Kasimir

But not books to read? Old Wyrm, you suggesting I get to skip out on reading all your book recs then?

Technically Wyrm is making a slightly more sophisticated point which is that even in the most optimistic scenario, Villagers cannot help but insert bias (see: tunnels, and so on) when editorialising. It's possible to amplify this point by connecting it to certain debates in the philosophy of science and epistemology which would in turn help to tackle certain rejoinders I could see being raised to Wyrm's argument, but I think rewriting my Master's thesis on this forum is a tad unnecessary Plus, that's the most optimistic scenario. Villagers do lie for their own purposes at times (Fifth has an interesting track record here), and as you pointed out, low-hanging fruit is that an Elim would love to use that to manipulate, requiring players to still...go back and actually do their homework

No. Hard, hard no. This would be a disaster and I absolutely can see why >>

What happened to good ol' "We lynch 'em, and if they're not Evil, we lynch you and the Seeker"? Though at that stage in the game, Village could definitely no longer afford the luxury of that kind of LAFO. It's a stylistic difference, I think, ultimately. I'd have dropped in on the thread to bait reactions there before revealing the Seeker thing late But it's my old playbook talking here.

You actually did some interesting and audacious phishing in PMs that might have been more helpful a couple Turns ago. Your hitting TJ with the Seeker scan bait was good, and I think an Evil player might have panicked for a few moments, though the immediate question is always: "Well, then why tell me in a PM, because if I were really Evil, you have no reason to do that." TJ's gambits were also extremely good, and I felt a bit like - guys, where was all this kayana earlier >> We've established you're responsible for 70% of the backlog on my recs list since 2016, sir. Is this the real reason you keep suggesting I step out of SE as well? You say this like you didn't play MR7

Ninja-ed by Wyrm, thanks for the save there, Chief So anyway, I've been asked to say a bit more about the civility issues and Fallion's Four. I'll say a bit more about the teams first, which is that we used to have a thing in SE where you'd actually look at team dynamics and synergies. I don't really want to think too much about personal assessments of a player's capacities. I used to think in those terms when I played SE, but now I'm old and cynical and in general, my view as a Villager is that it doesn't matter if I'm going up against Wilson, Wyrm, or anyone else - my job is still the same. In keeping with that, I do not suppress team distros unless I see there is, for instance, some reason the team is non-viable, or no way to ascertain that the team can fulfil the dead basic level of player competency. In this case, I felt that Team Village had a number of capable players, and two potential aces up its sleeve with Biplet and Tani holding down the Coinshot and Mistborn roles respectively. I was especially pleased when Biplet did in fact take to her 1337 Seeker powers by helping to terminally Seek in this game. I was fine with Elan and Daisy being Thugs as well, though I did wince a bit for Elan and her curse. New players often get jumped on for things that don't fit how the community plays, and I liked the idea Daisy got to have some durability. That part did not pan out so well. On the Spiked team side, I knew that the Spiked team needed to be able to mobilise PMs well, and to have a decent risk appetite. Part of this was me coming from the AG, and recalling that Evil teams without players capable of fulfilling the heavy PM user niche can be in trouble in a game with PMs wide open. Part of this was just based off the fact that they had two Seekers, which opened them up to a lot of shenanigans. When this distro came up: Maili, Illwei, Devo, Fifth, Araris, STINK, I figured they were fine. STINK PMs everyone, though our PMs have generally remained light. Maili and Illwei, in my view, would give them decent PM coverage, which was the one criterion I had and would have otherwise suppressed the distro for. I'd generally forgotten that Fifth, Illwei, and Maili together were gambit demons, and Araris has that mad bussing rep. This would come back to haunt me later. (Sorry Illwei...) I also figured that Maili and Fifth might be rusty, coming back out of hiatus/retirement as it were, and that Araris had been attracting suspicion for his Evil stunts as of LG73, so I saw no reason for that to be excessively problematic. Another thing I liked about this boiled down to TJ's comment about how the past few games had been about trying to find low activity Evil Teams. The idea that this team would have a mixed profile as a way of shaking things up for the Village was appealing to me. Strategically, as I've already said, the two big problems the Village had were the poor PM opsec (rampant roleclaims, massive manipulation), as well as the spiking level of inactivity. But I'm also going to point out that the Spiked gambled very heavily, and Maili was playing on the assumption he