Long Game 82: Secrets Written in Metal

[Araris Valerian]

15 minutes ago, Kasimir said:

Araris, if you think Szeth and Mage are Elims together, why are you voting on Szeth rather than Mage?

Because I 100% know that Szeth is lying. I think the only scenario that makes sense is Mage being his partner, but I could be wrong about that. Why would elim!Szeth claim to be sending on a kill on Mage, if Mage isn't his teammate? If you were his teammate, he would have claimed to be attacking you.

[Kasimir]

2 minutes ago, Ookla the Porched said:

Because I 100% know that Szeth is lying. I think the only scenario that makes sense is Mage being his partner, but I could be wrong about that. Why would elim!Szeth claim to be sending on a kill on Mage, if Mage isn't his teammate? If you were his teammate, he would have claimed to be attacking you.

Hmm. Not wrong. But of course I can't 100% know Szeth is lying. But I shouldn't vote you because -

I just realised the lynch target has to be one of <Szeth, Mage>.

Because suppose Araris is Evil, and the teams are 2-2 right now. Suppose Araris is also a Thug. (I sure as hell know I'm one so if he's not one, he's the only other player in the game who isn't one. I think it's better to assume Araris is a Thug because that's the more conservative assumption where error margins are concerned.) We shoot and win the cointoss and we go into the Night still 2-2, but Araris is down a life. The Elim teams shoot the other Villager who isn't me since I still have two lives. 2-1, we lose.

Szeth and Mage have both survived one kill each so I know the Elim team has at least one Thug-role. A mislynch here will cost the Village, but even a correct lynch on Araris (supposing) brings us to a Night that is a sure lose so that's not promising. Anything that's not an Elim death today means that the Village loses, I think.

I'm not sure we win even if we lynch right tbh. Suppose we do - in this scenario, Araris kills the other one-life Villager. Araris and I go to the day on two lives each and the lynch becomes a cointoss. If Araris wins, I die at that Night. Game over.

But suppose I win the cointoss. We have to win a second cointoss. Again. If Araris wins, I die. Game over.

Note: Whoever is reading this, if you don't think I'm Village, that's fine. This situation still applies to you because to lynch, you must kill an Elim. I have consistently claimed from very early on to be a Thug and I've claimed the extra kill on Tani. I think there's prima facie evidence I do have Thug-like abilities consistent with what everyone else has reported. The only two confirmed lynch targets are Szeth and Mage.

Szeth, if you think that the Elim team is Araris and me, then you're also committed to thinking that Araris is lying about being a Thug, because a failed lynch will lead to you dying in the Night. And that's disregarding the fact the lynch is a 50-50 cointoss and this can still be lost anyway.

Sigh.

Araris, Mage. For now. I'll finalise it later when I have the bandwidth to think things through.

[Szeth_Pancakes]

45 minutes ago, Kasimir said:

And Szeth, I could ask you the same question - why should I trust you? It's lylo and I'm basically just going to vote with whichever of the two of you seems less sketch to me.

You should trust me because at the beginning of last turn, I said I was going to submit the kill.

And because elim!Szeth wouldn’t be this clueless about why.

Edit: why you should trust me, at least

Edited December 10, 2021 by Ookla the Confused

[Kasimir]

8 minutes ago, Ookla the Confused said:

You should trust me because at the beginning of last turn, I said I was going to submit the kill.

I know, and Araris said it at the end of the last turn. Araris explained it as not wanting to risk an Elim protect but also not wanting to die with the info. Both your declarations seem legit to me on the face of it - Araris thinks Elim you would want to make that claim to shield Mage from a NK. I think Evil Araris would want to make the claim to set you up for a potential mislynch. In other words, to claim your action as his and then try to get you lynched.

It's an odd choice though - I think I'd be a better mislynch target. I haven't been playing this game well and it shows when my own vote analysis throws me up as sus. But then, I wouldn't die, and on the assumption you are Village, framing you would make sense because if they can lynch you today, it's an automatic Village loss.

25 minutes ago, Ookla the Porched said:

Because I 100% know that Szeth is lying. I think the only scenario that makes sense is Mage being his partner, but I could be wrong about that. Why would elim!Szeth claim to be sending on a kill on Mage, if Mage isn't his teammate? If you were his teammate, he would have claimed to be attacking you.

This makes sense to me: if you are a Villager, then from your point of view, Szeth is the confirmed Elim, so you would go for the confirmed Elim. If you are an Elim, then you're probably trying to still seem like a Villager in order to split Village votes or get one defection and win the lynch without needing a cointoss. My difficulty is that it's not clear to me I should trust you. I know you've said you're trying to solve the game and I have picked up on that from C1 and C2. You did better than Szeth on that. But a player of your calibre would project that, regardless of whether you are Village or not.

