Mid-Range Game 7: Eighty Splendid Suns

[Seonid]

Interesting. I was not expecting that. I would have thought that the Arbiter would have stopped moderation from getting their bribe.

[dowanx]

Since Eo wasn't discovery and wasn't spooked her bribe target was successful while Kippers was nulled.

[Alvron]

Since Eo wasn't discovery and wasn't spooked her bribe target was successful while Kippers was nulled.

And yet Kipper said Eo wasn't in doc.  Strange yes?

 

 

I have to say Moderation well played I didn't think you were going to keep alive, but you have.  Between the Discovery and Moderation they most definitely hold the swing vote which is a problem for both Heritage and Glory.  In order to keep the lynch off both of us I think it is a good idea to focus our lynch on known Discovery members until they aren't a swing vote.

Oh, yes.  A good plan.  I highly recommend that Heritage and Glory team up.  I'm sure Heritage doesn't have any ulterior plans.   It's not like Heritage has a Remember who can (and will) give Striker powers to one of theirs so they can kill again next cycle and the cycle after that.  Oh wait.  They do still have their Rememberer.  They also have a roleblocker and a vote blocker and a protection role....

 

Discovery however has nothing bar our votes.  We don't even know who the lynch targets are anymore.   As such we are open to bribes.  Should Glory and/or Moderation wish to lynch one of Heritages members, Discovery would be more than happy to add our votes to yours.  All we ask is that you let us know who the target is.  We have no way of knowing if you lie or not but we also have nothing to lose as we have been exposed.

[Zephrer]

Well, now that It's known, I might as well confirm it.

Yes, I am the final discoverer. And in the event that I was discovered I've prepared a roleplay.

 

 

The last stone was finally placed. Kartesh's neighbors had mocked him for building his house without masons and workers, but Kartesh did not trust them to do the job correctly. He stabbed his finger into the air in front of him and began to trace. Brilliant white lines appeared wherever he wished them to. AonDor was a beautiful thing. He finished the Aon, Aon Tia with its modifiers, and grabbed hold of its center. Immediately he was transported to the roof of the centermost building of his residence.
 

 Kartesh looked at his dwelling, built in the form of Aon Rao to modify and strengthen his AonDor. This would nullify the effect of his distance from Elantris.
 

He had known that eventually he’d be found out, and had prepared for the occasion. He was not going to go down like Ableah Edr had. If they wanted him, they’d have to fight like men! No choosing the coward’s way and shooting him down.

 Perfect Kartesh thought. Let them come for me now. I’d like to see them try…

He experimentally drew Aon Ehe on the roof, and immediately a column of fire burst into existence. Kartesh quickly followed it up with Aon Daa and laughed as a blinding burst of light jettisoned into the sky with enough force to shake his home.

 

“Yes” he chuckled to himself “LET THEM COME!”

Edited July 14, 2015 by Zephrer

[Elithanathile]

I have been made the temporary Glory spokesperson, just for right now, and Glory is willing to help take out discovery. Right now, they can pretty much control the vote. We need to take care of them first. But then, I'm totally challenging the Heritage spokesperson to a honorable duel.

[Paranoid King]

Although we really aren't that dangerous. If you don't approach Zeph's shack, he won't hurt you.

[Paranoid King]

I have been made the temporary Glory spokesperson, just for right now, and Glory is willing to help take out discovery. Right now, they can pretty much control the vote. We need to take care of them first. But then, I'm totally challenging the Heritage spokesperson to a honorable duel.

Here's the straight deal: With no people in factions, we can't control the vote because we don't know what people are voting for! And imagine that some group does convince us to vote for their side. Which person would you rather take out? A person with powers, who can bribe people to their faction, who is a member of a group that has enough people to, you know, lynch someone, and has special, game winning powers (rememberer? Teullu warrior?)

Or someone from the group with no info about the vote, who can't bribe people over, who have no special powers, who aren't dedicated to taking a specific faction out, and don't have enough people or info to change the vote?