would be dead soon and wanted to help his team as best as he could. Tani and Biplet both had Maili and Illwei in their crosshairs at points, and this could have backfired badly on the Spiked had either of the Village's 'Seekers' taken the shot. Eventually, they did not, but this goes back once again to the PM game, and who was on the ball in PMs, and who was not. Had Striker or Mat developed some trust or working rapport with either of the Village vigs, things might have gone very differently. Fifth's gamble that defending Maili would work well for him, for instance, backfired a bit in that he started to accumulate some suspicion just for doing so. I think on that level it's partly because some players are just always going to bite down hard on the IKYK. Fallion's Four: I do think it was not a good tactical move on the Village's part, but I think it was essentially not an ethical problem. I was in on the PMs, and my general take on these tends to be as follows: first, that having any role capable of influencing the lynch on their own for their own reasons is itself 'fundamentally undemocratic' in that pushing a lynch away from the Village majority is about subverting the will of the people. If you think that four ostensible Villagers discussing and agreeing to push a Striker lynch is fundamentally undemocratic, then you had better also condemn every lynch-changing vote-manipulator who did not declare they were one, and did not declare what they were doing and their reasons to the thread before doing so. Is the issue the fact it was a group PM? Would it have been any better if the Four had come to that conclusion and behaved the exact same was as the result of one-on-one PMs with each other? Well, then while doing so, you had also better condemn every time a player drops a bunch of one-on-one PMs to talk to other players on their views on the lynch and ends up changing the outcome. I'm also not a fan of demanding reasoning and immediately condemning players who don't. I think it's fine to do it in the game for tactical reasons, but I'm less fine when it appears to be coming out of a position that this is the way to play, and a reification of capital-r Reasoning. Players often do have reasons: it's just that sometimes it's strategically better to withhold them. Fallion's Four also fails that test, because they did make their reasons clear in thread: it just so happened they persuaded each other in PMs. In other words, they were convinced by reasoning that they shared with the thread: the PMs were simply the avenue by which the reasoning first appeared. In the end, I'm coming from the view that words have meaning. When we say mayoring is bad, or trust group dominance is bad, we mean a specific thing by it. Using words without care for what they mean results in us calling things what they are not. It blurs boundaries and it makes it difficult for us to clearly put our finger on what is wrong in a bad case. Referring to what Wyrm and I do to each other as targeted player harassment, for instance, grossly mutilates the word 'harassment' and what is meant by it. (Note that Wyrm consistently angsted to me out of game about what he was doing and if he was distracting the players. We also have a clear understanding of where each other's line is and we don't cross it.) It grossly misunderstands the sort of behaviour that's not acceptable in SE, and in extending that word to include our bickering, it trivialises what we mean by 'harassment.' In doing so, it makes enforcement of actual harassment difficult. You cannot properly condemn or report bad behaviour if you do not fundamentally understand what it is supposed to be. This is what I mean when I say words have meanings. We need to respect what words mean. Is Fallion's Four anywhere close to what happened in the AG? No. Is it mayoring? God, no. Is it trust group dominance? If it is, then where does the ethical wrongness or badness of Fallion's Four come from? I point out that the above discussion has been me showing that if you think the wrongness of Fallion's Four stems from these places, then I also expect to see people agreeing on or condemning behaviour that also displays this very sort of ethical wrongness. The fact that we do not suggests that such attempts to locate the ethical wrongness of Fallion's Four generally fail. My view is consistent with TJ's, which is that it's not an ethical issue so much as a tactical issue. Four Villagers bloc-voting generally just looks suspicious as hell and wastes Village energy chasing that (it did so happen Maili was not Village, but the point is we're talking about it from the tactical standpoint of the Village.) So yeah, I do think it's helpful to make it clear you were in contact with each other, but it doesn't really matter because Village is perfectly justified (in my view) regarding sudden coordinated lynch-changing shenanigans as being highly suspicious. Civility issues. There have been a number of low level incidents across this game. As I mentioned, I don't want to go into too much detail about most of them. One thing I will say is that I somewhat regret picking Nordic Noir as the flavour for