Long Game 83: The Survivor

[Karnatheon]

I'm cool with shorter days I was kinda thinking about that earlier.

[Biplet]

2 hours ago, StrikerEZ said:

Not like there's outed elims or anything, nope, not at all.

"I ain't never seen two outed elims. It's always one of them gotta deny it."

anyway yeah i'd be okay shortening the day.

 

[Araris Valerian]

Shorter days are fine by me. 

[Kasimir]

I'm fine with shorter days as well.

Edited to add:

3 hours ago, |TJ| said:

Well, we definitely have a prowler. There is an increase in the votes on Tani, which can happen only by Rioting. And if any of the three outed elims had used Riot, there should be net change of zero in the votes because the added vote and self-vote cancel cancels each other out. Which means there's a sixth elim on the Karn train *sigh* 

Edit: @StrikerEZ, I'm fine with 24 hr day cycles. 

Agree with prowler assessment. This puts us at (likely) currently 5-4; tonight will bring us to parity 4-4 and then probably a ML. If they can't succeed by D7, I don't know what to say.

Edited March 6, 2022 by Kasimir

[StrikerEZ]

Announcement: there was a Gold Vial added to the Stockpile by mistake. It is no longer there. Sorry about any confusion this may have caused.

[Kasimir]

15 hours ago, StrikerEZ said:

Also, everyone please say whether you want the next Day turn to be 24 hours or 48 hours. With the smaller player count, if things go past tonight, it might be worth to shorten the Day turns. And just for that reason. Not like there's outed elims or anything, nope, not at all.

We have always been at war with Eastasia, I see

Hi Village, honestly tonight's plans boil down to: grab anything not Bronze and go for it  It's not a good plan, but it has the distinct advantage of being a plan, that is to say, better than nothing.

-Love,

Your Friendly Village Neutral.

---

Ni su'cuyi, gar kyr'adyc, ni partayli, gar darasuum Aman, Ash, Mat, JNV, Bev'ika, Stick, Walin, Fifth, Tani.

The names he carried with him grew longer and more numerous as he recited them, daily, the way he was supposed to, the way they read out the names of the fallen each morning back when he fought with Clan Aral. Kavar knew their weight: it was a familiar one, and against them, he set the two names, heavy like two stones in his chest: Mira, Ailys. They were not dead, but they may as well have been. He felt the old ache well up within him.

He'd made his own choices, and his share of mistakes. Ailys had left first. After that, it was Mira who had walked out of his life. With Mira, it was no sudden decision, though perhaps it had not even been sudden with Ailys: it had been hurried nights, between deployments, it had been arguments swiftly hushed when Mir'ika came into the kitchen, it'd been a thousand and one signs he should have read as clearly as the star-clad sky above his hometown, as trail signs laid down by Aral scouts for the main force to follow.

With Mira, it had been distant transmission after distant transmission, growing briefer, colder; his own transmissions sometimes hitting the answering service or going unanswered altogether. He knew she was slipping through his fingers and maybe that was the point, he thought. You gave your children life but you could not live it for them, and Mira'd decided she was better off without her buir in her life. And the knowledge still cut him, like a knife: the knowledge that maybe there was no way to make things right, that Mira'd made her own choice, just as Ailys had, so many years ago.

Kad'ika. He was a knife, had always been. Maybe that was the problem. He'd been a knife first, and a father and a husband a distant third.

"I can't do this," he slurs, so long ago, slumping on that stool in that old run-down bar in the worst part of Elendel. Maybe he'd just wanted to numb his brain with enough alcohol. Or maybe he'd wanted a fight. Sometimes Kavar can't tell the difference. "Shab', Wyhe, I can't."

And then, terribly, unutterably terribly, Wyhe gives him hope. "No one knows how to be a father, Kav. You just do your best."

"And if that's not enough?"

"How hard can it be?" Wyhe wants to know. "Shab' Kav, you just love them more than air and water and light. From there, everything else comes naturally."

And he had.

And he had.

And it wasn't enough. And he didn't know what he'd done wrong, but part of him desperately hoped that it wasn't too late. Always one last mission, always some last task that needed his attention before he resigned and went to seek Mira. Went to—discover what had become of her, to gaze upon her, one last time, and to learn if she needed her buir gone from her life, and—

—and it ached like the rasping of a glass knife against bone, but of course, if that was what she wanted, that was what Kavar would do.

