Long Game 7: The Annealing of Luthadel

[twelfthrootoftwo]

By my count, the following people haven't posted:

• Kaldin Fathvell (Kal Dell)
• Wandrin Nuvidas (New One)
• Cadri Raisaal (Shivertongue)
• Jae Kastner (jaelre)
• Cat Lekal (luckat)

Of those, there are votes on Kaldin and Jae, and a comment towards Wandrin. I'll put my vote on Cadri Raisaal for the moment, since she's first on the list.

[Tulir]

By my count, the following people haven't posted:

• Kaldin Fathvell (Kal Dell)
• Wandrin Nuvidas (New One)
• Cadri Raisaal (Shivertongue)
• Jae Kastner (jaelre)
• Cat Lekal (luckat)

Of those, there are votes on Kaldin and Jae, and a comment towards Wandrin. I'll put my vote on Cadri Raisaal for the moment, since she's first on the list.

Also, I don't know about the others, but I saw Shivertongue reading the thread earlier, so that reduces his excuses.

[Mailliw73]

Okay, theory. I'll let you off for now.

A quarter of us are inactive so far? That's not a good start.

Edit: New One and Luckat are on the site now. Kal Dell was last on 17 hours ago. Shiv was an hour ago. And Jae, four hours ago.

Edited July 22, 2014 by Mailliw73

[Shivertongue]

Aye, reading, but mostly from my phone, which I hate posting from. I'll have an RP of some kind up in a bit, as well as a groundless accusation to join the others.

[luckat]

Cat wasn’t really sure what to think about the idea that skaa had infiltrated the Houses. It seemed a bit bizarre that they could, but those thoughts were filled with politics, which Cat wasn’t that good at. Finding the skaa was something best left to the others. Meanwhile, she and Triss could just enjoy one another’s company in peace.

Unfortunately, peace wasn’t easy to come by here. Already accusations were being thrown out from every corner of the ballroom. Cat huddled over Triss to protect her from them. It was irrational, since who would accuse a cat of being skaa, but it made her feel better, and it seemed to calm Triss down too. Most of the accusations didn’t even have reasons, as far as Cat could tell. She supposed that it made sense to the other nobles, but the whole scene seemed strange to her.

 

A few whispers of her own name startled her. Not accusations, but nearly so. They wanted her speak up and help find the skaa. She didn't know how much help she could be, but maybe if she did help, she could get out of here sooner. Getting out was appealing. She set her mind to work, thinking about how she could get home as soon as possible.

Sorry it took so long to post. I don’t really have much to say at this point except to agree that most of our conversations should be in the thread if we want to find the skaa. Also, we probably want to make sure a lynch goes through today so we can learn someone’s alignment, since night kills won’t tell us that. We have a while before we need to worry about that though. I suppose I’ll put a vote on Wandrin now, since he’s the last one who hasn’t posted yet and hasn’t been voted for. I’m sure it will change before the end of the day though. Really, I'm not surprised at who hasn't posted yet, and the fact that they haven't posted isn't making me suspicious of them. I do hope that they post soon though.

Edit: color

Edited July 22, 2014 by luckat

[Kasimir]

Sorry, Maili, just that for me, there's no out of game in this thread per se unless I do something really strange like talk about the latest cricket results on this thread, which you guys probably don't want me doing. (Wasn't my World Cup celebration enough? ) [Even then, that's still probably part of Daes Dae'Mar! But we don't need this tangent. Just noting.] And for blur people like me, marking OOC and IC helps, so unless we get a designated OOC colour, that's where I'm staying.
 
"Why, thank you, Lord Penrod," said Kassel, sticking the pen into the pocket of his jacket. He'd have to test it out later, he thought, see how that actually worked. Business, after all, over pleasure. "As far as I'm concerned, I am reluctant to discuss what to make of Lord Phantomhive. He delights in being particularly unhelpful, and the best way to avoid being played is to not play his game." Not, he thought darkly, that he's the only one.
 
He looked around, and in the welter of conversation that had long ensued since, decided to stay silent and to simply listen for the moment.
 
At least at my current quick/rough glance, everyone who hasn't spoken up of their own accord has been encouraged to speak up with helpful red burns on their names, so I'm going to read through the stuff after I get back and then decide.

