Mid-Range Game 42: The Auction of Lord Winsting

[Bugsy]

Excellent. Here's an updated votecount:

Bugsy (5): silber, sart, megasif, matrim, mist

Silber (5): bugsy, detess, experience, xinohep, kynedath

DeTess (1): emi 

Again, I'd stress the elims still have vote manip, which means this is a dangerous position to be in. Even if Silber isn't an elim, they'll manipulate the vote to save him tonight just to frame him - if we can get two more votes on him, or get one person to switch off of me and onto him, we set it up so their vote manip still maintains the tie.

@Megasif, you said earlier you thought you might owe me a tie. Now's your time to shine  

Just now, Devotary of Spontaneity said:

So Silber could be an impersonator, but if so Pyro spent a lot of effort trying to convince me that was not the case back before there was reason to believe Silber was an impersonator. If Pyro and Silber were teammates, I'd assume Pyro would want to live C5 and attempt to do so be having a vote be moved from Pyro to Xino. This didn't happen because Pyro made sure Silber's action was redirected to you, who was already voting for Xino. This ultimately wouldn't have mattered, but had the votes stayed the same as they were when I got Pyro's PM, impersonating a vote to Xino would have saved Pyro. Is there a reason for Silber being an elim other than being an impersonator? 

DeTess and TJ had some analysis that implicated him. I'm not sure what was happening with Pyro there, but given his penchant for misleading people during this game, I'm going to stop trying to analyze his behavior behind-the-scenes based on my woefully incomplete information. 

---

Since I'm not sure how much longer I'll have to post it, here's some RP from the Bleeder doc. This snip is from Cycle 1, I'll post some from other cycles later  

Quote

After centuries of snacking on aristocrats, Bleeder found she’d grown to hate the taste.

It wasn’t the actual flavor, so much as it was the significance. It reminded her most of her origins, of the days when she served the Lord Ruler. 

She had been a member of the third generation, Blessed nearly a thousand years before the downfall of the Final Empire, and she served the Lord Ruler in a personal capacity. Her skills had been used to infiltrate and destroy entire kingdoms, driving their downfall and his own ascension. The taste of a proud aristocrat, a man who simply knew the rules didn’t apply to him, was one she had become well acquainted with. 

This man in particular was indulgent, as most men of his stature were, and Bleeder could tell his health was already in dire straits before he’d been killed and eaten. It was a shame, in a way - if she’d have known, she’d have taken another instead and left him to his death in ignominy. Even still, she couldn’t bring herself to be sorry she’d chosen him; he was a man who’d made his riches as a gambling tycoon, preying on his customers and rigging games in such a way that they’d never win. The gamblers themselves weren’t much better, of course, but they were merely careless and desperate - the man she’d eaten, on the other hand, was predatory. 

No, she couldn’t bring herself to feel anything but pride that he’d been removed from the world. With luck, the same could be said of many others before the night was over. It was a pity she’d had to drop her original body - the appearance of a naive young maiden was one that could have deflected a lot of suspicion, if she hadn’t just been seen shooting multiple people - but it was no major tragedy. The auctiongoers had someone else to look for now, and she’d managed to snag a body from someone who wouldn’t be missed. Frankly, her plan couldn’t be going better.

 

[Coffeecat]

OK, i really think this should be a tie, i am resigned to die if we lynch bleeder.

i dont really get why you think elims have an impersonator or a vote manip at all.

also, what happens if you vote

silber 6

bugsy 5

and i am not elim?

you just lynched a villager, and missed a lynch on bleeder.

you didnt even tie.

i think we should vote the one who is harming the village.

bugsy is a tool you say?

then lets kill him.

take that tool away from both elims and bleeder.

 

[Devotary of Spontaneity]

I'm not convinced of the strategy 'lynch Silb and then lynch Zillah if village', but we'll see what the results of this cycle are. Three village impersonators would be a lot. I don't know what the ideal vote is to get a tie. I suspect the elims could put the lynch on whoever they want regardless of how I vote. I'll go for Lord Silberfarben I guess, though that really only works if Sart soothes a vote off him and elim!Silb is roleblocked.

[Coffeecat]

another thing...

even if i am an elim impersonator(which i dont see why you would think that. you are assuming that the elims have every ability, and that seems way overpowered), wouldnt you want to lynch an escort or extort instead?

so bugsy can kill and attack elims?

even if it were beneficial for us to let bleeder kill, i dont see how lynching me helps.

