Erfworld 144 The Battle for Gobwin Knob, Page 131

[HandofShadows]

One thing I have learned in this world is there is Honor and honor. Many times Honor goes by another name, EGO. Just look up "honor killings" if you have have time, but it will not be pleasant reading. Or a more personal example is there was a person who lied about something and had been lying about it for some time. In fact she used this lie to beat down on other people (she claimed special/confidential knowledge of a situation). Well I discovered the truth of the matter and started spreading the evidence around. This person claimed I had birsmircher her Honor by stating she was lying. This sort of "hornor" is very common.

Then there honor. This is where a person fullfills comitments, is honest and tries to do the right thing because it's the right thing. This kind of honor is quite and it is proven by small quite actions, not loud words and offers to go dual someone. To often these "honors" get mixed up. :(

[BRC]

Basically, I'm tired of a major player in the story having motivations so nebulous that any action he takes or fails to take can be made to fit. Charlie's not a character, he's just a plot device. When it's convenient for him to gamble, he gambles. When it's convenient for him to take the sure thing, he's all about eliminating negative outcomes. He's nearly omnipotent, yet he'll always do exactly what the plot calls for. And we can never say he's acting out of character, cause Charlie's wacky and unknowable! :-(

Actually, Charlie's motivations are perfectly scrutible in this instance, he want's to benefit as much as possible. He wants Parson and his Mathamancy bracer working for him, and if possible, he wouldn't mind the Arkenpliers.
Charlie is far from Omnipotent, he's just got good thinkamancy, and firepower superiority. I don't think Charlie has really "Gambled" at all so far. Once he got involved in this beyond his simple capacity as a mercenary, he's been guided either by his own profit, or his mercenary contracts.

[Hatu]

Ansom's weakness is that he has trouble seeing things outside of his view of the world (look at how he responded to Jillian's revelation of her past, say.) To him, it was inevitable that Parson would surrender to him, so he accepted it a face value.

And if Parson had presented himself as a noble, upstanding fellow, that might be believable. But Parson had presented himself as the sort of base creature that Ansom disdains: exactly the sort of person who would fake a surrender.

That Ansom would walk alone into a knave's fortress to accept his surrender goes too far to claim Ansom's just close minded. That's outright too stupid to breathe territory. If Ansom really is supposed to be this gullible, triumphing over him has all the thrill of stealing a toddler's lollipop.

-H

[Wixit]

It's interesting to note our reactions here. Most of us have chosen our side (that is, Parson's side) and we're rooting for them. I'm going to assume the majority of readers are of the "I want the good guys to win" variety, which implies they're good and/or follow most of the laws. Our side aren't really the good guys here, and we go out of our way to explain and rationalize our leader's actions, however morally gray they may be. If Parson was the antagonist, we'd be appaled at this dishonourable, backstabbing ruse, but as is we're saying "it's ok, his back is against the wall, he does what he must" etc.

Also:

The Archons couldn't take part in the attack.They're a hex away. So it's unlikely they could do anything to save ansom at this point.

The archons are on the same hex (the city of Gobwin Knob), but in a different zone. They're currently in the airspace, while Ansom is at the tower... whether that puts him in the tower zone or the airspace zone is up to speculation. If you recall, attacking units cannot move from zone to zone when they're out of move, as is the case with the archons, as they've already ended turn today before joining the coalition again, depleting their remaining move in the process.

And Bogrolls battlecry was to me more like the Warcraft orcs "For the Horde!" rather than THIS..IS.. well, you know the rest.

[Sieggy]

True, but Jaclyn was the only archon that got hit- so if it was area of effect, she was too close, or it might be that Wanda got to preferentially pick the targets, and Jaclyn just made herself a more prominent one by flying to the fore to speak to Jillian. Or it might have made no difference; I'm just speculating on what seems to me to be the most likely explanation. ;)

I think that Wanda could control the air defenses quite precisely - Jaclyn got toasted while Jillian (who was right beside her) escaped unscathed. I also think that what got Jaclyn skragged was the fact that she was telling Jillian what Wanda didn't want her to hear. As long as Jillian thought Wanda was under Stanley's control, HE was the bad guy, not Wanda. And Jaclyn was blowing Wanda's cover story . . .

[Prince_Rohan]

I know it's been said...

...many times


...many ways


...but Bogroll rocks!


