Inner Peace (Through Superior Firepower) – Episode 039

[Lamech]

Perhaps a [Florist-Croakamancer] linkup can accomplish true resurrection.

I doubt it, because that would be as powerful if not more so than Decryption. Adding a Florist to the creation of an uncroaked would probably make it last much longer by replacing some of the bodily systems with plant anatomy, but it wouldn't be the same as truly resurrecting a unit.

A trimancer can summon a warlord from anywhere in existence and make him or her work for you. That badly outclasses the hammer at the very least if only for the reason that you could summon and enslave Stanley. Oh, and want to guess what anywhere in existence includes? The enemy overlord if she or he isn't a caster. Unless you just happen to have a unit to resurrect that is better than an entire sides set of casters, resurrection pales compared too, uber-summoning.

[Lamech]

*better get a 2nd tinfoil hat here*
If Erfworld is waking up, and the GK-zombcano is its eyes, then Erfworld has lava lake sclera! You heard it here first!

No the lips. Well GK is its lips, the lava is its insides. Hmm... ERFWORLD IS A VAST KIN! READY THE AIR CONDITIONING, THE ROIL IS COMING!

[ftl]

Tri-links can do anything. Like, if you can imagine it, a tri-link can do it. There's no limitations sans imagination and a little bit of thematic tie-in to the schools of the casters.

Well, short of destroying Erfworld, anything.

[Housellama]

Whoa. Very powerful update.

Haffaton-era Wanda was bonkers.

I wonder how long there will ultimately be between Marie's prediction and the fall of FAQ. Presumably there has already been some time passed, and there will be a lot more before Wanda defects to FAQ with Jillian and Haffaton falls (if it's in that order; it could be the reverse, for all we know) and yet more time with Wanda as a FAQ caster before Gobwin Knob steps into the void left by Haffaton and Stanley the Plaid comes calling.

Uhm. Current era Wanda is booping nuts too. She's just more FOCUSED and less obviously creepy about it. Go look back in Book 1 when she's been taken down by Ansom and is telling him to touch her with the Pliers. Look at her face in that strip.

Wanda is, to me, the scariest character in the comic. Parson's scary, but Parson has limits. Wanda... doesn't. She's already proven she's willing to do anything it takes to achieve her goals. She sold out her Side at least once. She worked with the Conspiracy to get Parson into the world. She was willing to blow off the love of her life to stay on the Side she believes she needs to be on. She risked dying and then some to get her hands on the Pliers, and now that she's got them, she has an even grander vision.

Wanda is completely, utterly bat-boop crazy. She makes Jack look like the poster boy for normalcy. She has common sense, at least in situations not involving Jillian, but never mistake that for sanity.

[Lamech]

Wanda is completely, utterly bat-boop crazy. She makes Jack look like the poster boy for normalcy. She has common sense, at least in situations not involving Jillian, but never mistake that for sanity.

She has common sense when it doesn't involve her insanity/major-issues. For example, note how current era Wanda has given up on her extra-circular spells schools? No more rhyme-o-mancy it seems, no hatamancy, no dollamancy. And those are just her confirmed areas. Presumably she has flower power and dirtamancy for the garden and lookamancy for the statue. I think that Maggie meant Wanda is a Novice capital N when she was talking about her. She hasn't used any of that excepting scrolls or powder.

[Housellama]

Wanda is completely, utterly bat-boop crazy. She makes Jack look like the poster boy for normalcy. She has common sense, at least in situations not involving Jillian, but never mistake that for sanity.

She has common sense when it doesn't involve her insanity/major-issues. For example, note how current era Wanda has given up on her extra-circular spells schools? No more rhyme-o-mancy it seems, no hatamancy, no dollamancy. And those are just her confirmed areas. Presumably she has flower power and dirtamancy for the garden and lookamancy for the statue. I think that Maggie meant Wanda is a Novice capital N when she was talking about her. She hasn't used any of that excepting scrolls or powder.

Good point, well made.

[StClair]

Holy boop.
(or unholy, as the case may be.)

Hey, the subforum header says "Reactions"...

[Mylar]

Heres some food for thought;
What if she wasn't only dreaming that she was the Erf, maybe she was dreaming that she was a Titan?
Maybe the old myths are wrong, and the Titans didn't create the Erf, one of them is the Erf?