But for now, there were traitors to hunt. He closed his eyes and breathed in the dark, holding his breath for the ten-count and then releasing it. The knife was still tucked away in his boot. He supposed it was always good to have an ace up your sleeve in case you needed one. He'd carried it to war for the first time when Ailys had given it to him, but it'd saved his life nearly a dozen times, and by now, Kavar'd come to regard it as a good luck charm of sorts.

He'd found the caches and destroyed them. But the crew of the Survivor was fragmenting. 

"Live," Sergeant Vahn said, and glared at him when Kavar opened his mouth to argue. "The last cache you destroyed contained a transmitter. Can't break the encryption, but expect it to be Rosharan."

"We knew it, though. The saboteurs were meant to derail the mission before it began."

"The mission," Vahn snapped. "Not your mission."

Their mission is mine, Kavar'd wanted to say, but that was not what an operative could afford. Not sentimentality. Not entanglement. And yet, he had. Because something about the plight of the squads, of Kranvar, of the many others on the Survivor had reminded him of himself on his first deployments, and the instinct had been to guide, to protect, to teach. Even when he was no longer working for the same branch of the Confederacy as they were.

He'd reminded himself not to get attached, even when they made his cover and inserted him into Pyrehawk, with Vahn as his handler. But old habits died hard.

Good soldiers follow orders, said Bralor, so long ago.

Vahn's eyes did not soften. He held out a secure bag, with a faint bulge inside. Kavar took it, weighed it. "The transmitter. Some other critical pieces of intel from the Survivor. The ship is lost, Aral. Best you see to getting off before the mutiny begins and take it to Confederacy SIGINT. They'll be able to crack it, no doubt."

"And you?"

Vahn snorted. "Today, I'm a soldier," he said, and walked away before Kavar could shout at him for forcing Kavar to survive, for just walking away like this, for going against standard operating procedure, even though that was the same thing Kavar had badly wanted to do, to try to stand with the last of the Survivor's crew and brace for the final onslaught.

He kept the bag in his kit and secured it to be certain.

He drew a deep breath and went out to meet the others. Later, he told himself. He had his orders. But they wouldn't have sent him to the Survivor if they hadn't expected him to use his best judgement. And in Kavar's estimation, the crew was losing, but he'd be damned if he just lay down and surrendered.

There was always another day to die. 

And as the old saying went: Ib'tuur jatne tuur ash'ad kyr'amur.

Edited March 6, 2022 by Kasimir
formatting

[StrikerEZ]

@Biplet @Sart @Araris Valerian @Kasimir @|TJ| @xinoehp512 @Karnatheon @Sequence @STINK There's just about 4 hours left in the turn! Make sure to get any actions or item requests in before the turn is over!

[Biplet]

O7

[StrikerEZ]

And that's the turn! No more posting, PMing, or submitting actions/item requests!

[StrikerEZ]

Aftermath

Kavar Aral found himself waiting. He had a mission to complete, and he knew it was almost over. They all knew. He could see it in their faces as they walked through the halls of the ship. There were much less of them than before. Those that were left hardly strayed from their rooms. Command had holed themselves up in the bridge. Who even knew what was going on in there. 

But Kavar had been successful. He'd managed to find many of the traitors' storage caches and confiscate their contraband. The fact he hadn't been caught and killed yet was surprising. Part of him almost wished he had been caught, but then he thought of Mira. Of Ailys. Of seeing the people he loved again. 

One of the things that had kept him sane throughout all of this had been working with Kranvar. The man had...perhaps not the best record before coming here. But he had been resourceful. And very helpful.

And he had got his hands on steel. 

Kavar was anxiously pacing his room, waiting for Kranvar to show up. He was supposed to be back by now. Killing Edeis shouldn't have taken him this long. 

Haar'chak, Kavar thought, I'm going after him.

Arval could not stand being stuck in the bridge. He had been stuck in here with the captain and his crew for days now. It was supposed to be to keep everyone vital to the mission as safe as possible. But Arval could not help but feel like he was doing nothing while his men, his crew, were dying out there.

