First of all, I have to clear something up.

I have no theories. I just don't believe things unless I have enough evidence to think it's reasonable. My only reason for thinking Wanda won't get the pliers is because I don't have enough evidence to believe it.

Moving on:

Quote Originally Posted by Kreistor View Post
There's one. There may be no leadership in the area to make the order. That was part of my reasoning. We're down to only 2 major commanders from the feast table the night before. Orange Girl is at Ansom, but can she order troops of another nation if she is not acknowledged as the RCC Commander? Even if she is, we never saw Ansom giving orders to non-Jetstone units, only non-Jetstone Commanders. There's no evidence Orange Girl can order Sofa King units to retreat.
When the leader's die, someone is going to end up taking charge. The next person in the chain of command is going to become the leader, and is going to be able to issue orders. Even if all of the higher-ups in an army were killed, some sergeant or other lower rank could just as easily take charge. An entire army is not going to sit idly by just because their CO got killed. Someone in the ranks is going to decide to take charge.

The Coalition as a whole is going to start to fall apart anyway now. With Ansom gone, there's nothing holding it together. Some factions will leave, others will stay. But there has to be no chief commander to make decisions for the entire army in order for one faction to retreat.


So why does he work with Charles. Charles and Stanley are identical in everything except ambition -- both rule sides, both have an attuned Arkentool. both are not royalty. If your theory was true, then Ansom would never consider working with Charlie.

And I don't agree that Ansom would loathe anyone for it. He would consider them upstarts and take them down, but dispassionately, and as a chore. He wouldn't hate someone for it. Hate is, after all, a weakness. Ansom feels righteous anger, not hatred, or that is what he has to tell himself in the morning to make sure he remains superior.
Charlie is less a ruler and more a CEO of a business. He controls a powerful mercenary force of Archons. He doesn't rule a kingdom. He is completely different from Stanley in that respect. Also, there is a strong case that Stanley came to power through regicide (79/4). This alone would be enough to make Ansom despise Stanley.

Alternate explanations again. It is also consistent with an Ansom that would rather forget how he got the Pliers in the first place.
It isn't an alternate explanation. It fits far better than yours. Ansom is not trying to forget how he got the Pliers. His face (122/9) definitely does not have an expression of guilt. Guilty people don't look directly at the person they feel guilty about. They turn away from them or unconsciously put something between them. Ansom is looking straight at Wanda. That expression is one of disgust or fear. Again, crazy people creep people out. Just pretend for a moment that Ansom is not guilty at all at that moment. If you were him, would you want to touch Wanda with the 'pliers? I doubt it.

Again, alternate explanations for individual mysteries are not interesting to me. I can give you many possible explanations. Vaarsuvius teleported in and blew it up among them. The point for each mystery is that they can all be explained by one event.
But your theory doesn't explain all of them. You still haven't adequately explained how the 'pliers would have ended up in FAQ in the first place. If they were, how did Ansom know about them? Stanley might have, as he might have had the Thinkamancer and Lookamancer at the time. But FAQ was a town in the middle of the mountains. Jetstone had no such units, or they would be using them currently. How would Ansom have known how to go to FAQ?

But no knowledge of Faq. If there were no Arkentools in Faq, why would he attack it? Others feel that the War started when Stanley started hunting Arkentools. If Stanley was in Faq, then it is reasonable to say that an Arkentool was in Faq. So that puts either the pliers or dish in Faq. Dish makes no sense at all, and explains nothing. Pliers explains everything.
See above. Ansom would have had no knowledge of FAQ either, and would have been less likely to know about it as he has apparently never had anywhere near the kind of Caster setup GK had. Stanley might not have even wanted an Arkentool at FAQ. He could have wanted the casters there. Stanley could have found FAQ with the Lookamancer, seen the Foolamancer and Wanda, and decided to capture them. An alternate explanation that works when your theory doesn't.

How did Ansom get them? How did Stanley get teh hammer? Charlie the dish? Some information is not important enough to spend cels on.
Yes it is. If there is no feasible way for Wanda to get the pliers in the time since Jillian went on her last mercenary mission, how could they possibly have ended up in FAQ?

I really think you have Faq confused with someplace else. King Banhammer of Faq was no dictator. 82. The soldiers are like clerks. The Warlords treated like crap. He wanted a philosopher-prince for an heir, not a sword-wielding berserker. If a real army attacked, he had nothing to defend with. He would have had to call for aid. And who near Faq had firepower capable of flying through the mountains that Faq needed to help defend the nation?
Alright, yes. I wasn't clear on that, sorry. I was pressed for time on my last post, and I didn't have time to research this correctly.

Banhammer wasn't a warlord, fine. But he's still a dictator. Anyone who thinks their society is Utopian, and works to keep it that way, is a dictator. Socialism is, basically, "From every man according to his ability, to every man according to his needs." It is the perfect model of a Utopian society. This works great in theory, but in practice it doesn't work at all. The Soviet Union was definitely not Utopian, and was headed by dictators at several times.

Also, if Banhammer had called for aid from Stanley, why did Jillian get a frantic message about "a large overflight of Dwagons" and then become a barbarian the next turn (83/1)? Why did the message include nothing about getting attacked by Jetstone forces, and then about the Dwagons coming to save the day? If the message were about the Dwagons coming to save the kingdom, why would it be frantic?

Opposite of what? Jillian's beliefs? Those are based on a bare minimum of circumstantial evidence, so hardly factual evidence. Wanda's failure to inform her? Jillian made a great spy in RCC: telling her the truth would only gain Stanley a warlord that could never work with his ego and incompetence. Jack has been linked or crazy the entire story, so wouldn't tell us anything about Faq. No one else has ever mentioned the events in Faq, so there's nothing else to be the opposite of. Of course, I might be overlooking something. Care to present a source of whatever I'm the opposite of?

If anything actually contradicted me, well, I'd love to see it: my theory would be wrong and I'd need to rethink. Page and frame, please. Not asking you to do anything that I haven't.
83/1 does. Once again, why would the message have been frantic about a large overflight of Dwagons, and why would it have included nothing about Jetstone troops attacking the town? It would have had to have been a fairly massive Jetstone army in order to defeat that many Dwagons.
And that's not even considering the logistics involved in moving a massive, most likely ground-based army across mountainous terrain. I say ground-based because most units are not Jillian. She, while mounted on a Gwiffon, can kill a Dwagon. But I doubt a normal soldier could do so. You would need an extremely large force of Gwiffons and soldiers in order to take out the Dwagons and destory FAQ.
So really, there was no viable way for a Jetstone army large enough to defeat a flight of Dwagons in one turn to reach FAQ anyway, and if by some miracle of logistics it did, why would the message not have mentioned them?

So, why did Stanley become involved with Faq? It wasn't for Arkentools: that obsession came later. It wasn't to conquer: the place was annihilated, and dwagons don't conquer in the first place -- they destroy. It wasn't to annihilate, or Wanda and Jack wouldn't have worked for him unspelled afterwards. So why did Stanley go to a place that issolated itself from everyone, didn't bother anyone, and was not allied with his enemies who were equally unaware of its existence?
You just said that he didn't go to FAQ because the the Tools. The only motivation I can find that works is the casters. Stanley, if he was in possession of the Thinkamancer and Lookamancer at the time - which is quite reasonable - would have been able to see Jack and Wanda at FAQ. He realized that they would be very powerful, and decided to capture them.
We have also seen that Jillian was dissatisfied with Banhammer's government. We can therefore assume that others would have been dissatisfied. It is quite possible that Wanda and Jack could have gone over to Stanley willingly, as they wanted a change from Banhammer.