Erfworld 158 - tBfGK 145

[BillyJimBoBob]

Many answers, but many many more questions. Some of your answers seem to be flawed, too.

Fully agreed on the many more questions... And I'm sure my speculations can't be all correct, but the list of facts seems to be accurate, based on the strips.

Decay status may only be observable by a croakamancer, maybe even only the one that created the uncroaked. Maybe Wanda knows because she is attuned to the 'pliers.

Perhaps Wanda knows about Ansom's lack of upkeep from some other source of info. Perhaps no uncroaked have upkeep costs (just decay rates). Perhaps it is information imparted to her as a result of her attunement with the 'pliers.

It is Parson who first states that Newsom has zero upkeep. He does say it as a question, but people do that all the time when presented with something which they can see is different than they expected. But regardless, he says it while looking at Newsom through his 3D glasses, so it seems clear that he is observing Newsom's stats which included a lack of upkeep cost. Wanda affirms that he is correct on the point of no upkeep, also while looking at Newsom.

I think the point was that they knew Ansom was still a Lvl 10 warlord, so they had to know he was a Lvl 10 warlord prior to croaking & decrypting.

Indeed.

Or Ansom described the enemy Chief Warlord to his war council. Kind of a good idea, tactically. That way he can give an order to target the Parson if the opportunity becomes available without having to describe him on the spot.

That would require that the weiner-rammer rider had also described Parson to all of his troops. Which while possible, stretches belief. There comes a time when it is impractical to expect all of your troops to recognize one person amongst a few thousand enemies. In our world, prior to the information super-age we are now in, a soldier could recognize an enemy general by the simple fact that he had on a fancy uniform with plenty of braid and medals, even if he had never seen a French Marshal before. He wouldn't know that it was Francois Lefebvre (for example), but he'd still be able to figure that it was an officer, and probably a high ranking one. Parson doesn't wear a uniform.