Captain Kellian was pacing around the controls of his ship as Somah gave directions to Byndweth and the other navigators. "How close are we to Roshar?" Kellian asked.

"By my estimations," Byndweth said, looking down at the instruments in front of her, "we're a couple days out."

Kellian sighed. "Is there really no way you can make this thing go any faster?" He said, looking at Denno, the lead engineer.

Denno just shrugged. "We're going as fast as we can in the Physical Realm, sir. If we had a functioning cognitive drive, we could go faster, but...."

He didn't need to finish his sentence. They weren't going to have one.

"At this rate," Arval cut in, "We're all going to be dead or held captive by the time we get there. I say we go out there, gather anyone we think is loyal to our cause, and root out these traitors as soon as possible before there's a ship wide mutiny. I'm sure there are plenty of people would side with the traitors if it meant they got to live. We need to stop this before that happens and we're too late."

Kellian began to nod, as did a couple of the staff members in the bridge. Arval made his way to the door, hoping that if he left at least a few of them would gain the courage to leave with him too. 

"Stop." Denno said, firing a blast at the ceiling. 

Arval quickly turned around, pulling out his own gun, but found several of the staff pointing guns at him. Somah, the assistant captain, had Kellian in a chokehold. And Denno and another man had their guns pointed at Arval.

"I don't think you're going anywhere," Denno said. "Within the hour, the others will have taken the rest of the ship. We can't have you trying to gather a foolish resistance that will waste lives on both sides." Denno gestured to a seat, and Arval cautiously made his way to it, his heart hammering. "Just take a seat, and we can discuss the terms of your imprisonment like reasonable men."

Arval nodded, sitting down. When Denno turned for a moment to talk to another traitor, Arval jumped out of his seat and reached for Denno's gun. 

Arval did not make it. He took a blast to the chest and fell to the ground, dead. 

Kavar ran through the halls of the ship. He could hear the sounds of battle echoing through the ship. Men and women were dying on this ship. And he was running to save a single friend.

Better one than none, Kavar thought to himself, gritting his teeth.

At Edeis's quarters, he came skidding to a halt, breathless. Kranvar and Kavar had agreed that the immortal was most likely working for the Rosharans. They had done some digging and she had shown up in previous aliases on their side in the past. It was a wonder that the Confederation had not linked her to those previous identities.

Edeis's door was open. Kranvar slowly pulled out his knife before he began moving towards the room.

He quickly stepped into the room, knife forward, ready to thrown or stab with it as needed.

Kranvar was just standing there, quietly. There was blood on his hands.

"You did it?" Kavar asked, his shoulders relaxing. "Let's get out of here."

"It's a bit more complicated than that," Kranvar said. "Take a seat, Kavar. I have some explaining to do."

Edeis stalked through the halls, Karn and the traitor who called himself Arval at her side. The rest of their group were making coordinated strikes at parts of the ship, trying to take them from any loyalists that were left. She hadn't known just how many of them the Rosharan forces had managed to sneak into this ship. It was amusing to her that so many of them were secretly traitors all along.

But her group had an important mission. They had to kill Sart. He'd been a thorn in their side for some time.

Karn was going to be doing most of the killing, though. He had found a talent for that these past few days.

Edeis was there to make sure none of them died.

And none of them did. They tore their way through the ranks of soldiers they ran into, Arval and Karn ruthlessly pushing on armor and blasting through bodies. Edeis was there to soothe away everything but fear, to pull on any bullets that strayed too close to her companions.

She was going to have quite the story to tell after this was over.

Kavar's heart stopped. This can't be happening.

"I like you, Kavar," Kranvar said, walking around him. Kavar noticed the dead body at that point. A man who went by the codename of Stink. Kavar had never learned his real name. But he would remember him.

"I know that you've been confiscating our weapons. And you know that I know. And, as you have probably realized by now, that means my team knows." Kranvar paused, and Kavar felt like his whole world was falling apart. It was like every mission he had ever been on was happening again, the dying, the murders, everything.

He pulled himself together.

For Mira.

He pushed past Kranvar, stabbing him in the leg, and ran away from the room. There was a pop and the world around him seemed to speed up, and he heard hundreds of blaster shots at once. He'd been stuck in a cadmium bubble. Kranvar knew him too well.

The ship has probably been taken by now, Kavar thought, this was a distraction to keep me out of things.

