History WebComic / Erfworld

* AnAesop: In many of the stories, "outsiders" of a group should generally be brought in to provide a new perspective. Basically, uniqueness can help destroy common knowledge and improve tactics, strategy, etc.
** Parson was summoned to Erfworld partially to help destroy the status quo and remove CreativeSterility. His ideas and perspective often lead to unusual discoveries that natives of Erfworld either never think of or dismiss as being impractical or underhanded. These are often described as loopholes.
*** Trannsylvito's Moneymancer turns this around on Parson by toying with his Mathamancy bracer in ways he never thought to, showing that even someone summoned to think outside the box can be held back by their own thought processes.
** Many units find these loopholes or exploit or manipulate resources in a way that others didn't think of. In the story of Digdoug, King Posbrake found new uses for dirtamancy that Digdoug's home kingdom of Follywood did not think of. Posbrake traded his heir (an unusual move) for a dirtamancer in order to have trapped and upgraded cities without having to spend Shmuckers on actual improvements, thus allowing them to build up an army instead. This is similar to how Parson utilizes Sizemore's ability to make traps in book 1, but uses his ability for a much wider strategic goal. This novel idea allows Homekey to build horizontally instead of vertically.
** In the story of Duke Forecastle, non-seafaring warlords are used by Anchorbar, Seaworld's major naval rival, as first mates or second officers on their ships. The implication is that the "land lubbers" provide a unique perspective on naval combat that dyed-in-the-wool sailors don't and can't have, thus making their units more effective despite minor penalties to movement and attack. Notably, Seaworld hates and refuses to accept the actual moral of the story, rewriting Duke Forecastle as a DirtyCoward and changing the Aesop into "Fate protects a fool".

* AwesomenessInducedAmnesia: Casters can join into a "Caster Link", a type of MentalFusion initiated by a [[{{Whatevermancy}} Thinkamancer]]. If two casters participate in addition to the Thinkamancer then the resulting gestalt can create whole new spells or effects no single caster could even attempt. After such fusions the individuals retain only vague memories of how they did it, but usually gain greater insight into their own discipline from seeing game mechanics that are normally hidden from them. This seems to be another example of AnAesop (above) of the benefits of bringing in outside thinking.

* DropTheHammer: The Arkenhammer tames dwagons, produces thunder and lightning, can levitate, glows, turns about 20% of all walnuts that it cracks into pigeons, some of the Orlies it hits into walnuts, functions as a magical guitar, and is not too shabby of a weapon. By now, it's well into GreenRocks territory.

** Charlie also suffers from this when [[spoiler:his connection to the Arkendish is weakened. He launches an operation to croak Parson, ordering his archons to set up machine guns and croak or capture him if and when he comes through his portal. But then, a contract violation results in Parson offering himself up as payment for a contract violation. Charlie orders Parson to go through his portal to join his side, but his order to the archons in the portal room to stand down is received too late, causing his archons to fire upon Parson and croaking {{Innocent Bystander}}s in the Magic Kingdom in the cross fire.]]

** Over 100 pages into Book 3, we ''finally'' get to see [[spoiler:Charlie in the flesh. He's a combination of [[Franchise/XMen Charles Xavier]] and [[ComicStrip/{{Peanuts}} Charlie Brown]].]]

* SmarterThanYouLook: Axe Bodyspray, chief warlord of Squashcourt, is a huge hulking man with no patience for books or the other more intellectual pursuits of his predecessor, Prince Racket. However, that's out of disinterest, not stupidity. When his king passes along a "coded message" that's actually just a sudoku puzzle, he realizes that it's just a game, solves it and then goes to see Lord Crush in the dungeon. After hearing Crush's plan to save their side and their alliance against a larger, more powerful side, he recognizes that it'll work and is their only chance, even though he had intended to come down and laugh at the infeasibility of whatever plan Crush had come up with.