Long Game 96: KKC in the Modern Age

[The Unknown Medallion he/him]

I don't think I bribed my Master enough, he didn't elevate me.

I almost @ ed JNV to ask where he was elevated in, then I realized that he can't talk. I think the writeup implies Naming, but no idea if that's accurate or not.

[Elbereth she/her]

Just now, The Known Novel said:

I don't think I bribed my Master enough, he didn't elevate me.

I almost @ ed JNV to ask where he was elevated in, then I realized that he can't talk. I think the writeup implies Naming, but no idea if that's accurate or not.

I'd recommend not trying to get info out of the writeups. That way lies madness (and also inaccuracy).

[The Unknown Medallion he/him]

20 minutes ago, Elbereth said:

I'd recommend not trying to get info out of the writeups. That way lies madness (and also inaccuracy).

Oh, madness holds no fear for me. Madness waits for some. It creeps up on others. But me? I creep up on madness and slit its throat while its looking the other way.

[Archer he/him]

How come I got sent to horny jail even though Drake had more votes than me? 

I'm sleeping through 2/3rds of this round and busy on Saturday, so don't expect much. 

Drake Drake

[Szeth Pancakes he/they]

Right. This exists.

I’ve been elevated in Sympathy: does anyone want me to do some Malfeasance Protecc on them? Free of charge?

[Mat he/him]

1 hour ago, Archer said:

How come I got sent to horny jail even though Drake had more votes than me? 

It works the same way as being elevated in a field-- more votes equals a higher chance of being disciplined. In other words, Szeth got lucky, we did not.

Anyway.

---

From his table in the corner, Francis couldn't see much. With a wall to his right and a support beam to his diagonal left, it was by far the most obscured spot in the common room. He didn't always prefer it that way, but today he did. Something about the first month at the University had worn him down. He was the first in his family to study there, and so had entered with no baseline for the level of work and memorization it would hold. It had been... brutal.

Francis figured this next month would go better, as he'd fallen into a rhythm. It had only taken the Masters questioning him for his repeated tardies to whip him into shape. He snorted into his drink, then took a sip. Disgusting. But cheap, he reminded himself. That was the only silver lining, and it was a thin one. But it was there. When in as bad a financial situation as his, one had to take the small victories when they could.

He brushed his mustache, then glanced at the ceiling towards his room, feeling his craft calling him. He'd initially wanted to study baking at the University, though that was before he learned the school was much more... scientifically focused. For a brief time, he worried that one of those two dreams would die. But that was foolish. Passions cannot be smothered.

In a flash, he downed the rest of his drink, then left the cup on the table to seclude himself even further.

[Kasimir he/him]

[OOC: Guess who hit 15k words!  

Anyway, I'm trying a new convention to make the GM's lives a tad easier.]

[TAG: RP, 755 words, ANALYSIS, 338 words]

xiii. heimweh

As he moved in to his new lodgings, the inn room slowly took on some of the trappings of home. Kevan’d privately been grateful to have acquired some distance from the University: as much as the thought of his own room in the Mews was tempting, the presence of other students and the incessant parties the first years seemed to want to throw was driving him up the wall.

They were supposed to be here to study. To learn, to take in everything they could. He thought of Alfons’s admonition, of the kindling of a flame. The point of education wasn’t to fill up the emptiness in your knowledge, but to create the craving for it, the desire to learn.

An unexpected connection there, with the thought: the giller in charge of the class on Ademic thought was a harried El’the on track for his guilder. “He’d probably get it, easily,” Soren confided, as they were playing corners. Soren seemed to know a lot about the goings-on of the University, and sometimes Kevan wondered where he’d gotten that from. “Aksel’s problem is that he never, ever slows down.” 

“Ademic thought,” Aksel had said, in class, “Centres on readings—oral transcriptions, really—of Rethe’s stories to Aethe about a concept referred to as the Lethani. The Lethani is central to Ademic thought, and we will spend most of this term working to understand the different readings ascribed to the Lethani.”

Many of them seemed to boil down to puzzles, Kevan had noticed. When he’d pointed that out, Aksel’d asked him why he thought that was so. That had preoccupied him for two spans, until it’d come to him in the middle of drawing diagrams to prepare for midterms in the Medica. The puzzles were designed to be maddening; frustrating, even. They were meant to incite thought or reflection, to build on the student’s curiosity, to draw them deeper into contemplation of the Lethani.

Kindling the flame.

Perhaps, Kevan thought, you found truth in many guises, buried in many texts.

Through it all, the home-longing surged and receded. It welled up when you least expected it. And it never disappeared, not entirely.

