Erfworld

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Erfworld
Lady Wanda Firebaugh and the Uncroaked Lord Manpower the Temporary ride a dwagon to Gobwin Knob.
Author(s)	Rob Balder and Jamie Noguchi
Website	http://www.erfworld.com RSS web feed
Current status / schedule	Updated Randomly (approx 3-4/month)
Launch date	2006-12-07
Genre(s)	fantasy, comedy, parody

Erfworld: The Battle for Gobwin Knob is a fantasy/comedy story-driven webcomic about a master strategy gamer stuck in a wargame, written by Rob Balder (the author of PartiallyClips) and illustrated by Jamie Noguchi. It is hosted on Giant in the Playground Games,^[1] along with Rich Burlew's The Order of the Stick. It was recognized as one of the top 10 graphic novels of 2007 by Time Magazine.^[2]

Erfworld follows a graphic novel format, with a new "page" added with each update. Some updates are part of parallel work called Parson's Klog (book log, cf. web log) gives insight into the setting and the protagonist's state of mind with his diary entries. The setting is Erfworld, a fantasy world that adheres to the rules of a turn-based strategy wargame. The narrative itself is surreal and referential. The comic's humor largely revolves around strategy-fantasy video games, role-playing games, popular culture references, and historical references, with frequent puns and side-gags, as well as letter changes in frequently used names (spidews, dwagons and twolls instead of spiders, dragons and trolls, for example).

Erfworld's plot, setting, and characters are released under a Creative Commons Attribution, Noncommercial, ShareAlike license.^[3]

Contents 1 Plot synopsis 2 Characters 2.1 Known Arkentools 3 The World 3.1 Game Rules 3.1.1 Movement 3.1.2 Provisions 3.2 Boop 3.3 Magic 4 Recognition 5 References 6 External links

[edit] Plot synopsis

After a brief description of the origins of Erfworld, the comic begins with the Battle of Warchalking, a conflict between the forces of Stanley the Plaid and Marbit (and possibly other) forces. The battle ends in defeat for the Plaid, when Stanley's last living warlord is slain. Stanley's chief adviser Wanda Firebaugh convinces him to purchase a powerful and expensive "Summon Perfect Warlord" spell as a last-ditch hope of staving off defeat. This spell summons Parson Gotti from a gaming session in his apartment.

Meanwhile, Prince Ansom, the leader of a coalition against Stanley, and Jillian Zamussels, a female barbarian officer in his forces, plan their final assault on Stanley's capital city, Gobwin Knob. Jillian flies a scouting mission; as soon as she leaves, Ansom sends a squad of heavy ground units led by Sir Webinar and Dora to follow her as emergency backup. Jillian is captured by a dwagon squadron and taken to Gobwin Knob, where Wanda interrogates her. Their interactions suggest that they are romantically or otherwise intimate.

After concluding the interrogation, Wanda, confident of her emotional domination of the prisoner, plans to deliberately release her to be found by Webinar's squad. Expecting Ansom to personally lead a rescue expedition, Wanda, Stanley, and Parson plot an ambush. The trap fails when Vinny Doombats, one of Ansom's warlords, persuades him to remain with the main column. Instead, Ansom sends most of his flying forces. In addition, he contacts Charlie and hires three of Charlie's Archons from him to reinforce Webinar's group.

Taking advantage of the enemy column's lack of air cover, Parson sends a force of dwagons to make hit-and-run raids. They surgically target heavy siege units, which are critical to Ansom's attack plans, and then retreat. After the raids, Vinny's scout bats discover a ring of dwagons in the forest near the column. Inferring that this formation has been deployed to protect the attacking dwagons until they heal, Ansom assembles a force to punch through the far side of the ring (its weakest point) and finish them off while they are still wounded and vulnerable.

Ansom's force fights its way into the circle, and finds nothing inside. The ring formation is a trick (in fact, the wounded dwagons are hovering over a nearby lake, out of reach of enemy ground units). Ansom considers his options for salvaging the situation. In the hope of saving the remaining siege units, he orders Jillian to lead the air units in a hunt for the wounded dwagons.