this game. I've certainly covered a number of dark subjects in the write-ups: stalking, serial murder, abduction, child trafficking, drugs, violence, and so on. None of this is PG-9, but SE has a history of being bloody careful about the line, because we're part of 17th Shard, and that means keeping this family-friendly. (Just look at the Bonestorm write-up in LG18.) I relied on the maturity of the players in order to ensure that content did not stray past the line, even as I was careful to keep most of the darkness to hints, or Kast and Wyl rambling about human nature. In this regard, I have to admit I have been disappointed in the number of players who regarded 'noir' as an excuse to get downright edgy and dark. I think it's also important to be careful about the impacts our words have on others. I myself have crossed this line several times. As a player, I've been known to have a sharp tongue and I do not hold back when I go in on a player. I have tried to learn, and to apologise for my errors, though I make my mistakes still. The point I think is that mindfulness of others is always important. I don't want to turn this into a "if you can't take the heat, get out of the kitchen" discussion, because this sort of talk neglects the fact the kitchen could be less hot. With that caveat in mind, I'll note that as a player with a noted history/aggressive style, there's always an element of pressure to SE. People do press players, and put them under pressure. Spiked, too, automatically are under pressure by virtue of their role. Often, in SE, the ability to put pressure on another player for their reads, their reasoning, and just in general, what they say, is your power to elicit more information from them and to improve your reads. This is part and parcel of the game, on some level. As the Etiquette policy points out, it's important to be able to talk about when a player is making you uncomfortable, just as it's important to take a step back and realise that it's not always about you, but it's sometimes that the player is just doing their job because they don't know what you know, and so by their lights, that's a perfectly reasonable question to ask. During the time check in the previous cycle, I mentioned the dead doc being nuked. This was not in fact to lock Wyrm out, as some speculated, but because one of the dead players thought it was a good idea to head into the anon dead doc and post a short wall of abuse in whitetext. I have done the needful with regard to that. I just want to say I am pretty damned disappointed that they thought it was okay, whether in the name of RP and being edgy, or whatever their reasons were. Edgy does not excuse bad behaviour. RP does not absolve us of the need to be mindful of the others in the SE community. That's all I have to say about that.

I get this, my dude. O7 Glad to have GMed you, or at least, strangely appropriate to have been the last GM (if at least in a long while) for my first GM Now the circle is complete. I understand this as I often talk about having a chill game but for one reason or another, end up going ham. We saw this from me as Azure Mouse, and as Duncan Kerr more recently. And as we spoke in the Spiked doc, this is likely to be my last stint in SE for a long time as well, though for different reasons. Definitely also feeling harder to juggle these with my new responsibilities. Anyway, I'm still committed to taking MR50 if the players before me aren't going for it as the game I have planned is way easier than that and I may want to join TJ and Wyrm in the 'I GMed a X50!' club so I'm saving my official "I'm leaving" thing for either that game, or for the way I'd planned to deliver it here. Probably the latter. Sir, are you sure you're not Spiked? That's just too Evil to - oh, wait I'm quite sure Wyrm would get a lot of PMs from me because I have to seek a reasonable person somewhere thanks to that team, and God help me that I've determined Wyrm to actually be reasonable :/ Sometimes. More cases came in today to be honest so it looks like another late night. I may or may not have wept into my case files to discover my new temporal real estate was rapidly consumed. What is hydration, can you eat it I've been asked to share a bit more on my civility thoughts and Fallion's Four. I will do so in a while.

Alright. Let me just get the post-mortem done, so I can discharge fully my duties as the GM. 1. Meta 2. Opsec 3. Inactivity 4. Distro 5. Tyrian Re-modded 6. Civility That's it from me, really. Again, thanks to everyone for playing, and see you around sometime And now my Watch has ended. Edit:

Our PMs say otherwise, when you chose to inflict it on me there >> Sir, you were responsible for 3/4 of them, and the Spiked the other 1/4 >>

Player List:

Aftermath: Way Down We Go “Oh, father, tell me, do we get what we deserve? Oh, we get what we deserve [...] Oh, ‘cause they will run you down, down ‘til the dark Yes, and they will run you down, down ‘til you fall And they will run you down, down ‘til you go Yeah, ‘til you can’t crawl no more.” —’Way Down We Go’, Kaleo Betrayal. It really fecks a man up. We tell ourselves we know a person. We cite our years of history, our kinship. Our familiarity with each other. Until that one dark day someone you thought you knew does the unthinkable, the unforgivable. And then it’s like someone punched you, right in the gut, when you weren’t expecting it. Like falling. That moment where certainty gives way to the sullen sky overhead, the rush of breath out of your chest. How much do we ever really, truly know someone? I didn’t allow myself the luxury of questions, but they pressed at me, even as I went to the lone oak tree, the lightning-struck one that stood at the far end of the fields at the edge of Fallion’s Tears. The militia manned the barricades and one of them called out to me to stop me, telling me that the koloss had been sighted in the vicinity, that it was unsafe. I looked at him. Maybe it was something in my face, or my eyes. His partner pulled him back. I kept on moving. I had stopped at the lightning-struck tree, a few days after we first moved to Fallion’s Tears. Maybe Wyl knew, even back then. I don’t know. I pushed my way through the stalks of grass, until I came back, seven years later, and knelt at the base of the tree. There is a hollow in the tree, a crack I’d patched with tar. Now, I brought the purloined shovel down in a series of sharp, hard blows, until it splintered and sheared open again. I leaned on the shovel as my leg protested all over again. I’d expected to leave this life behind, really. We’d come to Fallion’s Tears to bury our pasts, and I thought I’d buried my ghosts years before even that, when she died. When that Soother died. When I killed the last of the Red Knives, and killed even Kast Speirs, and made myself someone else in the ranks of the Tremredare Watch. Maybe the real lie here is expecting people to change. Or expecting to be able to outrun our pasts. It’d hurt just as much, when she and Waes turned on us. Didn’t make the knowledge that Wyl had gone rogue any easier to bear, though. I hadn’t bothered to store my vials in the lightning-struck tree, but that was fine. I’d gotten a fresh batch from Palladiel, and I’d downed it immediately. No sense in carrying metal on me, when I went to do what I had to do. You never want too much metal on you when you’re fighting a Coinshot or a Lurcher. What I’d left in the tree though, was the tools of the trade. Some of them had been buried beneath the floorboards in my flat, so of course Arenta would murder me if she knew, but what’s life without a little risk? I guess maybe a part of me had known, on that day. Known I might one day need to return to the tree, to take up a rusher’s tools once again. To kill. Something I’ve never told anyone at all: that day, when the Red Knives died. I killed her because I didn’t want to die. But I also killed her because I loved her. Because that was what those spikes were doing. Twisting her into someone who loved pain and death and blood and slaughter. And that’s why I killed her. Because I loved her enough to remember who she was, even as I killed her. Like that dog that had the frothing sickness, all those years ago, growing up in the Warrens. Varns put the dog down, though I remember seeing the tears in her eyes, because we couldn’t save the dog, and because the dog was in pain, and it was lashing out the only way it knew how. I killed her. Because I loved her enough to take the pain on myself, because someone had to stop her. Because she wasn’t going to stop at the Red Knives, not what I saw that day. Not her, and not Waes. Maybe I’m making excuses for her. Maybe the darkness was in her all along, and I just hadn’t seen it. But what I saw that day, I had no excuses for. So I killed them all. We kill what we love, in the end. I took up the knives, and the darts, and the flasks, and the various tricks and traps I’d once bet my life on. Being a rusher is a dangerous life. Worse if you’re in the business of icing people. And then I went to go see a man about a murder. “We’ve found her!” one of the militia shouted, urgently. Erik pelted down the street. He was getting too old for this, he grumbled internally. Almost a decade ago since his wife was in the cold earth. Someone’d torched his fields a couple of days ago, too. Fallion’s Tears had seen too much excitement over the recent days, and all Erik really wanted was quiet time on his farm, enjoying the last of the light. Watching the barley ripen. Waiting, perhaps, just a little, for the day he would join his wife in the earth he’d worked for most of his life. A plot of land in the Western Dominance was as good as a plot of land in the Northern Dominance, really. He recognised who his militia had cornered. One of the six they were looking for: Illwei held a brace of sharp needles, looking supremely unconcerned as the militia surrounded her and levelled their swords at her. “Come quietly,” Douza said. There was a quaver in his voice. Blacksmith’s boy, but Erik wasn’t sure he had the steel in him for such work. “What if I don’t?” Illwei asked. “What are you going to do then?” Douza spluttered. “There are six of us. There’s one of you.” “Is there?” Kill him, his Clara said. And Erik moved. It was no different from