Anniversary Game 8 / AN11: Back to Beginnings

[Fifth Scholar he/him]

3 minutes ago, Coral Swan said:

But @Elbereth @Fifth Scholar could you add the VC? As I say this you're probably editing it in, sorry to ping you :P.

I have a long history of forgetting this as a GM and today is no exception  Thanks for the reminder!

[Onyx Flamingo]

That's upsetting and very unexpected. I genuinely thought that we had an elim.

Okay, that greatly raises my suspicions on gorilla now, thanks to the vote manip from D1. Also eases my sus level on Swan. I'll probably analyze the votes tomorrow.

--

Well, Edeis had managed to escape the town's rampaging. She peered at herself in the mirror. Blotchy skin, tear stains, and puffy eyes galore. Wonderful. She needed to clean up, couldn't have herself looking like a wreck.

Of course you survived, her reflection seemed to say back to her as she worked. Who would want to get rid of you? You're perfect.

Edeis finished her makeup.

[Coral Swan]

And there's no manip besides the expected one from Iguana. Guess the elims didn't feel like messing with it (assuming the elims have manip, which I think is pretty fair to guess) and considering how crazy EoD was I don't think it's outlandish to say that reflects good on Octopus and maybe Flamingo and Albatross. They're the ones who would have been up as secondary trains with ~an hour left and it was pretty close; I think an elim would have manipped away.

That being said, depending on how close our hypothetical Spiked manipper was watching at EoD they could have had it set and cancelled it last-minute. That's the thing about speculation; it's a rabbit-hole that only goes deeper the more you think about it.

What do you all think is the most likely option?

Praise the Ja!

[Oxblood Beagle]

@Coral Swan, to respond to your last post last turn, the interactions between you two were purely vote based. You both had similar timing in jumping off of a dying train and onto a new one, which looked very much like trying to save you with a new potential candidate. I'm still a bit suspicious, but not enough to vote either of you now. Especially not after joining that train that would have put e!Octo in contention for a tie with soother!Iguana before Falcon's last-minute vote. That would have been really risky distancing. So I'll put you in cautionary null-to-village, and octo in cautionary null.

[Turquoise Gorilla]

Ok - before I go to sleep, I just have to say this: don't vote on me just because you're convinced of a V/V/E D1. Ya gotta have more evidence than that. If you do, feel free to vote me. But not if you don't. Got it? Ok. Bye.

[Pearl Chameleon]

well

there goes my top suspect

as a villager

huh

well

time to redo all my reads

not now though

[Emerald Falcon]

Someone who works with microreads PM me.

[Quartz Zebra]

swig

"mmmmmmmmdasszhhee shtuff"

swig

Quote

k im breaking RP for the first and hopefully ONLY time to say some things

1. HOW THE [censored] [censored] [censored] ARE YALL POSTING SO MUCH WHAT THE [censored] [censored] [censored] [censored] [still censored]
if i want to do literally anything in life besides this game (hint: i do) i can't even afford to try and read through everything, much less in-depth analyze y'all. I'll stick to vibes and skimming out of necessity. :sad:

If there's anything that you want me to reply to or anything significant happens, plz ping me so I'm guaranteed to read it when i skim through.
 

2. woah you can set a thread to auto lock???
cool

3. PMs are fun and i want more of them

4. PRAISE. THE. JA. 

Quote

edit: chameleon is matrim calling it now

 

Edited January 9, 2022 by Quartz Zebra

[Chartreuse Penguin]

The other vote manip is missing this time, so I am now entertaining the idea of an e!Mistborn. I think they maybe rolled soother D1, and Coinshot N1. I know that they get different metals every night, so I’m assuming they started off with a metal that only lasted half a cycle. @Elbereth would this be correct, or do mistborn just begin the game with no metals? 
My guy says all the tied candidates D1 were village. Keep in mind I haven’t thoroughly evaluated Gorilla as of yet, but I’ve been playing with the assumption that it was v/v/v , and any vote manips were either self pres (like iguana’s), or just the elims trying to sow confusion by diverting D2 discussion to the vote manipulation instead of actually trying to weed out elims. Of course it is entirely possible that Gorilla themself was the second soother - I am only verbalizing this because I’m sure the elims have considered this as a possibility already, it’s kind of a no-brainer. 
Of course, the idea of the coinshot being an e!Mistborn should mean that Albatross is innocent, and I am willing to suspend my suspicions of them for this assumption. I think I feel slightly better about Albatross now anyway.