The grey-patterned rug was on the floor, and the succulent from Soren sat on the window sill, though Kevan had taken to closing it when he wasn’t in. He didn’t have many possessions, and he wasn’t sure that anyone in their right mind wanted to steal a copy of Spinoza’s Ethics, or his worn, half-scribbled-in notebook,  but it never did to be careless, especially with the times they were in.

It got better. It had gotten better. But you could be surprised, sometimes, at the strangest things that sent the home-longing snaking back to life: the harsh rasp of Commonwealth, especially Cealdim accents. The harsh consonant jutting in at a time when he expected the softness a Yllish would have lent it. The scent of cooking from the inn’s kitchens: it wasn’t bad, and he liked some of the food you got in the Commonwealth, but they barely did anything with mutton, and some of the textures, the cheeses, were all wrong. He missed the flatbread his father made, each span. And they didn’t do butter properly at all; not in the Commonwealth. It tasted dead. It was the best word for it: there wasn’t much flavour at all.

There were songs about the rolling green hills, sung to the drum and to the pipe, songs he discovered took on a different meaning, this far from home: songs to make the heart crack and ache, even if you thought people who went on about the preservation of old Yllish culture were full of it.

You could hate Yllish, and you could love it. You could hate what had become of Yll: the endless quest to preserve that which was long dead, and you could still see it as indescribably precious, to be catalogued, something uniquely in your blood, in your lineage, of Adeiren, to the end of days. He thought he understood what drove Eithne now, sometimes wondered if she hated it, in the same way he did, wanted to let Yll die, to let it transform itself, to be whatever it had become, Yll and Not-Yll, the way being owned had transformed Yll under empire, into something not quite recognisable.

He hung the corded bracelet from his grandmother, the length of six story knots, on a hook by the window and almost thought the room at the Gyre and Vane felt a little more like home.

Edited to add:

1 hour ago, Matrim's Dice said:

It works the same way as being elevated in a field-- more votes equals a higher chance of being disciplined. In other words, Szeth got lucky, we did not.

[OOC: Hmmm.

Can we sort of model this, a bit? 9 Masters = 27 DP, with Drake having the highest chance of accumulating DP, followed by Archer and Mat and Szeth (tied), then Steel. Notably, of the lot, Steel and Szeth both get elevated - this is significant because Szeth doesn't get brought on the Horns, while Steel does. Szeth had two votes, so was twice as likely as Steel to attract DP. The fact that Szeth didn't get brought on the Horns probably suggests either that Szeth was very lucky, as Mat concluded, or that Szeth had pre-existing EP with the Master whose DP got placed on him, so the EP got burned.

If Szeth and Steel hadn't made any submissions at the start of the game, they would start with two random EP. That probably doesn't seem very good for elevation, but depends on the EP landscape. Interesting because the Horns threshold is 5 DP, but Steel also managed to get elevated, suggesting Steel accumulated 5 DP but still had EP for elevation.

...And yeah we have eight elevations, which is suggestive that one field didn't get touched and I'm surprised by that.

Worth noting as well that the lower DP has implications for the Village vis-a-vis the Skindancers - we're supposed to kill or expel them, and lower DP means it's harder to hit the expulsion threshold, whereas they can just drive us insane. Have asked the GMs about this, but this feels about as useful as I'm interested in being when I have 45k more to write  ]

Edited to add 2:

1 hour ago, Szeth_Pancakes said:

I’ve been elevated in Sympathy: does anyone want me to do some Malfeasance Protecc on them? Free of charge?

[OOC: Christ in Heaven why. Look, unless a Physicker is also protecting you, if you are a Villager, you've just told the Skindancers that Sabotaging you will also Sabotage whoever you've picked? Like I don't understand from a Village perspective what the point of this is + it increases your insanity risk by one?

Cf.

Quote

First level upgrade: Create a binding between you and another student. All actions that happen to you also affect the person you’re bound to.  This action accrues a (+1) insanity bonus for that turn.

Can't really see this being good to use at this juncture without coordination, but maybe someone correct me if I'm wrong.]

Edited July 30, 2023 by Kasimir

[Szeth Pancakes he/they]

43 minutes ago, Kasimir said:

OOC: Christ in Heaven why. Look, unless a Physicker is also protecting you, if you are a Villager, you've just told the Skindancers that Sabotaging you will also Sabotage whoever you've picked? Like I don't understand from a Village perspective what the point of this is + it increases your insanity risk by one?

Cf.

Quote

 

First level upgrade: Create a binding between you and another student. All actions that happen to you also affect the person you’re bound to.  This action accrues a (+1) insanity bonus for that turn.

Can't really see this being good to use at this juncture without coordination, but maybe someone correct me if I'm wrong.]