I can really say that if you lynch me, it is going to be bad, since the elims wont even try to take a vote off me. i am village, and they want bleeder alive in order to use her.

what will happen is i am going to die, you will have missed a lynch, and you will have let bleeder alive for elims to use.

we need to eliminate bleeder, this will both remove the SK and take a tool off the elims

[DeTess]

34 minutes ago, Lord_Silberfarben said:

another thing...

even if i am an elim impersonator(which i dont see why you would think that. you are assuming that the elims have every ability, and that seems way overpowered), wouldnt you want to lynch an escort or extort instead?

There where a number of impersonations in the village's favor, and after eliminating all other claims, actions and votes only you or Zillah could have submitted those actions.

34 minutes ago, Lord_Silberfarben said:

we need to eliminate bleeder, this will both remove the SK and take a tool off the elims

Bleeder will survive this cycle either way, so the elims will get one kill off of her if no village escort can stop bugsy next cycle either way, If the elims do let you die without tying (and since I managed to really reduce the amount of possible people to be the  elim!impersonator and elim!escort I don't thing they'll want to have bugsy alive for much longer), we'll just have to consider making the tie less dependent on manipulation next cycle.

11 hours ago, Devotary of Spontaneity said:

C6 when I said that Silb wasn't the one who attacked you, it was because I'd asked that Silb be redirected to Bugsy C5 at Pyro's request. Since the extortionist's action was successful but Bugsy's vote was not moved, Silb can't be an impersonator. It's possible I'm being fooled here, since it was Pyro who directed me to this extortionist(Winsting) C5, presumably after the elims had decided they weren't going to help the village find Bleeder. One possibility is that impersonator!Silb submitted an action to redirect someone's vote to Xino, and the target of Xino remained even after Winsting's redirect. I'm not entirely sure if that's how things work. Another possibility is that the person I contacted wasn't Winsting, though that's not super likely.

It could be that silberfarben didn't submit any sort of action that cycle (he only posted once at the start iirc), and that Pyro was trying to get Silbers action in play anyway, which an extortion would do. That might suggest that silber might be the elim escort instead (he was in that group of possible players as well).

[A Joe in the Bush]

just about a half of an hour left everyone. Please get your votes and actions in as early as possible!

[Coffeecat]

10 hours ago, DeTess said:

It could be that silberfarben didn't submit any sort of action that cycle (he only posted once at the start iirc), and that Pyro was trying to get Silbers action in play anyway, which an extortion would do.

why would i not submit an action?

[A Joe in the Bush]

8 AM

A combination of a bad day at work, headache, and not knowing how the lynch would turn out has lead to no writeup. I’ll try to do it tomorrow night, but no promises.

 

Welcome to the 8th hour. I admit, when talking to Elbereth about balance, I thought the game would be ending before 7 AM. You guys are a lot less bloodthirsty then I thought you would be. 

 

Lord Silberfarben was lynched. They were the 5th Octant Escort.

Bugsy was lynched, but they survived.

Kynedath was killed. They were a Renowned Criminal.

Devotary was killed. They were a Criminal Stalker.

 

Awake players: 9 

Votes required to Disperse the Party: 5

 

Vote Count:

Bugsy (5): Matrim, Megasif, Mist, Sart, Silber
Silber (5): Bugsy, DeTess, Devotary, Experience, Kynedath, Xinohep
DeTess (1): Emi

Dispersal Votes (0/6):

 

Player List:

1. Xinoehp ( xinoehp512 )

2. Shard ( Experience )

3. Coda ( Coda )

4. Matrim ( Matrim's_Dice )

5. Lady Zephyr ( Zillah )

6. Archivald ( The_Archivist )

7. Lady Lumen ( Mist )

8. Emi ( Emi )

9. TBD ( BrightnessRadiant )

10. Lord Malikihal ( The_God_King )

11. Hammond ( Megasif )

12. Lady Telina Maladroi ( DeTess )

13. Lord Laborn ( Bugsy )

14. a smart guy ( Sart )

ThatTinyStrawMan ( Straw ) Renowned Constable

Lord Silberfarben ( Lord_Silberfarben ) 5th Octant Escort

To Be Determined ( Elkanah ) Dowser, a Criminal Smuggler

Qwerty Meep ( Shard of Reading ) Constable Smuggler

Lord Reginald ( Kynedath ) Renowned Criminal

Lord Karn ( Karnage ) Flogs, a Criminal Gambling Tycoon!