[Shivertongue]

Cadri was bored.

 

Lord Heron's sister was dead, yes yes, skaa infiltrators throughout the Houses, of course. She hid a yawn behind one hand. Really, the skaa tried something like this every hundred years or so; the Empire was about due for another rebellion-crushing. Did none of these fools ever so much as pick up a history text?

 

Half the room was busily engaged in accusing the other half. Nobody had a logical reason, ranging from being seen treating skaa with only mild disdain to the most wild of baseless conjecture. Mesist - as eager to trip over himself out the gate as his horses were - naturally accused Fein before Lord Heron had finished speaking. Fein looked upset at that; not so much at the accusation, but that Mesist had managed to get one out first. Fein, even as slow as he was in matters cognitive, seemed to realize that a counter-accusation would quickly become little more than an endless exchanging of "No, you are!" and "I know you are, but what am I?"

 

She sniffed. Boys.

 

No doubt neither truly cared; she would admit, to herself, that she didn't truly care. The more that died here, the fewer rivals to deal with in business. Skaa infiltrators could not be ignored, even if they had no hope of ever doing more than being a nuisance, but most pressing right now was how this may effect the fortunes and status of the Houses. None would ever live down the shame if they were discovered to be run by a skaa.

 

Just like Fein would never live down the shame of that orange shirt. Lord Ruler, the man should be hung for subjecting decent nobility to that atrocity.

 

"It might make sense to summon an obligator..." Cadri muttered, doubting that anyone heard. "Oh well, it seems the fashionable thing is to accuse someone. Mesist, your hat is horrid to the point of near-blaspheme. Only skaa, by nature lacking common sense, would wear something so blatantly hideous."

[twelfthrootoftwo]

Thank you Cadri and Cat. We're still waiting on Kaldin, Wandrin and Jae.

[Theorymaker]

Sylinia went over to Lord Tormander's table. He was sitting there looking very bored, and she wanted to cheer him up. "How are you Lord Tormander?" Sylinia asked.

[A Joe in the Bush]

Hyrun watched the proceedings with bored eyes. A messy murder of an Allomantic Skaa women. He'd seen worse. He'd done that as well. This was nothing new. As for the rest of the nobles, who was Skaa? Now that Lord Heron had revealed them, the Skaa Resistance would be quickly culling the ranks. The only Noble he knew was a Skaa for certain was-

 

"How are you Lord Tormander?" He didn't jump. He nearly did, but he managed to get subdue it.

 

"Lady Seeris. How nice of you to come chat with a man below your station. As for How am I? I am, because I made myself So." He sttod up and pulled out a nearby chair for her. One must always be Gentlemanly. "Would you care to sit down?"

 

EDIT: PhantomHive

Edited July 23, 2014 by The Only Joe

[Kasimir]

I've realised there's one more thing I sort of want to address before I head out. Anyone feel up for a bit of morning mathematics?

At the beginning of the Day Turn (!!! Kas is using new terminology! Much wow!), we had three Great Houses, of whom the three House Lords (henceforth referred to as HL) are known. The other nineteen are of unknown affiliation and listed as such. (The kandra is a special case, but as he's in there to even out the numbers, let's count him in.)

Each Lesser House should have two people each. Let's throw in six assumptions, one of which backs that up.

[ASSUMPTION 1] : As much as he enjoys a good troll, Wyrm/King is not going to put lots of people into one-people docs.
[Corollary 1a]: The kandra is more likely to be part of a Great House. (?) --Questionable and I'm not going to put too much weight on this, given the last set of clarifications.

[ASSUMPTION 2]: Before the intrepid doc-hopping incident, there were more Lesser Houses than Great Houses.
It seems like a reasonable assumption to me, given the faction set-up. More Lesser Houses to offset not getting powers.

[ASSUMPTION 3]: There are more people in a Great House than in a Lesser House.

[ASSUMPTION 4]: Semi-Great Houses have 3 people. This is because Wyrm put Sart with the Lesser House he'd accidentally popped in on to form a Semi-Great House.

[ASSUMPTION 5]: Each House of each classification has exactly the same number of members as its contemporaries.