Wait a sec

oh ok so the “first/second/third” level thing is dependent on the elevations

for some reason I thought anybody could use any of the levels

[Kasimir he/him]

[TAG: RP, 524 words]

14 minutes ago, Szeth_Pancakes said:

Wait a sec

oh ok so the “first/second/third” level thing is dependent on the elevations

for some reason I thought anybody could use any of the levels

[OOC: RIP. Well, there is a Village use-case if you are Village and want to use your new 1337 Sympathy powers, but basically you gotta bind to your greatest suspect, so you create a risk that if they try to sabotage you, they'll sabotage one of themselves as well. 1 for 1 trade is worse for Elims than for us, so that should keep them off you. But that's explicitly where you A. want to be correct enough that they won't want to go near you (since if they know you are binding to a Villager, that's basically a freebie for them), B. don't want to be asking for volunteers.]

xiv. procurement

A late night, at the Stonebridge, the Omethi River burbled below as it ran onwards, separating the University from the rest of Imre. Waters touched with moon-silver. Kevan shivered in the night breeze, drew his cloak more tightly about himself. Soren held the sympathy lamp: he was the one spending all the hours in the Fishery, had even gone for doping the emitter so the sympathy lamp let out a gentle blue glow rather than the red lighting Kevan had been used to seeing.

“I still think this is pointless,” Owyn huffed.

Jarvik said, “You think everything is pointless, if it doesn’t involve enough excitement for your tastes. Fishery could catch fire and you’d think it was the best day ever.”

“Can we please forget about the Fishery incident already?” Kevan muttered.

“No,” Owyn said, just as Soren said, “What Fishery incident?” He hadn’t been paying attention.

“I’m going over to his side,” Kevan said, and he slipped across the Stonebridge, putting Soren between himself, Owyn, and Jarvik.

“Why don’t you work as a scriv, Owyn?” Valerra asked.

“For Master Alys?” Owyn asked. “What is there to do, fight papercuts? Someone saw a scary book, help?”

In the muted light of the moon and the sympathy lamp, Kevan saw Valerra roll her eyes. “In Acquisitions, cabbage-head. Tehlu preserve us, you’d think you lived on nothing more than adrenaline and impulse alone.”

“What do they do in Acquisitions?” Kevan asked, curiosity getting the better of him. He was taking a history of technology class taught by Master Alys, which was terribly undersubscribed: everyone else was rushing into Fae lore, but the way he saw it, he’d heard just about enough of the skindancers and wanted to take classes he actually found fascinating. At the moment, they were covering the use of lift systems in old Modegan infrastructure, which was in and of itself interesting, and then moving on to the Great Stone Road dispute.

“They’re Master Archivist’s arms-and-legs,” Valerra explained. “Dogsbodies. Mostly, they do procurement work, which takes them out of the University. Rafel—one of the Acquisitions scrivs, and Master Alys’s giller—she conducts self-defense classes every Orden and Cendling. They’re primarily meant for scrivs, and required for those doing procurement work, but sometimes, other University students sign up for them.”

Owyn whistled. “It’s that dangerous, then?”

“Of course it is,” Valerra said. “What do you think? They’re primarily seeking to expand the collection. Often, they’re after rare texts, which means they may have to defend themselves from getting robbed, or dealing with some unsavoury figures willing to double-cross them, kill them, and sell the text to another bidder. And that’s not including those who deal with archaeological dig-sites…”

“You’ve just given him his new purpose in life,” Jarvik said, dryly. “I’m not sure that’s a good thing.”

“I’m talking to Master Alys first thing tomorrow,” Owyn declared.

“She could always use more in procurement,” Valerra admitted. “People don’t stay in the field for long. It takes a certain sort of personality to stick with the job. Don’t worry though, she makes sure your tuition and your belongings are accounted for while you’re on the road.”

Edited July 30, 2023 by Kasimir

[Kasimir he/him]

[OOC: k I would wait but separate posts are a thing and also the NAs seem to be wanting to have a chill weekend so what can I say man that's fine.]

[TAG: RP, 208 words]

xv. omethi flow

Beneath the Stonebridge, the Omethi River sang as it rushed on, past the University, past Imre. It was easy to lose yourself, Kevan thought, on the Stonebridge, looking below at the onrushing Omethi. The river did not know, did not care of the countless students and hopefuls and traders and Masters that had crossed its span, daily, for centuries. 

The bridge over the Omethi, according to the Archives, was as old as the Great Stone Road, older even, as old as dirt and memory, and the subject of multiple legends and bits and pieces of folklore and stories.