[Elbereth she/her]

 

21 minutes ago, Chartreuse Penguin said:

The other vote manip is missing this time, so I am now entertaining the idea of an e!Mistborn. I think they maybe rolled soother D1, and Coinshot N1. I know that they get different metals every night, so I’m assuming they started off with a metal that only lasted half a cycle. @Elbereth would this be correct, or do mistborn just begin the game with no metals? 

Any Mistborn in the game would not have received a metal until N1. 

[Chartreuse Penguin]

Oh

Well then 

[Salmon Meerkat]

urgh gonna do sme rp & gt rest & painkillers

nd 2 work & class 2morrow sorry gaiz so activity will drp bt i will be active jst less so

weekend was my really good time 2 se

whch is y i was trying 2 push harder

@Amethyst Scorpion- i think wht im struggling w/ understnding is tt axl & u & other vs im too tired 2 recall hve tld me tt elim teams these days like to wait for a late pt to oppose a train

so my qn is: hw ds every1 tell me abt Sart bg elim-bussed in lg82 & tell me tts a common strat these days & tell me elims wait until l8 hoping 4 v appetite 2 die & nt expect late movement 2 look like the start of the counterpush?

i dt thk the issue is about whtr 10 hours v 1 hr - my pt is if u r arguing elims now wt for counterpush v v late, then y shld i give credence 2 a counterpush tt is being originated in last hr of cycle?

i will see if i cn do pathwalking based off d2 & our updated d1 info bt probably not now im tired & still in pain

§

he remembered

as the lord, as Loenthal took his secretary away the secretary who had sought to kill Riggs, Riggs the obligator who had offered bets and tried to winnow away Kellehrt’s secrets with that knife-edged smile and tattoo-slashed eyes and Kellehrt could still only see

Riggs, dead, mob violence, of course, as though it had not come from one of them or several of them, as though the same dark seed that grew in his father’s heart and had grown into a bloody harvest

that day at the village square he had not been there he had been in Luthadel but he imagined he had been there and not in the cramped confines of his shop making, as ways, nails and doing his utmost even though it was only a mote of dust in the light to keep the world together at the joints nail after nail after nail hammer tapping groove into metal

as his father’s axe hewed stroke after stroke into the villagers of Tyrian Falls and sometimes Kellehrt feared it was a dark madness, a terrible inheritance that lay sleeping in himself no matter how much he inspected himself for temper or anger or ill-will towards his fellow villagers he could not be certain

nothing of his father was in him

when he owed everything to his father and to his mother and those long hours in the village forge learning the ways of metal tapping grooves into nails for carpentry and horseshoes and lord Loenthal’s household and ploughshares and sickles and hammers and tools and the things that made and held the world together

like the chain of sons and daughters down from generations of smiths in Tyrian Falls and sometimes working late in his father’s forge wiping the sweat from his skin in the dull heat of the furnace spreading through the air pressure on his skin he felt the weight of the generations and the expectations

that Kellehrt son of Athan would be the blacksmith in Tyrian Falls like Athan son of Farkas and Farkas son of Tarvin and so on and so on and so on in an unbroken lineage of flame and steel and sweat and nails, always nails, the village ran on nails and Dyring depended on them there was always some part of the inn that needed repairing or bands for casks or latches or firegrates or pokers or horsehoes, there was always work for a blacksmith in Tyrian Falls

but Kellehrt had left, had gone to Luthadel

where he met Wark in the forge there and everything started to happen one after another and maybe he was thinking of this now because Loenthal had taken Henry away to protect him

but you couldn’t protect anyway, you never saved anyone

salvation was always temporary

and this wasn’t Warmmha’s voice and Kellehrt didn’t know who was whispering perhaps it was his own bleak despair he’d taken her in and hid her from the mob screaming that she was a collaborator cuts on her stubbled scalp from where they’d dragged the knife roughly across skin and locks both as though

all dignity had to be surrendered

i didn’t do it, she said

you can’t let them do this, and he didn’t know if that was Warmmha speaking or maybe it was her, the voices blended together after a while in memory but he remembered Warmmha with clarity