Sun Tzu said even the most useless servant can be a great resource if they think of nothing but serving their lord. And Bogroll is not useless.

[Sieggy]

By the By, if the earlier comic is true, than Bogroll can probably survive this, remember the other guards used to give him an umbrella with a target and he got giant boulders dropped on him.

he must be a frigging tank.

uuuummmmm . . . that wasn't a boulder . . . "OH CRAP!'.

[Wakky]

I think it's pretty obvious what's going to happen here. When Bogroll attacked Ansom, did you notice that he disarmed him first? It looks like he is doing a "Disarm and Capture", just like Wanda tried during the sortie at the wall.

I have a feeling that Sizemore will be waiting at the base of the tower, and since he is a master of Dirtomancy he can generate a nice big mud pit or something similar for Ansom and Bogroll to fall into. Therefore both of them survive the fall, Parson's side gets the Arkenpliers, and Ansom gets captured, which gives Parson a huge bargaining chip to delay the Coalition until Stanley gets back with his dwagons.

I think this will be enough to drive off the Coalition troops, if only for a few turns to regroup, which should end Book 1.

[surtt]

Holy cats. CMOA for Bogroll, anyone?



Yes, in this klog. No telling how far that goes, though; dunno if you can regenerate from being reduced to a fine paste on the ground.

It would not be "paste."

[drachefly]

I would have preferred it if Bogroll had presented a scroll, which read, "I prepared explosive runes this morning"... No, not that. I mean, which had written on it an absurd set of conditions on surrender. When Ansom rejected them (with or without reading), only then would Bogroll tackle him. Preferably after Ansom had reacted violently so that Ansom would be the one to be violating parley. Plus, it would not require so much of a leap.

But this works too. It's just a little less clean.

[Hatu]

We already know that Charlie is confident of being able to take Parson's garrison even if Parson has the Arkenpliers -- that is the exact scenario Parson offered him earlier to convince him to stand back and wait. As for the uncroaked troops, they're simply not a factor for Charlie. Unlike Ansom, he doesn't have to win now to hold his allies together or minimize costs -- he can just wait a few turns until the mass-uncroaked units expire.

Actually, Charlie's timetable may depend on the contract: it's possible he could be ordered to support the attack next turn before the zombies decay. Just a thought.

But ignoring that, the problem for me is that waiting turns for the uncroaked to (re-)die off multiplies the possible outcomes. Parson is unlikely to win, but he's a lot more likely to win in 5 turns than he is to win in 0.

Charlie's motivation may well be greed, but his game is too complex to easily track. He wants the bracers, and was willing to assault GK himself to get them. Fine. But he was willing to trade a (presumably) certain chance of getting them for a chance at the Arkenplier as well. But then he was willing to trade the chance of getting the Arkenpliers away for whatever money Ansom paid him to rejoin the Coalition. He next agreed to sell his DDR services to Ansom, again decreasing the chance of getting the Arkenpliers. But now he decides to betray Ansom rather than extorting more money from him, allegedly because he's back to wanting the Arkenpliers.

Now maybe it's me, but that just is not a well justified series of moves on Charlie's part. Yes, I can concoct a rationalization for his moves after the fact, but I could come up with just as good a rationalization for him if he made the exact opposite moves. Charlie's greed is tempered with curiosity or canny insight only when it serves the plot, at least as far as I can tell. Charlie is too powerful to have story hinge on his whim.

If we can't objectively judge why he is doing what he is doing (and there's no way we can do that given how little we know of Erfrules), his actions are indistinguishable from plot fiat. Sometimes he wants cool toys more than he wants money, sometimes he wants money more than he wants cool toys; I can only guess at which he'll prefer next time the choice comes up.

-H

[Traker]

"HHAAAAAAAAMMMMMMMMSSSSTTTTTEEEEEERRRRR"
I'm sure I spelled that wrong. But eny way good comic.

[Ragn Charran]

Last two panels are pure win Actually, the whole strip was pure win - as others have said, it being predicted does not make it any less awesome, particularly with the SPAAAAARTAAAAA!! reference. The last two panels were the icing on the cake, though.

I now almost want to thank Rich for the delay on the previous strip, getting this one in rapid succession was a real bonus.

[Sieggy]

Awesome . . .

