Book 2 – Text Updates 027

[Lamech]

3) I think I favor the "fate" or "Erfworld" or "Titans" explanation. That mysterious game master who can alter the world at will (something we have no reason to believe Charlie can do) to improve the game for its players. Which might also explain why FAQ's Predictamancer failed to know a powerful Dwagon force was inbound due to the side's Croakamancer's betrayal.

Parhaps the Hammer did it some how? Charlie certainly seems better able to use his tool that Wanda or Stanley, he can share some of its power and it gives him a whole division of magic, and his unit. The hammer gives a smattering of ablities; lighting, flying, rocking, bird to nut, and a unit. The pliers give a unit. I don't think it would be to unreasonable to think that the hammer pulled somthing off.

[SteveMB]

Stanley was surprised when this happened, and that should NOT be overlooked. He isn't a tactical genius, but he DOES have a very firm grip on the mechanics of the world. He was surprised that she turned.

Was he? He comments on how sudden it way, in the context of rebutting the notion (which he thought Z-Twoll held -- a case of projection, perhaps?) that Wanda had set him up. I don't really see how that indicates that Stanley was surprised that it happened, just that he considered it a significant indication that she was trustworthy.

In the middle of her side's turn, apparently unexpectedly. It seems almost certain that she set up Banhammer to be defeated- but then, duty and loyalty suggest that that should have been impossible or extremely difficult- see the recent comment by Maggie, talking about "at great personal" peril or something.
Do we have, in fact, ANY instance of a unit defecting of their own willpower? Seems to me we only know of turnamancy and capturing.

The fact that Jillian repeatedly tries to convince Wanda to do so indicates that it's at least possible -- admittedly, Jillian isn't the most realistic or objective thinker in Erfworld, but she isn't an outright idiot or lunatic.

So here's the conspiracy theory this screams at me. Wanda didn't turn. She wasn't captured. She broke alliance. Mid-turn. I think we have another case or two of that happening within RCC. As supporting evidence, consider that her units are fiercely loyal to, apparently, only her. Consider that charlie's archons, in response to orders from their true ruler, were able to render a client 'full service' as though they were units belonging to that client. Consider that the decrypted forces have a decrypted ruler- and that they have extremely few living units other than dwagons. So maybe nobody noticed yet that the living units were never getting Ansom's bonus. And consider that the decrypted army has a DIFFERENT emblem, apparently, than Stanley's newly-redesigned one.

Hmmm... I'm not sure I'm convinced, but you do make an interesting case....

[nothrien]

Count me in on the people suspecting Charlie is somehow behind everything.

We have two instances of natural allies turning, something Maggie has described as "very unusual", and we know for a fact that Charlie was responsible for one of them.

We have two instances where the spawn rates of "wild" units have been unbelievably off, and one of those instances is very probably due to Charlie.

We also have an unusual situation where Wanda, a croakamancer, sent a thinkagram to Stanley. Yes, she could have had a scroll or one of Faq's casters could have been a thinkamancer (though I find it unlikely that she would have trusted someone else to being part of that communication), but we also know that Charlie is the telcom giant of Erfworld and that he is regularly used as a go-between in communications between third parties. So he could have known about Stanley's planned attack.

And lastly, we know Charlie is not at all eager for Gobwin Knob to know that he is working against them.

Something about all this stinks. I think that Charlie had a huge, secret hand in creating Gobwin Knob, as we know it today, under the command of Stanley and not Saline I.V.. Why he did this, I'm not entirely sure, but I believe that, like Frankenstein's monster, it's something that got ultimately got away from him and he's now racing to contain them.

[TheMutant]

Also, we still have Stanley's as yet unexplained hostility towards Charlie.

Unexplained? I don't think it needs to be explained, seems pretty obvious to me.

Stanley believes all the Arkentools are meant to be his.

Charlie not only is holding onto one quite strongly, but he's attuned to it.

Natural conflict of interest here. :B Stanley wasn't best pleased when Wanda attuned to the 'pliers, but I think he could deal with it because Wanda's still technically on his side and under his command (as far as he and we know).