I don't know about you guys, but it seems to me like if you are on a battlefield and have crippled two attackers, it is best to cripple the other one before finishing them all off. Otherwise you get stabbed in the back.

 

To summarize, discovery can't do anything, they're not going to win anyway, and attacking it will expose you to stronger enemies.

[Zephrer]

we might as well face it, PK. Discovery is done... They're not going to just leave us alone. They won't stop until we are all eradicated (which, I might add, is extremely rude. But no hard feelings ),Then they can butcher each other without the treat of outside interference from us.

 

PK is right, Discovery has been mostly powerless after the deaths of Cang Lu, Ableah Edr, and Ynla Ka. The only great victory that Discovery has had as of recently is the death of all the strikers, and we weren't even responsible for that, you did that yourselves. Discovery is dying, That's the truth, plain and simple.  

[phattemer]

Personally, I would wonder why more people didn't die. Eo was a diplomat kill from last cycle, Heritage lynched Shallan, and I assume Shallan killed Bort.

But that doesn't explain why neither Striker apparently had a kill-with-me go off and why Bort didn't kill anyone.

By the way, seeing as we know who Discovery is at this point, or at least Heritage does, why don't we just bribe everyone over here while lynching Discovery? There isn't a point in pursuing a path that makes less people win.

Edited July 14, 2015 by phattemer

[Kasimir]

By the way, seeing as we know who Discovery is at this point, or at least Heritage does, why don't we just bribe everyone over here while lynching Discovery? There isn't a point in pursuing a path that makes less people win.

I have said this once, I have said this twice, and thrice, until I am thoroughly sick of this. I have given all due public warning in the thread, and now I give everyone one FINAL warning. This is a Faction game. You have your win conditions. Attempting to meta-game with your win conditions and to treat this as a Village-Elimination game will be met with appropriate action. Perhaps it may be that it seems this is an empty threat as I have made several warnings before this. Very well. Know that should this last warning be ignored, I will give Discovery Slaughter, and I will give them Wilson. This is your final warning.

[Adamir]

Question: Is it considered breaking the overall game rules to not commit crimes against morality, eradicate Discovery and move everyone to the only faction that still has an Arbiter so as to provide as few people as possible with a loss on their overall win/loss ratio? Wait a moment - the Overmind is calling us, we must eradicate other factions with extreme prejudice. In my opinion, adding a faction transfer mechanic simply calls to the human desire to do more good than harm for the sake of their own conscience.

 

But then again, to do so we would have to avoid using the lynch, and if even one Discoverer slips through the net, then Discovery has complete control over the lynch due to being the only one to put in a vote. I have no idea what Slaughter is, but I will assume it will give them an instant victory?

 

EDIT: I just read through the earlier posts, that was exactly what Phattemer suggested. Sorry about that.

Edited July 14, 2015 by Adamir

[Alvron]

Know that should this last warning be ignored, I will give Discovery Slaughter, and I will give them Wilson. This is your final warning.

I don't know which is scarier.  Giving us Slaughter or Wilson.  Ohh how about Wilson wielding Slaughter.  And Cuddles.  Discovery wants Wilson to wield Cuddles too.

 

Asterion pulled out the tube and stoppered the hole.  With the ichor-alcohol in place only one step remained.

 

"Awaken to my Breath, serve my needs, live at my Command and at my word.  Blood of a Ghost."  A single Breath left Asterion and flowed into the body before him.

 

The body of Cation Vinid stirred once more.  One more for our army.  Too bad the body of that blind fellow disappeared.  A blind Lifeless would've been interesting to watch.

 

"Blood of a Ghost.  Follow that cat.  Blood of a Ghost."  

 

The cat in question looked up from where it had been napping and yawned.  Almost pure black of fur and deep green of eye it rose, stretched and walked out the door.  Asterion had no idea where it went but his instructions were clear.  Create Lifeless and send them after the cat.  In truth Asterion didn't care about where the Lifeless went or what they did.  The Breath he had been given was more than enough payment for the job.

