As far as I can tell, he got a super-short version of what Bonnie told Minds (including that Ivan Poe worked on the tower).

The video that came up after yours. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=twaH5giKYMI

This makes me want a rock golem that looks like the Terminator.

The only reason Parson means trouble for Charlie is because Charlie declared Parson his enemy. Parson and GK would have been happy to leave Charlie alone and deal with the RCC, but Charlie is constantly trying to meddle in their affairs and get rid of Parson. He did this at his own expense and didn't even get any reputation from it, since he tried to keep his involvement secret, but once that secret came out, he painted a big target on himself. Which was fairly stupid; Charlie did violate his usual modus operandi by choosing a side instead of setting things up so he would be the winner either way. He also recognized Parson has a hero complex; the last thing you want to do when you have a hero is to paint yourself as the villain that is manipulating everything from behind. That's like holding up a big "croak me" sign.
I know Parson is supposed to be fated to croak Charlie (or at least we've been told so by people who clearly have their own agenda *cough*Marie*cough*), but I feel like Charlie's attempts to get rid of Parson are what set him on track to destroy Charlie in the first place.

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I did a thing: http://www.erfworld.com/blog/view/55086 ... redth-king

That is how self-fulfilling prophecies usually work.

Janis thinks Parson is a Hippiemancer. She knows he has good Date-a-mancy instincts. I think that as a rules lawyer he is a natural, probably master class, Signamancer; whether he has juice or not he knows the Signamancer magic words ("hereby" "the undersigned" and so on) and can probably handle anything that a zero-juice Signamancer can do. He can write contracts out on paper, between GK/himself and TV/Caesar or Benny.

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In the beginning is the Setup. -- Books of the Titans, Section 1.1
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She's from Unaroyal (Royal!) / You can call her Queen Bea...

Yes, but most evidence points toward Erfworld prophecies not being self-fulfilling by default. So far it seems that prophecies come to pass no matter what you do, just the way they do so differs.

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I did a thing: http://www.erfworld.com/blog/view/55086 ... redth-king

Is it possible, that such written contract would work like a signamancy scroll? Such as any caster could then cast it, not just a signamancer, similar to the SPW scroll being cast by Wanda?

Maybe... if it were created by a Signamancer, one of which I'm postulating that Parson is. It could actually look something like a fill-in-the-blank contract, requiring the caster to use the names of the parties as input, or have them "touch here" or sign their names or whatever.

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In the beginning is the Setup. -- Books of the Titans, Section 1.1
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She's from Unaroyal (Royal!) / You can call her Queen Bea...

Why aren't they self self-fulfilling? Jillian getting ambushed was self-fulfilling, Ansom becoming the first Decrypted was self-fulfilling, Digdoug's story had self-fulfilling prophesies too.

The Thinkamantic interpretation of Predictamancy makes them actively self-fulfilling.

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I don't buy into the Thinkamancy interpretation of Predictamancy, for the simple reason that I refuse to believe that Thinkamancers know everything better than other casters, but that doesn't really matter.

It is true that we have seen some prophecies that were self-fulfilling. But we also have examples for predictions that were not self-fulfilling; like here: https://wiki.erfworld.com/IPTSF_Text_73. Marie predicts that Charlie wouldn't kill King Banhammer that day. The prediction was fulfilled, but it was not self-fulfilling; Charlie didn't decide not to kill Banhammer because of a prediction he probably didn't even know about.

Therefore, while some predictions might be self-fulfilling, not all predictions are. And that means that a prediction that was self-fulfilling might still have been fulfilled even if it hadn't been told to anyone.

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I did a thing: http://www.erfworld.com/blog/view/55086 ... redth-king

Ah, I think that's finally a useful distinction there between "self-fulfilling" and not.

A self-fulfilling prophecy is one where the Prediction being known to the agents of the Prediction being fulfilled is one of the causes of it being fulfilled. That's necessary for the OP save-scum style Predictamancy and for the things where people bring about the worst outcome by trying to avoid it. But probably most Predictions fall into the range of how Faq used Predictions of when and where other units would approach their cities, so they could veil them. The people who know the Prediction don't do anything to help or hinder it from being fulfilled, they just make sure to avoid the worst consequences.