gazing into a glory of sapphire

light, always light

Warmmha, saying, you can’t let them do this, someone has to stop them from hurting her from tearing the world apart the way his father cleaved a scarlet swathe drying dull cracked brown through the village square that day he imagined the sky must have been a leaden grey the way it always was an otherwise unremarkable day if his father hadn’t done it, hadn’t

they always say they didn’t do it, says Wark, flicking ash away from his shirt, really Kel you should know better by now

and maybe he did, but

he saved her anyway because someone had to, or maybe because he wanted to prove to himself that there was something good in the world, that some shred of decency was left, and how sad was it if you were looking to another for proof that the world was still beautiful

she left having stolen emptied out the contents of the forge safe

you fool, Wark said, shaking his head slowly

he found her floating in the canal the day after the boxings already stolen and felt grief like a sharp splinter through every fibre of his being every nerve every muscle

it wasn’t love but it was a patient kindness that he felt that day

that gazed upon both worm and grass both woman and boy and said

you are beautiful and you are enough and your existence matters even in the eyes of God, in the gaze of the universe

he saved her anyway, or he thought he’d saved her, but salvation was only ever always temporary

did you presume, did you dare presume to know the way the future was woven into warp and weft of the present silken threads twining here and parting there

futile to try but he had to, for the sake of the grass and the worm and the red sun hanging sullenly in the sky and for the tears and the hatred and the way she’d stumbled into his forge terrified and he couldn’t stand there and do nothing sometimes you had to try to salvage the tapestry

you can’t save everybody, says Wark, and it’s not your job to try

Edited January 9, 2022 by Salmon Meerkat
added three paras of rp at end

[Coral Swan]

9 hours ago, Oxblood Beagle said:

@Coral Swan, to respond to your last post last turn, the interactions between you two were purely vote based. You both had similar timing in jumping off of a dying train and onto a new one, which looked very much like trying to save you with a new potential candidate. I'm still a bit suspicious, but not enough to vote either of you now. Especially not after joining that train that would have put e!Octo in contention for a tie with soother!Iguana before Falcon's last-minute vote. That would have been really risky distancing. So I'll put you in cautionary null-to-village, and octo in cautionary null.

I see, that makes sense. I still think it's funny that I have no recollection of mirroring Octo's vote pattern, but obviously that means nothing to you.

Praise the Ja!

[Chartreuse Penguin]

Turquoise Gorilla:

1st Post D1: RP; NAI

2nd Post D1: Role distro thoughts; nothing of note; NAI

3rd Post D1: Irrc this was the post that earned Gorilla a number of the elim reads from people; Quotes a bunch of role distro-related posts (including their own), only to say that they agree with themself. This post provides nothing of substance, as noted by some. Could possibly be elim fluff.

4th & 5th Posts D1: Nothing of note

6th Post D1: Votes on Swan because they dont want any of the other exe candidates to die; notably refrains from providing reason to be reading Swan as 'mild elim'

7th Post D1: Responds to Swan wrt to their vote, says it's a gut read and that it's too late to start a new train; does not really mention who they would have tried to start a new train on did they have the time to 

8th Post D1: VC

Last Post D1: Switches vote from Swan to Iguana (making the votes 4/3/3 with iguana in the lead) in the name of self-pres + not wanting croc to die; says croc is top village read. This logic kinda checks out to me, idk.

1st Post N1: RP

2nd Post N1: Speculates that both vote manips were likely from elims

3rd Post N1: nothing of note

1st Post D2: Responds to Hyena's question about what other trains Gorilla would've liked to start during D1; claims that there's no one in particular but that theyve had a weird feeling about Alb; places vote on Alb saying their recent survival has made them more suspicious; at this point Alb already had mine and Amber's vote on them, so this could've been e!Gorilla just trying to sneak their vote onto a pre-existing train or v!Gorilla simply voting for their top suspect

2nd Post D2: Clarifies that their Alb vote is just cause of the fact that they survived, which apparently means they're more likely to be evil. @Turquoise Gorilla Would you have been suspicious of anybody that survived a coinshot kill, regardless of whether you'd previously been reading them village? There's also a slight contradiction in your posts here - in this post from D1, you explicitly say that you expect there to be one kill role among the elims. Shouldn't that, by extension, mean that the village would have some protection roles to counter that? In fact you even state that you expect the village to have at least one of each role, give or take. So why did Alb's survival point to their alignment being elim?

