Inner Peace (Through Superior Firepower) – Episode 049

[Whispri]

I don't know about anyone else, but I am getting so tired of Gillian.

When is the story going to go back to where the action is REALLY at?

I demand more Jillian in the next update! No more Gillian!

Just because the dead predictamancer got it wrong, once, is no reason for us to. :p

Well what did you expect, Faq never do anything.

With Wanda? It seems we're about to.

Gillian is superior.

Do I try and spoil your fun? She'll always be Gillian to me.

[Shai_hulud]

More like... Gilligan, amiright?

[effataigus]

I half suspect that Rob was poking fun at us with that line as we've been misspelling her name since time immemorial.

We'll know for certain when we hear about a side named Translovito ruled by King Osomer and queen Tremenndos.

[Sieggy]

Eeeehhhh . . . just had a nasty thought involving Charlie, Archons, and Dwagons . . . When Stanley was going to attack Faq, he would have lost badly had it not been for his fortuitous 'running into' a cwapload of dwagons that he was able to tame on his way there. It's been speculated that Charley had a hand in this.
Now we have Jillian, who encounters Archons, who (obviously) notifies Charlie. Charlie then offers to sell this info to Haffaton, who (Jillian is informed) declines the offer 'because she's not important enough', and the Archons depart into the storm. Shortly thereafter, Jillian 'runs into' a high move dwagon who can get her back home MUCH faster than moving on foot, and also refrains from eating her . . .
I can see Olive having cut a deal with Charlie, and I can also see her sacrificing a few of her troops to make it look good. Is it possible that Charlie pulled the same trick with both Stanley and Jillian, putting dwagons in their paths that they could make use of? And if so, either Charlie or Olive might have been able to track the dwagon, which answers the question of how Olive knew where Jillian was.
Now that Jillian is close enough to home for Haffaton to figure out where home is, Olive moves in for the recapture. If Olive cut a deal with Charlie, then I'm wondering if Charlie doesn't have some way of manipulating dwagons in a way that might come back and bite Stanley in the butt down the line?

[effataigus]

Now we have Jillian, who encounters Archons, who (obviously) notifies Charlie. Charlie then offers to sell this info to Haffaton, who (Jillian is informed) declines the offer 'because she's not important enough', and the Archons depart into the storm. Shortly thereafter, Jillian 'runs into' a high move dwagon who can get her back home MUCH faster than moving on foot, and also refrains from eating her . . .

As much as I like to believe every conspiracy story involving Charlie, I think you have the timing on this one backwards. Jillian found the dwagon before she ran into the archons. That said, there are a couple leaps of faith that you'd have to take to adopt this theory, and the leap that the archons were following Jillian under veil for a couple of turns before Jillian's dwagon found them would be a smaller leap than that Charlescomm gave Jillian the dwagon as a tracking device... IMO.

[bladestorm]

Eeeehhhh . . . just had a nasty thought involving Charlie, Archons, and Dwagons . . . When Stanley was going to attack Faq, he would have lost badly had it not been for his fortuitous 'running into' a cwapload of dwagons that he was able to tame on his way there. It's been speculated that Charley had a hand in this.
Now we have Jillian, who encounters Archons, who (obviously) notifies Charlie. Charlie then offers to sell this info to Haffaton, who (Jillian is informed) declines the offer 'because she's not important enough', and the Archons depart into the storm. Shortly thereafter, Jillian 'runs into' a high move dwagon who can get her back home MUCH faster than moving on foot, and also refrains from eating her . . .
I can see Olive having cut a deal with Charlie, and I can also see her sacrificing a few of her troops to make it look good. Is it possible that Charlie pulled the same trick with both Stanley and Jillian, putting dwagons in their paths that they could make use of? And if so, either Charlie or Olive might have been able to track the dwagon, which answers the question of how Olive knew where Jillian was.
Now that Jillian is close enough to home for Haffaton to figure out where home is, Olive moves in for the recapture. If Olive cut a deal with Charlie, then I'm wondering if Charlie doesn't have some way of manipulating dwagons in a way that might come back and bite Stanley in the butt down the line?

Unknown Archon ability... Dwagon form!

[Sieggy]

Ah, yup, you're right . . . I misremembered, thought Jillian had encountered the Archons before taming the dwagon . . . oh, well, that theory is shot.

[0beron]

I personally dislike the theories that chalk everything unusual up to Charlie. Yes he's powerful and all, but he cannot single-handedly be pulling off every instance of deus ex machina. We are in a world where Luck is actually a quantifiable resource which magic can manipulate, and one which has powerful mysterious forces of Fate. Erfworld is full of cause and effect, thus it is entirely possible that almost everything we attribute to Charlie is instead a manifestation of Fate and Luck.