On the assumption that there are two Elims, from my perspective, you and Szeth setting up a counterclaiming war to confuse the Village and split the wagons the next day would be interesting and Szeth certainly could afford to take a hit. But that feels like a level of paranoia too far. If one of you is Elim, then the other Elim from my perspective is highly likely to be Mage so I'm better off voting for Mage right now. But of course, Evil Kas would probably say that to try to split the vote and then hammer. So there's no straightforward way to resolve this.

Why would Elim Szeth need to protect Mage though? Mage can take a hit. We've just seen that.

...Bah I've gotten baited into puzzle-solving instead of fixing my dashboards -.-

[Mat]

14 minutes ago, Kasimir said:

...Bah I've gotten baited into puzzle-solving instead of fixing my dashboards -.-

You told me to tell you to do your work instead of the game:

Do your work instead of the game  

[Szeth_Pancakes]

Y’know what? Elim!Kas would not spend this much time on analysis if he had schoolwork to do.

[Mage]

2 hours ago, Kasimir said:

Because suppose Araris is Evil, and the teams are 2-2 right now. Suppose Araris is also a Thug. (I sure as hell know I'm one so if he's not one, he's the only other player in the game who isn't one. I think it's better to assume Araris is a Thug because that's the more conservative assumption where error margins are concerned.) We shoot and win the cointoss and we go into the Night still 2-2, but Araris is down a life. The Elim teams shoot the other Villager who isn't me since I still have two lives. 2-1, we lose.

Araris If he does have another life I can use my NK on him. The problem is there’s most likely another elim but either way by the end of the night there would be one elim with one life and two villagers.

[Araris Valerian]

Okay, well, I can't survive this cycle voting alone, and I'm pretty sure Kas is my village buddy, so I'll switch from Szeth to Mage. Pretty sure that's the elim team regardless.

[Mage]

I just realized the flaw in my argument yesterday. If we vote Araris today, then I NK him, we aren't going to find out his alignment until D5. The Elims could probably win by then, so I'm going to switch my vote off of Araris, and onto Szeth. I know that this puts me 1st in the vote, so if no one joins me on this then I'll switch back out of self-preservation, but I agree with Kas that we need an elim kill today, and we can't get that through Araris (assuming he is a thug).

[Szeth_Pancakes]

3 hours ago, Mage said:

I just realized the flaw in my argument yesterday. If we vote Araris today, then I NK him, we aren't going to find out his alignment until D5. The Elims could probably win by then, so I'm going to switch my vote off of Araris, and onto Szeth. I know that this puts me 1st in the vote, so if no one joins me on this then I'll switch back out of self-preservation, but I agree with Kas that we need an elim kill today, and we can't get that through Araris (assuming he is a thug).

Assuming he is a thug? If he’s an elim, then I don’t think he is. If he is, then we have a problem.

Edit: if both Araris and Kas’s votes stay on Mage, then the only option is that they’re the elims. Either that, or there’s only Mage left.

Edited December 12, 2021 by Ookla the Confused

[Kasimir]

On 12/11/2021 at 4:23 AM, Ookla the Pianist said:

You told me to tell you to do your work instead of the game:

Do your work instead of the game  

Yes, thank you Mr GM sir, I needed this >>

Last leg before noon. I'm committing to logging back in one more time to do my read and re-evaluation, but this will probably be after I get sleep as I haven't really slept in two days trying to finish this mid-term off and I don't want to be making too many analyses on pretty much no sleep. I'll have to get up to eat at some point so I'm guaranteed to check the thread and think more.

6 hours ago, Mage said:

I just realized the flaw in my argument yesterday. If we vote Araris today, then I NK him, we aren't going to find out his alignment until D5. The Elims could probably win by then, so I'm going to switch my vote off of Araris, and onto Szeth. I know that this puts me 1st in the vote, so if no one joins me on this then I'll switch back out of self-preservation, but I agree with Kas that we need an elim kill today, and we can't get that through Araris (assuming he is a thug).

Depends on Elim composition, off the top of my head. You're not wrong that if you have a NK remaining, then you NKing Araris means they'd NK you, because this scenario assumes you're a Villager. Which I am too low on SAN right now to work out if you really are. Since we're still assuming 2-2, we (Village) go 2-1 into the day because I have an additional life remaining.

But that means I have a 2-1 brawl against Evil Szeth. Suppose I lose the tie cointoss. We go 1-1 into the Night, Szeth kills me. We lose. (Of course, I could win the cointoss, in which case Village wins. It's less dystopian than going mano-a-mano with Evil Thug Araris.)