3rd and 4th Posts D2: nothing of note

5th Post D2: Says Meerkat's Octopus post makes sense, might vote for Octopus after a thread re-read; very non-committal tone to be noted "Perhaps I will be convinced to switch after doing a full-thread read thru, perhaps not. Idk."

6th Post D3: Promises a reads list to be posted sometime during the turn (which you're yet to provide, btw )

7th: nothing of note

8th Post D2 (and 9th): votes on Amethyst Scorpion for voting on Gorilla with reasoning Gorilla doesn't agree with; highly defensive reaction, considering that this was the only vote on Gorilla at that moment. What's also interesting here is that Gorilla placed this vote 1 hour before rollover. This sticks out to me because Gorilla's reason for not 'starting a new train' on D1 was because apparently there was no time to, despite there being 5 hours of the turn remaining. D2, however, Gorilla had no problems brining down the Alb votes from 3 to 2 in order to start a completely new exe target 1 hour before rollover. This is contradictory. Gorilla's reasoning for their vote, however, gives off village vibes because I don't believe an elim would be so quick to react so strongly to a single vote being placed on them cuz the panicked air that gives off aint good.

1st Post N2: 

10 hours ago, Turquoise Gorilla said:

Ok - before I go to sleep, I just have to say this: don't vote on me just because you're convinced of a V/V/E D1. Ya gotta have more evidence than that. If you do, feel free to vote me. But not if you don't. Got it? Ok. Bye.

They sound a little frustrated. Could be a village tell?

NGL I started off this iso with a little bit of confirmation bias cuz I just really want Gorilla to be village but I came across a couple of strange contradictions in their posts like explained above so if Gorilla can just clear those up it'd be v v nice, I don't want to form an opinion just yet.

[Plum Rhinoceros]

Hi! Im so sorry I havent been on! I got grounded last week and just got ungounded. I'll read through everything and come back with thoughts!!

[Turquoise Gorilla]

1 hour ago, Chartreuse Penguin said:

@Turquoise Gorilla Would you have been suspicious of anybody that survived a coinshot kill, regardless of whether you'd previously been reading them village? There's also a slight contradiction in your posts here - in this post from D1, you explicitly say that you expect there to be one kill role among the elims. Shouldn't that, by extension, mean that the village would have some protection roles to counter that? In fact you even state that you expect the village to have at least one of each role, give or take. So why did Alb's survival point to their alignment being elim?

Hm. These are valid points, and I admit I didn't really think that vote out to the fullest extent.

1 hour ago, Chartreuse Penguin said:

Promises a reads list to be posted sometime during the turn (which you're yet to provide, btw )

gahd storm it penguin i promise i'll get around to it

[Salmon Meerkat]

A Brief Digression Because Insomnia:

I'm going to put here my list of player ID guesses without mentioning who I think they are. I haven't been going out of my way to ID players but some are very obvious and some are less so. The point for me doing this is because I've been leaning on player ID sometimes as a baseline when assessing a player's behaviour and it feels...odd, I suppose, to expect people to just accept on faith that I am basing thoughts of the player's alignment partially on my read of the player. As a result, I've put together a table on my player ID guesses, indicating the degree of certainty/strength and listing in general terms the evidential basis for this assessment that I am drawing on.

For instance, I believe my Falcon and Vulture guesses to be very robust and so will not hesitate to use them in analysis. I am reassessing my Cham guess though it is currently at 0.9 certitude. My Alb guess however is at 0.1 certitude as it's just based on a hunch, so I will not be factoring that into analysis of a player. As a rule of thumb, I hesitate to draw on any ID guess that is not at least MODERATELY HIGH in credence.

tldr; read this more as a "This is where I'm coming from, and I am attempting to show my working so the limitations of my use of these guesses in facilitating a read of a player are more apparent."