Kavar almost ran into the main hallways of the ship. He could go out there, try and mount one last resistance against the mutiny. But what would that do? What could he do?

He could keep on living.

Kavar ran the opposite direction of what everything in his soul was telling him to do. He rain straight for the escape pods. The traitors obviously had not felt the need to barricade those yet. They probably assumed any loyalists were either dead or captured. Well, Kavar would survive. And he would find a way to Mira and Ailys. However he could.

He hopped in the escape pod, and ejected from the ship.

As he entered in the coordinates to begin his long escape journey, he looked out the window towards The Survivor. 

Farewell, my friends.

---

Sart has been killed! They were a Confederation Loyalist!
STINK has been killed! They were a Confederation Loyalist!

The game is over! Congratulations to the Traitors for winning! Good job Biplet, Araris, TJ, Karn, Archer, and Bort! Also a huge congratulations to Kasimir, who won as the Thief!

Thank you so much to @Experience for helping me run this game. And a huge thanks to @Devotary of Spontaneity for being an awesome IM, helping out when we were both dying IRL and needed help, and for doing some awesome RP stuff throughout the game. I will definitely be using that to scaffold my writing when I go back through and add in all the old writeups. Keep an eye out for when I add those.

Also thank you to @Szeth_Pancakes, @Dannnex, @Orlok Tsubodai, and @Fifth Scholar for playing, even if you couldn't stay with us the whole time. Thank you to everyone who pinch hit for me as well. It was really awesome how I managed to get so many pinch hitters. They just kept coming whenever I needed one.

Thank you so much to everyone who played. It's always a blast running games for all of y'all and I appreciate you guys so much. I hope you enjoyed. I'll probably wait a bit before I start giving out GM thoughts, of which I have many.

Player List:

1. @Biplet - Edeis, a totally not immortal gossip Traitor Metallurgist
2. @Ashbringer - Faleast, just a normal dude and definitely not a shapeshifter Confederation Loyalist
3. @Sart Confederation Loyalist
4. @Matrim's Dice - Dooku, a man whose name is unrelated to anything Confederation Loyalist Hazekiller
5. @Araris Valerian - Arval, no the other one Traitor
6. @Steeldancer - Leets, totally not the Flash Confederation Loyalist
7. @Amanuensis - Genis, a little kid who’s too smart for his own good and his AI friend, G.E.N.I.U.S. Confederation Loyalist
8. @JNV - Kali, another kid who managed to sneak on board the ship Confederation Loyalist Investigator
9. @Archer - Ivory Tarvis, Head Carpenter of The Survivor Traitor
10. @Kasimir - Kavar Aral, a seasoned operative who really should have retired ages ago Thief
11. @The Unknown Aon - ExMach Inadeus, an extraordinarily lucky guy Confederation Loyalist
12. @|TJ| - Kranvar, a wanted criminal who snuck on board somehow Traitor
13. @DrakeMarshall - The meme guy Confederation Loyalist
14. @xinoehp512 Confederation Loyalist Metallurgist
15. @Thaidakar the Ghostblood - Levin Venture, totally not a Ghostblood Confederation Loyalist Hazekiller
16. @Illwei - Kraval Aralis, who’s way too excited about potions Confederation Loyalist Hazekiller
17. @Karnatheon Traitor Hazekiller
18. @Haelbarde - Haen Plaid, he’s still here, I suppose Confederation Loyalist
19. @_Stick_ - The Stick figure Confederation Loyalist
20. @Sequence - Sfirm Kryt, they’re totally in the mission Confederation Loyalist
21. @Bort Traitor
22. @STINK Confederation Loyalist
23. @Tani Confederation Loyalist
24. @Walin Confederation Loyalist

Docs:
Master Spreadsheet
Spectator/Dead Doc
Elim Doc

Edited March 7, 2022 by StrikerEZ

[Biplet]

YESSSSS!!!

Oh gosh where do I start. To my incredible team who kept me on track, you guys were soooo much fun to play with!! You're all a lot smarter than me. And a special congrats to @|TJ| for the most incredible deepwolf I have ever seen. When you started speculating about there being three elims and maybe a prowler, I cackled. Absolutely incredible. Also, sorry for nearly forgetting to vote D6 and giving y'all a heart attack. It was okay though you didn't need me in the end.