Jillian begins to carry out the search as ordered. However, she deliberately sends Webinar, Dora, and most of the slower flying units on wild-goose chases and leaves them behind. Then, she declares that she is abandoning the mission in favor of heading directly back to Ansom's position to help him escape from the dwagon ring. One of the Archons confronts her with the question of whether her actions are the result of being under a spell... just as they find the group of wounded dwagons.

Meanwhile, Stanley and his advisers monitor the situation from the situation room at Gobwin Knob, using a battlefield command-and-control display generated by three mentally linked spellcasters: a Lookamancer, a Thinkamancer, and a Foolamancer. Parson worries that Jillian's group is getting too close to the wounded dwagons; however, Wanda insists that Jillian will not attack. Sizemore Rockwell, another of Stanley's casters, warns that the suggestion spell on Jillian might break if it requires actions (such as ignoring enemy units) that are too difficult to rationalize away; Wanda angrily dismisses his concern.

Face to face with the wounded dwagons, Jillian is unwilling to attack, and flounders for a reason to avoid doing so. Jaclyn, one of the Archons, presses her for a decision to either attack, switch sides, or quit. Unable to accept any of those options, Jillian collapses... and then recovers, sending a message to Ansom declaring her hatred for Stanley and love for Ansom. She then leads her force in an attack.

Parson directs a focused counterattack, ordering his forces to "croak, not capture" the enemy warlord. Wanda objects, but Parson and Stanley are unswayed. However, Ansom comes to Jillian's rescue just in time, with Vinny in tow. With these reinforcements, the dwagons are routed and destroyed. Stanley will not listen to Parson's attempt to suggest a new plan of attack, and orders Parson, Wanda, and Sizemore out of his sight. As they leave (with Parson carrying Wanda, who is in a state of shock), he sends a command to recall all of his surviving forces to Gobwin Knob, and orders the three casters to break their link.

Parson decides that he has to risk Stanley's wrath and convince him to attack the enemy leaders. Before he can do so, he finds that the surviving dwagons (from the decoy ring) have returned to Gobwin Knob. Stanley takes them, along with the Foolamancer and the top three units of the Knights in Stanley's Service, and departs the city. Parson goes to the situation room and finds that Misty, the Lookamancer, was killed by the severing of the link. He reviews the very limited resources left to him to defend the city.

While examining the tunnels under Gobwin Knob, he learns from Sizemore that they were designed for mining rather than defense, and can only be collapsed to a limited extent before bringing down the entire city. During this conversation, Sizemore describes Stanley's rise to power. Originally a common pikeman, Stanley was promoted to warlord. He then found and was attuned to the Arkenhammer, enabling him to tame dwagons. The battles he won as a result impressed then-ruler King Saline IV, who made Stanley his Chief Warlord and Heir Designate. After a gobwin rebellion against Saline while Stanley was out on a mission, Stanley returned and took control of the realm.

As Ansom's forces approach Gobwin Knob, Jillian surmises that Stanley has fled and requests permission to pursue, but refuses to explain where he went or how she knows. After her request is denied, she tells her story to Ansom in person. Jillian had been the heir to Faq, a small hidden kingdom. Unhappy with life at home, she led mercenary expeditions to supplement Faq's treasury. While on a mission, she got a message describing a massive dwagon assault on Faq, and then found her status changed to barbarian. Continuing to take mercenary jobs to support herself, she learned that Stanley was a likely suspect in the attack. This was confirmed the first time she was captured by Stanley's forces, and encountered a spellcaster from Faq working for Stanley. (A flashback panel reveals to the reader that she is referring to Wanda Firebaugh.) After this explanation, Ansom agrees with Jillian's conclusion that Stanley is headed to the ruins of Faq with the intent of making a new start there.

Parson then begins putting his new plan into motion. He directs Sizemore to lead his golems in an overwhelmingly strong attack against the furthest-advanced Marbit scouts in the tunnels, ignoring all other forces. He then consults Maggie, the Thinkamancer, who tells him that Wanda will probably recover eventually, but not yet. Parson then has Maggie put him in direct contact with Charlie, and offers him a deal. Charlie takes a friendly tone, but declines to damage his reputation by changing sides in mid-conflict. After Maggie tells him that she has the stamina to send only one more Thinkagram this turn, Parson contacts Ansom and deliberately goads him, scoffing at royalty and declaring that Stanley's attunement to the Arkenhammer shows him to be Ansom's "superior".