Spoiler

Player	Certainty	Evidential Basis
Salmon Meerkat	VERY HIGH = 1	-Very obviously Kel   -hello there general kelnobi u r a bold one   -Unclear why keep on getting mistaken for another SE player   -Salmon Meerkel not Salmon Meerkas
Amber Vulture	VERY HIGH = 0.95	-Linguistic behaviour a close match for player   -Demonstrates historical knowledge in personal interactions that specific player would   -Tabular closereads distinctive and time-consuming style – assess unlikely that another player would put in effort to impersonate; better targets elsewhere   -Behaviour consistent with previous interactions both onshard & offshard – if Vulture isn’t who I think he is, then the player is coaching him.
Charcoal Hyena	VERY HIGH = 0.95	-Isolated analysis distinctive and time-consuming playstyle – assess unlikely that another player would put in effort to impersonate; better targets elsewhere   -Distinctive use of player’s signature RP tag
Fuchsia Ostrich	VERY HIGH = 0.95	-Engages in behaviour that is uniquely identifying for a single player   -Demonstrates historical knowledge in personal interactions that is uniquely identifying
Pearl Chameleon	VERY HIGH = 0.9 [REASSESS]	-Linguistic behaviour a decent match for player   -Demonstrates historical knowledge in personal interactions that specific player would   -Chronology a close match for player’s distinctive timeslice – assess unlikely that another player would know to duplicate this   -Weakly corroborated by thread behaviour and thread reaction to player   -Moderately corroborated by previous onshard & offshard interactions   -Displays strong familiarity with the player I’m impersonating
Oxblood Beagle	VERY HIGH = 0.9	-Demonstrates historical knowledge in personal interactions that specific player would   -Linguistic behaviour within acceptable parameters   -Timezone behaviour not uniquely identifying but strongly suggestive   -One particular tic strongly suggestive of player and potentially uniquely identifying
Emerald Falcon	VERY HIGH = 0.9	-Linguistic behaviour fairly distinctive and extensively matches player’s known baseline   -Distinctive playstyle and ISO MO is not very common in playerbase and coupled with linguistic behaviour, should be considered uniquely identifying.   -Strongly corroborated by historical knowledge in personal interactions   -Displays strong familiarity with the player I’m impersonating   -Ostensibly inhabits my timezone which implies distinctive sleep patterns of that player.
Chartreuse Penguin	MODERATELY HIGH = 0.8	-Linguistic behaviour within acceptable parameters for player but not strongly indicative   -Displays historical knowledge and emotional reactions that the player in question would in interactions   -While timezone is not uniquely identifying, it is very rare to find another player who occupies that particular timezone and Penguin’s in-game behaviour better maps onto the player I have in mind than the alternatives.
Mauve Crocodile	MODERATELY HIGH = 0.75	-Conversational behaviour fairly distinctive – potential match to approx 3 players I can think of off the top of my head but most closely matches 1 of them.   -Behavioural love of gambling and train negotiation also hallmarks of the playstyle of one particular player.   -Tbh this one doesn’t matter as he’s dead now but I threw it in for completeness’ sake
Coral Swan	MODERATE = 0.55	-Partial linguistic match for player; not uniquely identifying   -Timezone match for player. Not uniquely identifying but strongly suggestive.   -Suggestion of match for player in terms of historical knowledge in interactions
Amethyst Scorpion	MODERATE = 0.55	-Partial match for linguistic/analytical behaviour of player.   -Decent match for player in terms of historical knowledge in interactions but this could be easily duplicated by another player with the same chronology.   -Some discrepancies with player’s voice and playstyle results in only medium confidence in the player’s identity – do not feel confident in basing analysis off this read.   -If player is who I think it is, player is fiendishly difficult to detect when Evil so it is better to bracket player identity when analysing player behaviour for Scorp.   -Partial match for player timezone – within known parameters but does not display uniquely identifying behaviour of player’s known timezone so cannot be taken to be strongly indicative.
Turquoise Gorilla	LOW = 0.5	-Chronology matches two players: not uniquely identifying   -Voice and speech-patterns has some overlap with two players: therefore also not uniquely identifying.   -Reassess
Violet Axlotl	LOW = 0.3	-Attitude overlap with player   -Weak linguistic overlap but also enough differences to seem an unwarranted inference   -Gut
Magenta Albatross	LOW = 0.1	-Hunch

 

[Turquoise Gorilla]

3 minutes ago, Salmon Meerkat said:

Voice and speech-patterns has some overlap with two players: therefore also not uniquely identifying.

To give you a hint: There is one word that I used sometime in the thread that is very distinctive of me and me alone (at least, I think).

[Salmon Meerkat]

Just now, Turquoise Gorilla said:

To give you a hint: There is one word that I used sometime in the thread that is very distinctive of me and me alone (at least, I think).