And below: the Omethi itself, rushing on, always rushing, the water singing, and if you listened, sometimes, maybe you thought you heard something else—what made the water water, the same sort of water as rain, as the snow and ice, as the oceans and seas and clouds and rivers, all of it one, single thing that was singing.

You could write a song about it, a song that captured the song of the river, of the Omethi, lively plucks of the lute, and even then, there was still something else beneath it, something written into the river like words on a window-pane frosted over, icily-translucent.

Meanwhile, the Omethi flowed on.

[STINK he/him]

11 hours ago, Matrim's Dice said:

 

Also guess who got the rollover time wrong and didn’t submit any actions in time! :D. :D. :D.

Me too my guy what can you do smh

Anyways what up ya boi is here to say hello and maybe do some RP later I guess it depends on how I feel like it, thank you very much. 

As for the NAs having a chill weekend, it's still early morning for them give em some time alright there pal 

[Kasimir he/him]

1 minute ago, STINK said:

As for the NAs having a chill weekend, it's still early morning for them give em some time alright there pal 

[OOC: Listen bro I'm tryna finish this RP challenge before I die ok I don't feel like I have much time left so I feel some anxiety about whether I can finish it or not  ]

1 minute ago, STINK said:

Me too my guy what can you do smh

[OOC: I both got the rollover time wrong and wanted to spite Drake >:D And anyway asking for an extension is in the uni student tradition, right? @ me if you dare, Drakebro, I do not fear u!! ]

[TAG: RP, 549 words]

xvi. boats

There were traditions in the University, and traditions upon traditions. Some of them were silly things, the sort you scared feckless first year students with, like telling them about the fourth classroom in Mains, bricked-off, that you only saw on moonless nights with the light of a sympathy lamp, and if you saw it, then the ghosts of students past who’d been possessed by skindancers were going to claim your soul too.

Some of them were small superstitions, the sort you believed in because it gave you a sense of power over the horrors of Admissions, like spitting for luck as you crossed the Stonebridge.

This, Kevan had decided, was madness. The Stonebridge ran over the Omethi, just high enough that he wasn’t even sure if they could hit the river if they tried. 

“We’re not going to make that throw,” he muttered.

“Oh, ye of little faith,” Owyn said. “We’re going to make it! Students have been what, doing this throw for years now, and most of the time, they don’t screw it up!”

“The wind can foul your throw,” Soren warned. “You’ve got to watch for that.” He bent over the Stonebridge—too far, enough that Kevan’s stomach clenched, and he reached out reflexively to grab and steady Soren as he made the cast. The folded paper boat dropped to the waters of the Omethi. For a moment, leaning in, Kevan thought the boat would collapse, but then it righted itself and glided on down the Omethi and in moments, had drifted out of sight.

“Hah!” Soren exclaimed, aloud. “I told you so!”

Kevan stepped back, and let go. It was a warm evening, and he fumbled about for his own paper boat.

“Oh, c’mon, you don’t have to worry like that, Kevan,” Soren grinned. “I know what I’m doing.”

A good cast was supposed to mean luck for the rest of the term. Something that was probably lightening Soren’s spirits, as they all contemplated what the term was supposed to mean for them, with the University teeming with skindancers and the horrors of Admissions looming. Halfway through the term already, and the pressure was mounting.

When it was his turn, Kevan leaned over the bridge and tried to assess his target. He’d meant for a quick, downward cast, but the wind picked up just as he made his throw, and the boat landed side-first. It bobbed up and down in the current, but soon sank, and the Omethi carried it out of sight.

He felt the foreboding, deep in the marrow of him. He looked away slowly. A poor cast. Wondered what it meant for his prospects, for the term ahead.

It was just a superstition, he told himself. 

Still, the blank, shocked looks on the faces of the others only seemed to make him feel as though he was living on borrowed time. 

“Well, if the skindancers get me,” he joked, “Do me a favour and get rid of them, alright? Can’t say the same for if Master Anders pushes me over the Stonebridge.”

Soren snorted. “Fluff-headed E’lir,” he said, and something in Kevan’s chest tightened at those words. “Far as anyone can tell, you’re the E’lir he keeps talking to the other masters about, you’ll probably make elevation any day now, and well-deserved at that.”

[STINK he/him]

1 minute ago, Kasimir said:

[OOC: Listen bro I'm tryna finish this RP challenge before I die

True RP can never die! It's like rock! It shall live on in the hearts and minds of the people and maybe the university itself could put up a bench with your name on it if you just so happen to die thats a thing universities love doing can't stop a good bench can ya.