But consider this - the Archons are literally floating there with their hands behind their backs. I think Charlie saw this one coming, grinned, popped another brewski, and sat back to enjoy the show. He's a gamer, and right now, he has everything to gain and nothing to lose by letting the GK and RCC forces winnow one another. His Archons at this point are giving him a view of the goings-on that's about the same as you get on monday night football. And this has to be the best show he's ever seen - I doubt he wants it to end quite so soon.

So, with Ansom hors d'combat, the RCC forces have lost the majority of their bonuses, are in a state of shock having seen their glorious leader fall, leaderless, in parade formation rather than battle array, inside the enemy stronghold with an enemy that has shown the ability to just pop up out of the ground and attack, facing an unknown number of casters as well as more uncroaked than they really want to think about, have suffered substantial casualties already this turn, and their most powerful ally just sat there and watched it happen. Morale check, please.

GK now possesses Ansom (state yet unknown), the Arkenpliers, and pretty much initiative at this point. Remember, this is their home ground - we don't know how much they're bound to 'turn discipline', as RCC has already initiated hostilites and not yet ended turn. I think the next installment will reveal the fate of Ansom (who I doubt seriously is going to be getting out of this one) as well as what Parson has planned for the troops in the courtyard.

Also, the number of Archons that are being shown in the panels have seriously decreased. We have no way of knowing how many Archons were taken out, but if the artist is being honest in his depictions, it was probably a bunch. And bear in mind that as a mercenary, Charlie really doesn't care who wins or loses, as long as he gets paid. From his POV, it's actually even better to hire Parson as opposed to capturing him, if only from a Loyalty standpoint. Remember, captured casters are supposed to have low loyalty.

Let's face it - win or lose, where is Parson going to go? If he wins, and Stanley comes back, he's still stuck working for an obnoxious, self-destructive fool. If he escapes to the Magic Kingdom, then he's stuck having to go to work for someone else as a mercenary warlord himself, which means probably Charlie, as Charlie may have the deepest pockets at that point (just cleaned out the Jetstone treasury, most likely). If he goes to work for Charlie, Charlie may just kill Stanley to eliminate further difficulties, or buy Parson's contract from him.

But if Parson gets sent home, then he's back to being a fat gameboy in a dead end job, only now he'll have serious doubts about his own sanity . . .

[BRC]

Actually, Charlie's timetable may depend on the contract: it's possible he could be ordered to support the attack next turn before the zombies decay. Just a thought.

But ignoring that, the problem for me is that waiting turns for the uncroaked to (re-)die off multiplies the possible outcomes. Parson is unlikely to win, but he's a lot more likely to win in 5 turns than he is to win in 0.

Charlie's motivation may well be greed, but his game is too complex to easily track. He wants the bracers, and was willing to assault GK himself to get them. Fine. But he was willing to trade a (presumably) certain chance of getting them for a chance at the Arkenplier as well. But then he was willing to trade the chance of getting the Arkenpliers away for whatever money Ansom paid him to rejoin the Coalition. He next agreed to sell his DDR services to Ansom, again decreasing the chance of getting the Arkenpliers. But now he decides to betray Ansom rather than extorting more money from him, allegedly because he's back to wanting the Arkenpliers.

Now maybe it's me, but that just is not a well justified series of moves on Charlie's part. Yes, I can concoct a rationalization for his moves after the fact, but I could come up with just as good a rationalization for him if he made the exact opposite moves. Charlie's greed is tempered with curiosity or canny insight only when it serves the plot, at least as far as I can tell. Charlie is too powerful to have story hinge on his whim.

If we can't objectively judge why he is doing what he is doing (and there's no way we can do that given how little we know of Erfrules), his actions are indistinguishable from plot fiat. Sometimes he wants cool toys more than he wants money, sometimes he wants money more than he wants cool toys; I can only guess at which he'll prefer next time the choice comes up.

-H

I see your reasoning, but it makes sense if you look at it from the perspective of Charlie not really caring about the Pliers.
Origionally, if GK wins, He swoops in, captures it, get's Parson and the bracer, plus the Pliers. After his deal with Ansom, he gets the same stuff if GK wins, but now he gets money from jetstone as well AND he gets bracer+parson if the RCC wins.
However, the question comes up, Why did he sign the deal with ansom on the wall. He was a few seconds away from GK winning, thus making it ripe for the picking, so he can grab the bracers, Parson, and the Pliers. Why does he trade THAT for putting the RCC back into the fight. He gets the bracers and warlord anyway, but this way he won't get the pliers. Possible Reasons
1) Ansom is paying him enough money that he dosn't care about the pliers.
2) According to the contract Ansom accepted, Charlie gets the pliers after the battle for GK (hey, those wouldn't be doing him much good if he got croaked)
3) As a mercenary, Charlie is obligated to make an offer to anybody willing to pay, he put a price that he didn't think Ansom would accept.
4) He is willing to make there be a chance of not getting the pliers in exchange for a good show.
5) Some combination of the above.

