Book 2 – Page 36

[Avalus]

First post for an reader since book 1 (Yay)

A truly great update!
I just love Jacks faces, well done Xin *3 mutated thumbs up*.

Sourmanders can be food.
Wanda can decrypt Sourmanders.
Food can be delivered off-turn.

You do remember, that decrypted Units turn to dust after croaking (which must be done to the poor sourmander to get some rations out of him). Would be a quite dry meal, I guess

[Polysanity]

you know, i had a definite answer to this last strip in mind when i entered this thread. then i started reading. i've been at it 40 minutes now, and have come to two conclusions:

A) this comic appeals to a subset of the populace that happens to think VERY much alike
B) Parson is a master-class EveryMancer. how else could he have surprised (fooled) Jack?

[robak]

If rations can be popped off-turn (and its not unreasonable, since you can "spend schmuckers" off-turn) and be decrypted into some kind of unit (undead roast chicken ftw) that might be an interesting food fight. Indeed food that is fighting.

[dirocyn]

All I got to say is: poor, poor Banana.

[valce]

Just wanted to say -- an off-turn capture of Spacerock would be sweet. I don't think it's the sort of thing that happens often in Erfworld since the attacking side would have to be pretty careless to end turn inside the enemy's city and the defending force would have to be quite careless to let their king get killed by off-turn troops.

It would cement GK's reputation

Also I hope somebody finds out about Parson. So far I don't think the Royals really know about him (Ansom did, but I don't know if he ever highlighted Parson's significance to his side)

[gazes_also]

Been marinading this one for a couple of days and I will now don my curmudgeonly contrarian hat.

I don't like the way this appears to be going from an overall plot view.
If Parson exploits the parley it then becomes clear that the one sure-fire unbeatable winning tactic is to lie at a parley, fake surrender and then ass-pull something completely unprecedented for the win.
Parson did it against Ansom, Jillian did it against Wanda. Please, not again, let's have something different, like Parson actually having some integrity.


It would also cement Parson as a Win-every-battle-lose-the-war general who will ensure total ruthless from his opponents in future.

[slb]

Parson did it against Ansom, Jillian did it against Wanda. Please, not again, let's have something different, like Parson actually having some integrity.

By that you mean he should act as insanely as the others ?

[asparagus]

Parson did it against Ansom, Jillian did it against Wanda. Please, not again, let's have something different, like Parson actually having some integrity.

Pretty easy really. All Parson has to do is persuade Slately to make Stanley a royal. Then they can all go back to having tea parties. Will make for a very short erfworld comic, but gazes_also has clearly predicted how this is going to end.

Actually breaking out of the sarcasm for a second, maybe Parson loses his "integirity" when he is under "duty". The expression on his face looked a lot like that when he had the sword of ruthlessness.

[MarbitChow]

It would also cement Parson as a Win-every-battle-lose-the-war general who will ensure total ruthless from his opponents in future.

Why do you assume that having ruthless opponents would hinder Parson in any way?
He's already assuming worst-case scenarios in all of his exercises, and then taking advantage of any non-ruthless actions that his opponents make.
If anything, there's a good chance that being 'noble' is part of being Noble - they might not be ABLE to change their way of thinking.

Queen Bea committed mass suicide rather than live ignobly.
In our world, Roman troops defeated ruthlessness + greater forces with ruthlessness + discipline + tactics.

Also, this is WAR. There are no such thing as civilians in Erfworld - every unit can fight.
In our world, the reason why it is better to wound an opponent than kill them is that wounded opponents drain a country's resources faster, urging them to end the war sooner.
It has nothing to do with 'integrity' or 'honor'. War is about expedience, and winning.

[effataigus]

Been marinading this one for a couple of days and I will now don my curmudgeonly contrarian hat.

I don't like the way this appears to be going from an overall plot view.
If Parson exploits the parley it then becomes clear that the one sure-fire unbeatable winning tactic is to lie at a parley, fake surrender and then ass-pull something completely unprecedented for the win.
Parson did it against Ansom, Jillian did it against Wanda. Please, not again, let's have something different, like Parson actually having some integrity.

It would also cement Parson as a Win-every-battle-lose-the-war general who will ensure total ruthless from his opponents in future.

Huh... I hadn't realized that Parley had been exploited twice already until you mentioned this. Good point! I wouldn't worry about it just yet though... it isn't clear that Parson's plan needs there to be a parley. It could just be that he knows that the parley will coincide with the last possible moment (giving Parson the most time to prepare) at which he can enact his plan.

Also, I wouldn't count Parson's exploitation of the Ansom Parley as a winning tactic since the net effect of the move was having Ansom die by some manner of blunt force (club, falling, twoll fingers) instead of volcano... largely iwellevant.

There's still so much we don't know in terms of decrypting through zone boundaries, decrypting food, summoning food off turn, foolmancy across zone boundaries... etc. I'm curious how much of this will be learn by seeing for us and how much of this will be learn by doing for Parson.