 

[Kasimir he/him]

11 minutes ago, STINK said:

True RP can never die! It's like rock! It shall live on in the hearts and minds of the people and maybe the university itself could put up a bench with your name on it if you just so happen to die thats a thing universities love doing can't stop a good bench can ya.

[OOC: Only if you die a donor smhh universities don't give a damn about students these days, but donate some money and suddenly they rename the whole block after you and then you come back the next sem and be like "wait my classes are in the what lecture theatre now where the frick's that???"]

[TAG: RP, 562 words]

xvii. knots

Most people, Yllish or otherwise, didn’t know how to read Yllish knots these days, much less to strand them. In that light, Kevan probably shouldn’t have felt surprised that Eithne would’ve approached him about it, eventually.

“You have a cord from your grandmother, don’t you?” she asked, out of the blue. They were studying for the medical midterm together, and Kevan wasn’t feeling particularly confident. Some of the older E’lir had warned that Master Bob set deceptively easy midterm exams, but they often had hidden traps meant to ensnare a less-than-careful student. 

“Yeah,” he replied, absently. “She taught me to read them, a little.” Realised a moment too late that this might have been a tactical mistake, where Re’lar Eithne was concerned.

“Really?” Eithne asked, brightening up. “That’s amazing! I don’t think anyone at the University, not even Master Linguist, quite remembers how to read Yllish story knots. Sometimes, there’s a giller who’s picked it up, and makes Archivist, but often not.”

“I’m not surprised,” he said, carefully, racking his brains, wondering how to beat a tactical retreat. If it even was possible at this point. “The story knots are meant to be read by hand. It’s difficult to transcribe something as tactile as that.”

Another strand, another connection to a debate he’d read about in the Archives, in the Rhetoric and Logic section. The Medica had learned to remove cataracts through surgery only last year, and in some cases, to restore sight to patients who had been born blind. But then: if the blind learned to see, did they learn something new by seeing a tomato? Or were they simply accessing a new ability, or acquiring the same knowledge through a different modality?

None of which explained the experience of learning to read, however haltingly, the messages woven into Yllish story knots.

“Could you teach me?” she asked, as he’d known she would, the moment he’d made that mistake. “We didn’t have anyone who remembers, even in Dhoiall. The last one must’ve died two decades before I was born, and the knowledge was never passed on.”

He hesitated. Difficult, even now, to explain to one as Eithne his hesitance, his strange aversion-and-yearning towards anything Yllish. It wasn’t something Eithne could understand, in her struggle to preserve and catalogue it all. And yet…and yet it was a piece of home, a fragment of his grandmother (and not for the first time, he wondered how she was doing, if she would still be there when he returned, if all he was doing was squandering time, and to what end? You couldn’t stay in the same place forever: like a boat, the current carried you onwards, and yet…and yet couldn’t you want to stay there, in that moment, forever? And his mind went to Soren, on the Stonebridge, for no reason, keeping him anchored to the Stonebridge, in case he’d lost his balance and gone over.)

“I don’t remember most of it,” he admitted. “I wasn’t the best student. But yeah, sure, I guess. After midterms, though.”

“I’ll trade you for help with the history midterms,” she offered.

He wasn’t the best at writing historical papers; something to do with historiography and how he hadn’t quite mastered the art of juggling and weaving sources into a coherent narrative, while evaluating them. 

“Alright,” he agreed, with an inward sigh. “For help with the midterms, then.”

Edited July 30, 2023 by Kasimir

[STINK he/him]

26 minutes ago, Kasimir said:

[OOC: Only if you die a donor smhh universities don't give a damn about students these days, but donate some money and suddenly they rename the whole block after you and then you come back the next sem and be like "wait my classes are in the what lecture theatre now where the frick's that???"]

If only you could get enough money in-game to do something like that Possible contract opportunity but not sure how that works with GM interactions

I wonder if you make a really long post solely about rule clarifications in the thread rather than in a PM if that would count as one of the posts that reduces tuition as like a good post for the game, the ideal post that anyone reading should aspire to follow in the ideal of a true sanderson elimination player ready to spread the way of a murderer to the masses which doesn't sound so good when you write it out like that.

Also right the rules say if you vote on someone thats -3 whatever to tuition but getting voted on is a +1 so can't we game theory and everyone vote on someone not voted on and we all just get some money from it with like no real consequences surely who's down for this big money scheme of mine

[Kasimir he/him]

[TAG: RP, 299 words, analysis, 325 words.]

29 minutes ago, STINK said:

If only you could get enough money in-game to do something like that Possible contract opportunity but not sure how that works with GM interactions

If only I had the decency to be born a noble instead!