Now, if we go with the "Good Show" theory, that justifies all his actions so far. Once Parson made the second deal with Charlie (Mathamancy for not renewing his contract), Charlie was operating in a capacity beyond that of a mercenary. Since then, every one of his actions has been based around extending the battle, thus entertaining Charlie (And Us). When his help would croak Stanley, he dosn't give that help. When his non-intervention would cause Ansom to croak, he intervenes. When his alerting Ansom to the imminent Bogrolling, he keeps his archon's quiet.

[the_tick_rules]

Best battle cry ever!!! Boy charlie really nickel and dimes you doesn't he?

[Doug Lampert]

I think she was just mourning Jaclyn by remembering what her friend would've said in this situation.

Parson doesn't give a damn about honor or nobility or honesty. He's a gamer; he cares about winning. (Also, he's not even entirely convinced that this world is real.)

Also, compare with Ansom's speech. He says that his honor led to him prevailing... right before he was (apparently) defeated by Parson's disregard for honor.

Honor and nobility are for stick-up-the-bum nobles like Ansom who can afford it. Parson does what he's gotta do win.

Attacking during negotiations is a fine way to make sure every conflict, no matter how small, escalates to genocide.

This is bad. It's bad for the WINNERS as well as the losers. Real life isn't zero sum, and you're almost always better off ending a fight without going on to the bitter end. But that REQUIRES that you have some degree of trust that the other side is capable of negotiating in good faith.

The only excuse is the claim that Parson never actually said he was surrendering (in fact what he said was weaselly enough that Charlie spotted it), and Bogroll didn't seem to have anything equivalent to a white flag. Arguably this is good enough, no truce exists without a clear signal or agreement that there is a truce.

But claiming that in general attacks during negotiations are justified since "honor is stupid" is itself stupid, historically the really great conquerers have typically been the sides that DIDN'T use such methods but considered honor and rule of law important. That let them add the other side's resources to their own at far lower cost and let them negotiate when appropriate.

[DigoDragon]

It was so simple... yet so effective!

[Tweed]

I doubt it. Charlie wouldn't have suspected it if it were so unheard of.

Assuming, of course, that Charlie is "of" Erfworld. I have a deep-seated suspicion that Charlie, like Parson, is not actually from Erfworld -- perhaps in Erfworld the "fake surrender" is unprecedented, but perhaps Charlie, like Parson, predicting Parson's fake surrender based on his out-of-Erfworld knowledge.

[ShinyBrowncoat]

....and there go the pliers again. Is Wanda positioned to grab them?

If you look at the 3rd panel of the previous comic, you can see some GK units conveniently massed directly under the tower balcony. Doesn't seem to be Wanda herself, though, as panel 6 seems to show her in the tunnels...

[Aquillion]

It's interesting to note our reactions here. Most of us have chosen our side (that is, Parson's side) and we're rooting for them. I'm going to assume the majority of readers are of the "I want the good guys to win" variety, which implies they're good and/or follow most of the laws. Our side aren't really the good guys here, and we go out of our way to explain and rationalize our leader's actions, however morally gray they may be. If Parson was the antagonist, we'd be appaled at this dishonourable, backstabbing ruse, but as is we're saying "it's ok, his back is against the wall, he does what he must" etc.

I take issue with several points here.

First, this isn't a Saturday Morning cartoon. There aren't always obvious "good guys" and "bad guys". I don't think most people here are of the "I want the good guys to win" variety, because using that as a universal method for looking at all stories is overly simplistic. Almost everyone we've seen in detail in the strip has both flaws and sympathetic qualities; some might be better or worse than others, but nobody has clearly come off as an inhuman monster or as a shining knight of justice.