But...why didn't you put in a NK last Night?

3 hours ago, Ookla the Confused said:

Assuming he is a thug? If he’s an elim, then I don’t think he is. If he is, then we have a problem.

Edit: if both Araris and Kas’s votes stay on Mage, then the only option is that they’re the elims. Either that, or there’s only Mage left.

If he is a Thug, we have a 75% chance of losing this game, unless Mage is Village and has a NK, and even then, it's dicey if there's another Elim remaining (see what I said to Mage.) That's really awful odds and because it's so awful, I'd rather play to avoid it. The idea of having to win two coin tosses in a row isn't appealing.

To be clear, I've claimed the NK on Tani, Danex claimed a kill and had no reason to lie, Mage claimed one (dunno), Tani claimed one, Illwei likely had one, and Archer claimed one. You claimed one as well. Araris claimed one. That's eight out of nine players, with the ninth being Sart, who's too dead to care. Even if we assume there is a three Elim team (rather than two) and they are all lying about having a kill, this puts us at 2/3 of the game having kills. The idea the Elims would have absolutely zero protection or extra lives against the kill is really wild because nothing stops them from a TPK on N1 if the entire game had gone shooting wild. Even more so if you also think it is a two-man team. The only scenario in which Araris is Evil and the two of you are also Villagers requires that he be a Thug because a two-man team with zero protection against seven kills flying around is extremely unbalanced.

At this point, I'm staring at having to vote for the entire <Szeth, Araris, Mage> pool again because I'm so confused. But it has to be that the Elims are trying to force a mislynch. This is the only way I can make sense of why they haven't just unmasked themselves since we can't outvote them anyway, it's lylo.

Which means that I need to look for who is pushing or encouraging vote spreading, I suppose. But urgh. Noon deadline. Deadline first.

Edited to add: Alright, I am done (in both senses of the word.) So I should be able to at least do this/take a look/stuff.

Lesgo Team Village.

Edited December 12, 2021 by Kasimir

[Kasimir]

Double-posting to not inflate that post. It's been quite a while anyway and the thread is dead. Last big push ho.

• We know that there are at most two Elims and at least one other Villager. Otherwise the game would have ended. Given we have at least six non-Night kills [=Archer, Illwei, Danex, myself, Tani, one of <Szeth, Araris> who claimed a kill last Night] running around the game, three vanilla Elims seem an uphill task. So minimally, two-thirds of the playerbase have a kill. If Mage is correct about having an unused vig kill, this brings us up to 7/9 which is a frankly astounding amount of kills to not have any Elim protection or padding for.
  
  I'm ignoring more exotic possibilities here like Elims having one-shot or two-shot protects. I feel that if they did, they'd just have used it rather than shield Mage (Araris's theory) - then again, they may have judged that in a game like this, having a protect might seem sus since everyone and their uncle is a Thug.
  
  Possibility A: One regular Elim, two Thugs. This seems a bit strong for me, but it may not be as bad given Village firepower. On this possibility, Sart is our regular Elim, and we have two other Thugs, at least one of whom is on one remaining life. <Araris, Mage, Szeth> as my pool.
  
  Possibility B: Two regular Elims, one Thug: This seems roughly right and potentially plausible to me, given the kill prolificity of this game. On this possibility, Sart is one regular Elim. The other basically has to be Araris, who was lying about the kill on Mage to frame Szeth. (Everyone else apart from me and Araris is down to one life and I sure know I'm a Thug.) This means that our remaining Elim pair is Araris and Mage. [Again, Szeth and Araris could be trying to split the vote but it feels a bit unnecessarily elaborate and at this point, I think I'm just going to say it doesn't feel right and move on.]
  
  Possibility C: One regular Elim, one Thug. This seems a slightly underpowered Elim team, given the number of kills flying around, but perhaps Mat rounded down due to game size. On this possibility, Sart is our regular Elim. But who is the Thug? For me, it'd have to be a <Szeth, Araris, Mage> pool. But we can work things out a bit more: Szeth volunteering immediately to hit Mage makes pretty much no sense if Szeth isn't actually a Thug with a vigkill. The lack of a kill would've been pretty obvious. Araris's theory of Szeth shielding Mage doesn't work in a two Elim scenario, meaning our Elims have to be between Araris and Mage. But moreover, if we know that Szeth is likely actually a Village Thug with a vigkill, then ex hypothesi, our leftover Elim is basically Araris, because Araris and Szeth are conflicting about the stray kill.
  