 

But Breath wasn't all he was given.  Just hours before, an old friend had delivered the sword of his fellow Discovery member now departed.  Cang Lu's sword he called Regicide stood propped up in a corner, waves of light from the candles reflecting off it blade.

 

Asterion sighed.  He still had to drain Eo's body of any remaining fluids before he could start the process on her.  But first he need a cup of tea.  Picking up Regicide he closed and locked the door to his workshop before heading to The Frozen Moon.  A haven for those that wanted to remain anonymous.

[Paranoid King]

Sir Edonar frowned. All his friends had powers. Why didn't he? Perhaps his own skills were enough. As he continued walking, he passed Asterion. You should kill him. "No," thought Edonar. "He works on my side. Killing him would be self-defeating" He rubbed his shoulder, but paused as his hand ran over something hard. A spike. "How long had that been there?" He shrugged. It wasn't causing him any problems at the moment. He'd just go to a resealer later and have it removed. He looked out the window of the Gardens of the Sun, at the headquarters of the Glory faction. You should kill them. "Yes. Yes, I should"

[Alvron]

Just so everyone knows, I'm going to vote for Dow to be lynched.  He is after all Heritages Rememberer which makes him one of the more dangerous players left.  At least I think he's the Rememberer.

 

Glory, Moderation feel free to help lynch someone who, if isn't killed very soon, will be the reason Heritage wins.

[phattemer]

Sorry about that. I only remember reading about Faction loyalties in Cycle 3 or so when Heritage members were going to be bribed back right away, or else I wouldn't have posted.

[Kasimir]

The Cycle is now closed, pending the write-up and PMs. Please bear with me; no further actions will be accepted.

[Bort]

Not even a funky chicken dance? That's no fun Kas

[Kasimir]

MR7: Cycle Nine - The Consolations of Metaphysics

A man sat at the stone platform at the base of the lighthouse, fishing.

The ocean waters were as dark glass, reflecting the black expanse of the starry sky above. In the distance, there were many other lighthouses; glimmers of light in the darkness. There were many other boats and platforms. Shapes moving.

The man whistled a tune as he waited, patiently.

Nothing bit. Perhaps there weren’t even any fishes. In any case, it was not the fish he was waiting for.

Finally, after an interminable period of time, he heard splashing. He set down his fishing rod and stood up. In the distance, he could just faintly make out a tiny glow that was not a distant lighthouse, but from a lantern affixed to the prow of a wooden rowboat that was getting closer and closer.

There were two people in the boat: a lighteyed woman, who was rowing, and a tall, thin man with pale eyes, who glanced around him, confusion writ in his features.

“Sister,” he greeted, as the boat glid in towards the platform. She tossed him a loop of rope; he caught it deftly and tied it about the wooden post. The rowboat bumped to a halt. “You took your time.”

She glanced at him, her single blue eye icy. “He did,” she said, gesturing to the passenger in the boat.

“He usually does,” the man said. “But then, he usually dies. A hundred and thirty times, to be precise.”

“Were you keeping count, Brother?”

“Weren’t you?” he winked. “There’s very little to do around here. I was talking to the fishes.”

“There aren’t any fishes here, either.”

“I know. But sometimes, it does to pretend there are. Belief, my dear sister, is a more potent weapon than reality itself. The mind can only bear so much reality—in bits and pieces, as it were. In fragments. We go through life skimming the very surface—and sometimes, we catch the faintest glimpse of the shadows that lurk beneath.”

“Within limits,” she said, lips pursed. She regarded the man in the rowboat critically. “Eventually, it all tends to run out.”

“Why, Sister, you’re particularly optimistic.”

She glanced at the man in the boat. “Is he going to move?”

“Oh, he will…” said the first man. “Eventually. There’s only so much you can do, before you put one foot down, and are forced to either spend the rest of eternity looking a fool or to carry on walking by putting down the other right in front of it.”

“We picked the fool, then. For a fool’s task.”

