Fifth Scholar

Callor, Child of the Light and personal retainer to the Lord Captain Commander, Pedron Niall, stepped into the open plain. Or, at least, what was now an open plain. What the scene of carnage around him had been before was all but impossible to determine. It was those Aes Sedai witches, he knew, and not all female ones too; the eyewitness reports of the scouts which had been sent back did not deny the presence of male channelers, even under the shadow of the Hand of the Light. A truly frightening prospect, yet one he would have to stomach. The Children would need to redouble their vigilance against the witches and other Darkfriends, if the world had any chance of surviving these troubling times. Of course, few rulers saw the wisdom of this course of action, and those who did—mostly in Amadicia and Arad Doman—did so in fear of Niall’s armies instead of true belief. True belief would come later, he presumed, when they realised the vast scope of the threats against them. But for now, Callor was in the dark about what the future or even the past held. And judging from the expressions of the men and women who were slowly ringing him, they did not either. But such explanation as could be given, would. Welcome to MR41: Lord of Chaos! The rules should be fairly simple to explain, as it’s blackout, so just a few basic guidelines: - This MR runs on a single 48-hour cycle. Most players have one action a turn. - The setting is Wheel of Time. Most players will be channelers. The specific site is the nation of Amadicia in a location which was recently utterly destroyed by unknown forces. - A few other rules will be released C1, including those guiding PM usage. - The game needs exactly 14 players to run, and is anonymous. You may sign up either in this thread, or via a PM to myself and my co-GM @StrikerEZ entitled “MR41 Signup Request: [Your Name Here].” Please refer to the anonymous account rules, which govern your usage of the accounts and are replicated below for your reference. (I’m going to be a bit more lax about Rule #3, but the others remain in full force.) Given the restricted player counts, there will be a strictly enforced two-cycle inactivity filter. If you sign up, please participate. Anonymous Accounts There are a number of rules associated with the use of an Anonymous Account. Please follow them carefully. Given the potential for abuse of Anonymous Accounts, any rule breaking using the accounts will be dealt with harshly. 1) Do not change the password of the anonymous account you are issued. The IM and the GMs will have access to all anonymous accounts for the duration of the game being played. 2) Do not use the anonymous accounts to PM any non-anonymous account, other than the accounts of the GMs or the IM. Please do not use your normal accounts to PM anonymous accounts. 3) Do not tell any other player or individual associated with SE, whether you are playing or not playing the Anonymous Game. Player identities will be revealed after the game, not on the death of their avatar. Players must not reveal their own identity after their death, until the end of the game, including in the dead/spec doc. Part of the attraction of anonymous games is keeping identities obscured, and we'd like to eliminate any chance of information becoming known that undermines the integrity of the anonymity. 4) Do not change anything cosmetic about the accounts, including their member title, username, signature, and avatar. 5) Anonymous accounts have been restricted from posting outside the Roleplaying subforum, but must not be used to post in any thread other than the thread of the game they are currently being used in. If you would rather not play, you are welcome to publicly or privately request a spec doc. Signups will close in a week’s time on Thursday 9 April at 9 PM EDT. If we get enough players before this, the game will still start on schedule, but signups will remain open so anyone who still wants to play can join as a pinch-hitter. Good luck! I will keep a running count of the number of players signed up here: 2 (updated 23:22 Thursday 2 April)

Huh. I had a very poor idea of what the vote count looked like. I thought my Coda vote was actually doing something. I’ll analyse in the morning, probably, as I’m having too much fun in my PMs right now.

Not liking either the Elkanah or Sart wagons from my skim of each, Coda, as the pivot away from him was altogether too sudden for my tastes. Also Kynedath. Also also, I’ll explain all this and respond to people pinging me at Night when I can more fully process all this. Probably should have left myself more than 15 minutes to make a post but oh well

My issue with the codes is more that they’re a means of communication which reward people with effort and time. While the second is random, Eliminators tend to have more of the first, and can pool their brains in a doc to help crack codes; as such, you really shouldn’t be saying anything in a code you’re not comfortable sharing with the entire group, and since the people who will actually bother to crack codes are usually evil, you might as well share what you have to say with the village as well. I’m not opposed to their use if they’re being used for a bit of fun, but if people are passing information along them, I will oppose that. I think it was quiet just from times of day shifting. People tend to be on in the morning a bit less (though you’re correct that a lot of people, myself included, have retreated to PMs). What information are you trying to look for as you “observe?” I’m a staunch supporter of the D1 lynch, and believe the best way to observe information is to create it with lynch discussion. As such, Kynedath. We need more votes than God King’s poke on Elandera anyway, particularly since that vote seems somewhat illegitimate given that its target has already provided two thoughtful posts. I’m not in favour of revealing PM contacts. Keep in mind the Eliminator factions might not know roles, but they might strategically split up PMs they regard as active by converting or killing people in chains to prevent potential coordination. Keeping village communication together, even if we can’t trust the people we’re talking to, is important to me, and I’d rather not lose that. (Thank you for creating actual discussion, by the way, Joe.) suppresses desire to vote for Striker D1 for not voting I’m not going to try to rehash the old D1 lynch debate, but tl;dr we should at least pretend that we’re having one to generate good discussion, even if we decide later we’d rather not kill people. Letting the Eliminators pick targets freely during the Night is mostly a waste of a cycle, and getting analysis off the ground always requires a lynch, even if we don’t necessarily want one or think it’ll work. It’ll also revitalise a discussion which is going somewhat in circles right now because nobody’s actually being accused of anything.