  Possibility D: Three regular Elims. This also seems a slightly underpowered Elim team, given the number of kills flying around. It's also immediately false because I know I'm a Thug and I claimed the first attack on Tani. Moreover, Szeth and Mage both took one hit each. In other words, the numbers for a three regular Elim team just don't exist.

To sum it up: <Possibility A, Possibility B, Possibility C, Possibility D>. I'm disregarding the two regular Elims scenario - far too underpowered.

Either way you slice it, my analysis sets Szeth as more or less Village. I'm not sure if it's borne out by player behaviour - I'll return to that later. I'm very tempted to vote Araris at this point just because of the sheer number of times Araris appears in my possibilities, but once again, this is going to be a really big problem if Araris turns out to also be a Thug.

The problem of course is Araris's sudden willingness to vote Mage, especially since Araris was pushing for Danex over Mage the previous cycle. This matters because Danex was the countertrain to the Mage train, which I started. (Yes, I know I swapped eventually but I'm also not taking myself to be a starter as a suspect since this is my analysis, thank you very much.) At this point, I'm not willing to look too closely at it because Elims have been known to try to peel votes away and then hammer at the last minute and I strongly expect an Elim hammer or mindgames if we're 2-2.

In the scenario we're 3-1 (Possibility C), a Mage lynch is a very bad idea though, because this means we go 2-1 into the Night, Araris kills Szeth, and then we're 1-1 in the day voting, which is a cointoss. I win that, suppose, and we're into the Night 1-1. Either way it's over, because Araris has an extra life.

But suppose Mage is lying about the NK. This would certainly make Mage an Elim with just an extra life. But this almost certainly makes one of Araris and Szeth a liar and it's likely Szeth - Huh.

No. I think...Am I drunk? Am I just really sleep-deprived and stressed?

Because now I think about it again I don't see why Szeth would lie about the Mage attack since he'd have to answer for it the next day anyway. Araris's theory is that it was to try to protect Mage, but Mage had an extra life. Moreover, the situation was only exacerbated because Araris claimed a last minute strike on Mage. If there was no kill on Mage, on top of Szeth's inconsistencies about his secondary ability, we would be asking, since Szeth's dominant theory is that the Elims are not Thugs. This is just a bit too kayana for an Elim (famous last words....) In other words, it only became an Araris-or-Szeth-is-lying situation because of Araris's post. If not, it'd have straightforwardly been a 'Szeth is lying' situation because of Szeth's claim to have hit Mage. This would not have been good for Elim Szeth.

Which means I'm committed now to one if not both of Araris and Mage being Evil.

I...

Maker help me, I think Mage is Village. Araris felt like he was trying to set me up for a mislynch after Mage which...

Sigh.

And I still come back to the Sart vote. Yes, Araris voted on Sart. But an Elim team that was happy with a 50-50 on their regular or their Thug...that's a hard pill to swallow. A 50-50 on their regular and a Villager makes more sense.

Araris, Mage

@Mage, you can swap back if you want to. I'm just going to let the cards fall as they may.

[Szeth_Pancakes]

I'm going to camp this until the cycle's over. I'm kind of wary about the way this is shaking out.

[Mat]

About 45 minutes left. A reminder that I probably won’t be on the close the cycle at 10am (PST) but it still will end at that time.

Rollover won’t be for a few hours after that.

[Kasimir]

1 minute ago, Ookla the Pianist said:

About 45 minutes left. A reminder that I probably won’t be on the close the cycle at 10am (PST) but it still will end at that time.

Rollover won’t be for a few hours after that.

I'm too tired to be anxious by this point  

Wyrm has told me to YOLO vote and go back to Wormmon my slides and I think that's more or less my position after giving it one last try. I'm not seeing any further discussion here, nor willingness to engage with any arguments at this point, so I don't think it's going to be productive. Someone @ me if I'm needed to block Elim madness though I doubt they'll play their hand until the very last minute. Right now we have three people who have expressed willingness to vote for Araris.

It's unlikely all of this group are Villagers but that brings me back to kayana paranoia territory I'm just too tired for. And I'm wary of re-enacting the last minute vote switcheroo mess that Vulture, Lion, and Dragonfly did in that LG.

That's about it from me.

[Araris Valerian]

Well, bother. I thought we could win this one without resorting to ties. Great analysis Kas, you’re only wrong in a couple of places that are to be expected from the blackout nature of the game.

Mage Szeth.

[Elandera]

I'll go ahead and mark this cycle as closed. Please standby for Matrim's return.