“He lived. The others didn’t. All hundred and thirty of them. It was the one constant, wherever we looked, until it wasn’t.”

“And the king dead.” She added, a beat later. “Long live the king. For what good it’ll do them.”

“I’m sure he makes a perfectly splendid king,” the man said. “In a hundred and forty-eight lives.”

“And in the others, he’s dead, slaughtered, a Shardblade thrust through his spine, occasionally garrotted, and very seldom simply stabbed by a more ordinary knife. Very sad.”

“It makes you wonder, doesn’t it? In all of them, one of them kills the other. Brother slaying brother, life after life. On such myths, a city was built. Or perhaps it was the dream of a city, which explains a great deal about the pass we now find ourselves in. Or perhaps we simply haven’t looked hard enough.”

“You still haven’t convinced me around to your way of thinking, Brother. One of them always kills the other in two hundred of the observed outcomes. The only prediction a rational being would be entitled to make is that this is continues to be the case in the two hundredth and first.”

The man clambered out of the rowboat, clutching onto the wooden post for support. “Where am I?” he murmured, haltingly. “This doesn’t make any sense. I killed—”

“Another constant,” the woman murmured. “You’d really think a killer of kings would feel less guilt about his deeds. Enough blood on his hands to bathe in.”

“I know you,” the man said, frowning at the first man; the one who had been fishing on the pier. “You were him. The King’s Wit.”

“At your service,” the Wit said, with a florid bow.

“But how?”

The Wit smiled. “What if,” he said, leaning forward, beckoning the man who had been a Ghostblood, an assassin, and a killer of kings with a conspiratorial gesture. “What if I told you there was a way to be good again?”

 

 

“Absolute rubbish.”

“Oh, come, now, Sister,” the Wit said. “After all, he longs for it. It’s perfectly understandable as a motivation: redemption. How else do you explain what we’re doing?”

“We’re averting something far worse,” the woman said. “The biggest variable of all.”

“Exactly. We’re undoing a mistake. That’s redemption for you.”

“Redemption is a state of mind,” the woman replied. “An act of a guilty conscience. There’s no guilt here, no wrong. We’re simply fixing things. Making them the way they should have been. Not all shoulds are ethical ones, Brother.”

“Enough are.”

 

 

Wurum Heron, King of Alethkar, First of His Name, Protector of the Realm and Herald of the Storms heard splashing.

It was, he thought, most unexpected.

He opened his eyes to find himself in a wooden rowboat, adrift in a dark ocean beneath a sky of hanging stars.

“Where am I?” he muttered. His head pounded as though he’d been hitting the wine a little earlier than usual and it felt as though there was a thick fog in his brain, eating through his memories.

“So you’re up. You’re in a boat. Obviously.” The man answered.

Memory, like the fork of lightning that splits the overcast sky in a sharp, incandescent bolt. Wurum sat upright in a single flash and tried to summon Regicide. “You!” he breathed. “I remember you. You’re dead. I killed you.”

The Blade coalesced in his hand in a single moment—point directed at the assassin’s throat, beaded with faint condensation. A heartbeat later—so the assassin’s heart was beating slower than his—a second Blade, identical in every respect to his, dropped into the assassin’s outstretched hand.

He used the flat of his Blade to push away Wurum’s Shardblade.

“It’s not possible,” Wurum said. Flatly.

“I’m a dead man talking to another dead man,” Khas said, “So let’s agree to renegotiate our definitions of possibility for the next few moments. There are some things you need to know, and there are some things I'd like to hear about from you.” He let go, and his Blade dissolved away. Wurum narrowed his eyes but did the same.

“Talk, then,” he said.

Khas smirked. “I had a feeling you might see things my way,” he said. “Well, then. It all begins with the lighthouse…”

 

 

Asterion sat in a corner of the Frozen Moon, one arm bandaged and put in a sling. He looked up as the door to the teahouse creaked open and someone slipped inside. He wasn’t particularly remarkable: a tall man, with pale eyes, who had, of late, come away from a grim task that had to be done.

