Erfworld thread V: Baddie Will Not Post In Thread

[EnragedFilia]

Now that sounds like Charlie and fits this new information very well. Charlie, as an extremely powerful Carnymancer, rigs Fate to specify his own cause of death, and in seeking to make it as close to impossible as he can manage, he comes up with "something not from Erf". This seems extremely likely to me, with the main question being whether he did it before (thinking it a true impossibility) or after (inspired by the idea) learning about Summon Perfect Warlord.

According to the wiki it must have been the latter, for a number of reasons but chiefly because Charlie himself apparently invented the spell. Maybe he thought nobody else would ever be able to use it?

[HalfTangible]

According to the wiki it must have been the latter, for a number of reasons but chiefly because Charlie himself apparently invented the spell. Maybe he thought nobody else would ever be able to use it?

Uh...

Charlie didn't create it the second time around. We know because Marie told Janis the link-up of who created the spell.

[Kantaki]

Uh...

Charlie didn't create it the second time around. We know because Marie told Janis the link-up of who created the spell.

But he was involved the first time. So he could be called the spells inventor. Lets say you build a car that runs on water and some years later someone does the same. Would that mean you aren't the Inventor anymore? As far as we know Charlie was the first to use this spell, it makes sense that he came up with it as well. That he wasn't involved the second time doesn't change that. In the same way Parson invented the "Awaken Tower" spell and would still be the inventor if someone else recreates it.

[HalfTangible]

But he was involved the first time. So he could be called the spells inventor. Lets say you build a car that runs on water and some years later someone does the same. Would that mean you aren't the Inventor anymore?

Yes. Because the chances of you creating the exact same design as the other person is remarkably small. Just now you'd have to say a water-powered car instead of the.

[eschmenk]

Theory: Charlie made it so nothing from Erfworld can kill him. He knew about the Summon Perfect Warlord spell, but didn't expect it to be used again. That's why he's so obsessed with Parson.

My thought is that that Charlie doesn't seem to be obsessed enough if that were the case. Charlie told Parson that Parson wasn't at the top of his list and that seems to be the case. Parson is still an important target for Charlie, but no more than I would expect any "perfect warlord" to be. Charlie isn't the type of person who could have allies, and Parson is smart and competitive, so he's a threat to Charlie's interests. That's enough to keep Charlie interested in him.

OTOH, we don't really know what all Charlie is trying to do. Maybe he's stalling while he comes up with a way to protect himself from Parson. Also, if Parson is really fated to kill Charlie, Charlie wouldn't want to give that away by acting paranoid. I guess we really can't know, then.

[Godskook]

Yes. Because the chances of you creating the exact same design as the other person is remarkably small. Just now you'd have to say a water-powered car instead of the.

Only one time in the comics has the spell been invented. The only other time the spell was used, at least one of the casters involved was fully aware of how the original had been made. We don't go around saying that every tom, ****, and harry invented their own model of car. We give credit to Benz for the original and Ford for the first mass-producible one, and Ford's existance doesn't remove Benz as the inventor of -the- car.

Where inventorship is contested is in cases such as Leibniz-Newton on Calculus, where as far as I know both did the job concurrently, and neither was published before the other began his work.

My thought is that that Charlie doesn't seem to be obsessed enough if that were the case. Charlie told Parson that Parson wasn't at the top of his list and that seems to be the case. Parson is still an important target for Charlie, but no more than I would expect any "perfect warlord" to be. Charlie isn't the type of person who could have allies, and Parson is smart and competitive, so he's a threat to Charlie's interests. That's enough to keep Charlie interested in him.

OTOH, we don't really know what all Charlie is trying to do. Maybe he's stalling while he comes up with a way to protect himself from Parson. Also, if Parson is really fated to kill Charlie, Charlie wouldn't want to give that away by acting paranoid. I guess we really can't know, then.

Its entirely plausible that the wording is such that Charlie doesn't realize that Parson -could- be a threat to him, as predictions do tend to be ~weird~ that way, for instance, Jillian being predicted to kill "the leader of Haffaton", but also fated to kill Olive, despite everyone's estimation.

[Welf]

Theory: Charlie made it so nothing from Erfworld can kill him. He knew about the Summon Perfect Warlord spell, but didn't expect it to be used again. That's why he's so obsessed with Parson.