reaping at harvest. His sword flashed and then Douza was falling. And then Seran, and then steel met steel as Peng fought Lam, until Hreo knifed Lam in the back, and then there were three corpses, and the three of them stood there, with blood on their blades, watching the village acupuncturist. “Erik,” Peng said, “I—” A pair of Illwei’s needles flew, and then there were two. Fallion’s Tears must fall, Clara whispered. You know this. I love you. Across Fallion’s Tears, the sun was setting slowly, setting both land and sky aflame with bloody light. Slowly, as though choreographed, the militia at the barricades turned on their fellow villagers. Some of them were fellow militia, but there was one difference between them. Some of them had gone to Illwei’s acupuncture clinic. Some of the villagers of Fallion’s Tears ran for the barricades and were cut down. Ruthlessly. Swiftly. Blades flashed in the light of the dying sun and villagers fell and villagers died, their blood soaking the streets and the earth. Ruin had come to Fallion’s Tears, and in the end, it had come from within. Wyl burned iron. The Watch in Tremredare worked on a fundamental set of beliefs: that human behaviour is more or less predictable. We put on our coats the same way, shut and lock the door the same way, take the same routes to get the groceries. Some variance is to be expected but genuine unpredictability has to be trained. For that reason, Wyl was unsurprised when the shutters crashed open, and dodged the sweep of flying darts. He’d seen them coming, blue lines speeding towards him with lethal swiftness. He kicked the office desk over and crouched behind it, and tugged on those blue metal lines. As he’d expected, he heard the thumps of darts burying themselves in the thick wooden surface, and then a few moments later, more thumps as the metal halves of the darts joined them. “Really?” he called out. “This the best you can do?” Maybe it’d have caught him, in another time. But he’d seen Kast use this trick before, against a Mistborn—target tries to stop the dart, the metal separates, and the glass dart-heads continue onwards and shred the target. Wyl’d be damned if he fell for it. Kast was still leaning heavily on the dueling cane. Wyl noted this and filed it away. “It’s a good trick,” he replied. “Works perfectly on most.” “So this what I am then? Most targets?” “Probably not,” Kast admitted. “But if a trick is good, it’s worth a shot.” “Thought so,” said Wyl, as he burned iron and yanked on the nails buried only loosely in the shutter frame. “Are you fecking serious,” Kast said, with such exasperation that it sounded almost as though they were arguing over some case, or whether it was okay to reveal to a target they were under surveillance. Almost. If Kast hadn’t opened with his best shot, with something that’d meant to kill Wyl, and they both knew it. “I know you buried nails in the office, Wyl.” He slammed them with a Steelpush and contemptuously knocked the nails away. It was Wyl’s turn to shrug as he emerged from the cover of the desk. Pity about the desk. Wasn’t sure how they were going to replace it. “As you say, if a trick is good, it’s worth a shot.” Kast eyed him, eyes narrowed. “Find better tricks.” “Same to you.” They stared at each other, for a long hard moment. “You killed her,” Kast said. “You were the last person I’d thought would’ve done it.” “Would’ve thought my insistence she was murdered gave it away,” Wyl said. “Didn’t intend on that slip. Oh, you mean Wilson.” Kast’s grip on the cane became white-knuckled, but then he relaxed again, shifting away from the shutters, padding deeper into the office. Tap. Tap. His back was to the bookcase, for the moment. “You told me, a long time ago. Law’s the law. We’re not above it.” “You think anyone was going to stop her from murdering her way through Fallion’s Tears?” Wyl wanted to know. “You think anyone was going to try Wilson for dealing in dreamweed?” He’d startled Kast, he could tell that much. Kast rocked back on his heels for a moment, before his eyes narrowed again. Kast had seen what dreamweed did, and hated it just as much. “Doesn’t matter,” he said, slowly, deliberately. “Watch doesn’t do that. We don’t do that. We’re supposed to be better than this, and even Wilson deserves justice. You taught me that yourself.” “Tell that to the next person Sara would’ve killed,” Wyl said. “Tell that to the lives Wilson’s dreamweed destroyed. There’s the law, and there’s justice. This was justice.” “Maybe I will,” Kast said, his voice cold. “You going to stop, then?” “Nah. You?” Kast shook his head. “Had to ask, I suppose.” “Yeah,” Wyl said, with some regret. “Same.” They struck at the same time. “Jorah,” said Arenta. She fidgeted with the jewelled earring she wore. Helped with her Seeking, she supposed. It had been a gift from Iste, meant to pay off his rent for several months, and while she’d thought of selling it, well. She’d put it on, and she supposed, it had just sort of slipped her mind. And really, she had more important things to be doing, like dealing with a large group of recalcitrant tenants who weren’t paying their rent. Didn’t pay his rent on