How old is ErfWorld?

[K2]

I have just had a thought, and though painful I have elected to follow it. How old is Erfwold, not the comic but the world. And I don't mean how long has it existed in the minds of its creators, but rather how old is the physical world with in its universe.
From what I have seen it does not long to be that old, and I do have a few examples: there are only 4 known Arkentools; Stanely only recently discovered the walnut pigeon ability; Ansom does not have a clue on how to work the pliers(you would thing he could find some one to explain it to him); The gem that the marbits used to make the axemen that ultimately killed manpower was droped by the Titans(either they only just found it burried deep, or they have been saving it for a long time and I cant think of any society that would not spend a surplus.)
With these in mind I would have to say that Erfworld is not that old and has only recently been created. That or I was blind and missed something.

Also, if a thread to this effect already exist just let me knoe and i will delete this one.

[jindra34]

probably around a thousand years... thats assuming no evolution... it takes a while to build up the first few bits of technology...

[Legendary]

Although I don't disagree per se, here are my arguments for why it could be an older war.

From what I have seen it does not long to be that old, and I do have a few examples: there are only 4 known Arkentools;

This might just be that currently most of Erfworld is unexplored. It might be that civilization is clustered on one continent, and that the other, farther away continents, hold the remaining arkentools.

Stanely only recently discovered the walnut pigeon ability;

Which has no practical purpose, and would take an idiot to look for. No one else would use the Arkentool for cracking walnuts, in the same way we would not use a tank for cracking walnuts.

Ansom does not have a clue on how to work the pliers(you would thing he could find some one to explain it to him);

He isn't ATTUNED to them. We don't know how that works, so being shown how might not be enough. We haven't seen anything one way or another to say he won't know what he is capable of when he IS attuned, or when someone else is.

The gem that the marbits used to make the axemen that ultimately killed manpower was droped by the Titans(either they only just found it burried deep, or they have been saving it for a long time and I cant think of any society that would not spend a surplus.)

Buried deep seems likely, look at the picture where the marbit finds it. Also, marbits aren't human, so using human behavior to try to predict what they'd do wouldn't work.

Now then, personally, I haven't thought of it, and like I said, I don't disagree with you necessarily. I do, however, think that more concrete evidence is required.

[jami]

How old? As old as its tongue and a little older than its teeth.

[Bogardan_Mage]

This might just be that currently most of Erfworld is unexplored. It might be that civilization is clustered on one continent, and that the other, farther away continents, hold the remaining arkentools.

Or, more obviously, there could actually be only 4 Arkentools. The Stupidmeal clarifies them as "known" in case there are undiscovered ones (these sorts of things tend to be in long forgotten ruins or in the depths of the oceans), but I don't think we're ever told how many there "really" are, so there doesn't have to be more than four.

"How old is the world" seems a strange question to me. "How old is civilisation" or "How long has this war been going" are fathomable, but the age of the world? Our own planet is hundreds of millions of years old, and geologically Erfworld doesn't look too different. Of course, it was created by the titans, so we really do have no way of knowing.

[Erk]

It could be a relative term, but "Ages ago, when the Titans of Ark forged Erfworld" implies it wasn't all that recent.

[Ave]

Erfworld is a created world. It is as old as the war itself :)
Sure there is 'history' but that is only created.

[Scientivore]

It could be a relative term, but "Ages ago, when the Titans of Ark forged Erfworld" implies it wasn't all that recent.

I take it as an intuitive term. It could be descriptive like the Ages in Middle Earth or prescriptive as in the Lords of Dus by Lawrence Watt-Evans. (In the latter series, the Ages of the world were as long as they needed to be to fulfill their gods-ordained role in the path of history. Naturally, they tended to get shorter -- and bloodier -- as they approached the end of that path.) Either way, it's intuitive that the youth of a world feels timeless, so I feel safe in assuming that the first Ages were very long.

[Ultimatum479]

Erfworld is a created world. It is as old as the war itself :)
Sure there is 'history' but that is only created.

Exactly. I'd say that "created history", as Ave puts it, ended and actual events began some time during what we've already seen, perhaps around the time of Manpower's death. Assuming Erfworld is indeed the world Parson was creating (a plausible assumption judging by his reaction to Gobwin Knob -- "I was actually going to game a scenario like this just before you summoned me...more evidence I'm dreaming, I guess."), then it's been around since Parson got far enough in its creation that it was playable. I s'pose that its actual age would thus depend on the difference in speeds of the passage of time between Earth and Erfworld, which I s'pose we'll figure out if we see any more comics about the friends Parson left behind.

[SteveMB]

Assuming Erfworld is indeed the world Parson was creating (a plausible assumption judging by his reaction to Gobwin Knob -- "I was actually going to game a scenario like this just before you summoned me...more evidence I'm dreaming, I guess."), then it's been around since Parson got far enough in its creation that it was playable.

The catch is, Erfworld is clearly not actually Parson's game world -- there are just too many things that are unfamiliar to him and even things that he would never have put in himself (e.g. the "cutesy-boop names and appearances" of things -- at first, I thought that might reflect a sarcastically added feature of Parson's game world, but evidently not).

The geography of Gobwin Knob is pretty much the same, and presumably that's part of the reason Wanda locked on to him rather than some other target.

[Studoku]

Erfworld is a created world. It is as old as the war itself :)
Sure there is 'history' but that is only created.

Maybe the world we live in was only created fifteen minutes ago but it was created with all our memories and history...

[Fo Shizzle]

It could be a relative term, but "Ages ago, when the Titans of Ark forged Erfworld" implies it wasn't all that recent.

I bet an age equals an X-amount of turns or something similar. It could be that an age equals the rough equivilant of a year or a century. . . or a week.

Maybe there's a whole fancy time system we don't know about, and ages is just a term in that system.

[Erk]

Actually, I think Scientivore is right and Ages refers to specific chunks of time where some goal of an undefined deific power is met. In this case, likely an Age would represent an entire unified game campaign, assuming all of Erfworld's Ages have been in the same game-style life as present. This Age will probably end when a Warlord possesses all the Arkentools, thereby winning the Age, and a new Age will begin.

But the fact that the Titans built the world ages, plural, ago, implies it was not a short time. And when you consider how long a good strategy campaign lasts, for the units within that strategy campaign an Age is probably several generations long at least. So Erfworld is probably thousands of years minimum, and could be uncountably longer (it doesn't seem like the sort of place to have evolution).

[Om]

I wonder if we'll meet some Erfworld version of Ussher who's busy adding up all the ages

Maybe the world we live in was only created fifteen minutes ago but it was created with all our memories and history...

Interesting. To paraphrase Pratchett - "Its ten thousand years old but wasn't there ten minutes ago". The idea appeals to me.

[Ultimatum479]

The catch is, Erfworld is clearly not actually Parson's game world -- there are just too many things that are unfamiliar to him and even things that he would never have put in himself (e.g. the "cutesy-boop names and appearances" of things -- at first, I thought that might reflect a sarcastically added feature of Parson's game world, but evidently not).

I dunno. I think it's possible that Parson's game world was basically playable in terms of mechanics, but the history, plot, and magic system were still in the works, and that's where Erfworld came to life on its own outside of Parson's control. Although he did seem farther along in the creation of the game mechanics (judging by the fact that he was about to unveil it to his friends) than his lack of knowledge of some of the mechanics details, as in the terrain advantages of fliers, would imply, so you're probably right. Just keeping that idea open.