Erfworld thread IV: In memory of King Saline

[Winterwind]

I do think it's a bluff that he has enough archons nearby to get to Stanley before he gets home.
*analysis*

While he sort of implied that he'd use his own status as aerial power to take Stanley down, if necessary, he didn't explicitly say he had enough archons around to do so.

Here's my thought - we have already seen how powerful scrolls can be, if they are of the hundreds-of-thousands-of-Schmuckers-sort, and we have seen how powerful big link-ups can be. Link-ups, using Magic Kingdom casters, creating weird new spell effects and tons of money all being things that Charlie specializes in. What if he created - maybe for a cost measured in the millions - a scroll or a few that are, essentially, atom bombs? He wouldn't need a lot of archons in the area then - just one (keep in mind, they are sort-of-casters themselves, so they might very well be capable of using scrolls) flying into that hex and then destroying everything in it would suffice. He already hinted at having all sorts of things prepared that he never was forced to use before in the Book 2 Epilogue - right about now is the time where it might make narrative sense from the author's perspective to show that, so it doesn't come across as empty threats. And that might explain why he might not want to use this option, either, if he can avoid it - it would be extremely costly, and he probably wouldn't want people knowing that he can do things like that (lest he finds himself in the position of "biggest threat to status quo" and thus target of a massive coalition.

EDIT: Now, it almost certainly is not going to be exactly something like this - removing Jillian and Ansom both from the story right now would leave their arc unresolved, there is certainly more planned for at least one of those characters still - but it might be something more selective than that. In any case, I'm starting to suspect that one of the purposes of this whole scene might be underscoring just how dangerous an opponent Charlie actually is - it started with the hobgobwins-thing, but I'm not at all convinced it is not about to get a hundred times worse.