Book 2 – Page 102

[thegoofromspace]

http://www.erfworld.com/book-1-archive/?px=%2F118.jpg

Here's one place where we've seen the Parch effect before, but effataigus says there are two. Not sure where the other is.

[splexis]

http://www.erfworld.com/book-1-archive/?px=%2F118.jpg

Here's one place where we've seen the Parch effect before, but effataigus says there are two. Not sure where the other is.

Here's the other (twelfth panel): http://www.erfworld.com/page/16/

[effataigus]

http://www.erfworld.com/book-1-archive/?px=%2F118.jpg

Here's one place where we've seen the Parch effect before, but effataigus says there are two. Not sure where the other is.

Here's the other (twelfth panel): http://www.erfworld.com/page/16/

Those were both of the ones I was remembering. Thanks!

[teratorn]

General 1: I've got a cunning plan! We pack all our tanks with explosives, drive them into the enemy capital and detonate them!

Strawman. The dwagons had no problem reaching the hex, Parson didn't ask permission to do siege attack, and dwagons were only vulnerable to archery, those needed could be shielded long enough to get the deed done, not all dwagons needed to be sacrifficed. Once the hex was cleaned wanda could be sent there and mass decroak it, and start sweeping unlead hexes with dance-fighting uncroaked.

Having said that, looking again at the this late strip, the exploit wouldn't work. The scale of this explosion was only possible because these are decrypted, when they die as a result of their buddies going off they turn into ash and their gas adds to the explosion. A regular dwagon would get parched not releasing its gas to the explosion.

With three warlords in the siege attack in book one, there could be at most three explosions much smaller than this one, probably not enough to wipe an entire hex.

[Frosted]

I'm very curious to see what she meant by "I win". Did she survive a second longer and thus count as capturing the Garrison?

I will believe Sylvia is dead when I see her dust and not before! I don't care that she is on fire, I don't care that she is immobilised in the middle of the courtyard that's on fire....

You also apparently don't care that she DID dust, as evidenced by the classic "PARCH" sound effect that her legs dissolved into.

After sleeping it over, it seems that the intent was to convey that she thinks that she won by being the last thing alive in the zone. She is unaware of the golem+Ace.

[oslecamo2_temp]

So I would maybe there's a very very narrow window for combo attacks, they basically have to be attacking simultaneously for them to happen. That didn't happen in the first instance, whereas it did happen here.

Indeed, it was specifically averted:

The cloud floated straight up and away...

That just suports my point even more. Against Artemis the poison gas forms up in a cloud and harmlessly floats away in a split second in the middle of attacks being thrown around (because I'm pretty sure neither side paused for the gas to dissipate). Even Artemis troops that were in melee range with the dying green dwagons could care less about the gas being released in the area.

Against Ace, the poison gas spills around (instead of instantly floating up and away in a split second) and now, extremely conveniently, actually reacts even with the distant enviroment (it doesn't poison Artemis hounds at point blank range, but it reacts with fire several meters away, yeaahhh). And reacts more devastatingly than it ever did on the comic to boot.

The part where decrypted dwagons are now leaving body parts behind just pile in the evidence that the author is now just making up events based on whatever seems shinier.

[teratorn]

The part where decrypted dwagons are now leaving body parts behind just pile in the evidence that the author is now just making up events based on whatever seems shinier.

Who do you think you are? (sorry couldn't resist, those kind of posts crack me up). I only see one dwagon part, it might be from a non-decrypted dwagon or part of one decrypted that is still alive (but then it should be one of the reds). The rest of the chunks I recognize are Sylvia and burning cloth golems.

My take is that greens were all dusted, releasing their gas and adding to a mega-explosion, something that Sylvia couldn't have really antecipated, since no one was used to fight with decrypted green dwagons.

I'm not sure Sylvia isn't recoverable, she stopped talking so she's incapacited, but she's not dusted.

[youngstormlord]

Awesome update! As I said before, Parson's 'just another battle!' is 'pure hell!' for any other warlord. I wonder what will happen next.

P. S. I finally updated my fanfiction with the scene I wrote a month ago. I felt inspired to write more, but then realised it needs serious editing before submitting. Keep up the good work, Mr Balder.

[splintermute]

Compare and contrast panels 5 and 6 with:
http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0464.html
and
http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0465.html

and also with the ending of the awesome Ewan McGregor movie Shallow Grave.

[bladestorm]

So I would maybe there's a very very narrow window for combo attacks, they basically have to be attacking simultaneously for them to happen. That didn't happen in the first instance, whereas it did happen here.

Indeed, it was specifically averted:

The cloud floated straight up and away...