I think that is unlikely. In book zero Wanda explains that Olive (the Florist and Charley's daughter) tried to kill Charley while Haffaton was expanding, and that was under Judy from earth. If he had used Carneymancy to make a non-Erfworlder his killer it would have been very likely that Olive would have croaked him. Also, I think Charley realized very early that Parson was from Earth, and yet he still made him the offer to join him as warlord, although it was apparently his policy to not have any warlords. Plus, this is Charley, this would be too simply for him. Maybe he made his death only possible by running out of schmuckers? Although that would be too simple, too

[Douglas]

Maybe he made his death only possible by running out of schmuckers? Although that would be too simple, too

Choosing something convoluted as your cause of death is just asking for trouble, I think. Fate would have no problem working its way through an unlikely series of events. No, if you're going to try to use this trick for immortality you need something that's nigh impossible, not merely difficult or improbable.

[Godskook]

Choosing something convoluted as your cause of death is just asking for trouble, I think. Fate would have no problem working its way through an unlikely series of events. No, if you're going to try to use this trick for immortality you need something that's nigh impossible, not merely difficult or improbable.

"Killed by the conquerer of all of erfworld" is a seemingly useful restriction.

[Lizard Lord]

"Killed by the conquerer of all of erfworld" is a seemingly useful restriction.

If that is the case it would explain why Charlie is not interested in conquest. He wouldn't want to doom himself to suicide.
\

Huh...and it would actually explain the real reason Olive was trying to conquer Erf, she just wanted to finish the job she started.

[HalfTangible]

"Killed by the conquerer of all of erfworld" is a seemingly useful restriction.

... Or maybe 'killed to end all war'? That would even fit with the Predictamancers' stated reasons for the summoning.

'Killed by the conqueror of erfworld' would be a pretty good condition, yeah (though I imagine that that would require Charlie's side to fall first, which would explain why he's built up as powerful a force as he has with as small a resource base [1 city and 1 arkentool] as he can muster)

My theory on Charlie for a while now is that he's been trying to destroy Fate as a concept in Erfworld - that's the 'only enemy worth fighting' he was talking about in the book 0 thing with Jillian and Wanda. That would explain why it feels (to Parson, at least) as if he's being railroaded by two different DMs at once - he IS, and each has a different goal in mind. And it would even explain why he's going out of his way to keep Jillian alive - he severed her from the jester thing, and if that was Fate, it means Jillian is immune to... well, Fate railroading, I guess you'd say. I don't think we've seen her go into or out of any situation where she couldn't conceivably have done so with her own strength and wit (as opposed to, say, Wanda or Sylvia)

The question that raises is why he would do that (my best guess is either 'so he can never lose' since he's basically unassailable without some sort of fate bonus, or that he secretly wants war to end as much as anyone else and thinks that he can if Fate doesn't keep getting in his way)

[AgentPaper]

Hm, or perhaps, "I will be the last one on Erf to die", or something along those lines. Which he assumed to mean that he would die at the Erf equivalent of the end of time, after everyone else had already died, but instead Parson is going to break the rules somehow to make killing other people impossible, so that Charlie is literally the last one to die, but not the last one alive.

That would also follow the various predictions fairly well, IE olive wanting to make the whole world one side where everyone is tranced and thus can't kill anyone else (or die).

[guttering flame]

If Sylia's story teaches us anything. history would try to repeat itself after failing a first time. Sylvia died by fire all three times so Charlie should suffer debilitating drug problems and probably a feme fatale / murderous daughter-figure situation probably Jillian.

[Kornaki]

Hm, or perhaps, "I will be the last one on Erf to die", or something along those lines. Which he assumed to mean that he would die at the Erf equivalent of the end of time, after everyone else had already died, but instead Parson is going to break the rules somehow to make killing other people impossible, so that Charlie is literally the last one to die, but not the last one alive.

This is brilliant.

[ryuplaneswalker]

New Erf

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Now we have something interesting.

Did we know Erfworld began with 99 Sides? I bet that is important, I wonder if one could calculate out the potential number of cities based on the number of starting sides, do we know if new cities can appear? or if those sorts of things are a static mechanic?

[Radar]

New Erf

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Now we have something interesting.

Did we know Erfworld began with 99 Sides? I bet that is important, I wonder if one could calculate out the potential number of cities based on the number of starting sides, do we know if new cities can appear? or if those sorts of things are a static mechanic?

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We know for sure, capitals can only be built in specific places (there were more then enough references to capital sites at this point), but it wasn't ever really mentioned, how does it work with other cities. From the practice of Erfworld it looks like they are also static, but I don't think it was ever confirmed - we just have the fact that Parson never pondered on the idea of building new cities or just rearranging their layout within Gobwin Knob domain.

[Lethologica]

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Jojo's missed a trick. The scroll is, in fact, Parson's reassurance that he's here by choice. (The fact that Fate intervened when Parson tried to cast the spell is not something either Jojo or Parson could know.)

[HalfTangible]

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Jojo's missed a trick. The scroll is, in fact, Parson's reassurance that he's here by choice. (The fact that Fate intervened when Parson tried to cast the spell is not something either Jojo or Parson could know.)