Awesome update. Love Zhopa's changing name throughout the text.

[Glenn]

Think about how this story fits into Wanda's belief system. Wanda believes the Titan's have a Plan for the Arkentool Holders. No one, not even the Arkentool holders themselves, can prevent the fulfillment of the Titan's Plan. This is why Wanda is sure she won't die in the Battle at Jetstone, because she is sure that the Titans will keep her alive somehow so that she can fulfill her part in their Plan. However, Wanda also believes that when the Arkentool Holders deviate from the path dictated by the Titan's plan, as she has unfortunately done at Jetstone, the result is unnecessary pain and suffering.
The story Stanley has just told us goes a long way towards explaining how and why Wanda came to believe in the inexorable nature of the Titan's Plan. As Wanda told Parson, she believed that Stanley was an idiot who could be lured into a trap at Faq. And she succeeded in fooling Stanley. If it hadn't been for the huge number of feral dwagons Stanley found on the way to Faq, he would have died, and the Arkenhammer would have fallen into Faq's hands. I think it's at least possible that King Banhammer knew and approved of Wanda's plan to capture the Arkenhammer. I don't see any reason to assume that Wanda originally planned to betray Banhammer or Faq. Even if she did think it possible that Banhammer would die, she would have expected Jillian to become the Queen after Banhammer's death.

I don't believe it can be an accident that Stanley found so many dwagons that day. Stanley has had a lot of experience capturing feral dwagons. If there just "happened" to be a lot of dwagons popped in the mountains around Faq, I'm sure he'd know about it.

So what went through Wanda's mind when she saw that Stanley had come to Faq with over twice the number of Dwagons he had when he left Gobwin Knob? I think she saw it as the divine intervention of the Titan's themselves. She had fooled Stanley, she had led Stanley into a foolproof trap, and the Titan's themselves had intervened to save their Arkenhammer holder by giving him all those Dwagons. i think she changed sides at this point because of her newly found conviction that despite Stanley's foolishness, it was the inexorable will of the Titan's that he survive.

[Ansan Gotti]

Nope still not enough. More than 10 dwagons dropped on the approach. If the air defenses look similar to book one Gobwyn Knob then most of the remaining dwagons in the air should have been injured. The infantry on the ground would have been lead by warlords with the monarch in hex. Even with low level warlords the bonuses would have added up. Stanley would not have known the exact location of the monarch.

You are making some awfully specific speculation based on really general game mechanics with no hard data.

Based on this text update, it seems clear that 15 dwagons = not enough, and 36 dwagons = enough. Enough for Wanda to turn immediately when she saw the writing on the wall (I believe).

I will also note that dwagons 11-36 would only be badly injured if they all followed in closely to the lead stack, which is another big assumption.

The predictamancer must have been involved. It is possible that the king was still safe from Wanda's uncroaked assault. The assassination would have deprived FAQs defenders of a monarch bonus as the initial combat started. The lack of a bonus increased the numbers of croaked for Wanda's first spell. Important parts of what happened are still missing.

Again, I think "must have been" is a pretty big overstatement, based on what little we know of the specific details of the battle.

[BLANDCorporatio]

No big surprises in this update, just as we expected- said Captain Redundant.

As for Charlie and the Endless Plot Device, count me among those who expect Charlie to NOT be involved in this.

Yes, there's circumstantial evidence that Charlie may have been involved.

However, I fully expect and hope that this will turn out to not be the case. It would be, imo, ridiculous to expect Charlie to not just be involved, but the driving force in everything happening in Erfworld. What about everyone else?

"Anything mysterious => Charlie did it" <=> fail.

[Ansan Gotti]

"Anything mysterious => Charlie did it" <=> fail.

Once again, you and I are of the same view, BLAND. Cheers.

[yuffiek]

Re: Wanda's apparent lack of Loyalty - She's said more than once that's she's loyal to Fate magic, not Stanley now, nor King Banhammer when Faq fell.