But while that would probably account for most Predictions in the career of a sided Predictamancer, and possibly for most of the Predictions in the life of even barbarian Predictamancers, the narrative doesn't focus on those Predictions as much because they don't do much to advance the question of whether it is possible/desirable to beat Predictions nor what Predictions really are.

Thing is, Charlie didn't have much of a choice.

In book 2 GK was steamrolling all over the royal sides thanks to two arkentools and Hamster's tactical genius. If Charlie didn't do anything, they would've just kept conquering and conquering everything on their way until they decided Charlie should be their next target. It wouldn't be anytime soon, but eventually it would happen. And the sooner GK's steamrolling was stopped, the better.

Even then Charlie did create that scroll to return Hamster to stupidworld as a compromise of sorts.

Alas Hamster is no quitter so it's a lose-lose situation for Charlie.

Well yes Charlie could try an alliance with GK, but that would mean an alliance with Wanda too, and we already saw how that turned out.

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Formerly oslecamo2, unable to acess old acount.

If Charlie was this concerned about GK, he could have assassinated Stanley on one of his dragon taming forays. He even could have manipulated the RCC into paying him for it, which would have been very Charlie-esque and have increased his standings with them. Instead his secretiveness meant that he failed in eliminating GK as a thread and lost standing with the RCC members. I think the reason behind that is that he was emotional about his archons being decrypted; he took that as a personal affront and wanted to find out how it was possible, and that caused him to make bad decisions. There's probably even a Charlie's rule that's relevant to it.




I would be interested in seeing something like a rogue Predictamancer; one that doesn't buy into the same "fate is unavoidable" belief most Predictamancers seem to but who works at trying to find the loopholes in the predictions. I'm sure they must exist, there's never just one single viewpoint.

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I did a thing: http://www.erfworld.com/blog/view/55086 ... redth-king

Yeh, I mean if you can share shmuckers by contract anyway...

You sprout a couple new sides.
Sign hard alliance, non-agression, treasury-sharing contracts, with the 'free schmucker transfer' the contracts involve.
Now, those sides are basicly one single side money-wise, but they don't have the 'too many cities, so produce less schmuckers' penalty, and can keep expanding easily without that problem, which is the flaw of big sides, as the comic has told us.

... why they don't do that ._.?



you have the wrong context, there we were talking about the gem for the heir, which I think had nothing to do with Parson at the time. They were asking why a gem and not a contract. I pointed the lack of signamancers to make such contract.

[Dunno how to delete this fail post D:]

First of all: Charlie doesn't do political assassinations (unless contracted), although none in the RCC were willing to pay Charlie for anything. Secondly, Stanley had a bunch of decrypted Archons scouting for him. They woulda spotted Charlie's ambush and prevented Stanley from going out in the first place.

Quite true that decrypted archons were scouting around for traps, there was even a full update dedicated to Hamster coming up to the idea.

On the other hand, Charlie isn't above killing those that directly challenge him free of charge.

Getting paid is nice and stuff, but even Charlie sometimes simply kills those that he deems too much of a threat.

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Formerly oslecamo2, unable to acess old acount.

Ahh, yes. They had a Moneymancer and a Hat Magician, not a Signamancer, so they sent gems by hat.

I'm surprised Charlie hasn't set up a contract-based money transfer network. For one tenth of one percent plus a small service fee of 30 Shmuckers, with a minimum charge of 100 Shmuckers, Charlie would transfer any amount of Shmuckers from one side to another. Just sign here...

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In the beginning is the Setup. -- Books of the Titans, Section 1.1
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She's from Unaroyal (Royal!) / You can call her Queen Bea...

Trust.

Charlie's one big failing.

The cause of the fall of the side of Homekey.

The key word in 'Trust Fund'.

Acton's Law states that power tends to corrupt and absolute power tends to corrupt absolutely.

Each ruler has absolute power over their units, and the thought of just a little bit more absolute power can be pretty tempting. If you build this alliance on legal contracts rulers will try to find a way around the them. The alliance would have to be built on trust and friendship.

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For those of us in the USA: Have you wondered what you would do during in the civil rights movement, or in 1930 Germany? Well, what did you do yesterday? Now you know.

A tale from Erfworld: The Retconjurer

A tale of Rhyme-o-mancy: The Noble Gasses