time, said the voice. It was true of most of them, and Arenta was both annoyed and bothered. Time was, most of Fallion’s Tears used to be more prompt about repaying their debts. Now, they gave her all sorts of stories: about how they couldn’t scrape together payment, about how she didn’t own the land, about how they could swear on their great, great, great grand-aunt’s beloved cushion that this flat was theirs before hers, as though Arenta couldn’t smell a great load of crap when she saw it. She clubbed him down with her rolling pin, and Smirkai ran him through with his knives for good measure. There was a certain amount of blood, and Arenta sighed. Oh, bother. But Jorah had been asking for it, as far as Arenta was concerned. She flicked open the thick ledger she was carrying under an arm and crossed off his name in neat, dark strokes. He was dead then, and his debt was annulled. And then there was Kait, who had been cut down by the sword of one of the militia. Arenta hummed to herself and flipped over to Kait’s page. Kait had been late on her rent five months in a row, now. Something about poor finances, which Arenta was absolutely not buying. She crossed that name off. Another one down. Fallion’s Tears was running deep into debt, and Arenta had come at long last to collect. They knew each other too well. Hours of stakeouts. Years of operating together. Cracking cases, investigating, and even before that, in the early years when they’d operated on opposite sides of the law, back in Tremredare. Wyl vaulted the table and rushed him, and Kast knew in that moment Wyl was coming for his weak side and spun about, bracing off his good leg. Kast was the better duelist, but he was years away from the rusher in his prime and now his leg punished him for it. Wyl knew that, though. And Kast knew that he knew it. Wyl struck with his own dueling cane in a series of quick slashes, and Kast parried easily, but Wyl was relentless, forcing him to move, dodge, and block. And always, always, pressuring him on his weak side. He responded automatically, relying on schooled responses trained by hours of practice into muscle and bone. Responses that had first been drilled in a body decades younger, that hadn’t yet had his leg fecked over by Gade that night he saved Wyl’s life. Kast turned aside a swift flick at his wrist with a block and lunged for the riposte, and then his leg screamed and buckled. He recovered, as swiftly as he could, but Wyl had been waiting for that moment of weakness and drove forward, and his dueling cane smashed full-force into Kast’s elbow. Kast’s arm went numb, and he did his best to hold on, but Wyl smashed his dueling cane into his arm a second and third time. His grip loosened. His fingers flew open. The dueling cane clattered to the floor. Kast still had one arm currently working, though. He drew his knife. Iste Confessor led the scattered members of the militia to the slaughter. He had taken a sword from one of them, probably cut down by another of the militia. The thought should have distressed him, but it did not, not particularly. Everyone had a past, and part of him was remembering Rostam, remembering that day in the interview room, when Rostam had whispered the sins that Iste had thought were buried and forgotten into his ear. And then Iste knew, then, that he was done for. Finished. If an obligator such as Rostam knew, then the rest of the Steel Ministry, and most certainly the Canton of Inquisition would be well aware of this. Steel Inquisitors in particular had ways of knowing, of being particularly convincing. Iste did not like pain that much. The iron earring dug into his flesh. He did not like killing, either. Fallion’s Tears had been a peaceful village, a quiet place where he could tend to his books and papers, and be left to his own devices. The grocer smiled at him every time he came by for groceries, and he enjoyed being the first customer at the baker’s, taking his time to select from the various loaves of bread on sale that morning. You were allowed your peace, whispered the voice. Iste imagined that was how the Inquistition sounded, when they interrogated you. Took their knives and hooks to you. You savoured it. Now fulfill the task you were sent for. Iste did. He led the wolves to the slaughter, and they fell upon the stunned, terrified villagers of Fallion’s Tears, and killed, and killed until the streets ran with blood. “What about the koloss?” one of them screamed before Smirkai ran her through. “Don’t be ridiculous,” scoffed Arenta, crossing yet another name off from her ledger. “There weren’t any koloss at all. I was right about that.” Wyl raised an eyebrow. “Who brings a knife to a duel?” he wanted to know. The dueling cane was the weapon of choice in the Watch, back in Tremredare, because it was easy to teach, it could be wielded in lethal ways, or non-lethal ways, and it afforded Watch options in operations against rogue skaa Mistings. Learning how to disable and stop Mistings had been one of the more interesting lessons they’d picked up, in the Watch. Kast rolled his eyes. “Want to come closer and find out?” And there it was, the one reason most Watch