And congrats to the village/Kas for a heck of a game. You really gave us a run for our money for, like, all of the game. Y'all were awesome!! This game was a blast. I've never gotten to open wolf before >:)

 

[Archer]

Weeeeee first LG elim game in the books! Aaaaaaah it is way harder than the shorter games!
Way to pull through, gang! I was a little nervous that hammering!Araris would point to e!TJ because people would know the elims knew about the Bort scan earlier than it was revealed in thread, but TJ not hammering with y'all really really helped things. I think if he'd helped out, he couldn't have played PM spider and that probably would have cost us the game, so I approve of everything and good job. 
Good game, everyone else as well. A lot of you had solid analysis and JNV.... sigh. Alignment scanners are the worst. :P. 
Anyway, I had fun. Thanks for running this, Striker, Experience, Devo.

Edit: that's a really pretty spreadsheet, good job, whoever made it

Edited March 7, 2022 by Archer

[JNV]

Wow congrats to elims I didnt predict TJ at all you guys got really lucky on that four way tie. Also great job Kasimir thanks for helping out the good guys even though you could have just chilled your a great guy and I really appreciate it

Matrim gets a gold star for being giving a really good scan recomernndation for scan and being a ver ynice person in general thanks Matrim you are cool

6 minutes ago, Archer said:

A lot of you had solid analysis and JNV.... sigh. Alignment scanners are the worst. :P.

Are you saying I didnt have solid analysis hmmm? Probably didnt honestly Im not great at it but also ha alignment scanners are the best I actually caught someone yay!

Ok now to read the elim doc its really long wow you talked a lot its like 1.5x the dead doc good job

[---]

Another game, another doc full of quotes to boost my already too large ego

:P.

GG elims, good job TJ :p. 

Edited March 7, 2022 by Illwei

[Karnatheon]

GG everybody! I'm so glad I got to be elim this game it was a ton of fun! My team was amazing, I'm glad I got Hazekiller cause I always felt useful. The ruleset was a ton of fun @StrikerEZ thanks for running an awesome game. Congrats on the win Kas I'm glad we didn't end up needing to off you like we were worried we would.

I killed so many people this game I had a blast murdering all of you haha(almost all of you)

Edit: At one point Striker said I did more actions in a turn than he had slots prepared in his sheet so I'm proud of that.

Edited March 7, 2022 by Karnatheon

[Devotary of Spontaneity]

Final tally of Kas PMs:

976(TJ)+659(Drake)+501(Stick)+413(Mat)+266(Aman)+190(Araris)+140(Bort)+115(Hael)+114(Illwei)+107(Orlok)+100(Fifth)+61(Bip)+54(Karn)+47(Stink)+45(Steel)
+37(Ash)+32(Tani)+30(Archer)+17(Xino)+13(Walin)+12(Sequence)+9(JNV)+3(Sart)+2(Szeth)+1(Dannnex)=3944(player)+715(GM)=4659

Spoiler

Final Report:

Message sent. Convinced some bridge crew, lead engineer, assistant captain to join. Bridge secured. Enroute to Roshar. Lockdown remains until Survivor fully pacified. We’ll be seeing you again very soon after liberating training facilities.

With these last two fatalities, we won’t have to kill anymore unless any remaining crew insists on it. Locke and Sfirm surrendered quietly when they saw we had won. We’re having them listen to the broadcast again. There’s hope of them renouncing their ties to the Confederation. We have Faleast and Leets alive and unconscious, and we’ll be bringing them to a secure location if Command gives the go ahead. I think it’s still possible to turn them to our side. G.E.N.I.U.S is still functional but we haven’t had any luck bypassing security mode. 

Kavar escaped with equipment caches. For the best, he’s a natural ally, but too stubborn and Honorbond to listen if captured. Mass broadcast recorded on escape pod navicomputer. Also all intel on known and suspected Confederation operations to destabilize, disarm, and annex his people. Added Kranvar’s contact info, at his request. All contents securely encrypted, require provided physical key to decrypt.

We’re continuing negotiations with our four remaining collaborators in the original crew. They performed beyond our expectations and will be rewarded accordingly, regardless of what Command says. They can also contact you, if you’d like. All of them would make excellent agents, and everyone should get to meet you.