Variel ( StrikerEZ ) Bartender/Bodyguard Criminal

LenSaar ( Devotary of Spontaneity ) Criminal Stalker

The Young Pyromancer ( The Young Pyromancer ) Constable Stalker

Locke Tekiel ( Orlok Tsubodai ) Renowned/Gossip Criminal

Lady Arielle ( Arraenae ) Criminal Gossip

Julius ( TJ Shade ) Criminal Gossip

Lord Gavin Verduex ( Hemalurgic Headshot ) Criminal Extortionist

mad watcher ( little wilson ) criminal impersonator/gossip

Muriel Ladrian ( Furamirionind ) Gossip Constable

Lord Hadrian Penrod ( Araris Valerian ) Criminal Gossip

[DeTess]

Okay, I'm actually kinda thankful for the kill on Kynedath, as they weren't cleared in my book yet.

Also, Bugsy, which of the two did you kill, out of curiosity?

More thoughts now that silberfarben is dead coming up later, though I'd note that they weren't an extortionist, which implicates Zillah.

edit: @A Joe in the Bush, how does extorting an impersonator work when that impersonator took no actions? Does the impersonated vote just dissappear?

Edited June 8, 2020 by DeTess

[A Joe in the Bush]

14 minutes ago, DeTess said:

edit: @A Joe in the Bush, how does extorting an impersonator work when that impersonator took no actions? Does the impersonated vote just dissappear?

Exactly that. Kinda just a weird convuluted smuggler.

[DeTess]

Okay, time to do a quick look over Lord Silberfarben now that we know his alignment. First of all, I'd like to highlight this:

1 hour ago, Lord_Silberfarben said:

why would i not submit an action?

Given that we had two kills on an odd cycle, it seems like he, in fact, didn't submit any actions (unless being successful lynched roleblocks you, @A Joe in the Bush?)

Also, it seems I was almost certainly right about Pyro's reasons for extorting Silber that cycle XD

This post contained something of an implicit defense of Coda, as well as throwing shade at Megasif and me. Mild suspicion of xino, mild trust (even though I really don't want to ) of megasif.

He votes on Xino after they survived an attack. This makes me lean fairly village on Xino now.

So conclusions: I think Xino is village at this point. Coda looks even more sus, and megasif looks a bit better. Also, silber being the escort also increases Megasif's chance of being evil, as he couldn't be the elim extortionist because his previous player was inactive C1, while the extortionist did their thing on me.

 

Now, let's take a look at the Silber lynch. This was a pretty close call, so i think everyone on the Silber train is good. This is an easy thing to say, as the only person I hadn't cleared some other way yet was Xinoehp.

Now, let's look at the other lynch train, being the push on bugsy. I reckon we'll find most of the active elim team here. On that train we can find Matrim, Megasif, Mist, Sart and Silber. Sart's soft-cleared because the elims really tried to get him lynched as a bleeder suspect. I had Matrim as soft-cleared as well for their itneractions with Pyro, but I'm becoming a bit more suspicious of them, mostly just based on a gut feeling though, so I won't dismiss them from the pool yet.

Megasif is a pretty major suspicion based on last cycle for me. The way he was dragging his heels on a tie lynch really feels pretty elimmy to me given how that turned out, but he can't be the only active elim left, as he can't be the elim extortionist.

Lastly, we've got mist., They where someone I was reading as village before, and they had some pretty decent analysis and suspicion reads, but at this point I feel like, jsut by process of elimination, they should be considered suspicious.

Lastly, there's Emi. She voted on me, not bugsy, for a reason that was factually wrong. I am unsure about what to think of her. I really didn't get the impression she had an elim team behind the scenes helping her along, but her vote last cycle was odd.