drilled unarmed and picked up a couple of dirty tricks and carried a knife. Because if it got close and dirty, you were proper fecked, with a dueling cane. “Nah. Didn’t fall off the turnip cart yesterday.” Wyl lashed out, meant to disarm Kast, but Kast must’ve been holding back a bit of speed, because he dodged and came at Wyl like a madman, and then it was Wyl who was falling back as Kast rushed him, no matter how off his cadence was, thrown off by his game leg. The knife drew a hot flash of pain across his arm as Wyl blocked Kast on the knife-arm but got slashed for his troubles. Kast wrested the dueling cane from him, with a hard twist of his arm, until Wyl was forced to drop it as well. Well, then, Wyl thought, because Kast’s back was still to the bookcase. He still had that one trick. And it was a good trick. He flared iron and pulled. The red haze washed about him again. Every slight, every indignity. Every bit of suspicion that the people of Fallion’s Tears had visited upon him. Tears drying on his cheeks, Marll picked up the hammer and let those smouldering embers of rage grow. Kill, the voice whispered. Kill for me, as you did before. Marll fought it. In his mind, he built a wall of stories and shoes about himself. Against the voice, the one that had whispered to him through the outrage of the years. The one that had prompted him to kill when he’d been a younger man, angrier. Tyrian Falls. He did not remember if that town existed. Did not know, any longer. Perhaps it was the story he told himself, to comfort himself. To pretend that he could wash his past away by fleeing far away to a different dominance. Tyrian Falls. Fallion’s Tears. Red paint against the window, and it looked as though it was weeping blood. Marll stared at it. The window slid open and Roseanna Ghetti poked her head out of the attic. She was trembling, dark hollows under her eyes. “They say you’re a friend,” she said, in a quiet voice. He had pretended. Or maybe it was genuine. Marll did not know. The rage was held back by the steel banks of his will. The knowledge that Roseanna had protected him, spoken for him, vouched for him when she did not have to. She had trusted him. “I am,” Marll said. He hefted the hammer. “He says you’re a friend,” she said. There was that tremor in her voice. Fear of the uncertain, perhaps. Or fear of—of him? Did you really think just anyone would save you? murmured the voice. Did you think I spoke only to you and the rest of your sorry group? Marll blinked. “He says to do what he told you to do,” Roseanna said. She had a knife. A small tool, stained with paint. Probably used for scraping. “Twineye.” He met her gaze and sighed. Kill for me, whispered the voice, and the dice rattled in Marll’s head and came up with a single baleful eye. Sometimes, you gambled and you lost. The red haze descended and two Spiked ran through the streets of Fallion’s Tears, slaughtering all in their path. Kast had been burning steel. Just a little, to keep himself aware of where the hazards were. He noticed, from the corner of his eye, a few seconds after the nails tore free from the bookshelf and hurtled towards his back. He flared his steel in response, pushing against them. He’d gotten into a metals-fight with Wyl before. They were evenly-matched, when they set their minds to it. Wyl headbutted him, and Kast was reeling. He slashed out instinctively, still keeping the nails at bay. He cut Wyl a few times for good measure, but that was the trouble with knife-fights. You bled the bastard to death, cut him until he didn’t want to keep fighting, or you went for the kill. The nails crept closer, and Kast slammed them with another, more forceful Steelpush. He strained against Wyl’s Ironpull. They inched closer. Where the feck was this additional force coming from? Wyl’s coat had fallen open, and Kast noticed the vest that Wyl usually didn’t wear, and realisation dawned. Weighted. So he gave way. Abruptly. He hit the ground hard, and rolled, his leg screaming all this while because Kast was stacking ever more demands on it. He tried to get up and his knee buckled, and he fell back to the ground. Get up, Kast thought, teeth gritted, even as Wyl had to dive to avoid the nails he’d yanked at both of them, now Kast wasn’t in the way. Now that Kast wasn't pushing back. Some of them probably grazed him. Get up, get up, get the feck up! He was on his feet, somehow, and he’d managed to hold onto his knife. He flicked a few coins at Wyl, knowing that Wyl would deflect them with ease. Instead, he reached into his coat for the flask he’d claimed from the lightning-struck tree and closed his eyes an instant before he smashed it into the floor. Hoped to hell Wyl had been distracted. Explosions reverberated through the streets of Fallion’s Tears as Sonnah drove her cart. The rest of her team piled onto the cart as it sped along, propelled by the occasional explosion. It crashed down the streets, through structures, and ran over the villagers of Fallion’s Tears and kept going. The voice had suggested that particular alchemical mixture, and Sonnah had tested it and refined it. It was a little risky, but Illwei and