Rhythm of Victory

-Larkin -Lanceryn

Roshar Report Final

Congratulations on another success. Excellent to hear you’ve secured the ship with a minimum of casualties and a bolstered number of allies. The situation on Roshar has stabilized, and the addition of you and any allied crew will surely lead us to victory. Transmit a copy of your broadcast to Confederation sympathists when you get in range, if it worked on the crew of the Survivor it may work on them. Drop off Faleast, Steel, and anyone who was captured to the training facility after it’s been secured. I’ll ferry our technicians over to look at G.E.N.I.U.S. Kavar is a threat if he continues to serve the Confederation, but if he convinces other worlds to support our cause, the Confederation won’t be able to win this war quietly. I will speak with any ally who wishes a meeting to discuss reimbursement and possible further employment if the Confederation decides to escalate. We’ll also begin preparations for funerary services for Bort, Ivory, and every life wasted by the Confederation in their bid for increased power. We cannot win a full-scale war on our own, but you and your allies bought us enough time to prepare for the worst. Phem and I look forward to seeing you again.

Rhythm of Victory

-Dawnshard

 

 

[Karnatheon]

Also just have to say now that I've read it, I love the final write up. I love this line

Quote

Karn was going to be doing most of the killing, though. He had found a talent for that these past few days.

Yay Rebels *stabby stab*

[Mat]

1 hour ago, JNV said:

Matrim gets a gold star for being giving a really good scan recomernndation for scan and being a ver ynice person in general thanks Matrim you are cool

Thanks JNV! We made a pretty good team!  

But ok

TJ

I was so onto you

Until I wasn’t :|

I feel really good about my reads this game though, I basically had the team at the time I died via my own Hrovell figured out :P. I had Bip and Karn, still TJ a little bit, and Araris by default because of the Bendalloy thing plus him claiming to have targeted Bip- we were killing Archer and I’d already helped with Bort. So what I’m saying is that you’re lucky RNG gave Archer that Hrovell >:)

Yall did play extremely well though and can’t overlook that and it’d be wrong for me to.

…But also that cycle you hammered, there was a 75% chance of an elim dying (I’m sure you’re well aware of that) but nope Illwei lost the RNG and that was that. I bet the game would have gone differently had that 75% chance actually gone through. Guess you were fated to win from the beginning  

@Kasimir I had a lot of fun in PMs (the same goes to the other people I PMd) and you gave an excellent effort, much deserving of the win for sure.

@StrikerEZ and @Devotary of Spontaneity, thanks for running a great game!

Edit: I am kicking myself for not just using the Hrovell when I got it though, I would have targeted Bip. Oh well :P.

Edited March 7, 2022 by Matrim's Dice

[Biplet]

2 minutes ago, Matrim's Dice said:

Edit: I am kicking myself for not just using the Hrovell when I got it though, I would have targeted Bip. Oh well :P.

How could you!!? We're spiritual elim teammates!

[Mat]

10 minutes ago, Biplet said:

How could you!!? We're spiritual elim teammates!

Exactly, I can tell when you're elim :eyes:

Man seeing the elim doc just makes me sad because I'm still waiting for an elim game where I have more than three teammates ;-;

[Sart]

Yuck. I totally flubbed this game. I picked up a Soothe on Night 4, and could have used it to stop the elim rush. I thought we had one more cycle before LyLo, and picked up Aluminum, which was totally useless. Still mad we lost to a 1 in 4 chance.

[Stick.]

GAAAAAAAAAAAH I KNEW IT HAD TO BE TJ I KEPT CIRCLING BACK TO THISS

congrats elims and thief xD

edit: 

Oh yeah. Bip, I was trying to pocket you in our PM. xD I think I told Mat and Kas what I was intending to do there - by telling you I trusted you I was trying to bait you into trusting me so that you guys never NK me and I could somehow work the pseudo-trust to my advantage. But you didn't take the bait and our PM died xD And that made me go hmm maybe she's village then.