Even if it helped me ID which of the two you are, I only am roughly familiar with the Elim meta of one of the two, so if this ends up telling me you are the other player, it's not helping me read you, unfortunately  So this becomes a paper exercise. But thank you.

[Coral Swan]

54 minutes ago, Turquoise Gorilla said:

Hm. These are valid points, and I admit I didn't really think that vote out to the fullest extent.

gahd storm it penguin i promise i'll get around to it

Those are also the same points I brought up last cycle after I voted you, to which you had a different reaction. Lowkey reading this as e/e but I’m not going to put a lot of stock into that read because of its weak nature. I’m not especially reading Penguin as village unlike apparently most of the thread so I think this is something in the realm of possibility.

54 minutes ago, Salmon Meerkat said:

Timezone match for player. Not uniquely identifying but strongly suggestive.

For what it’s worth, I am currently (and unexpectedly) in a different time zone than I was in for D1/N1.

Praise the Ja!

[Amethyst Scorpion]

9 hours ago, Salmon Meerkat said:

i think wht im struggling w/ understnding is tt axl & u & other vs im too tired 2 recall hve tld me tt elim teams these days like to wait for a late pt to oppose a train

so my qn is: hw ds every1 tell me abt Sart bg elim-bussed in lg82 & tell me tts a common strat these days & tell me elims wait until l8 hoping 4 v appetite 2 die & nt expect late movement 2 look like the start of the counterpush?

i dt thk the issue is about whtr 10 hours v 1 hr - my pt is if u r arguing elims now wt for counterpush v v late, then y shld i give credence 2 a counterpush tt is being originated in last hr of cycle?

You're right about this. Super late counterpushes are more likely to be elim than ones closer to midcycle, and are also less likely to work unless there's a convenient alternative already prepared. The main point of that post was that Turquoise and Saffron were under roughly equivalent suspicion D1 and then that was not true D2, and then I started muddling things up. With Saffron being village, I would expect the elims to have seen that train taking off again as convenient.

[Melon Dingo]

I'm back. Left for a bit, had other things I needed to do. Sales pitches to make. All that joy. Old habits.

[Plum Rhinoceros]

Hi! So I know I said Id be back with thoughts but my brain decided to be confused instead so take some rp while I reread everything again and think more

 

Jan had a plan. It wasn't a very good plan, but it existed alright. Koloss. Again. Run of the mill for this area. Sure, people would die but no big deal. But that relaxed attitude wouldn't bring home the big bucks. No, paranoia was great for the payroll and better for the wallet. All he needed was something to make sure of it.

Then news of traitors! Perfection! But that was also run of the mill. Too boring. Too normal. He needed something to spice it up.

Well... people always go mad at the end of the world.

He just needed the right prophecy.

[Charcoal Hyena]

18 hours ago, Fifth Scholar said:

Saffron Iguana was a Village Soother!

Vote Count:
Saffron Iguana (5): Azure Mouse, Charcoal Hyena, Emerald Falcon, Onyx Flamingo, Pearl Chameleon, Salmon Meerkat
Scarlet Octopus (4): Chartreuse Penguin, Coral Swan, Oxblood Beagle, Saffron Iguana
Onyx Flamingo (2): Fuchsia Ostrich, Mint Heron
Amethyst Scorpion (1): Turquoise Gorilla
Magenta Albatross (1): Amber Vulture
Pearl Chameleon (1): Violet Axolotl
Turquoise Gorilla (1): Amethyst Scorpion

Well that's disappointing  I really was praying for a red flip. Now I'm back to having no clue what happened D1 and dreading my inevitable reevaluation. For what it's worth, I'm sorry I couldn't resolve your slot another way or sooner, Saffron, and for my role in your execution =\ 

I wish I could to do something productive right now, but quickly skimming is the best I can do in my current state. My BPD has decided I've been manic for long enough and swung back to depressive. I'm trying to pull myself together but I'm sure ya'll know how it is. Low energy + motivation + willpower and mental breakdowns galore. Usually the worst is the first two days and then I get numb enough to be semi-human-ish again, though I'll see how I feel after a good night's sleep and try to be active tomorrow, even if it only means short posts and convos.

I hope everyone is well.

[Coral Swan]

Praise the Ja!