However, this goading is unknowingly interrupted by Stanley, who then contacts Maggie in an attempt to learn the Foolamancer's name, which is suspected to hold the key to restoring him to full ability. Ansom, meanwhile, dispatches a force of air units, led by Jillian, to hunt down Stanley.

So far, Jillian has led her forces directly into Gobwin Knob, 'buzzing' the main tower of Efdup. There is a confrontation between Jillian and a recovered Wanda, after which Wanda vapourises Jillian's forces (visible casualties are an Archon and three Unipegataurs) but noticeably spares Jillian.

[edit] Characters

• Stanley the Tool, formerly Lord Stanley The Plaid: Overlord of the city of Gobwin Knob, and of the nearly lost Plaid tribe.^[4] He possesses the Arkenhammer, a mysterious tool of divine origin.^[5][6] Lord Stanley is involved in an ongoing war in an effort to find the other Arkentools, believing it is the will of the Titans he control them. Unfortunately for him, this war has reduced his realm from eleven cities to only Gobwin Knob itself.^[7] He had Wanda summon "the perfect warlord" in an attempt to win the battle for Gobwin Knob, which yielded Parson Gotti.^[8][9] In Stanley's first meeting with Parson, Parson convinced him that "tool" was a term of honor. Drawing a connection between this title and his search for the Arkentools, Stanley declared that he should henceforth be addressed as "Tool".^[10] Stanley objects strongly to being called a "bad guy,"^[11] and considers himself to be divinely favored by the Titans.^[12] Stanley's underlings often suffer from his unchecked ego and limited patience, as well as his limited intelligence. After the rout of a large group of Warlords and Dwagons by Ansom and Zamussels he left the city with every remaining dwagon, as well as his three top knights and the base's Foolamancer.

• Wanda Firebaugh: Chief Croakamancer serving Lord Stanley.^[13] She is a patient and skilled manager,^[4] though she is not above using seduction as a means of manipulating others.^[14] She is skilled at many types of magic, but has stated that only Croakamancy (which she uses to animate fighters "croaked" in battle as "uncroaked"^[15]) holds any interest for her.^[16] She was the one who suggested using the warlord summoning spell, and cast the spell that drew Parson into Erfworld.^[9] She knew that, as a Croakamancer, she was not ideally trained for the casting of the Summon Perfect Warlord Findamancer spell, but Stanley ordered her to do so in order to save on the casting cost. The warlord she summoned (Parson) did not match Stanley's expectations.^[17] She has been described by Stanley as a skilled torturer and interrogator;^[18] after questioning Jillian Zamussels, she reported that she had obtained the entire enemy battle plan and that she controlled Zamussels' mind.^[19] Unfortunately Zamussels broke the hold over her mind, and in the process led Ansom's forces and Charlie's Archons to victory over several Warlords and a large group of Dwagons. The backlash resulting from the breaking of the suggestion spell severely affected Wanda mentally, leaving her unresponsive; several turns later, Maggie stated that Wanda would recover, but not in that turn.

• Parson Gotti aka Lord Hamster: Depicted as the author of the webcomic Hamstard^[20] (actually created by the authors of Erfworld as a meta-background for Parson's character and as an "easter egg"). Parson spends months at a time designing strategy games for his own amusement as an escape from an unsatisfying job and life.^[8] He was summoned to Erfworld by Wanda on Lord Stanley's orders, called by a spell meant to summon "the ultimate warlord". Parson is large by Erfworld standards, standing roughly twice as tall as Wanda Firebaugh.^[10] His name is an anagram for "Protagonist".

• Prince Ansom: Chief Warlord to King Slately^[4] and the leader of the Royal Crown Coalition fighting against Stanley.^[21] He is a skilled leader, but severely lacking in modesty. His crest is a radish. He carries the Arkenpliers, though he is not attuned to them, and thus cannot use their full abilities.^[22] He has a history of personally riding to Jillian's rescue,^[23] and Wanda believes he is in love with her.^[19] While he apparently looks down on those not of royal or noble houses---Vinny correctly guesses that he despises Stanley not so much for his attacks on other peoples as on the fact he came to rule by regicide---he does, according to Jillian, honestly believe in the concept of noblesse oblige, and as a result often puts himself in unnecessary danger to protect his troops.