I'd like to know if Wanda originally popped in Faq or was just captured (the latter makes much more sense, I can see a flashback of Jillian on a merc job sacking the Croatoan Tribe, and capturing a recently popped Wanda)

Also, appropriate that the old Gobwin Knob livery is the Erfworld web icon gobwin.

[Kender Wizard]

Hmm. Little by little, the truth comes out. Hmm. I'm fairly firmly in the camp with those who think that charlies responsible for the excess dwagons. It may have been the titans, but I doubt that, even without the extra forces, that Stanly would have croaked. There is always retreat in the face of overwhelming firepower, after all. He's already proven that he has the capacity to run away There are a few problems I think though, with the idea that Charlie is involved here. Whatever this was, it had the power to dramatically influence the pop rates of dwagons within one turn over several hexes. If he did hire and link with a luckamancer, that would explain some of whats occurring now. See, having this done by caster fits the scenario pretty neatly. Check my logic pls. IF Charlie did hire and link with a luckamancer, he would be restricted to a degree by the casters amount of juice. Since kingworld, we know that casters can carry more than one turns juice at a time. The more powerful the effect, the more juice spent, while something less powerful could possibly be kept up indefinitely. So, if this is how it happened, charlie+luckamancer burned all available juice to pop as many reds and purples as possible, while not being repeatable for several turns. He could make the same deal here. Influence dwagon pop precentage for a few turns (i'd wager that, since dwagons are a more powerful unit, and their pop rate is lower than most other terrain spawns, that it takes more to significantly change their pop rate), or prevent gobwins from popping in a given area around gk indefinitely. As an added bonus, units (random included, presumably) only pop at the start of their turn. All Charlie would have to do is be linked up when the start of the turn (or whenever random units pop) and have a unit in the hex hes affecting to change the pop rates. Afterwards, he could break the link (if the 'dish allows for seamless creation and breaking of links with no backlash) and go about his business. All of this came to me when I was wondering why, if it is charlie, is he messing around with gobbos? Why not make dwagons impossible to find? Seeing as gobbos are likely the cheapest units available to the side that has them, their pop precentage may also be easier to mod.

[Chit Rule Railroad]

The planners of the defense of FAQ should have been able to count on the uncroaked dwagons fighting Stanley's injured live dwagons. Some of the 26 injured dwagons should have become uncroaked before the original 10 uncroaked got recroaked. Fresh uninjured megalowiffs, gwiffons, warlords and samurai stabbers would have been blocking the path to the monarch. And if some of the defenders failed they should have tried again as uncroaked. Stanley blundered into a very well defended valley.

If you can't uncroak a wienerrammer, I doubt you can uncroak a dwagon or gwiffon. Remember that decryption can operate on a wider range of units than uncroaking.

[splintermute]

Dwagons are wild units, not natural allies. Charlie has only been shown to have influence over natural allies. There's nothing to suggest Charlie affected the spawn rate of the dwagons. I'm inclined to believe it was either coincidence or Fate, Fate being the force that Wanda obeys that has the singular purpose of bringing the Arkentools together.

@Psychotic chicken - a major flaw with your extremely detailed battle analysis is that you're assuming dwagons are uncroakable. They're probably decryptable, but Wanda was surprised at being able to decrypt the Wiener-rammers, and we never saw any uncroaked spidews at tBfGK, which suggest that prior to the attunement of the pliers, dead mounts stayed dead.

The predictamancer, at the very least, had to be complicit in everything - she was the only one who could have sent Jack away.

[Cyanshine]

Ahahahahahahaha hilarious update!!! All those references!! ROFL!

And of course so much interesting information, although Stanley behaves in these text updates in a manner previously unseen, a whole new side of him!
I wonder if the desire of Wanda for power was enough for her to overcome her Duty and I wonder how the relationship with Jillian could endure such a grand betrayal. After all, he who has once betrayed shall betray again.