So, in conclusion: Megasif is likely bad, and both mist and Matrim don't look as good as they used to. From my search for the elim extortionist  last cycle we know that it has to be one of Coda, Mist, Matrim or Emi (can't be Megasif, Xinoehp is likely village, sil was the escort). Of these,  I think Matrim or Mist are most likely. The extortionist likely extorted Zillah to remove a vote off of Silber, so they had to be active in the latter half of the cycle. If either Emi or Coda had been around then though, I'd have expected them to join the lynch on bugsy. Actually, this is incorrect. The elime xtortionist didn't do anything we could see, because if they had extorted Zillah to action, the relevant vote would have straight-up disappeared from the tally (right, @A Joe in the Bush?). So we've got another elim smuggler, most likely. That could be megasif, I reckon. In that case, the elim extortionist would probably not be around near the end pf the cycle, making coda and Emi more likely suspects.

Hmmm, @Sart, can you say whether you've been extorted C2 or not? If so, you might be the third smuggler on the straw lynch. If that's so, i think it looks likely that Megasif is another elim smuggler. FI not,t hen he can't be an elim smuggler as eh wasn't around to submit an action C2.

tl;dr: Xinoehp good, Megasif, Mist, Matrim and emi maybe bad.

[Experience]

Well, that turned out well. I'm thinking that we should try to do another tie lynch on bugsy and another person. The main reason I think we should do this is to eliminate the elims access to a second kill, which would help us a lot. @DeTess, I would be fine with a lynch on Megasif and Mist, and maybe even emi, but I'm not sure about Matrim. I'm feeling village for them, and I think that the other three would be better lynch candiates. I also think lynching either megasif or mist would be better because they have had more posts then emi so we would be able to get more info during their death. So right now I'm going to place my vote on Megasif, whom I'm feeling more elim than mist. I'll go through the past turns to figure out why I feel like this, but that's who I'm putting my vote on now. 

[Mat]

57 minutes ago, Experience said:

Well, that turned out well.

Really? I was honestly thinking the opposite, though that may be from a personal standpoint.

I believed Silber to be village, and Kyne and Devotary to be elim. So I got 0/3. That is NOT a good show of what I thought I knew and therefore my elim suspect and village trust lists just got turned upside down. Another tie would be great, presumably there are 3 elims left for the 14 players and 5 dispersal votes, meaning lylo isn't that close. So if in doubt I believe Bugsy is the best choice, but a tie, if possible, would be better. Bugsy to start the tie off. Now if you excuse me, I have some major editing to do in my trust/distrust lists.

Edited June 8, 2020 by Matrim's_Dice

[Emi]

Bugsy makes sense now as we know that he is a bleeder, so I also vote for him

[DeTess]

1 hour ago, Experience said:

Well, that turned out well. I'm thinking that we should try to do another tie lynch on bugsy and another person. The main reason I think we should do this is to eliminate the elims access to a second kill, which would help us a lot. @DeTess, I would be fine with a lynch on Megasif and Mist, and maybe even emi, but I'm not sure about Matrim. I'm feeling village for them, and I think that the other three would be better lynch candiates. 

I'm not very suspicious of Matrim. He has been on my cleared lynch fora while, and it's only recently that I've started to doubt that somewhat. I mostly moved him back off again because my list of suspects was becoming rather small (maybe too small).

Among those active and alive, only Megasif, Coda, Emi, Mist and Matrim have the potential to be evil (in roughly that order from most to least suspicious). In addition to those, Zillah is pretty much guaranteed to be an elim,  BR could likely be one as well and the archivist hasn't been cleared in any way, but as long as they remain inactive they're of secondary importance (though if we managed to deal with bugsy and another elim this cycle, it might be worthwhile to put BR, Zillah and the archivist in a three-way tie, just to clear them off the books).

Edited June 8, 2020 by DeTess

[Mat]

I do find it odd the elims let the tie happen with Silber on the lynch- though that might just be that they didn't have any impersonators available.

[DeTess]

1 hour ago, Matrim's_Dice said:

I do find it odd the elims let the tie happen with Silber on the lynch- though that might just be that they didn't have any impersonators available.

Yeah, I think they threw everything they had active at it, and even with it not being enough to switch the lynch off of Silber, losing silber mean that their plan to 'secure, contain and protectuse as a tool' bleeder was shot anyway, so they benefit from at least getting the tie.