• Jillian Zamussels: A female barbarian and warlord, fighting for the army of Prince Ansom. She has been known to engage in combat even when directed to avoid it.^[24][25] She has an unrealistically oversized sword.^[4] Her personal relationship with Prince Ansom is unclear; she declined Ansom's invitation to join him in his tent, but later that night approached it, stopped, and walked away.^[26] Jillian has a reputation for being frequently captured by the enemy. She chats casually with Wanda after being tortured and interrogated by her,^[27] but later suddenly breaks down and collapses. It is revealed that Wanda is able to influence her feelings and thoughts. ^[28]. She has stated that she was originally the heir of the kingdom of Faq, an isolated and peaceful Utopian kingdom and the daughter of King Banhammer, a philosopher-king who disliked his heir for her violent and aggressive ways ^[29].

• Sizemore Rockwell: A Dirtamancer in the armies of Gobwin Knob.^[4] He is very curious and loves to study all types of magic, but is unskilled in any beyond his specialty.^[16] He has helped Parson learn how magic works in Erfworld (insofar as the Erfworlders themselves understand it), but knows little about military matters.^[30][31]

• Bogroll: A one-eyed twoll who serves as a guardsman in Gobwin Knob and lackey to Parson.^[32] He is loyal and typically good-natured, although a frequent target of the other guardsmen's pranks.^[5] Bogroll was a character in the PartiallyClips strip ^[33], and is the only known crossover between PartiallyClips and Erfworld. His name is a British English colloquialism for toilet paper.

• Vinny Doombats: A count who fights for the Royal Crown Coalition, Vinny seems to be a vampire (though sunlight apparently does not harm him). Vinny has few qualms about speaking frankly, in a colorful accent and colloquial slang, to Prince Ansom, to whom he seems to be a top advisor. He has confronted Ansom with his opinion that Stanley's commoner origins, not his military aggressions against several coalition members, are at the root of Ansom's antipathy toward Stanley, while assuring Ansom that this issue would not affect his personal loyalty.^[34] As his name implies, he controls the coalition's bat scouting units. His name is a reference to Vinny Goombatz, a fictional character created by stand-up comedian Rodney Dangerfield.

• Maggie: A Thinkamancer in the employ of Gobwin Knob. She controlled the trimancer link with the unnamed Foolamancer and the Lookamancer Misty. She is very skilled in her specialty and amoral in its application; it is heavily implied that when she broke the link, she protected herself from the backlash at the expense of the other two. Parson discribed her as "Kind of a cold fish."

[edit] Known Arkentools

There are four Arkentools known to be in existence,^[35] but only three have so far been positively identified in the comics.

• Arkenhammer: A hammer resembling a toy croquet mallet. Owned by and attuned to Stanley the Plaid/Tool, the Arkenhammer has the power to control dwagons, to glow brightly, to levitate along with its wielder, and to turn approximately 20 percent of walnuts cracked with it into pigeons. Stanley claims the Arkenhammer has chosen him for divine reasons, and uses this as rationale for his quest to obtain the other tools.
• Arkenpliers: A sword-sized pair of needle-nose pliers. Owned by but not attuned to Prince Ansom, they serve as a close combat weapon and have the power to "turn most Uncroaked to dust". It is not yet known what powers they would manifest in the hands of an attuned wielder. Stanley believes that Ansom's attack on Gobwin Knob is divinely directed to bring the Arkenpliers to him.
• Arkendish: An object resembling a satellite dish. Owned by and attuned to Charlie; it gives him a mastery of Thinkamancy. Parson uses the fact that Charlie is not a Royal but is still attuned to it to further provoke Ansom.

[edit] The World

[edit] Game Rules

The laws of nature governing Erfworld are similar to the rules of a turn-based strategy game.

[edit] Movement

Each unit (a term that encompasses both various creatures and sapient beings) has a certain amount of "Move," which governs how far it may travel during its side's turn. At the end of the turn, all unused move is reset to zero. Thus, units may only travel to other locations during their turn (at other times, they may move around within the bounds of their current game-world location and otherwise act normally).