29 minutes ago, STINK said:

I wonder if you make a really long post solely about rule clarifications in the thread rather than in a PM if that would count as one of the posts that reduces tuition as like a good post for the game, the ideal post that anyone reading should aspire to follow in the ideal of a true sanderson elimination player ready to spread the way of a murderer to the masses which doesn't sound so good when you write it out like that.

[OOC: Probably but if only people had the decency to ask in thread smh :eyes: ]

29 minutes ago, STINK said:

Also right the rules say if you vote on someone thats -3 whatever to tuition but getting voted on is a +1 so can't we game theory and everyone vote on someone not voted on and we all just get some money from it with like no real consequences surely who's down for this big money scheme of mine

[OOC: To hard Village or not to...

Alright: on the serious front, I feel like someone with more brainpower/more determination to hard Village this than me needs to model this out because barring us acquiring any serious tankiness, the skindancers have a much better PtV than the Village right now, so I don't know the extent to which we want to be low tempo. On the assumption of a three Skindancer world, we're on seven Turns to a loss. Keep in mind we win when they are expelled or killed, not just brought on the Horns and lashed. Unlike previous games, the Masters are handing out 3 DP each, and we're not counting the use of EP to offset DP (which true, can be dicey.) This means that until we get our hands on kills, voting such that a Skindancer accumulates at least 11-12 DP is necessary (note: this is like DP from 1/3 the Masters!) and that gives us a measly 10% shot at getting the Skindancer expelled. That's really bonkers bad, since the sabotage works pretty straightforwardly.

Now, it's not as awful in a two Skindancer world, since I forgot we're fourteen players, so two Skindancers isn't as likely, but just for the maths, that world would mean we're eleven Turns to a loss. Whatever  

I've asked the GMs about this and am waiting for an answer as the DP situation could be pretty grim.

That being said, I'm finding it hard to care, as the guy who is patently in this for the uni sim life, so IDK bruh I'm just conflicted. Kinda wish there was a version of this ruleset but without the Skindancers, like an Heirs run. I'd totally play tbh.]

Edited to add: Sorry - I can't do maths. In a three SD world, we're ten Turns to a loss which is less puckery but I still DK about giving up tempo unless the DP situation is less dire.

xviii. tomato sandwiches

“Kevan, you’ve got to help me out here,” Soren begged.

Leafing through his lecture notes, focused on the symptoms of a fracture, Kevan was barely paying attention to the ongoing argument. “Hmm?” he asked.

“I’m telling you,” Valerra said, “You’re being unnecessarily dramatic.”

“It is an abomination, and it should be cast into the fire.”

“...commit it then to the flames, for it can contain nothing more than sophistry and illusion,” Kevan muttered.

“What was that?”

“A lapse,” he said dismissively, filing away the reference in head, though it’d amused him to make it, all the same. “What’s up then?”

Soren said, “Raw, beefsteak tomatoes do not belong exclusively in a sandwich.”

“Whyever not?” Valerra challenged. “Look, it’s got two slices of bread on either end, doesn’t it? That’s basically the definition of a sandwich.”

“A sandwich isn’t just whatever you put between two slices of bread,” Soren objected. “And even if it were, a sandwich of tomatoes alone is just plain wrong.”

Valerra took a bite of her lunch. “Tastes good to me,” she pronounced. 

“You see what I have to deal with?” Soren bemoaned. “Look, it’s about as appealing as a carrot sandwich.”

“Less juicy,” Valerra interjected. “Good, proper tomatoes taste like sun and warmth when you eat them. Hints of summer.”

“Less poetry, more taste please,” Soren said. “At least put anything else in there! A ham! Some bacon! Smoked fish! Some cheese! Anything but the abomination that is raw tomato, I’m begging you, for the sake of all sandwiches.”

Kevan sighed and returned to his reading. “Sorry, Val, I’m going to have to side with Soren on this one. Raw tomatoes just taste awful. They need to be purified in fire first.”

“You both just lack taste,” Valerra grumbled, in response to Soren’s triumphant crowing.

Edited July 30, 2023 by Kasimir

[STINK he/him]

I mean hard village is certainly a term but I'm just talking about money here like we can all save some money if we do this no other concerns might be possible but we're at university here people I don't wanna eat shin noodles all the time even though they are really nice I do love em ngl

[Kasimir he/him]

[TAG: RP, 471 words, analysis, 405 words.]