Second, you talk about how good people "follow most of the laws" as though there's one set of perfect laws that everyone holds to equal weight. That isn't true. I suspect that most people here place very little value on ye olde knightly virtues of honor and chivalry. We live in a world where even the good guys -- to the extent that the real world has good guys -- have deliberately bombed civilian cities. Maybe you feel that honor and chivalry are deeply important things. Good for you. But you have to realize that you're old-fashioned in that regard, and that most people have considered them dead since the 20th century. We have enough trouble keeping together a basic enough code of morality to confront the constant torture and genocide and the issues that actually directly touch on lives without also concerning ourselves with a dead era's rules against punching below the belt.

Attacking during a parley is not a nice thing to do, no. But guess what? In the strip, thousands of people are dying, right now, for absolutely stupid reasons that, as they've been described, boil down to noble pride verses religious fanaticism. Warrior-code honor and chivalry are bullplop, grotesque masks that people put over that kind of horror so they can say "Oh, hey, I just ordered a thousand men to their deaths for some stupid reason, but I would never attack during a parley, so I'm still a good person."

You want dishonorable? Parson murdered three thousand people yesterday, for no particularly good reason (what, his own pride? Stanley's religious fanaticism? None of the reasons he's given are worth fighting over. The best you can say for him his maybe he's mind-controlled.) And if you're just complaining now, because he just violated rule 347b in your little white book of things honorable generals do between slaughters? You are a hypocrite.

Either you have a good reason for fighting or you don't. If you have a good enough reason to stab a man in the chest, then you have a good enough reason to stab him in the back, or during a parley, or with a poisoned blade, or whatever else the hell it takes. If you don't have a good enough reason to do anything like that, then murdering him honorably isn't going to make it any better.

And that, incidentally, is why so many people here dislike Ansom. Ansom is the sort of guy who could murder three thousand people to satisfy his pride and tell himself that he's still the hero, because he did it using an honorable method. Parson and Stanley aren't better people, or more heroic, or anything like that -- but at least they have the decency not to pretend that they're being shining paragons of righteousness when they murder you.

[SteveMB]

Attacking during negotiations is a fine way to make sure every conflict, no matter how small, escalates to genocide.

Then again, that's pretty much what normally happens in Erfworld when one side is completely defeated -- the winners generally don't bother to capture any units other than casters, so the rest get disbanded.

[Mr. Scaly]

Bogroll now has two Crowning Moments of Awesome.

Also, what do you suppose the rules for damage by falling are in Erfworld? Bogroll will probably survive I think since he regenerates, but Ansom...

[Suicide Junkie]

But that REQUIRES that you have some degree of trust that the other side is capable of negotiating in good faith.

You seem to be assuming that ANSOM is negotiating in good faith.

In Erfworld, what is surrender if not a game-over disbanding of your side?
You would certainly have to give up the city, at which point all the units disband.
Only Parson himself, and perhaps Maggie might be captured out of the entire city.


For something completely different...
Recall that Maggie is in charge of this particular operation.
For those who think Ansom was a bit overconfident and rash, Maggie had a full day's charge of thinkamancy that she hasn't used yet.

[ShinyBrowncoat]

Page 130, panel 7. What is Ansom doing there?

In panel 4, he is receiving a thinkagram from Charlie informing him of Parson's "surrender". In panel 7, he is doing what any self-respecting leader of noble birth would do: tuck in his shirt to make himself presentable for the surrender ceremony.

[BillyJimBoBob]

If Jaclyn had followed the rules about paying for magical protection, maybe she'd be alive now. Just saying.

I couldn't post last update due to the server misbehaving, but what I tried to post went something like this:

"Hmmm, I wonder how Parson is going to pull off disguising Bogroll as him when the Archons have twice been shown to see through spells on people (or not on people, as the case may be) effortlessly."

I was wondering how the authors were going to explain this, and I'm glad they did. But you have to wonder why Charlie isn't interested in following a course of action which has no possibility of failure. As someone else pointed out after the last strip, surrender after a deception like this is no longer going to be an option for Parson. So it's either capture or croak if combat restarts and GK falls. Ansom ordered that Parson be captured, but if Ansom is killed, will those orders stand? After all, Ansom never explained why, and Ansom's authority to confiscate the share of spoils of whichever faction kills Parson is kind of in question if Ansom is dead.

simple, if jacklyn hadn't told jillian about the suggestion spell, jillian would have left the dwagons alone and probably left ansom in a lurch because of it. She almost certainly wouldn't have been able to convince ansom to go after stanley to faq (if he even left GK) and then jacklyn wouldn't have gotten fried by wanda because that fight is directly the result of her getting jillian to break the suggestion

That's all correct, but I think that more relevantly if Jaclyn hadn't advanced to tell Jillian that Wanda was not under a spell, Jaclyn wouldn't have been hit by the air defenses and croaked.