Recall the opening of Book 0, and how it describes the MASSIVE debt Wanda's creation incurred. We can only assume the other integral characters ('Tool wielders, as well as perhaps Marie, Jack, and Jillian) also incurred similar debts when they popped. All of these debts and forces could interact and counter each other to result in extraordinary circumstances that further Fate's design.

[Lamech]

Wanda also had incredibly high stats (omni-caster and physical combat), so that possibly added to her debt. Hmm... I wonder if Stanley is an ultra-infantry just like Wanda is an ultra-caster.

[Zeku]

Where did we learn that Wanda had above average combat ability?

I was also under the impression that any fate debt Wanda had was already paid by events that occurred soon after her popping?

Is Wanda still insane, or is her whole Fate thing happening outside her head as well?

[Nakedkali]

I infer Wanda has better than average combat ability in that in the first combats she is in, she uses her staff, and most casters would not. Also, she knows how to dance-fight. In the scene at Gobwin Knob siege where she's doing MJ in the courtyard there might be a bit of artistic license, but she's drawn as leading from front and center. We've since seen in the book 2 that units in your stack can "screen" a unit, and stacks can screen stacks, but we don't know if they have to be physically there. It could be like other same hex manouvers, and they just say that's what they're doing.

Wanda's a rather extreme fatalist, so she still seems insane to me. Jack Jack makes fun of her, as a fool should, down in the portal room while they are waiting for Parson.

[0beron]

Delphi thinks Wanda's debt was repaid during her time in Goodminton, but I'm not so sure. And even so, what I was suggesting is that the repayment of the debt could have further reaching cause-and-effect linkages than is obvious. Just because her debt gets repaid doesn't mean there is no ripple effect caused by the events that transpired to pay the debt.

[Smoker]

Interesting this idea of paying a 'debt' to fate. Before Delphie's note, I understood the easy/hard way to simply be Fate determining the destination, and the unit determining the amount of hardship it had to suffer before it arrived there. Once Fate had been satisfied, there was no 'punishment' inflicted for a unit's disobedience.

So Delphie is either saying that:
A) There is a punishment - that, if you didn't follow the grand plan, Fate holds a little grudge and makes you suffer for a little while after the event ..
or B) Wanda needing to have her side wiped out and herself captured in order to have Olive as her chief was the 'debt', and is perhaps unaware of the time and suffering Wanda has since endured under Olive.

The term 'debt' kinda implies the first one, in my mind.

[0beron]

Well when you put it that way, I realize there may be 2 separate kinds of debt here! Wanda is a powerful unit who is full of Fated Purpose, which is what the intro of Book 0 refers to. Someone has to pay the price for such a mighty unit being brought into the world.
The debt that Delphi mentions in her note may be something entirely different, which could more appropriately be called "backlach", the price that Wanda herself pays for choosing the hard way. So, Wanda has paid her debt for her actions with Goodminton....but the real debt incurred by her very existence may still exist and is gradually being paid off in events that appear to be too lucky to believe.

[bladestorm]

Or Wanda's debt could have been partially covered by Jillian being popped. According to Delphie, the only reason she was popped was to fulfill part of Wanda's fate. That could be similar to taking out debt on a second credit card to pay off part of the first credit card. Then Jillian's actions could be wracking up even more Fate debt. Now you have both Wanda's actions and Jillian's actions pushing the numerical value nowhere near close to the 0 mark. And there's no telling how much debt Faq had to borrow to continue covering Jillian.

[StClair]

Cute bit at the start. Jillian didn't have problems with Predictamancy until she started getting powerful enough to have delusions of free will and being able to avoid Fate.

[Lamech]

I've always wondered something about predictamancy. When something is fated to happen. Say your side falling, would it be possible to "avoid" your fate by making it happen in the most friendly way to you possible? Say your side is doomed to fall! So you pop a heir. And make the heir go out and start a new side. Then the new ruler returns and takes your capital. Then you take it back. And everyone rejoins the same side. Since this is all preplanned you can make this happen fairly easily with no fighting.

Fate is fulfilled! Your side falls. But everyone lives, and you reclaim your cities half an hour after your side falls. Maybe you even get a new caster if the heir's side pops warlords.

Or Jillian with her ambushes. Carry around a few natural allies. If she is going to be ambushed, send out the natural allies ahead, have them break alliance and attack! Then after one attack reform the alliance. BAM! You "avoid" fated ambush.

[effataigus]

I personally dislike the theories that chalk everything unusual up to Charlie. Yes he's powerful and all, but he cannot single-handedly be pulling off every instance of deus ex machina.