[Avic]

Does anyone else find it odd that Wanda asks for Jillian's name, rank and side, but in the very last line of the update calls her "Jillian", despite Jillian never saying her own name? If she was apparently able to both see and hear Bart and Jillian while they were in the room, then she already knows all 3 details she asked for(Jillian herself mentioned Faq and identified herself as Bart's Chief Warlord in the last text update, and Bart said her name out loud), so why not start off with more important questions?

[Chance Gardener]

Ok, I just have to ask: why do so many folks say there is a tri-mancer link up in play?
According to the lore, a tri-mancer link is about impossible to break; if broken, it just about always leads to destructive feedback to 1 or more of the casters in the link.
It has been implied that it takes a skilled thinkamancer (though I suppose perhaps other Masterclass 'mancers might have a way to help break the link) to separate the linked three.

I can't imagine Olive putting herself into a tri-mancer link, or letting Wanda get stuck in one.
Also, I don't see where the text says there is a tri-mancer link in play, so this idea that there is one is puzzling.

As for Wanda's appearance, I rather imagine that Wanda is exploring not only Croakamancy but the other magical disciplines. As a result, she is slowly being "wasted" because she isn't tuned to handle the other disciplines on a regular basis (I imagine something similar to what happened to Drool Rockworm w/ the Staff of Law in the first Covenant trilogy). What we're seeing is Wanda being used up or twisted by other magical disiplines as she tries to understand magic, Fate, and her own powers as a Croakamancer. Perhaps this is why she tells Parson in Book 1 that other magic is hard.
As an aside to all these activities, she has also developed into a torturer and sexual sadist in creating her garden as part of an ongoing attempt to gain info on Haffaton so that she can take it down at some point.

I think maybe we'll find she views Jillian as the right weapon to implement her plans to destroy Haffaton and leaves her garden behind, becomes the fetching Croakamancer we see today, and rip apart Haffaton to live w/ Jillian when she learns about Marie.

[Saladman]

Does anyone else find it odd that Wanda asks for Jillian's name, rank and side, but in the very last line of the update calls her "Jillian", despite Jillian never saying her own name? If she was apparently able to both see and hear Bart and Jillian while they were in the room, then she already knows all 3 details she asked for(Jillian herself mentioned Faq and identified herself as Bart's Chief Warlord in the last text update, and Bart said her name out loud), so why not start off with more important questions?

Wand probably wants Jillian's full name for her stone. Too, and more practically, demanding obedience to an order Jillian has no inherent reason to disobey is probably part of the conditioning, since she's going to have other questions.

[Xorbon]

That dream at the start - was that some sort of natural predictamancy?

Also, I have trouble imagining how Wanda and Jillian could become friends or lovers after this. Super creepy. Maybe Jillian develops a kind of Stockholm Syndrome or something.

[effataigus]

Ok, I just have to ask: why do so many folks say there is a tri-mancer link up in play?

I don't think many people have. Sheepfly just pointed out some assorted bits of evidence to suggest it might be... which I found more interesting than compelling, so I ran with it and did some speculation on what a linkup between Olive and Wanda might do.

[drachefly]

If Wanda invented the graveyard, I don't think there would be a word for 'cenotaph' lying around waiting to be used.

On the other hand, language does seem to have come pre-formed such that there's no particular surprise to hear a new word so long as the Titans know it.

[Lamech]

Does anyone else find it odd that Wanda asks for Jillian's name, rank and side, but in the very last line of the update calls her "Jillian", despite Jillian never saying her own name? If she was apparently able to both see and hear Bart and Jillian while they were in the room, then she already knows all 3 details she asked for(Jillian herself mentioned Faq and identified herself as Bart's Chief Warlord in the last text update, and Bart said her name out loud), so why not start off with more important questions?

Good catch. However basic interrogation technique. She gets something small and useless out of Jillian AND can tell if Jills lies to her. Then she can set up a lie detector persona and get her foot in the door.

[Arky]

Whoa. Very powerful update.

Haffaton-era Wanda was bonkers.

I wonder how long there will ultimately be between Marie's prediction and the fall of FAQ. Presumably there has already been some time passed, and there will be a lot more before Wanda defects to FAQ with Jillian and Haffaton falls (if it's in that order; it could be the reverse, for all we know) and yet more time with Wanda as a FAQ caster before Gobwin Knob steps into the void left by Haffaton and Stanley the Plaid comes calling.