That just suports my point even more. Against Artemis the poison gas forms up in a cloud and harmlessly floats away in a split second in the middle of attacks being thrown around (because I'm pretty sure neither side paused for the gas to dissipate). Even Artemis troops that were in melee range with the dying green dwagons could care less about the gas being released in the area.

Against Ace, the poison gas spills around (instead of instantly floating up and away in a split second) and now, extremely conveniently, actually reacts even with the distant enviroment (it doesn't poison Artemis hounds at point blank range, but it reacts with fire several meters away, yeaahhh). And reacts more devastatingly than it ever did on the comic to boot.

The part where decrypted dwagons are now leaving body parts behind just pile in the evidence that the author is now just making up events based on whatever seems shinier.

Looks more like a pressurized system with a series of eruptions than a single green exploding with the force of a small tactical nuke. Gut the first green to make him rupture, and he blows up in a small explosion that probably only took out the LFN and whatever happened to be within the AoE. In game terms, they probably have mini-hexes the size of the unit, and the eruption caught everything in an adjacent mini-hex. The way Sylvia had them packed in there, bearing down on the dollamancer, it probably took out at least one more cloth golem, two more greens, and a red. Those two green erupted with the same force, setting off a chain reaction. The Friendly Pyre effect looks like a central explosion, surrounded by newer explosions that are in the process of expanding rapidly.

Individually, such an explosion may not be that bad. Cram a bunch into a small area, and you get chunk salsa real quick. It also accounts for the multiple sound effects and explosions all around the garrison and up into the throne room.

As for the burning dwagon parts, not all of the dwagons were decrypted. At least one green on page 96 is depicted as not decrypted. Panels 3, 5 and the one closest to Ace in Panel 9.

So really, not much of a huge change in the rules all of a sudden.

Too bad I let my Tool membership lapse. The panels that got redone may be very interesting.

[pearl jam]

Sylvia- "But only slightly less well-known is this: never go in against a Sicilian when death is on the line! Hahaha! Ahahahhh-"

[Chit Rule Railroad]

I know some are bored with this discussion, but I find it interesting how carefully this explosion was set up in the text and the art.

All I know is that this Archon must've been doing some precision cutting to avoid setting off this Green Dwagon: http://www.erfworld.com/book-1-archive/?px=%2F069.jpg

The siege raid was micro-managed by Parson, so naturally the green dwagon had delivered all the damage it possibly could and was out of gas.

sanjmerchant: I don't see a Red Dwagon breathing fire in that panel.

But with a remaining warlord Parson could have wiped the entire hex just by ordering her to gut all greens and ignite them. Even the siege thing wasn't needed, just send all the warlords and green dwagons into the hex where Ansom and all the coalition leaders are, gut them and ignite them. Problem solved.

The RCC1 column was in open air. Given that the art emphasized that the Spacerock explosion was taking place within a structure, I imagine that the walls of the atrium keeping the gas confined contributed to causing detonation rather than just deflagration.

Under certain conditions, mainly in terms of geometrical conditions such as partial confinement and many obstacles in the flame path that cause turbulent flame eddy currents, a subsonic flame may accelerate to supersonic speed, transitioning from deflagration to detonation. The exact mechanism is not fully understood, and while existing theories are able to explain and model both deflagrations and detonations, there is no theory at present which can predict the transition phenomenon.

Note the second sentence in the quote above - even if Parson knows as much about military hardware as Ace Hardware, as of the present day in Stupidworld, creating a thermobaric bomb is a matter of trial and error. Parson can't afford to do that kind of experimentation with dwagons.

This in addition to what teratorn noted about the dusting of the decrypted dwagons aiding quick dispersal and mixing of their breath.

Plus, we don't know if decrypted dust is more like ash or more like fish meal (dehydrated flesh), which would tend to be flammable/explosive in itself.

previous engagement....three "opened up" green dwagons worth of gas around.

In addition to the line, "The cloud floated straight up and away", the end of that update also specifically shows that GK had been using pink dwagons to put out any stray fires set off by the reds.

[tgriff02]

Well, that was very well done.

I've got to say that I am really pretty pissed off at Parson at this point. He's done absolutely nothing of any tactical intelligence whatsoever since ordering the riders to harvest their mounts way back at the start of the battle, and his followers are getting killed in droves due to a series of situations that he should have seen and avoided.

The fact that a stack of leaderless, Croakamancer-less Archons were able to take out Slately, Ossomer and a good chunk of their stack is all the proof we need that had Parson displayed the intelligence he did all throughout Book 1 this battle would've been over a long time ago.