Edited March 7, 2022 by _Stick_

[|TJ|]

Nonono smh, that's not how it was supposed to go down! According to me it went down like this - 

Me ofc being a v good friend to Kavar, was very concerned about his personal life. He'd said it was his last mission before... heading out to see Mira. But I knew. An operative never gets to retire. It's never the last mission... until it is. So ofc Kavar being stubborn as a mule and honorable as a... well an honorspren I suppose, he'd choose another mission and then another, then... well you get the idea, and he wouldn't accept my [or my mates'] help because well... we aren't exactly honorable, are we? 

So I did the only thing I could do to help him. Wrapped a hood around him and kidnapped him off The Survivor, hehe. He'd never accept our help voluntarily smh, we had to do what we did. I even drafted a nice resignation letter to his boss and everything, so all's peachy [er, or it could be taken as desertion notice but let's not worry about that ]. 

Dropped him off at Mira's, hoping they'd reconcile and he'd be there around more for his kids like he wanted. Mira does bake some mean cookies though, I might have to return here.... but uhh not before gauging how Kavar feels. Angry? Disappointed? Betrayed? Well, if it gets him the life what he wanted, then it's alright. But for now? Well, Roshar's a whole new world. 

See, no stabbing or betrayal, just wanted to help our Security Officer find his way back to his family xD

---

Right, so that was fun :P. This elim team was just... so messy and chaotic, it was glorious lmao xD Really had a great time plotting the win with every one of you, you guys were great teammates. 

Yeah, we were insanely lucky, especially with the 1/15 chance of Hrovell going to the one person who already had Hrovell, and with the Illwei elimination, but that Bort RB was sooo unfair too xD Alignment scanner finding Hazekiller during N1 could have been too devastating for us, and well, I did feel 3 Hazekillers were difficult for us to overcome. Illwei claiming to be the third is one of the big reasons we decided to go for the hammer. 

Village was very good analytically, you had all of us in your sights by D4 and we had to go the desperate route and it worked out, elim team mechanically winning the game, that feels weird to say :P. 

1 hour ago, Devotary of Spontaneity said:

+37(Ash)+32(Tani)+30(Archer)+17(Xino)+13(Walin)+12(Sequence)+9(JNV)+3(Sart)+2(Szeth)+1(Dannnex)=3944(player)+715(GM)=4659

Bro, what are you ranting so much about in your GM PMs??? xD

1 hour ago, Matrim's Dice said:

TJ

I was so onto you

Until I wasn’t :|

I literally had an audible sigh of relief when you gave me village points in N3/D4, like "finalllyyyy" xD

1 hour ago, Matrim's Dice said:

Man seeing the elim doc just makes me sad because I'm still waiting for an elim game where I have more than three teammates ;-;

I jinxed it onto myself when i mentioned that same thing a few days back before this game started :P. Can confirm coordinating with a large elim team is definitely fun!

And finally, Kas, sorry for betraying you >> but you know what they say. You aren't a True Bro until you've stabbed your bro in the back (I didn't even do that smh ). Wyrm set a very high bar for that one. :P. 

Edit: smh I forgot to thank our game runners. Thanks a lot for managing the game guys @StrikerEZ, @Experience and @Devotary of Spontaneity! I had a blast playing it :).

Edited March 7, 2022 by |TJ|

[Kasimir]

6 hours ago, |TJ| said:

And finally, Kas, sorry for betraying you >> but you know what they say. You aren't a True Bro until you've stabbed your bro in the back (I didn't even do that smh ). Wyrm set a very high bar for that one. :P. 

I hate it break it to you but my trust of you was operative  The whole time I felt certain that it was a Hazekiller or Drake got cadmiumed but I just didn't see any Day signs of a Hazekiller. It's just that if you were Evil, the Village was screwed anyway and there was nothing I could do, so I decided to operatively trust you. In other words, for most of the game, my view was, "TJ could be Evil, but if he is Evil, whatever, can't do much about it." My trust of Wyrm was affective, so that was a betrayal  

Being neutral was hard, and I'm tired and I just want to be a Villager again guys  Please...

Edited to add:

6 hours ago, |TJ| said:

Bro, what are you ranting so much about in your GM PMs??? xD

Ethics, thoughts of how to play neutral, how I wanted to run this, suspicions, and so on. Probably random rambling for some cycles when I felt really down and tired, and traded some thoughts with Devo. 20/10 recommend, Devo best IM and interesting conversations.