[Mat]

LG82: Night Four: An Attempt

The Allomancer Feruchemist conflict was a battle of the Luthadel citizens, but by the nature of the fight it was headed by those who actually could use the Metallic Arts. These people rose up, becoming both famous and infamous within days. They had discussed, stabbed, and bantered, for while they all claimed to hold Allomancy, mr lowercase had proved otherwise.

After four days, it had all come to this.

Lord Hadrian Penrod stared at the others seated in the room, one by one. Kiril, shifting in his chair, seemed preoccupied with something outside of the meeting yet still did his best to offer suggestions. Mage appeared nervous, but Hadrian thought that might be a side effect from surviving the battle he had been in the night before. Szeth seemed a bit confused with all the attention he was getting.

And Hadrian? Well, that was for the three of them to decide.

He was actually quite pleased with the attention on Szeth because that detracted from the attention on him. The group was sure that one of Hadrian or Szeth was behind Reva’s death, and the issue had proved to be divisive. Hadrian was doing his best to make sure the right person was booted from the group, but he didn’t like the recent turn of conversation.

Eventually, Kiril stood. “Lord Penrod, sir, I’ve made my decision.”

Szeth mirrored the movement. “As have I. Though I doubt you’re surprised by my choice.” Kiril snorted at that.

Hadrian followed suit, staring them in the face. “Choose your next words carefully. You will regret this.”

“Are we all standing now?” Mage asked, standing up. “Oh, I know what I think too.”

Szeth took a step towards Hadrian, attempting to move the removal forward, but Hadrian raised a hand. The door opened, and six of Hadrian’s men entered, wearing the Penrod seal.

His men grabbed Szeth and Kiril, only leaving Mage because he sat down of his own accord. The men forced Hadrian’s accusers into their seats and stepped back, leaving Kiril and Szeth to glare daggers at Hadrian they only wished were real.

“Now,” Hadrian said, spreading his arms and joining the men in their chairs. “Can we talk this through for a little while longer?”

---

Araris Valerian was executed, but survived!

Vote Count:

• Szeth_Pancakes (2): Mage, Araris Valerian
• Araris Valerian (2): Szeth_Pancakes, Kasimir

Night Four has begun, and will end in about 24 hours, on Monday, December 13th, at 2pm PST. Thanks for your patience in waiting for me to be available. Rollover will be at this time for the duration of the game, from this point on.

• Don't forget any actions, if you have them!
• PMs are closed.

Player List:

Spoiler

1. @Ookla the Porched (Araris Valerian) - Lord Hadrian Penrod
2. Ooklil' the Wei (Illwei) - Allomancer
3. Ookla of Anarchy and Chaos (Tani) - Reva - Allomancer
4. ookla the quantificational (Danex) - Allomancer
5. @Ookla the Confused (Szeth_Pancakes)
6. @Mage
7. ookla the lowercase (Sart) - Feruchemist
8. Ookla the Paranormal (Archer) - Brawnze - Allomancer
9. @Kasimir - Kiril Jerzy

 

[Szeth_Pancakes]

Oh Harmony

What do we do now?

[Kasimir]

11 minutes ago, Ookla the Confused said:

Oh Harmony

What do we do now?

You? You die :eyes:

Just kidding. But it's more or less what is likely to happen.

It's interesting to me that Mat hasn't called this game because IMO since Araris does have an extra life, it's clear we can't win. I've used my kill, as have you, so the game should end tonight. You've been hit once so they know the NK will take you out. We just chill and sit out the Night.

Araris and Mage look to be our remaining Elims. On the off-chance Mage isn't an Elim (which is zero - Mage read the thread but refused to swap votes to Araris despite claiming Araris was his primary preference which makes Mage Evil as well) 

Amused that my gut team that I couldn't prove was right after all.

Quite practically, there's nothing we can do so we just chill. If there's actually another Day, then that's the Day's problem. If there's nothing we can do, why worry?

May I offer you a Wormmon in these troubling times?

Spoiler

 

Edited December 12, 2021 by Kasimir
To make text look even more Evil

[Mage]

So which of you doesn't want to die? I have an item that makes it so the holder wins with whichever side. I could pass it to one of you and kill the other.

[Kasimir]

Do your kills go through extra lives?

[Mage]

Good point. No.

Sorry Szeth. I guess it's you.

[Araris Valerian]

@Kasimir, we don’t have extra lives. We instead have a 20% chance to survive any given kill/vote. Said item increases the odds of survival to 30%.

And somewhat ironically, my survival means you get to win. Consider it a gesture of respect for your significant efforts to solve the game.

[Mat]

If it’s fine with everyone, I’ll just end the turn tomorrow at 10am like it would have been normally.