If Parson makes his opponents ruthless enough, perhaps war will become so terrible, or so absurd, that people will stop warring... epic win for Parson..?

[DevilDan]

Jill's use of the time warp strikes me as a minor violation of parley, at worst. And Jill was already far less of a slave to the obligations and conventions of nobility than other units.

[Direcoyote]

I'm in the Disband Drop camp also. IIRC the only troops on that section of the Garrison are archers. If the right units survive being dropped by disbanded dragons, then it'll be chaos down there.

Edit: The post above this one isn't the one I was agreeing to ><

[Welf von Ehrwald]

Parson did it against Ansom, Jillian did it against Wanda. Please, not again, let's have something different, like Parson actually having some integrity.

Pretty easy really. All Parson has to do is persuade Slately to make Stanley a royal. Then they can all go back to having tea parties. Will make for a very short erfworld comic, but gazes_also has clearly predicted how this is going to end.

Actually breaking out of the sarcasm for a second, maybe Parson loses his "integirity" when he is under "duty". The expression on his face looked a lot like that when he had the sword of ruthlessness.

It's impossible for Stanley to become a royal. You're either popped that way, or you're not. If it was possible, Stanley would have been promoted by Saline to avoid al those foreseeable problems with their neighbours.
Also, Parson does have integrity. Unfortunately, he is more than ready to put it aside for a victory. See the end of book 1. Duty just gives him an excuse.

[Calemyr]

When he says he'll wait for parley, I don't think he means he'll use Parley as a key to his victory, but rather a key to making his victory hurt more by acting right after the parley. Wait for the smugness, wait for the arrogance, wait for insult-to-injury offer of mercy, wait for the moment they are at their absolute most confident, and then turn the tables on them. Extra points if Parson gets to pervert their offer in the process. Optimal humiliation plus time to get all the players in order before the play.

[DevilDan]

Am I missing something? I don't believe we've ever seen disbanding in action. Do we have any reason to assume it isn't just a reverse "pop," meaning that the unit simply vanishes?

[nothrien]

This is what I'm thinking:

Spoiler: show

I actually don't think it has anything to do with food or bombarding enemy troops. I think it just has to do with moving units between enemy city zones when it's not your turn.

I think the exploit Parson is talking about is just a dirty and elaborate means to cross city zones using a combination of croakamancy and the falling mechanic. Falling does let you cross zones, as we know, but no one uses it for that purpose because units often don't survive the trip. Croakamancy gets around this. Units fall and die and can then be revived, except now they are on the ground and able to engage ground forces off-turn.

The problem here is that probably a large number of Wanda's forces are probably already decrypted and will simply turn to dust when they fall. But at least some of her forces are alive (I'm thinking of the dragons in particular). Anyways, once the units are on the ground on decrypted, they can start killing enemy units, who can then be decrypted too, like what everybody else has already been saying.

[Lamech]

Jill's use of the time warp strikes me as a minor violation of parley, at worst. And Jill was already far less of a slave to the obligations and conventions of nobility than other units.

No its a pretty dang major one. She lauched an extremely powerful spell, which rendered the GK units defenseless, during the parley. Its just about as bad as killing them all. Like in DnD, when a wizard casts his one spell and incapacitates all the enemies? Thats called winning the battle. Sure someone has to swing at the enemies some, but the battles effectively over.

If Parson spins this right he can make himself look blameless, especially compared to Jillian. He can either not accept the parely when there flying down; the Jetstone forces won't be able to really make out what the response is until there close. Or simply attack as soon as the enemy says "Well in that case we'll destroy you know". In the first case GK never accepted a parley, in the second Jetstone is clearly to blame for the lack of finding a peacable solution. Sure the royals probably won't tell the truth, but if there gonna lie it doesn't matter what Parson does.

[Welf von Ehrwald]

Am I missing something? I don't believe we've ever seen disbanding in action. Do we have any reason to assume it isn't just a reverse "pop," meaning that the unit simply vanishes?

Actually, vanishing is exactly what disbanding means, and we know that because it's explicitly stated canon. So you're not missing anything.

Edit:
PS: What kind of helmet does that Jetstone soldier wear in panel 8? That guy looks like a boy scout. Is he some kind of scout?

[lukewarm]

There are limits to decrypting (is that the terminology?)- I'm not sure what they are, but that was established right away, because otherwise Bogroll would be around. So the strategy of taking dinner-sized portions and decrypting them might not be available (nor something like decroaking something someone ate and is currently digesting). I don't follow this as carefully as most- a previous post just suggested that dead decrypted can't be redecrypted, is that true?

Is there any way for Parson to manipulate the terms of parley that will be offered?

So that's the army passing underneath them, too. Looks like they don't care all that much.

And has Parson gained some weight back?

[Sieggy]

Bogroll's body was burned by the extremely annoyed RCC forces, though I have to wonder why those who were incinerated when the volcano blew could be decrypted while Bogroll couldn't. Perhaps they scattered his body parts / ashes around enough that decryption was impossible . . .

And yes, those decrypted who get croaked again turn to dust.