I'm pretty sure one of the powers of the arkendish is to hack forum posters accounts and poo poo the righteous truths of those us that are on to him. *suspicious stare*

Well when you put it that way, I realize there may be 2 separate kinds of debt here! Wanda is a powerful unit who is full of Fated Purpose, which is what the intro of Book 0 refers to. Someone has to pay the price for such a mighty unit being brought into the world. The debt that Delphi mentions in her note may be something entirely different, which could more appropriately be called "backlach", the price that Wanda herself pays for choosing the hard way. So, Wanda has paid her debt for her actions with Goodminton....but the real debt incurred by her very existence may still exist and is gradually being paid off in events that appear to be too lucky to believe.

I think there are definitely two different debts at play here. One is for Wanda's crimes against fate... she tried to jump the chasm rather than lowering herself into it. The other I view more as a Fate analog to the conservation of energy. You can set the world aflame, but it is all using energy released and not energy created. We can make a reaction favorable in a closed system either by destroying potential energy (stored in the structures of the various sides) or by creating entropy. Wanda was fated to change the world much more than most units, so the world was going to have to burn or become a much more chaotic place (the world's energy debt for Wanda's fate). Wanda's kinda going for both at the moment.

I'm confident that there are two different kinds of debt here because I don't see how Delphie would know about the one that started book 0.

I've always wondered something about predictamancy. When something is fated to happen. Say your side falling, would it be possible to "avoid" your fate by making it happen in the most friendly way to you possible? Say your side is doomed to fall! So you pop a heir. And make the heir go out and start a new side. Then the new ruler returns and takes your capital. Then you take it back. And everyone rejoins the same side. Since this is all preplanned you can make this happen fairly easily with no fighting.

Jillian's intro to this update definitely suggests that this would be the way to go about it. However, I imagine that going through this song and dance would make me, like many people, grumpy with fate and how arbitrary it is being. I might choose the hard way on the grounds that it would spite fate as much as it spited me. Especially if we went through the routine only to have our predictamancer say "We're going to fall soon... again."

[effataigus]

Now that that post count is out of the way...

[ftl]

I've always wondered something about predictamancy. When something is fated to happen. Say your side falling, would it be possible to "avoid" your fate by making it happen in the most friendly way to you possible? Say your side is doomed to fall! So you pop a heir. And make the heir go out and start a new side. Then the new ruler returns and takes your capital. Then you take it back. And everyone rejoins the same side. Since this is all preplanned you can make this happen fairly easily with no fighting.

Fate is fulfilled! Your side falls. But everyone lives, and you reclaim your cities half an hour after your side falls. Maybe you even get a new caster if the heir's side pops warlords.

Or Jillian with her ambushes. Carry around a few natural allies. If she is going to be ambushed, send out the natural allies ahead, have them break alliance and attack! Then after one attack reform the alliance. BAM! You "avoid" fated ambush.

Maybe. I'm not sure if the natural allies thing would count as an ambush since you know they're there (and so it's not an Ambush), but even if it is, it doesn't mean you WON'T get ambushed again. Like, you could go and send them ahead and be fake-ambushed, re-ally, and then get ambushed *again* by your real enemies. Same thing with your side falling - yeah, that fulfills the prediction, but doesn't mean the side WON'T fall in some other way.

It's a way to get out of predictions you don't like, but it's not actually using the predictamancer to your benefit. As you said, maybe you reform the side and the predictamancer'll be like "Guess what guys, this side is gonna fall... I WONDER WHY, PROBABLY THE SAME REASON IT WAS GOING TO FALL BEFORE."

...ACTUALLY LOL WANDA ALREADY TALKED ABOUT THIS I JUST REMEMBERED. "When the prisoner chooses the easy way... she gets the easy way. But when she chooses the VERY easy way, she gets the VERY HARD WAY."


The right thing to do is probably to take the prediction at face value and work with it. Like, if it's Predicted that the side will fall, well, that sucks... but you can work with it. Pop a new heir to reform a side later - don't do silly tricks like trying to fulfill the prediction immediately, but make sure that when it happens, the casters are ready and escape to the MK, the heir is ready and has a site lined up to found a new side, and so on. Or, like the ambush - don't try to fake-ambush yourself, just be ready for an enemy ambush and maybe bring more forces than you usually would, or stay extra-alert, and so on. Maybe head in such a direction that your enemy won't be able to extrapolate where you're coming from and so on.

So yeah, that's my guess. Trying to avoid the prediction is futile, and that's the Hard way. Working with the prediction, you know it'll happen so don't try to prevent it but try to make the best of it, that's the easy way. Trying to "fake out" Fate appears to be the "very easy" way, but might lead to the very hard way.