3 minutes ago, STINK said:

I mean hard village is certainly a term but I'm just talking about money here like we can all save some money if we do this no other concerns might be possible but we're at university here people I don't wanna eat shin noodles all the time even though they are really nice I do love em ngl

[OOC: I think the point I'm making is, there's no 'just talking about money' here, because from a hard Village point of view, that's just a fundamental trade-off between getting the tuition reduction, and reducing the (already very weak) pressure being applied, given this essentially requires dilution of at least one of two votes everyone has. In other words, it's a proposal to trade time and tempo for tuition reduction. Do you wanna? Well, sure I guess, again, not the person to be commenting here since my gameplay up to this point has been RP and method acting-based but I felt like no one else was actually looking at the implications for the Village wincon, and I've said my piece.

I think the real question here is whether Village can afford to. I'm aware that in most previous KKCs, there was enough time for players to just sort of faff around the first couple cycles and wait to level up and then wreak havoc with 1337 powers. I don't know if we have enough padding here for this. Some of this has to do with modelling what happens with scaled down DP. But I reiterate that if one side just needs to target and hit successfully, we can drive ourselves insane, and we need to not just vote enough, but to get lucky with the DP RNG and then the expulsion RNG...that just seems like a rough climb.

Maybe there's a factor in your analysis here I'm missing though. You've at least played this before, and there are probably other KKC veterans who will know better than I do. I certainly won't pretend my game modelling is all that great because I quite frankly didn't notice anything weird until I was trying to work out wtf was going on with Steel and Szeth wrt the Horns ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

If this is a 'do this if u have no suspicions and just want the tuition reduction' proposal then yeah I guess that works I suppose but then there's the ??? about having no suspicions and not wanting to Village bread and butter. IDK bruh I will accept again that I shouldn't be telling people how to play since I don't wanna hard Village this, I just have doubts about giving the tempo to the Skindancers tbh.

Also this is blasphemy shin noodles are great smh you should just dump them in curry and they're god-tier.]

xix. worth

“E’lir Kevan?” Aksel called out, as the rest of the class began filing out of the classroom. “A word?”

Kevan paused in the middle of stuffing his notes back into his satchel and nodded. He finished the rest of his packing quickly and headed over to the lecturer’s desk at the front of the classroom. 

“You look…tired,” the giller said, as he erased the last of the scribblings on the chalkboard. “Midterm season?”

Kevan nodded. “Everyone puts the midterms on the same few days,” he said. Wondered if he sounded whiny. It was a fact though, and a matter of student consternation, that the lecturers always seemed to find the exact same few days to cluster the deadlines on.

“Have you heard of E’lir burnout?” Aksel asked.

Kevan shook his head.

“It’s more common that you expect with students recently elevated,” Aksel explained. He brushed off leftover chalk dust from his hands. “The move from the University to the Arcanum makes them feel as though they have something to prove. And then they half-kill themselves or burn themselves out trying to show they’re brilliant, or outstanding, that sort of thing. Really, it’s more prevalent in Arcanum students than at the University side, but I digress.”

He did have something to prove though, Kevan thought. Master Anders had fought for him. That meant something, in the face of all the doubts. Master Artificer had let go of him, even though more students elevated inevitably meant better for Master Artificer’s logistics and resource allocation, as far as administrative policies at the University was concerned.

He was so terribly aware of the fact he lacked brilliance, and that he owed Master Anders, and he didn’t have the faintest idea of how to repay everyone except by working his damnedest. Even if it meant ignoring some parties he wasn’t interested in, anyway.

“Take a span off, E’lir Kevan. Do something, anything that isn’t reading more papers on the Lethani. I promise you, your grades won’t suffer for it, and as far as our department is concerned, you have nothing to worry about.”

Except that wasn’t true, even if it was kind. He struggled with the readings all the time. He lacked the raw, incisive brilliance of Owyn at his best moments, or the stolid hardworking nature of Basil. And he always, always felt so painfully…

“You don’t have to prove yourself worthy to anyone, E’lir,” Aksel concluded. “Not even to yourself.”

Kevan thanked him, because that was the polite thing to do. He left, his mind full of thoughts, full of determination to make up for the missing time.

Aksel, he thought, was wrong. Kevan’d fooled him somehow, he didn’t understand enough, and that meant he had to work twice as hard, to keep up, and hope it didn’t blow up in his face somehow.

[STINK he/him]

If only there were Americans around to pitch in smh where are these guys not everyone can be out having a barbecue surely there's bad weather somewhere and someones sat at their desk

[Ashbringer he/him]

I have 4 awake hours today before I have to go to work again >>

[Mat he/him]

Actually sat down and read stuff-- here are my takes

• The lack of engagement from all parties is odd, maybe because the exe doesn't actually exe(ecute)? Also kind of a trend lately which is too bad but I'm not exactly innocent of that. Let's keep it up, guys!
   
• Feels like TKN sort of is breaking his own voting meta but I'm not sure if that's a solid meta at all. Noting the difference, at least.
   