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Let's be perfectly honest here: it's pretty obvious fate intervened even without seeing the 'Manos' unsound effect. Even if they don't know for sure, they could probably put two and two together. (especially with the knowledge that the bracer was lying to him)

[Killer Angel]

That is, indeed, a glorious monster manual!

[Lethologica]

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Let's be perfectly honest here: it's pretty obvious fate intervened even without seeing the 'Manos' unsound effect. Even if they don't know for sure, they could probably put two and two together. (especially with the knowledge that the bracer was lying to him)

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Does Parson know the bracer was lying to him? On the face of it, it's not strange that burning things in a burning city are falling down. The bracer's behavior is strange, but not in a way that Parson can definitively tag as 'lying'.

[Landis963]

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Does Parson know the bracer was lying to him? On the face of it, it's not strange that burning things in a burning city are falling down. The bracer's behavior is strange, but not in a way that Parson can definitively tag as 'lying'.

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The bracer attempted to obfuscate exactly what his chances of casting the Dorothy scroll were. There aren't many ways of doing that beyond lying when you only have a numerical readout to work with.

[Lethologica]

I misremembered the dialogue from that update. My mistake.

[Jasdoif]

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The bracer attempted to obfuscate exactly what his chances of casting the Dorothy scroll were. There aren't many ways of doing that beyond lying when you only have a numerical readout to work with.

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I don't think there was any actual obfuscation there at all, honestly. My evaluation was that the bracer showed Parson's high chance of successfully casting the spell, which would entice him to attempt casting the spell, which would cause Fate to prevent him from casting the spell, and the bracer then showed the updated chance of successfully casting the spell (which was now impossible). The bracer can make calculations on future events...which could conceivably include reactions to reading its own results.

[eschmenk]

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I don't think there was any actual obfuscation there at all, honestly. My evaluation was that the bracer showed Parson's high chance of successfully casting the spell, which would entice him to attempt casting the spell, which would cause Fate to prevent him from casting the spell, and the bracer then showed the updated chance of successfully casting the spell (which was now impossible). The bracer can make calculations on future events...which could conceivably include reactions to reading its own results.

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Interesting idea, but I think if that was what was happening, I would have expected the results to toggle between 0.98 and 0.0 instead of remaining on 0.0. I'm leaning toward the idea that the bracer displays the tentative results of its calculations and fate is the last factor it considers and it takes a while to do it, so the 0.98 number was just a tentative result that was displayed for while until the calculations finished. Consistent with the numbers being tentative, it had displayed different numbers earlier, even before Parson had specified that the spell would be cast upon him. IMO, it was foolish of Parson to pay any attention to anything but the final result without knowing how the bracer worked. Granted, he was under a fair amount of stress at the time.

[EnragedFilia]

That is, indeed, a glorious monster manual!

Indeed, that second edition cover art sure brings back memories.

[Douglas]

Interesting idea, but I think if that was what was happening, I would have expected the results to toggle between 0.98 and 0.0 instead of remaining on 0.0. I'm leaning toward the idea that the bracer displays the tentative results of its calculations and fate is the last factor it considers and it takes a while to do it, so the 0.98 number was just a tentative result that was displayed for while until the calculations finished. Consistent with the numbers being tentative, it had displayed different numbers earlier, even before Parson had specified that the spell would be cast upon him. IMO, it was foolish of Parson to pay any attention to anything but the final result without knowing how the bracer worked. Granted, he was under a fair amount of stress at the time.

Yes, I think this is pretty much it. The bracer calculates the odds of Parson succeeding when he completes an attempt to use the scroll, and that comes out as .98, and then it notices that Fate will never allow Parson to complete such an attempt, always providing a reason to not do it or an interruption, and that sets it to 0.

[HalfTangible]

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Does Parson know the bracer was lying to him? On the face of it, it's not strange that burning things in a burning city are falling down. The bracer's behavior is strange, but not in a way that Parson can definitively tag as 'lying'.

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He specifically stated such at the time Even if he doesn't know it he at least suspects it

[Lethologica]

I misremembered the dialogue from that update. My mistake.

wordswordswords

[ryuplaneswalker]

Yes, I think this is pretty much it. The bracer calculates the odds of Parson succeeding when he completes an attempt to use the scroll, and that comes out as .98, and then it notices that Fate will never allow Parson to complete such an attempt, always providing a reason to not do it or an interruption, and that sets it to 0.

Alternatively the Bracer does not play well with the Carnymancy in the scroll.

[guttering flame]

Couldn't fate just be a bit slow? It's not instanteneous. It's presented as a player that has to respond to attempts to thwart him and thus can't be instanteneous. If Parson can act within the split second window he can defeat Fate.