[ASSUMPTION 6]: Great Houses have more people than Semi-Great Houses.
I think this is a reasonable assumption, or they wouldn't be labelled Semi-Great.
[Corollary 6a]: Great Houses have 4-5 people.
[Corollary 6b]: Assume the original House Tuy had 4 people. Losing Sart and being promoted to a Semi-Great House [Elariel] would result in 3 people left, also one more than a Lesser House. This is a picture that makes sense.
[Corollary 6c]: Assume the original House Tuy had 5 people. Losing Sart and being promoted to a Semi-Great House [Elariel] would result in the following distribution, assuming that 5 is the norm for a Great House:
Elariel: 4
Tuy: 3
Seeris: 5
Fien: 5
Total = 4+3+5+5 = 17
That's majorly unbalanced: 22 - 17 = 5. It also doesn't give us a way to work with Lesser House numbers, and it's generally just a messy picture. That looks to be unlikely, giving more weight to the credence that Corollary 6b is correct.

From these, this is the House picture I'm seeing:
Great Houses generally have 4 people each, with the exception of Tuy and Elariel. Lesser Houses have 2. I don't know where the kandra is and for the purposes of these calculations, it's irrelevant anyway.

So, solving for the number of Houses:
Number of Lesser Houses:
[22 - (4 x 3) ]/2 = 5
Total number of Houses: 5 + 3 = 8

This only matters because within this game, I'm guessing we have 4-5 skaa. Probably 4. That gives us 1/2 of the Houses that have been unpenetrated by skaa, if we assume there is no skaa doubling-up. (The likelihood of a House's being penetrated by skaa infiltrators is another issue altogether, and I hate considering probability in this game because it always seems to go by Murphy's Law ) The whole point of this exercise was just with regard to Araris's comment: the skaa do have a surprising amount of knowledge, and it's definitely enough to blow ours out of the park, but at their very best, they still will be doing some guesswork with blind spots in some Houses. The main question I'm considering is how that can help us.

 

Edit: My apologies to Tulir and Sart. I keep seeing 'Tuy' and thinking 'Tulir.' Just like I keep seeing Fain and thinking someone is referring to me >>

Edited July 23, 2014 by Kasimir

[jaelre]

Sorry, have been trying to think of a RP post for a while but at the moment it's not going to happen. :|

 

Anyhow, what if  we completely disregarded the secondary objective for a bit and come clean on everyone's allegiances? Since that would put the great houses under duress, maybe we could start with telling if we're in a great or lesser house.

This is because the great houses' Lords/Ladys potentially already have a huge aiming target on their backs, and this would diminish a bit the pressure on them.

 

This, of course, has the drawback of protecting any skaa hidden among them. But I keep thinking that the secondary objective might hinder us.

 

Also, Kas, assuming 1) and 6b) are true and lesser houses are made of 2 people (Wyrm says so in the rules, so I'm assuming it true), we would have a 3+3+4+4 for great houses, 3 lesser houses, and one spare player and a kandra. So:

• Wyrm is a troll (I'd rule it out)
• 6b) is not true
• Lesser houses may have more than 2 players. (Also unlikely)

This would have me say that we have some 15 players in the great houses, and 3 lesser houses with 2 players each. And the kandra is an unknown, as far as I'm concerned.

 

That said, since we have still 35+ hours til the end of the cycle, I'm going to sit on my vote.

[Aonar]

I'd agree with Jaelre on the distribution of players. I even have a good guess as to which House the Kandra belongs to because of this.

 

I'm not certain, however, that I agree about posting which House we belong to. While it's statistically more probable for there to be Skaa in a Greater House than a Lesser, it's statistically improbable for there to be one in every Great House. Knowing who belongs to what House will make the Lords a bigger target, not smaller. It will make it that much easier for the Skaa to systematically remove the House Powers from play. While they're most definitely not 100% necessary to win the game, they are useful, and several of them are far more powerful in the Skaa's hands than they are in ours.  

 

Just a hunch (and not a very good one at that), but I think I'm voting Jae Kastner this cycle.

 

 

EDIT: After rereading this while not distracted by anything else, I find it more likely the Kas was right; that there are three players in Elariel and Tuy, and four in Urbain and Seeris. However, I think this just further supports the point above about Jae's logic.