[build6]

If Charlie has the power to affect the spawning rate of feral units, that's an amazing power. Stanley was saying he was seeing a lot of dwagons, way more than usual. If Charlie has the power to do something like that, then it's gonna make last minute army strength increases real easy for himself (are Archons ever found wild and, err, "tamed"?).

It makes sense that Wanda might get the "imbecile" Stanley to come attack Faq with insufficient forces and get killed, then she can get the arkentool which she believes she will attune to (no reason for Banhammer to not let any of his casters check if they attune, and if they attune to not keep it, "in his service" - I'd assume Wanda's been able to not reveal her lack of loyalty previously).

So if Wanda contacted Stanley via Charlie (or perhaps not even through that? Charlie got into the eyeBooks, which had initially been thought to be secure... what if Charlie generally has the ability to spy on all Thinkagrams? that's gonna be a heck of an advantage for someone operating a mercenary force). The Arkenhammer has a fairly awesome power (taming dwagons), the Arkenpliers has an even more amazing power (the power of decryption is a game-changer well beyond taming dwagons), there's no reason to underestimate the power of the Arkendish...

Anyways, Wanda's "immediate decision to uncroak and rebel" seems mighty quick-thinking, though - she saw she'd be in the losing end and decided to immediately try to demonstrate loyalty? Wanda wasn't kidding when she told Parson that he didn't know the things she'd already done in order to try to get her hands on an arkentool...

So what went through Wanda's mind when she saw that Stanley had come to Faq with over twice the number of Dwagons he had when he left Gobwin Knob? I think she saw it as the divine intervention of the Titan's themselves. She had fooled Stanley, she had led Stanley into a foolproof trap, and the Titan's themselves had intervened to save their Arkenhammer holder by giving him all those Dwagons. i think she changed sides at this point because of her newly found conviction that despite Stanley's foolishness, it was the inexorable will of the Titan's that he survive.

[HandofShadows]

Anyways, Wanda's "immediate decision to uncroak and rebel" seems mighty quick-thinking, though - she saw she'd be in the losing end and decided to immediately try to demonstrate loyalty? Wanda wasn't kidding when she told Parson that he didn't know the things she'd already done in order to try to get her hands on an arkentool...

I go with this. I checked the end of book one and there is no indication that Wanda disliked Banhammer. I don't think that Charlie has the ability to effect spawn rates since that should fall outside thinkamancy. But Charlie COULD influance dwagons that are already around to hang around in certain locations for Stanley to find on his way to Faq. And I feel there is a good chance that he did this (I would think Charlie would keep his eye on anyone else with an Arkentool since if you have one of those you are now on "his level" of the game). Charlie is the master of everything Thinkamancy so I find it probable that he listened in on the communications between Wanda and Stanely. Since Wanda likely used a scroll and was not a Thinkamancer, she would not have noticed being easdropped on.

[oslecamo2]

"Anything mysterious => Charlie did it" <=> fail.

+2 to that.

Dwagons aren't natural allies. So altough Charlie has been shown to make tribes rebel and is strongly implied to be behind the lack of gobwins, there's no proof he can manipulate wild creatures.

I vote for the "luck" option. Stanley hit the jackpot. Sometimes s**** happens. Other times good stuff does.

I also vote for the possibility that dwagons had simply been acumulating on those hexes for hundreds of turns and Stanley just hadn't the time to explore the area before.

Who knows, perhaps FAQ was the one puting a "wall" of wild dwagons around their city to keep intruders away, and then Stanley shows up and tames them all!

As for Wanda, she was probably playing smart. Stanley shows up with an army twice as big as expected. What to do?
-Stay loyal. FAQ may still win with your help, but there's a good chance you'll be killed in the crossfire or Stanley will kill you personally for clearly trying to betray you in a last act of revenge.

-Betrayal. They won't see it coming. You know where the king is. Kill him now and he won't have any time to react. With him out of the way and with your uncroacked army Stanley can easily crush FAQ's defenses. Minimal risk of personal death.

So basically, she quickly adapted to take the option with less risk. She would rather turn to Stanley than die heroically helping defend FAQ from a dwagon rush.

