Wanda
told Parson that he, too, was "an instrument of Fate", and it was a 350k
schmucker Fate spell that summoned Parson to Erfworld in the first place),
which does seem to suggest Signamancy. But perhaps Wanda's just looking at
it from her own perspective as an instrument of Fate magic.

I don't think Janis was lying to the casters just to keep them from
twitching and blowing Parson up; I think someone like her would view lies
to be repugnant. She speaks in riddles and otherwise impenetrable truth
half the time anyway. Besides, as the *Grand* Abbie, I don't think she
necessarily *had* to give the casters any explanation at all to get them to
follow her directive - I think they have enough respect for her that if
she'd simply said "Don't kill him," they wouldn't. She's not a warlord, but
al the other casters seem to defer to her. A Peacelord, if you will.

So, taking Janis at her word that Parson is a Hippiemancer... I kinda like
the "datamancer" angle of Date-a-mancy (side note - a guy going by the
handle "Datamancer" makes the most AWESOME case mods for PCs I've ever
seen. Google "steampunk laptop" and you'll see what I mean). Parson, more
so than pretty much anyone on Erf, seems interested in learning as much as
he can. Part of that is by necessity, given his situation, but the
Strategery entry in his Klog shows his interest in and knowledge of
historical battles (Stalingrad, Battle of the Bulge, etc.) as well as
theoretical ones. Perhaps Parson got the Date-a-mancy spelling from
Sizemore, who didn't know that it really was datamancy, and perhaps having
never actually met a datamancer, didn't know what was really involved in
it. So, IF Date-a-mancy is actually Datamancy, and IF it pertains to
information in general (as distinguished from just calendar dates), then a
Datamancer he may be. A bit of a stretch, perhaps, but his clear
mathamancy talent (even if he doesn't count as one) suggests he may be more
aligned on the Numbers axis than the Fate one.

Or... given our reasons to suspect an alignment on the Fate axis too...
perhaps he's on all three.