 

It does also make him look a tad less suspicious, as the Skaa probably know that at least one Greater House is short a player, but there's always the possibility that he's trying to play on a higher level, and it's not as if he's going to get lynched as things stand anyway. 

Edited July 23, 2014 by AonarFaileas

[Ashiok]

Blue: ok... Mobile 17s is beyond stupid. I am having difficulties posting my RP, so I'll give a summary. I am Ashette Cett, I'm reading a book aloud to myself, my terrisman walks up to me and he be like "socialize" And I say that I have an open seat next to me, and that I'm establishing myself as an eccentric noblewoman to confuse people, and gain allies for my house.

Also, I rescind my vote for GrEEn: Ashette Cett

[Lightsworn Panda]

None of your RP really explains why you voted for yourself, Ash (eccentricity doesn't qualify as an excuse. I was an erratic player, and eccentricity is quite suspicious, if not detrimental and unhelpful for your team), and you suddenly retract it. 

 

Yeah, yeah, I retract my vote for Lord Heron.

[Ashiok]

Blue: oh no, the eccentricity was temporary, until I found some reason to retract it (specifically, it was to be used to start conversation) I can tell you now, I'm not skaa, and you will regret killing me if y'all lynch me today...

Edited July 23, 2014 by Ashiok

[Dellexe]

Sorry I haven't been on guys. I've been pretty busy lately.

Whoo. After reading through that mountain of posts (seriously, you guys have already posted this much?!)... I have no idea what's going on.

So we're trying to keep in-forum discussion going rather than house doc scheming? I can work with that.

I'll vote Cat, because they haven't posted yet but are watching the thread.

[luckat]

I agree with Kassel's analysis. I think that there is an outside possibility that Assumption 5 is incorrect and both of the original Great Houses that weren't changed have 5 members, partly because Wyrm said that Great Houses would have "about four" members while giving a fixed two for Lesser Houses. It seems much more likely that they have 4 members apiece though.
 

Sorry I haven't been on guys. I've been pretty busy lately.
Whoo. After reading through that mountain of posts (seriously, you guys have already posted this much?!)... I have no idea what's going on.
So we're trying to keep in-forum discussion going rather than house doc scheming? I can work with that.
I'll vote Cat, because they haven't posted yet but are watching the thread.

 
But I did post.
 
That leaves Wandrin as the last person who hasn't posted. He's been on a bunch all day, and his activity reminds me of how he was at the end of QF 2. I hope he posts soon.

[Dellexe]

 

But I did post.

 

 

 

How did I miss that? Ignore that. Cat.

[Wyrmhero]

I see there's a lot of speculation on here about this, but I will just confirm, since its a slight change from the original rules.

 

While originally the Great Houses were four players each and Lesser Houses were two, this was before the mistake was made of giving smart the wrong document. As such, Tuy and Elariel are 'Semi-Great'. Sort of Great Houses on hard times, if you will. The 'Semi'-Great Houses have three players (or two players and a Kandra) each.

 

Also, to clarify how Atium works - It only works on the first hit when a Mistborn would normally die, ignoring their use of Pewter. This means it can trigger off of attacking a Pewterarm and being hurt by them in retaliation. In the case where multiple hits would be dealt to the Mistborn in one Night Turn, they are done in a random order for the purposes of triggering Atium. In general:

 

1. Lurchers will intercept the first attack on a player.

2. Atium acts instantly to prevent the first death (ignoring Pewter being used by the Mistborn).

3. Attackers take a random order, but this does not prevent any kill actions going through if a killer dies on that night.

Edited July 23, 2014 by Wyrmhero

[Kasimir]

Just got back. I'd like to say I think luckat's right though. The lynchpin assumption of all those I've made is that the Great Houses have equal numbers of members. Which may or may not be legit, as luckat has pointed out. (I've listed as many assumptions as explicitly as I could so that if there's one that should be properly rejected, it's far easier to find it and to revise the reasoning process from there.) Also because I'm just not going to go down the dark path of guessing what King has in that head of his. (As Nietzsche's oft-(mis)-quoted line about the abyss goes... )

Frankly, I really wasn't after getting House membership numbers right as trying to set out how many Houses there likely were for the purposes of figuring the extent of skaa penetration into the Houses. (The latter, of course, does partly depend on the former.) As I mentioned earlier, I'm a bit reluctant to consider the skaa base occurrence rate, because it seems to hinge on a few assumptions with regard to King's sorting algorithm and that's quite beyond me.