[Aquillion]

Attacking during negotiations is a fine way to make sure every conflict, no matter how small, escalates to genocide.

This is bad. It's bad for the WINNERS as well as the losers. Real life isn't zero sum, and you're almost always better off ending a fight without going on to the bitter end. But that REQUIRES that you have some degree of trust that the other side is capable of negotiating in good faith.

The only excuse is the claim that Parson never actually said he was surrendering (in fact what he said was weaselly enough that Charlie spotted it), and Bogroll didn't seem to have anything equivalent to a white flag. Arguably this is good enough, no truce exists without a clear signal or agreement that there is a truce.

But claiming that in general attacks during negotiations are justified since "honor is stupid" is itself stupid, historically the really great conquerers have typically been the sides that DIDN'T use such methods but considered honor and rule of law important. That let them add the other side's resources to their own at far lower cost and let them negotiate when appropriate.

Not... really. In real life, parley during wartime is done using expendable intermediaries or under very secure circumstances, and when someone surrenders, you make damn sure you've seized control in a hard way first. You don't march into their fortress alone to accept their surrender, because that would be stupid; you have them come alone and unarmed to your own fortifications, searched by your troops, etc. This is because nobody in reality would be stupid enough to rely on an honor system in a situation with that many deaths involved.

Murdering an intermediary or attacking during a peace negotiation is an excellent way to disrupt it, but it doesn't lead to genocide; it just makes things last that much longer. The Northern Ireland conflict was drawn out for a long, long time because there were so many people unwilling to commit to peace who kept on attacking during a ceasefire, say, but that didn't lead to genocide; once there were enough people genuinely interested in peace, the conflict was resolved.

Doing this hurts Parson's reputation personally, and means that people are likely to be much, much more careful next time he surrenders, requiring that he disband his entire army and surrender unconditionally first or whatever, but it doesn't cause the social fabric to collapse into cats and dogs sleeping together, mass hysteria the way you implied.

And Erfworld is a game-world, where individuals magically add hard and clear bonuses to their entire side, where getting your hands on the magic MacGuffin on Ansom's belt could possibly actually turn things around. That changes things considerably; it means that something like this, which might not have been enough to do more than drag the war out pointlessly in reality, can actually make a significant difference there.

[Fez]

I think people have done a good job of discussion possibilities that come from this point, such as the 'mudpit' to soften the impact and capture Ansom and the pliers, or other non fatal maneuvers.

What I just wanted to comment on was the art, particularly panel 8. Since the comic started a lot has been surmised from small variations of art. Has the lessoning of detail in Parson meant that he's becoming more 'Erf', are changes of head size in Wanda indicative of ??? or just a progressive evolution of the style for the strip.

I like panel 8 because it does a few things:

1. Its a detailed image of Bogroll with wisps of hair, creases from muscles, and so forth. That answers to a degree that Erfers are not 'mere cartoons', they are just in the words of Jessica Rabbit 'drawn that way'.
2. It shows Bogroll at that moment from Ansom's perspective. We're used to the comic relief, innofensive butt of jokes and gentle servant Bogroll. But in that one panel we get reminded 'Oh yeah, he's a twoll, a tough infantry and pretty darned scary when he's dive tackling you off your magic carpet'.

Overall nice use of a single panel to transform the image of a character in his heroic moment.

[wildcard9]

That was Foolamancy at its best. And now we see why treating your followers properly is the best strategy for a commander. No way Parson would have gotten Bagroll to do that if he had not treated him as being worth having at his side. And Anson's poor treatment of the people under him resulted in them not giving warning they could have given but did not (he got nothing extra from them, only exactly what he ordered from them). Maybe the tide has turned after all.

[Malkith]

If you look at the 3rd panel of the previous comic, you can see some GK units conveniently massed directly under the tower balcony. Doesn't seem to be Wanda herself, though, as panel 6 seems to show her in the tunnels...

or Ansom falls conveniently though a sizemore hole into the dungeons,

where wanda and parson are waiting