A lot about what I said in thread - it's just very hard to maintain an interest in the game once you've secured your item sidequest. Which is the Alexander wept (Hans Gruber version) problem for a neutral in a nutshell. Siding with the Elims was a no-no for me so it was only how overtly or covertly I wanted to help the Village, and solving gave me a reason to stick around.

Thanks for the PMs, @|TJ|, @Amanuensis, @Araris Valerian, @DrakeMarshall, @_Stick_, @Fifth Scholar, @Matrim's Dice

@Orlok Tsubodai, @Haelbarde- 

They were entertaining and kept me involved in the game when I might have headed out.

As Araris correctly noted, I was not very subtle about siding with the Village. Part of this came from watching the Village screw the pooh on D2 discussion when I finally couldn't take it anymore. Part of this came from the fact that I talked to Devo about how I wanted to approach this game and if it was legal. I didn't want to play a faction manipulating neutral - I wanted to play a straightforward, chill neutral, who won by being chill bros with both factions, initially. That died when I could not take sitting back and chilling. I just felt increasingly disengaged from the game and if the game is getting you to think maybe you shouldn't sign in at all, that's not a good place to be in.

So I revised my strategy. I wanted to be straightforward still, and to keep my word when given, and to be direct with each faction about what I would and would not do. There was a very small chance I'd have been open to cutting a non-aggression or even outright offer-to-help deal with the Elims if they had approached me early with the right player, but as it turns out, they had only two players on their team who could have potentially talked me into taking their side more out of personal loyalty rather than anything else in particular, so that was a non-starter. (Note that Orlok, Fifth, Bev'ika, and potentially Aman would've gotten very good results, but fortunately they were Village.)

Basically that was the line I took. I more or less openly committed to being Village, more or less firmly told Bort what I was not down for, and then nearly died when Mat approached me with the scan results in the same cycle Bort outed himself and sent craptonnes of PMs to Devo and to Elan panicking about the ethics. And then again when Karn asked me to hold fire. And then again...

Bloody hell. I can say this was not the easiest path to walk.

And I wanted to do it because I wanted to show/remind SE players that there's a lot of ample space for neutrals to play in without having to go for manipulative play. Was my style unnecessarily rigid? Possibly. Trying to be the game's Ned Stark usually gets you killed. But I think it was a line I was happy to uphold, and it was something that kept me engaged with the game and in a positive way.

Thanks for running this game, @StrikerEZ, @Experience, thanks for the enlightening strategic and ethical conversations, @Devotary of Spontaneity, and congrats to the Elim team for winning and thanks for not killing me as I'm not very good at survival wincons and said as much the second I saw my GM PM  Good job, Village, it didn't work out in the end I guess  But I did my best and I have no regrets.

And did I mention how good it was to not feel ML guilt?

Edited March 7, 2022 by Kasimir

[Ashbringer]

"People always talk about order. That it's order that matters, and to Braize with whatever stands in the way," AraRaash said. "That once you have order, anything that changes is a threat to that order, and that needs to stop."

"I'm aware you're not a fan," Faleast replied.

"But the people who don't like that order usually aren't upset by the order itself, they just want to be the ones on top. They're looking for a different order. Not a lack of it. Remember the PRE? The Loyalists? They were fighting for ideals. Which order was better. They didn't understand."

"That chaos is better?"

"That's how I started. Not sure if I'm still there, but that's the game. It's not who wins, it's if someone wins. How long it takes, how permanent it is."

"So that's what you were trying to do. And here?"

"I was more concerned with... finding an old friend than who would win. I think you were too."

"Sorry to interrupt, but we're still in a box," Derrick said.

"Not now, Derrick. We don't need you yet," Faleast and AraRaash said.

"He does have a point," Faleast said.

"Well, either we'll stay in the box or we won't. They knew we were alive. Can probably hear us now. So we'll wait a little longer. And then... well that depends what they've got to say, doesn't it?"

"... did you say an old friend?" Faleast said.

AraRaash smiled. "Oh, you're curious? Well, perhaps you're ready for the story..."

 

I died pretty early this game (and a Striker game too...) but I liked the game quite a bit and the items and badgering Kas and Striker with Bendalloy shenanigans 

 

Edit: I had PM fun too Kas  

Edited March 7, 2022 by Ashbringer