 

Edit: And yes, I know, King has clarified it. Thank you, GM Almighty

Edited July 23, 2014 by Kasimir

[Mailliw73]

Sorry, Maili, just that for me, there's no out of game in this thread per se unless I do something really strange like talk about the latest cricket results on this thread, which you guys probably don't want me doing. (Wasn't my World Cup celebration enough? ) [Even then, that's still probably part of Daes Dae'Mar! But we don't need this tangent. Just noting.] And for blur people like me, marking OOC and IC helps, so unless we get a designated OOC colour, that's where I'm staying.

 

 It's Okay. I don't mind a whole bunch, I just wasn't sure if you knew, because there have been times when it is called OoC text instead of OoG. I just won't be doing the same  

I've realised there's one more thing I sort of want to address before I head out. Anyone feel up for a bit of morning mathematics?At the beginning of the Day Turn (!!! Kas is using new terminology! Much wow!), we had three Great Houses, of whom the three House Lords (henceforth referred to as HL) are known. The other nineteen are of unknown affiliation and listed as such. (The kandra is a special case, but as he's in there to even out the numbers, let's count him in.)Each Lesser House should have two people each. Let's throw in six assumptions, one of which backs that up.[ASSUMPTION 1] : As much as he enjoys a good troll, Wyrm/King is not going to put lots of people into one-people docs.[Corollary 1a]: The kandra is more likely to be part of a Great House. (?) --Questionable and I'm not going to put too much weight on this, given the last set of clarifications.

[ASSUMPTION 2]: Before the intrepid doc-hopping incident, there were more Lesser Houses than Great Houses.

It seems like a reasonable assumption to me, given the faction set-up. More Lesser Houses to offset not getting powers.

[ASSUMPTION 3]: There are more people in a Great House than in a Lesser House.

[ASSUMPTION 4]: Semi-Great Houses have 3 people. This is because Wyrm put Sart with the Lesser House he'd accidentally popped in on to form a Semi-Great House.

[ASSUMPTION 5]: Each House of each classification has exactly the same number of members as its contemporaries.

[ASSUMPTION 6]: Great Houses have more people than Semi-Great Houses.

I think this is a reasonable assumption, or they wouldn't be labelled Semi-Great.

[Corollary 6a]: Great Houses have 4-5 people.

[Corollary 6b]: Assume the original House Tuy had 4 people. Losing Sart and being promoted to a Semi-Great House [Elariel] would result in 3 people left, also one more than a Lesser House. This is a picture that makes sense.

[Corollary 6c]: Assume the original House Tuy had 5 people. Losing Sart and being promoted to a Semi-Great House [Elariel] would result in the following distribution, assuming that 5 is the norm for a Great House:

Elariel: 4

Tuy: 3

Seeris: 5

Fien: 5

Total = 4+3+5+5 = 17

That's majorly unbalanced: 22 - 17 = 5. It also doesn't give us a way to work with Lesser House numbers, and it's generally just a messy picture. That looks to be unlikely, giving more weight to the credence that Corollary 6b is correct.

From these, this is the House picture I'm seeing:

Great Houses generally have 4 people each, with the exception of Tuy and Elariel. Lesser Houses have 2. I don't know where the kandra is and for the purposes of these calculations, it's irrelevant anyway.

So, solving for the number of Houses:

Number of Lesser Houses:

[22 - (4 x 3) ]/2 = 5

Total number of Houses: 5 + 3 = 8

This only matters because within this game, I'm guessing we have 4-5 skaa. Probably 4. That gives us 1/2 of the Houses that have been unpenetrated by skaa, if we assume there is no skaa doubling-up. (The likelihood of a House's being penetrated by skaa infiltrators is another issue altogether, and I hate considering probability in this game because it always seems to go by Murphy's Law ) The whole point of this exercise was just with regard to Araris's comment: the skaa do have a surprising amount of knowledge, and it's definitely enough to blow ours out of the park, but at their very best, they still will be doing some guesswork with blind spots in some Houses. The main question I'm considering is how that can help us.