EDIT:Did anyone notice the uncroacked samurai have GK's livery on their chest? I believe that's the supreme proof that Wanda turned to Stanley right there.

[noxharrington]

All those dwagons, plus Wanda's behavior recently (not cloaking herself in battle) lead me to this observation:

It must be really easy for Charlie to keep his manipulations hidden in a world where so many attribute everything that happens to the Titans.

[leshabirukov]

3) I think I favor the "fate" or "Erfworld" or "Titans" explanation. That mysterious game master who can alter the world at will (something we have no reason to believe Charlie can do) to improve the game for its players. Which might also explain why FAQ's Predictamancer failed to know a powerful Dwagon force was inbound due to the side's Croakamancer's betrayal.

Parhaps the Hammer did it some how? Charlie certainly seems better able to use his tool that Wanda or Stanley, he can share some of its power and it gives him a whole division of magic, and his unit. The hammer gives a smattering of ablities; lighting, flying, rocking, bird to nut, and a unit. The pliers give a unit. I don't think it would be to unreasonable to think that the hammer pulled somthing off.

I also have thought about this. Is it possible, that arkentools have their own will? Let's recall something:

...
LordHamster: You should be happy, though. Right? You're a Tool.
CharlsNChrg: I'm nobody's tool, Parson.
LordHamster: Oh? Not even the Titans?
CharlsNChrg: ...
CharlsNChrg: We'll see.
LordHamster: So you really don't buy into this big idea that attuning is a "new Titanic mandate?" Even though you're attuned.
LordHamster: That is interesting, Charlie. Almost more interesting than toilet paper.
LordHamster: Though my ass would disagree.
LordHamster: Stanley and Wanda seem to have this feeling that they're doing the Titans' will. But you don't think you are?
CharlsNChrg: It's possible. I suppose.
CharlsNChrg: But it seems at least as likely that they are choosing their own meaning. Writing their own narrative.
CharlsNChrg: It seems entirely plausible to me that attunement to an Arkentool has nothing at all to do with the will of the Titans.
...

It's supposed, that Charlie have Arkendish. Maybe he is the Arkendish?

All those dwagons, plus Wanda's behavior recently (not cloaking herself in battle) lead me to this observation:

It must be really easy for Charlie to keep his manipulations hidden in a world where so many attribute everything that happens to the Titans.

It must be really easy for the Titans to keep their manipulations hidden in a forum, where so many attribute everything that happens to Charlie.

[Lamech]

Anything mysterious => Charlie did it" <=> fail.

I fully support this.
Another idea, if the predictamancer supported this which seems likely, we have three casters from FAQ who decided to support GK. Plus the casters seem to have free reign over their rand supply. Could have say a caster from FAQ have used luckamancy or somesuch to influence the dwagons? Or hired one from the magic kingdom to do so?

I also have thought about this. Is it possible, that arkentools have their own will? Let's recall something:

I fully support this. Plus its a character on the cast page http://www.giantitp.com/comics/erfcast.html And it has taste in friends.

[mortissimus]

I don't think there's anything really unusual about it... I'd imagine that a dwagons have a low spawn rate, and the rate gets smaller the more dwagons that are in the hex... 3 may be a possible cap; so you'll never find more than 3 feral dwagons in one hex and the chance that you will get the 3rd spawn is quite rare... As such, If Banhammer never bother to croak the dwagons in the mountains around Faq, then in theory the dwagons would just keep spawning until the hit the spawn cap for the hex... And thus you would have multiple hexes filled with feral dwagons.

in theory, if Stanely decided to sit back and do nothing for 100 turns or so, the minty mountains near gobwinknob might be impressively filled with dwagons aswell

Makes sense, I like this theory as well.

Me too. In particular since a) FAQ relied on not being spotted by chance and high risk of chance encounters with Dwagons might lower the willingness to take a path that crosses FAQ and b) lots of Dwagons implies no side moving around there. Both great for FAQ, normally.