[edit] Provisions

Each unit has an "upkeep" cost, paid by the overlord of its side out of the treasury. At the start of their side's turn, each unit receives rations, heals back to full health, and minor maintenance such as personal cleanup.

[edit] Boop

One of the more unusual features of the Erfworld universe is that it appears to be censored. When Parson is summoned to the world, he discovers almost immediately that whenever he attempts to use a word that could be considered a profanity it comes out as "Boop". It is clear from Parson's reaction that this is an in-universe mechanic. ^[17]

The natives of Erfworld apparently understand that the word represents profanity, but it is unclear whether they understand each boop as the word Parson had intended to use. Sizemore and Wanda are the only characters to have responded appropriately to a word that was "booped out," but it is possible they determine the word's meaning from the context. ^[36]

There is one notable exception to the general censorship, "Crap Golems"^[37] remain un-censored even due to their risque name.

[edit] Magic

The workings of magic in Erfworld has yet to be explained in great detail outside of the second Parson's Klog where the major classes and elements of Life, Motion, and Matter were given, along with the disciplines of each class and the axes of Erf, Fate, and Numbers. None of the elements or axes have been explained in any detail outside of the definitions of their names.

As explained in the second Klog, the three elements of Life, Motion, and Matter are combined in different ways to get each of the eight major classes. From there, each of the major classes are divided by the three axes into three disciplines, giving a total of twenty-four disciplines.

The major classes, their combinations of the Elements, the disciplines, and known information, are as follows.

Life	Motion	Matter	Class
X			Hocus Pocus
	X		Spookism
		X	Stuffamancy
X	X		Eyemancy
X		X	Hippiemancy
	X	X	Naughtymancy
X	X	X	Stagemancy
			Clevermancy

	Erf	Fate	Numbers	Notes
Hocus Pocus	Findamancy	Predictamancy	Mathamancy	Findamancy and Predictamancy were used to summon Parson; Predictamancers have been indicated to be akin seers[38]. Mathamancy is described as: "Analyzing probabilities... predicting outcomes" and "the raw calculations of that work"[39].
Spookism	Turnamancy	Dollamancy	Weirdomancy
Stuffamancy	Dirtamancy	Changemancy	Dittomancy	The Dirtamancer, Sizemore Rockwell, has been shown to be able to animate different types of rock into golems [40], to be able to dig through solid rock[41], and to deal with Gobwin Knob's night soil in ways up to and including animating it into "crap golems".
Eyemancy	Lookamancy	Thinkamancy	Foolamancy	Lookamancy has only been shown as a form of scrying. Thinkamancy has been shown to deal with telepathy, including creating a mind link with other casters that allows spells that normal casters cannot even comprehend [42], Thinkagrams, and suggestion spells. Foolamancy has been shown to function around illusions and veiling troops. The Eyebooks used by the main characters in Chapter 1 are made through a combination of all three disciplines of Eyemancy[43].
Hippiemancy	Flower Power	Signamancy	Date-a-mancy
Naughtymancy	Shockmancy	Croakamancy	Deletionism	Croakamancy includes the creation of Uncroaked. Deletionism is a jab at Wikipedia.
Stagemancy	Hat Magic	Carnymancy	Rhyme-o-mancy
Clevermancy	Luckmancy	Healomancy	Moneymancy	Clevermancy consists of none of the Elements, and is described by author Rob Balder as "raw magic dealing with raw magical forces"[44].

[edit] Recognition

Despite being a "young" webcomic, Erfworld has been recognised by several sources and webcomic authorities. Other webcomics authors such as Howard Tayler of Schlock Mercenary^[45] and Mohammad "Hawk" Haque of Applegeeks^[46] have posted reviews and comments about Erfworld, and it has been cited on numerous webcomic sites such as Comixpedia^[47] and Fleen,^[48] by authors outside the webcomic field such as Jonathan Coulton, ^[49] and by Time-Blog and Time author/journalist Lev Grossman in his articles "Webcomics are the New Blogs"^[50] and "Erfworld: It's a Boopin' Good Webcomic!"^[51]; Grossman also listed Erfworld as one of the Top 10 Graphic Novels of 2007^[52]. The addition of Erfworld to GiantITP was noted in "First Watch," Dragon Magazine's monthly section on new developments in gaming and entertainment.^[53]

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Erfworld
• The main cast of characters