Karjakin frowned. “Not something you see too often,” he muttered to himself. With a start, he realised he could be describing the situation around him just as well as the one on his screen. Either way, he figured, the best solution was to impose normalcy. He would meet the oddities of the situation with a principled response. He walked up to one of his fellow tourists. “What do you know about Coolidge?” he asked. “All I’ve heard about him is his strong economic record as president; why would anyone care about the man now—or, perhaps, why would the man now suddenly re-emerge?” @The_God_King A stab in the dark is often a dangerous tool, but fine for now, I suppose. RNG votes are somewhat distasteful to me on principle, but I understand why people use them. I will call you out if this vote becomes a permanent fixture for no apparent reason, though Who made the cipher? Caesar made the cipher! Not quoting Xino’s post because it’s long and I need sleep but I’d note in addition to his mostly excellent analysis that there are a lot of roleblocks and redirects flying around, and I would encourage those who have them to use them intentionally and prudently. Messing with action systems “just because” has more potential to hurt the village, because it’s uncoordinated to begin with and profits off of reliable information, and throwing a wrench at random into things hurts both the reliability of information and the coordination of village power roles; unless you strongly suspect someone, I’d be careful with these.

Karjakin sighed, looking up from the memo he was typing on his phone to see the flood of tourists around him pressing into the White House. Another crowd I’m forced to be a part of, he thought begrudgingly, returning to his memo with a vengeance. A few furiously typed lines and the press of a button, and it was off, skirting through digital space to his superiors. He was done for the moment as well, and caught the eye of another tourist in the crowd, who looked back significantly. Ah, right. He opened his messages, quickly sent “Best by test, of course,” and swiped two squares forward on his virtual board. Now he should be free of obligations, and could perhaps think of something besides his upcoming meeting with the Secretary of Defence. A bleep from his email sent that notion packing. A press release from the chief of staff? Three of those went out an hour, it seemed. Why should he care? He began reading, then frowned. Unusual incidents? This is not our work, whatever the stereotypes may be. He would have to speak with the embassy about this if he could. A president, even a dead one, was not a force he wanted to tackle alone.

It’s been a while and I need to jump back into SE while I have the time, so I’ll sign up as Sergey Karjakin, Russian ambassador and secret advisor to the Secretary of Defence. I too have not read Alcatraz, but that’s no excuse for not giving El and Wilson more of a headache more fun with writeups! So I have a flavour addition to the game. The Thirtieth President: The specter of Calvin Coolidge haunts the White House. Once per phase, a d4 is rolled and one of the following writeup consequences results: 1: Coolidge randomly interrupts both a random one-on-one and a random group PM with cryptic commentary. 2: Coolidge terrifies a random player out of his wits. 3: Coolidge participates in a murder, lynch, conversion, or other writeup-significant event. 4: GM discretion (but it can’t be nothing ).

Rath

Quite disappointing you’re choosing to comply with Xino’s lies, as with everyone else. No chance that you’re feeling Disputational today?

I must admit, being an outed and confirmed villager is quite a nice feeling

Oops, guess I killed Xino accidentally. No hurt feelings? Especially since he was evil? I dunno, can you really trust Xino? Seems a tad suspicious to me. Confirmed good does not equal confirmed right, but confirmed evil certainly does not give anyone credibility! /shrugs diffidently Only an Eliminator deals in absolutes. Sad to see such blatant prejudice against all those not buying into Xino’s honeyed lies. Perhaps I could, Zillah. I’m glad you’re keeping an open mind, so I’ll lay out my case here: 1) Araris is my fellow villager. I know this because of a secret village doc Elandera put together called the Disputers, which has him and a friend of ours named Rath in it. Unlike Xino, I’m going public with this so that people can fact-check us. As you can see, we’ve been hard at work rooting out the entrenched DDF Elims among us, and they’re nearly all out of the way. I suspect you’re one of the last few. 2) Xino is not my fellow villager. As @Araris Valerian justly points out, he flipped Elim. I performed a last-minute hammer to ensure the Elims wouldn’t be on in time to use vote manipulation to save their teammate, and since it worked, I don’t see why you’re taking issue with it. Falsely accusing somebody in an explicitly village doc was an immediate red flag on his part; not really sure why he tried that.

Xino Araris

I mean, I’ve done similar as a villager to try to avoid tipping my hand. The weird thing was the timing—sacrificing one’s anonymity to kill an elim is a very worthwhile trade—but it is understandable if he was afraid he’d be killed before the info got out. For this to be a true hammer, though, you’d have to expect me to be in on it, which is not an impossible leap of logic but is also harder to assume than just Araris and Abstrusity being evil, which, incidentally, is the explanation I’m going with because it doesn’t condemn me

Very tl;dr version Xino PMed me anonymously with an accusation against Araris, expecting me to post in to the thread I was busy and couldn’t post about it, and further distrusted it slightly because it was anonymous, so he posted about it instead just as I was getting on to make my post I posted confirming that he had made this allegation to me before in PM

As for Xino having caught two eliminators, that’s absolutely wonderful if true, and potentially concerning if false; an elim!Xino waiting until the last second to reveal these claims and force a mislynch, then hammer next cycle could be very effective. That said, I’ve maintained a consistent trust of him, and a distrust of Araris and Abstrusity, so I’m going to believe him in this contest of credibility. If that costs us the game, I’ll take responsibility, but really you all should be blamed for putting the fate of the village in the hands of a distracted semiactive to begin with, whether we come out of this on top or not I’ll try to post my thoughts on everyone else, but they’ll obviously be coloured by all of this recent discussion. @Araris Valerian @AbstrusityCan you offer any defence to Xino’s claims? It does seem as though you are planning to kill one of the only remaining roled villagers, and your interactions smell of distancing.