Edited June 8, 2020 by DeTess

[Bugsy]

Before manipulation:

Bugsy (5): silber, sart, megasif, matrim, mist
Silber (6): bugsy, detess, experience, xinohep, kynedath, devotary
DeTess (1): emi 

After manipulation:

Bugsy (5): Matrim, Megasif, Mist, Sart, Silber
Silber (5): Bugsy, DeTess, Devotary, Experience, Kynedath, Xinohep
DeTess (1): Emi

The only difference here is that one of the votes on Silber was removed. Either it was smuggled off, or an extortionist targeted an inactive impersonator, I'm not sure which. @Sart, did you smuggle a vote off? I'm still leaning village on you, because I doubt the elims have repeat roles, and if you tell us you're the smuggler you'll have saved us from a bit of a wild goose chase.

Based on TJ's analysis, either Silber or Zillah had to have been the elim impersonator. Given the absence of an impersonation last night, and given Zillah's inactivity that same cycle, I'd say they're almost certainly an elim. Because tonight is an even cycle, let's have a village bartender kill them if one's available - no use wasting a lynch on someone who's already basically dead to rights, especially when it would destroy a cycle's worth of discussion.

As for who else is suspicious, I'd go with Megasif. He's been cagey for awhile, and acted as if he was considering the Silb lynch without ever showing signs of following through. At first, he based his opposition on a series of clear misunderstandings - first about what happens when there's a tie, second about me supposedly 'threatening' the village, etc. Those misunderstandings all strike me as a little too convenient for his purposes, as he forced DeTess and I to spend most of the cycle answering his specious arguments instead of actually doing further analysis. Even once those arguments were addressed, he maintained the same course of action, now absent any justification, and disappeared for the remainder of the cycle. He's very suspicious to me, and I think he should be our lynch target today.

Oh, and tonight's the night the elims can extort me and redirect my kill, but I doubt that's what they'll do. More likely, they'll extort Winsting into making a kill, since they know his identity and it sets them up to have another escort every even cycle for awhile. That means we either need the elims to roleblock both me and Winsting, or we need to redirect / roleblock the elim extortionist. 

Edit: Oh, right, some more RP. Here's cycles 2 and 3

Quote

Well. Her plan could be going a little better. She’d set out to observe Lady Arielle and see what information she could glean, but unfortunately she’d been cornered by an unpleasant little man she didn’t recognize. Apparently he and her most recent snack had known each other. 

Apparently the man she’d eaten had been indulgent in more ways than one, and had been caught out by whoever this new person was. His extortion attempt didn’t work, but at least it gave her some new information to work with about who exactly her new disguise was before he’d been digested. Even still, she’d have to make up for some lost time.

It was some consolation that she’d found the bodyguard, Flogs. He had been the source of quite a bit of commotion; some of those present had seemed to think he might be collaborating with the Constables, while others suspected him of being the person who started all the chaos in the first place. He’d managed to rally most of them around him, though, which wasn’t a promising development. Bleeder knew she’d have to go through him to get to Winsting, and if people were inclined to protect him, that wouldn’t be an easy task. 

As the chaos continued to escalate around her, Bleeder sat back and began to plan her approach for that night. She was targeting a Sooner, and it wouldn’t be an easy fight. 

-

She had decided to attack the Sooner from range, but that was a mistake. She sent off her projectile with a burst of allomantic steel, but a brief flurry of movement around Flogs made it impossible to see if she’d hit her target. Perhaps he’d simply tanked the hit, or perhaps he’d been shielded by one of the people around him; whatever the case, he clearly wasn’t dead. She resolved to try again next cycle - Flogs would die by her hand, it was only a matter of when.

The quality declined a bit as I got more and more busy with the actual game  Still, figure it's worth posting

Edited June 8, 2020 by Bugsy

[A Joe in the Bush]

8 hours ago, DeTess said:

Given that we had two kills on an odd cycle, it seems like he, in fact, didn't submit any actions (unless being successful lynched roleblocks you, @A Joe in the Bush?)

The elime xtortionist didn't do anything we could see, because if they had extorted Zillah to action, the relevant vote would have straight-up disappeared from the tally (right, @A Joe in the Bush?).

Being lynched does not roleblock you.

I'm not sure i understamd the second question.

[Bugsy]

Just now, A Joe in the Bush said:

Being lynched does not roleblock you.

I'm not sure i understamd the second question.