 

Edit: My apologies to Tulir and Sart. I keep seeing 'Tuy' and thinking 'Tulir.' Just like I keep seeing Fain and thinking someone is referring to me >>

Dang Kas. Like everyone else, I have to agree. Eight seems like the number of houses we have.

Since Jae has come on, and Wandrin has a vote, I'm voting for Ashette Cett. You aren't helping us out now, and it's easier to just get you out of the way before your erraticness becomes a huge problem.

[Metacognition]

Mesist removed the beaten-up, stetson-style hat from his head and turned it over in his hands. 

"What's wrong with it? Seems to be in decent care, as far as I can tell," he said with barely a glance towards Cadri.

 

"Sure, it's seen some wear, but that's what happens when you actually do something for a living; not that I suspect you know much about that."

 

As he replaced his hat, he scanned the room. He tried to catch everyone's eye. 

 

"Things seem a mighty touchy in here. That's understandable, what with things like murder and spies and such around. Now we got ourselves a good start on a lynch mob already. 

"Now, that ain't a reason for guilt. It just is what it is and I'd think that if the Skaa can pretend to be us so well as to be next in line for old Heron House here, then they probably don't have much to do with it. 

"That's why I'm thinking that Tormander needs to be watched a bit closer. He ain't given us much as far as reasoning and he's been mighty silent other than to change his mind (without explanation, I might add). 

"So what say you, Hyrun?"

Edited July 23, 2014 by Metacognition

[Gamma Fiend]

Fien Urbain sat off by himself, getting less and less sober throughout the night as he lost count of the number of glasses of wine he had consumed. Despite his earlier outburst, prompting people to speak up, he had faded off into a dark corner, trying to hide his outlandishly coloured shirt, and stay out of the fire of public criticism for his stewards poor choice in fashion.

 

Also, if he was going to have to worry about receiving a knife in the back, he was going to make sure he was well and plastered before it happened. The accusations and insults had started to fly too fast for him to keep up with, and he soon found himself lost at where things currently stood. He of course blamed Luthadel's constantly shifting political landscape as the reason, instead of the dozen or so of Lord Heron's finest vintages he had guzzled down throughout the night.

 

"Shorry, Chette," he slurred, "I'm not really a philossifer or anything, but those are pretty shoddy reasons for your atnics earlier. I actually doubt you're skaa filth, but you're obvishly not trying to help us at the moment!" He gestured aggresively towards Ashette, splashing wine out of his cup, but miraculously missing his sleeves as it spilled.

 

He sat back down and did a quick look around the room, noticing that Rascal girl eyeing him down. He really did pity people like her and Mesist. To be so unimportant and unreknowned in Luthadel politics, to be so jealous of somebody like him, being head of his household at such an early age. It really was sad. He raised a glass, toasting both of them as they stood on the opposite sides of the room glaring at him separately.

 

He took another sip and let his gaze wander around the room, trying to find his steward Gamad, wondering where the insufferable man had wandered off to. Maybe he's off losing more money, he thought distractedly, not even remarking how odd it was to hear of a gambling Terrisman.

 

--------------

 

Gamad sat in the shadows of the ballroom, watching the fool of a fop get recklessly drunk while blatantly insulting all of the other respectable representatives of their households. The child really had no tact, nor scope of the far-reaching implications of what had transpired so far this evening. He knew his former Master, the old Lord of House Urbain had instructed him to mentor and protect the young Fien, but really, the juvenile was unbearable! He would abide by the man he had served and respected's wishes, but he knew deep down that the young Lord Urbain was a lost cause. That was why he would passively torment the lad, despite the fact that he just would either embrace or disregard any subtle slight. In the counsel of his peers, Fien would still look the fool. And if the child wouldn't take the hint and get his act together, then he was obviously too weak to actually lead his household, and he would get picked apart by the larger, more cunning predators that resided within the Courts of Luthadel.

[Ashiok]

Blue: it's day one, discussion was stalling, I did what I believed to be necessary to continue the conversation... In this game, almost all of the roles have major uses (not so much pewter), and I don't think that we actually want a day 1 kill... Unless you truly believe I am skaa. Give me a day to get some sleep (I'm running on almost none) and I'll be a better player

GM? Can vote changers change votes to or from nobody?