• Steel's vote is kinda lazy but doesn't feel evil, exactly? Well actually my brain is trying to tell me it's a distancing attempt but it's obviously not a distancing attempt :P.
   
• JNV RPing with punctuation is kinda hype ngl, too bad they went insane.
   
• It seems like a lot of the votes were based on RP things rather than OOC things which isn't ideal and I don't know what to make of it. Maybe I'm not reading things close enough. But like Araris' Archer vote seems solely RP based.
   
• Archer's defense of Steel is kind of strange but as I mentioned yesterday I actually like his voting pattern so /shrug. Ah wait he explains this later okay. 
   
• Is it just me or does that Sart post feel like someone else stole his account xD
   
• Isn't TKN auctioning votes a thing that has happened before

Okay so... Araris, Sart (@Araris Valerian @Sart, the game is going! :D.)

---

The stairs creaked under Francis' feet, each board threatening to collapse. 

His door creaked as he swung it open, revealing his pitiful accommodations.

His bed creaked as he sat down-- the mattress was old and uncomfortable.

Francis sighed. He hadn't chosen his hand in life, but it was his. He'd lived far enough years to become desensitized to his own situation. He smoothed his mustache. At least that was pristine.

His eyes found the corner of the room, where his reason for coming up here stood. A wooden box, about an arms-length in each dimension, rested there. The top opened downward to form a smaller metal inner box-- a fire place, if not a fireplace. The contraption was of Francis' own design, a kind of poor man's oven. He'd purchased the materials, along with a couple pots and pans, with the jots he'd had leftover after paying the first term's tuition. It wasn't great-- it was barely useable-- but it was better than nothing.

He took from a pile of kindling a few branches and slivers, and placed them inside the metal interior of his oven, which he then lit on fire. It was a small flame, but it produced heat all the same. And it would be relatively controlled in the oven.

Francis relaxed at the sound of the crackling wood, and pulled out a pan and some vegetables. It was time to cook.

[Araris Valerian he/him]

I’m not really sure how to talk about this in character, but I agree with Kas that the reduction in total DP available is a little rough in regards to getting people expelled. I think it’s reasonable, since we have around 60% of the players as previous KKC games have had, but it still means we need to probably use the complaints a bit more like a standard exe. However, the (non apology) effects of getting disciplined are still pretty rough for the skindancers, even if expulsion doesn’t happen.

 

---

Aralon sat on his bed in Anker’s, surprised that the Masters hadn’t punished any of the students brought on the Horns. What was the point of the complaint system if it didn’t have any teeth behind it? Even now some of the students were trying to game the complaints to save on their tuition. In Aralon’s opinion that was a tactic the Skindancers themselves might taken, if they thought it would gain ground. He made a mental note to file his monthly complaints on anyone he heard pushing for such a plan. (STINK STINK)

It had been hard for him to motivate staying at the University beyond his lectures this term, and not being elevated into the Arcanum didn’t help in that regard. So he scribbled away at some assignments in his room, occasionally taking breaks to read some books he’d borrowed. By the time his work was done, he’d come to the conclusion that he needed to force himself to maintain more of a presence at the University, even if it was uncomfortable for him. Make some friends, impress a Master, find a nice reading spot. He didn’t think he was capable of worrying about his studies as much as some of the other students, but that didn’t mean he didn’t care, just that he felt his work was sufficient. But, well. It wouldn’t hurt to be a bit more visible.

[Ashbringer he/him]

One of the Masters didn't elevate anyone. Unless two Masters can elevate the same player in one turn which I tried and failed to figure out if it was possible. If not, then there was no overlap in Mat/Araris/Drake/Wonko/TKN/Archer in one field, or perhaps among everybody.

I don't know if that's in any way relevant to anything.

But I also gotta go so... hopefully I think of something on my break.

[|TJ| he/him]

sorry, yet to get into the game, but finding archer's obsession with double-voting drake a bit weird. 

drake a bit claim bait-y in PMs, something to look forward too.

remember myself agreeing with the vote on steel from t1m1 but really can't seem to recall why. hopefully will get to re-read before eom and get to form a clearer picture. 

[The Unknown Medallion he/him]

2 hours ago, Matrim's Dice said:

Feels like TKN sort of is breaking his own voting meta but I'm not sure if that's a solid meta at all. Noting the difference, at least.

I'll do anything if given a sufficient monetary incentive. Plus the last two times I've broken my voting meta, I've been village. 

2 hours ago, Matrim's Dice said:

Isn't TKN auctioning votes a thing that has happened before

Almost certainly, mostly in games where I'm forced to vote.