Uhm. Current era Wanda is booping nuts too. She's just more FOCUSED and less obviously creepy about it. Go look back in Book 1 when she's been taken down by Ansom and is telling him to touch her with the Pliers. Look at her face in that strip.

Wanda is, to me, the scariest character in the comic. Parson's scary, but Parson has limits. Wanda... doesn't. She's already proven she's willing to do anything it takes to achieve her goals. She sold out her Side at least once. She worked with the Conspiracy to get Parson into the world. She was willing to blow off the love of her life to stay on the Side she believes she needs to be on. She risked dying and then some to get her hands on the Pliers, and now that she's got them, she has an even grander vision.

Wanda is completely, utterly bat-boop crazy. She makes Jack look like the poster boy for normalcy. She has common sense, at least in situations not involving Jillian, but never mistake that for sanity.

Current Wanda is scary and obsessive and ruthless and divinely convinced of her destiny but I don't think that's the same as being completely crazy. Haffaton Wanda appears to have completely lost her marbles. The rest of "Inner Peace", logically, is going to be about how and why Wanda regained her focus, youthened up, caused the downfall of Haffaton and fled to FAQ with Jillian and got her head filled up with destiny by Marie (not necessarily in that order).

[Oberon]

Ok, I just have to ask: why do so many folks say there is a tri-mancer link up in play?

Because they are idiots. Really, it's just that simple.

The capacity of the forumites to conjecture that almost anything which has been shown, or not shown, in the comic as being the root cause of just about anything else, well, it defies reason. And no matter how often their conjectures are dispelled, they will continue with their baseless theories. There is no stopping them.

[sheepfly]

Ok, I just have to ask: why do so many folks say there is a tri-mancer link up in play?

Because they are idiots. Really, it's just that simple.

The capacity of the forumites to conjecture that almost anything which has been shown, or not shown, in the comic as being the root cause of just about anything else, well, it defies reason. And no matter how often their conjectures are dispelled, they will continue with their baseless theories. There is no stopping them.

I made the suggestion that it might explain a couple of vague details in the update - it seemed like a way to provoke discussion. Others providing literal-minded interpretations of the update and refuting truly baseless speculation is part of that discussion.

That said, Rob captured a dreamlike quality in this update, not just because part of it explicitly IS a dream and other parts of it incorporate Erfworld parallels to familiar Earthly ideas. He also employed stylistic choices that convey Jillian's state of shock and horror, emotional states which tend to elicit disbelief and mental retreat from reality.

And it's still deeply disturbing to think that Wanda & Jillian will become 'involved' after this initial encounter (and that BOTH will come to ENJOY their torture and interrogation routine)!

[effataigus]

And it's still deeply disturbing to think that Wanda & Jillian will become 'involved' after this initial encounter (and that BOTH will come to ENJOY their torture and interrogation routine)!

Eh, the human (and apparently Erfworlder) mind is an inexplicable roiling and sloshing sea of emotions... I say you ride whatever waves you can to pleasure island without worrying too much whether the wave makes sense... even more true when stds ain't no thing.

Ok, I just have to ask: why do so many folks say there is a tri-mancer link up in play?

Because they are idiots. Really, it's just that simple.

Welcome back to Reactions, Oberon! Good to see you, again. I was starting to feel like the forum bully without ya!

Not to be confused with zeroberon (with the Jack avatar), for any that haven't been reading for awhile... who is generally polite about our nearly perpetual disagreements.

...

I'm not sure if they've been mentioned, but other bits that suggest this might be a linkup:
1. This Wanda is preoccupied with surrounding the dead with life, and seems to feel remorse for killing... that doesn't sound like just-Wanda to me.
2. Wanda has no access to think-space to our knowledge, and creating a field like this would be a lil' extravagant.
... again, I'm not convinced this is the case... I just won't be surprised if it is.

[Kreistor]

Does anyone else find it odd that Wanda asks for Jillian's name, rank and side, but in the very last line of the update calls her "Jillian", despite Jillian never saying her own name? If she was apparently able to both see and hear Bart and Jillian while they were in the room, then she already knows all 3 details she asked for(Jillian herself mentioned Faq and identified herself as Bart's Chief Warlord in the last text update, and Bart said her name out loud), so why not start off with more important questions?

Good catch. However basic interrogation technique. She gets something small and useless out of Jillian AND can tell if Jills lies to her. Then she can set up a lie detector persona and get her foot in the door.

Wanda was the "Dollamancer". She heard Bart and Jillian call each other by name.