I'd like to see a little more tactical brilliance from the guy in order to explain just why he's suddenly gone from being an unsurpassed tactical and strategic genius to somebody who charges into battle without a plan or even remembering to order Wanda to hold in Spacerock in order to maintain her absolutely vital bonus.

Well, techincally, Parson has pointed out several times that he has been TRYING to make use of his usual brilliance, and his cats just refuse to herd cooperatively. From Maggie interveining to have him promoted to CWL instead of someone AT the battle to give the needed bonus, to Jack deciding to bring down the tower, to Sylvia torching the city; his minions keep trying to be masterminds.

[My2Cents]

So, Sylvia's fate armour wears off when there's no friendlies left to die for her?

[effataigus]

To both take liberty and paraphrase:
Olescamo2: "Rob is criminally inconsistent and unrealistic!"
Chit Rule: "Rob is amazingly consistent and realistic!"

Fate has been pretty heavy-handed recently, but Rob also seems to want to make Fate into a kind of character in Erfworld, and to do so he needs Fate to throw its weight around pretty aggressively. If he doesn't then there will always be convoluted statistical arguments making the claim that there is no fate... just numbers sticking together in the reality batter.

I just hope this ends more entertainingly than the last story I read where the author made his own pen into a character.

So, Sylvia's fate armour wears off when there's no friendlies left to die for her?

Tis my best guess as well, though it could also just be that Jeffti's spell inserted her into one of those "fated" moments that had to happen. Having just happened, Fate is off the hook on keeping her alive. Or, you know, maybe it's all just numbers sticking together in thereality batter.

[Noigel]

So, Sylvia's fate armour wears off when there's no friendlies left to die for her?

Interesting concept! Though I bet there is no distance limit to the dice rolls that luck can steal. I think she served her purpose and Charlie let her cash out... which may mean that Charlie has a good view/intel on the state of the battle...

[Beeskee]

Re: Green dwagons:

Their breath is explosive. They don't randomly detonate when croaked, only when an open flame or active red dwagon breath is nearby.

Normally red and green dwagons are a great pairing, as the greens can engulf a target with their breath and the reds can detonate that. The only problem was Sylvia's recklessness in keeping them too close together, as others have said.

We see Parson using the breath combo in Book 1: http://www.erfworld.com/book-1-archive/?px=%2F050.jpg

ALRIGHT, WE GET IT, JACK IS GOING TO DIE. You've done enough foreshadowing now.

(I'm not really serious; it's probably just that I've read too much TVtropes. But is anyone else getting that sense? I mean, he doesn't really seem to have any purpose here except to die, and narratively it's been made pretty clear that Parson needs to learn the harsh realities of war.)

I'm pretty sure that Jack is either going to die soon, or the author is toying with us.

[Saladman]

ALRIGHT, WE GET IT, JACK IS GOING TO DIE. You've done enough foreshadowing now.

(I'm not really serious; it's probably just that I've read too much TVtropes. But is anyone else getting that sense? I mean, he doesn't really seem to have any purpose here except to die, and narratively it's been made pretty clear that Parson needs to learn the harsh realities of war.)

I'm pretty sure that Jack is either going to die soon, or the author is toying with us.

I don't see it myself. Jetstone's forces have been pretty well depleted, down to just Clone Slately and a few infantry. Versus a larger stack with decent Leadership plus modest Chief Warlord bonus plus Parson's tactical sense. But enough people do see it I guess I need to consider it. I suppose... Parson's bonus is still low, and the unhappy decrypted might fail a morale/loyalty check? Shoot - now I'm starting to see how it could happen. I just hope it isn't a self-fulfilling prophecy rather than something scripted.

[Beeskee]

I certainly don't want Jack to die. He adds a lot to the story, and has been an important part of it for a while now.

I'm really just hoping the author is toying with us. Which he does. Remember how folks thought hippymancers were weak?

[bladestorm]

Jack could very well die. Or there could be something to Parson considering if he has any ability in a melee fight. In most genres, spell casters absolutely suck in melee combat. Wanda is one of the more talented casters we've seen, and she has proven quite capable in combat. Melee may not be her forte, but she is far from useless.

For Jack, I could definitely see him being able to feint, distract, and disarm a single opponent in melee-- maybe even producing a stylishly thin blade from his cane. At the very least, he could set up an opponent to start over-extending and going off balance. Eight-ball to the head may work, too.

Casters may be just as capable in melee as any other unit, but that doesn't play to their strengths ad puts them in danger. Most rulers would not want to endanger a prized caster by sending them into melee... unless they were Slately being careless with his dollamancer. Yet one more reference setting up an endangered caster. Evidence exists on both sides f the argument for whether or not Jack dies here.