They're saying that if someone extorted Zillah to target person x, person x's vote would have disappeared. The fact that it didn't means an extortionist didn't force Zillah to target someone who actually cast a vote

[Sart]

So, I was actually extorted last cycle, and forced to remove Bugsy's vote. This seems like a clear indication that any remaining Constable vote manipulation is inactive. However, I would prefer not to go after the inactives until we lynch Bugsy. I've suspecting for a while that Winsting is one of the inactive players, and it's going to be tough to tell which one he is with the lack of information. However, once Bugsy is gone, we can start the Contribution Crusade again. On the other hand, this means a Constable Extortionist is still active, which means we can't focus solely on the inactives. I suspect either Matrim or Mint is the Extortionist, but I'm not positive on either of those. Especially since we were able to tie the vote last cycle, we should be okay doing a lynch just on Bugsy.

[A Joe in the Bush]

Win Condition Masterpost:

Bleeder Wins if the following is true: Winsting dies on or before the cycle that Bleeder dies. This means that if Bleeder kills Winsting while being lynched, Bleeder wins, but if Bleeder gets lynched and Winsting dies the following cycle, Bleeder hasn't won. This also means that if the party is dispersed on the same turn that Winsting dies, Bleeder still wins, and kills everyone else.

The Constables win only once the party has been dispersed, as long as one of them are still alive. Dispersal will come after any kills, including the lynch. So if the last Constable is lynched before or as the party disperses, the Constables lose.

The Criminals win either by dispersing the party after killing all constables, or by killing all the constables and Bleeder. 

[Bugsy]

5 hours ago, Sart said:

I've suspecting for a while that Winsting is one of the inactive players, and it's going to be tough to tell which one he is with the lack of information. However, once Bugsy is gone, we can start the Contribution Crusade again.

Yeahhh, no. There’s no chance the elims let the village lynch Winsting. That’s a loss for them.

Let’s imagine what happens if Winsting is leading in the lynch. Is there any chance that one of the elims doesn’t unmask to warm us off? Having Winsting up for the lynch is a best-case scenario for the village, because it means the elims have to sacrifice a teammate just to continue the game.

[DeTess]

3 hours ago, Bugsy said:

Yeahhh, no. There’s no chance the elims let the village lynch Winsting. That’s a loss for them.

Let’s imagine what happens if Winsting is leading in the lynch. Is there any chance that one of the elims doesn’t unmask to warm us off? Having Winsting up for the lynch is a best-case scenario for the village, because it means the elims have to sacrifice a teammate just to continue the game.

I still do think we should take you out asap though. Nothing personally, but the more successfully we hunt the elims, the more dangerous you become .

I also think we should grab the elim extortionist asap though, to stop them from pulling off the same trick with Winsting. I agree with Sart that it's likely to be one of Matrim or Mist, because any other potential elim could/should have also put their vote down for bugsy to save Silber. Of these, I'm ever so slightly more suspicious of Matrim, mostly because Mist had some decent suspicion of Shard relatively early on.

12 hours ago, A Joe in the Bush said:

I'm not sure i understamd the second question.

Basically, I was trying to confirm that an impersonation into nothingness would cause the vote to also disappear from the vote tally.

[Mat]

5 hours ago, DeTess said:

I still do think we should take you out asap though. Nothing personally, but the more successfully we hunt the elims, the more dangerous you become .

I also think we should grab the elim extortionist asap though, to stop them from pulling off the same trick with Winsting. I agree with Sart that it's likely to be one of Matrim or Mist, because any other potential elim could/should have also put their vote down for bugsy to save Silber. Of these, I'm ever so slightly more suspicious of Matrim, mostly because Mist had some decent suspicion of Shard relatively early on.

So, it might be Mist, but I already claimed impersonator. Last cycle I was blocked by an escort for the 3rd or 4th time- it’s probably been the same one over and over- so I couldn’t have extorted the elim bleeder kill even if I had the ability. Plus, I already said that Kyne and Devotary were some of my elim suspects, and for good reason. If you think we should take Bugsy out ASAP, then let’s take Bugsy out ASAP.

Who are you talking about when you say ‘Shard’? Is it Reading, or Experience because I was suspicious of both and they have been on my guess elim team for 4-5 cycles at this point. 

I think it’s worth pointing out how you haven't voted on any of the main suspects or Bleeder for quite some time. I can almost see where Emi is coming from but I still believe you to be village.