“You’re late,” was all Asterion said, as the man picked his way across the crowd of patrons frequenting the teahouse and sat down across from him.

“Sorry,” the man said. He didn’t look particularly sorry. “Cross-universe travel isn’t the easiest thing.” He slipped a package onto the table. It was long, and thin, and wrapped in brown paper.

Asterion looked at it. “That it?”

The man shrugged. He said nothing.

Asterion picked up the package, and carelessly tore it open. Inside lay a long, thin, sword, unsheathed, with a curving crossguard. He picked it up, carefully, by the hilt. The pommel stone winked; it was a pale amber, like a cat’s eye stone.

He was careful not to touch the edge.

“This isn’t the sword,” Asterion said, at last.

The man shook his head. “It isn’t,” he agreed. “This is Regicide.” He eyed the wagon-driver, with his pitch-black cloak, and sighed. “Do try to bring me back my sword without too many dents and scratches, will you?”

He got up, nodded to Asterion, and left.
 

---

What did all players in this game say to the god of death? NOT TODAY!
 
In addition, it has come to my attention that a GM can only issue so many warnings and have them disregarded before they are compelled to act, lest their word be essentially regarded as being useless. I have spoken to the impartial mod for this game, Gamma, about the issue, and we have settled upon this:
 
A new element has entered the game. An unspecified member of the Discovery Faction has had the sword Regicide (essentially Slaughter 2.0) added into their inventory as Gamma doesn't want to lend out his own sword -.-''' The sword is to be regarded as Slaughter in every conceivable way except for the lack of a feed. The unblockable insta-kill remains the same. Thank you.

The cycle has begun and will end at 11PM SGT on Friday, 17th July, 2015. Have a nice day and happy slaughtering!

Edited July 5, 2021 by Kasimir

[Adamir]

Accidental downvote; sorry about that. Could someone fix it? On another note, nobody died? That is surprising in what I expected to be a murder-fest.

 

EDIT: Thanks, ParanoidKing, for fixing the downvote. Not that I won't still try to kill you. By the way, how about the factions stop treating this as a faction game and unite against Discovery, turning this into a generic villager-vs-eliminator game, because of what Kas did to stop us treating this as a generic villager-vs-eliminator game?

Edited July 15, 2015 by Adamir

[Paranoid King]

Oops, thought I had one more day. Despite my RP where I targeted glory faction, I forgot to target glory faction.

[Orlok Tsubodai]

Well... I completely understand why Kas is doing this, but would someone please be able to explain exactly what it was Slaughter did for those of us who have not being playing for all that many games?

[Paranoid King]

Also, COME ON, KAS! We just barely convinced everyone that discovery couldn't do anything, and NOW you give us the sword? It's like you want other factions targeting us.

With that rant out of the way, thank you for giving us that sword, Kas. We needed it.

[Paranoid King]

 

By the way, how about the factions stop treating this as a faction game and unite against Discovery, turning this into a generic villager-vs-eliminator game, because of what Kas did to stop us treating this as a generic villager-vs-eliminator game?

Wait, wut? A villager-eliminator game where all the eliminators are revealed? That wouldn't be very fun...

[Seonid]

I'm assuming that unlockable not only means that a resealer won't stop it, but also that a roleblock won't stop it. And since it's an item, the rememberer can't change the person holding it in such a way that they don't have it...

Alrighty folks, time for some discovery bashing!

[Adamir]

EDIT: Calmed down now... sorry about the earlier rant. Having a bit of a bad day - and yes, that's no excuse. I've trimmed most of the rant. Sorry for how rude I was.

 

I've been asking that same question for the last two cycles - what does Regicide do? As I don't think there is anything left for Kas to threaten us with now that he gave Discovery an advantage because we partially united against Discovery, how about we all unite against Discovery?

 

On another note, what, exactly, counts as meta-gaming the system?

Edited July 15, 2015 by Adamir