Smirkai were decent shots, and the confusion from being attacked by the very militia meant to protect the village meant that there was little opposition left. At least, Sonnah thought grimly, she could derive a little pleasure from how well her cart was performing. The first version hadn’t even made it across the field. She lobbed alchemical bombs at the buildings they passed, watching as they erupted into flames. Soon, most of Fallion’s Tears was ablaze. Sonnah heard the screams as people tried to escape burning buildings and found themselves trapped inside. More bombs that she’d been testing: ones that created a poisonous chemical fog that dropped those who strayed within it, burning them terribly. Ones that made people hack and cough and rendered them helpless. The cart ran them all down and Arenta ticked off more entries on her ledger. Some of them had been militia, and Sonnah thought she vaguely recognised them from Illwei’s clinic. But the voice was silent, and Sonnah supposed the voice wasn’t really concerned with what became of its pawns. After all, it had forced her into its service, had it not? It could always make more. Ensnare more. Patience, she told herself. The voice had not led her astray. She would be cautious, and she would do as it bid. For now. And eventually, she would rid herself of the hooks it had sunk into her, even if it did seem to know the most interesting formulae. It was a fecking distraction. Of course it was. Wyl cursed as his eyes watered from the bright flash of light. He’d deflected the coins, and got out his own knife, only to be immediately caught out by the light bomb that Kast had set off. It wasn’t even a rusher thing. Watch used it too, on raids. “That’s low,” Wyl said. His eyes were still streaming, but he could see the metal lines, and Kast was still carrying coins on his person, because he wouldn’t have been caught dead without them, not as a Coinshot. “So was the fecking nails,” Kast snapped. But then Kast was on him, and he wasn’t holding back. Neither was Wyl. They attacked each other with the viciousness that only former partners trying their damnedest to kill each other could bring to bear. Kast stabbed him, but the weighted vest took the cut and deflected it, as far as Wyl could tell. Blind, pure luck, Wyl thought, astounded, and lashed out. His sweeping leg caught Kast on the ankle and sent him stumbling. Kast recovered faster than Wyl had expected and slashed at him, the knife biting deeper each time. You didn’t feel the pain, not when you were fighting like this. But the part of Wyl that was Watch knew that he couldn’t afford to keep letting Kast land those hits. Wyl shoved blindly, sending Kast off-balance. A hammer blow drove the stiffened fingers of his hand into Kast’s knee and this time, Wyl didn’t relent. He slammed at the knee again and again until he heard Kast cry out in agony and the thump of Kast hitting the floorboards. His vision was clearing, slowly. There were still bright smears, but Wyl blinked away the annoying dazzle-spots, until he could vaguely make out Kast prone on the ground, trying to crawl for his knife. Wyl stomped on his wrist. Hard. Heard the crunch of breaking bone. Kast was one hell of a stubborn bastard, though. Wyl’d give him that. But it was over. Everyone looked down on you, when you were the guy who just talked to everyone, who knew everything about the foods in the various parts of the Final Empire, and who really just projected a general aura of “Don’t mind me, I’m just here to sit back, and have a quiet life.” Smirkai knew all about that. Cultivating that impression was a craft, and Smirkai considered himself rather good at it. Some of the militia were rallying together and trying to fight back. Fools still used steel-tipped arrows, though. Shaking his head in wonder at how naive people could be, Smirkai burned iron and pulled on the arrows. Would be a damper to his day, and probably everyone else’s if they got shot by a stray arrow, after all. The fact that some of the arrows he’d pulled were going through villagers instead? Some people were just that good. Smirkai whistled and wondered about getting a flatbread from the bakery once they were done with the task of demolishing Fallion’s Tears and killing every last person in it. It was the first rule of surviving the streets of Tremredare. You give up when you’re dead. Kast had it pounded into him, time and again, by brawls he’d survived, by fights he’d walked out of as a cocky young rusher that he really shouldn’t have. By marks who’d seen an assassin coming and who’d prepared traps to lure a would-be killer off his guard. The second rule was that there was always somebody better. Kast didn’t know if Wyl was that person. But he’d be damned if he just lay there and went into the night quietly. He took stock. His wrist wept agony, and his knee felt as though Wyl had poured molten metal into it. Wasn’t going to be any good. But he had one trick left. It was an old trick, but it was a good trick. “Ain’t personal,” Wyl said. He hefted his knife. He was bleeding. Some of the wounds looked worse than others. Kast’d got him good, at least. But it was. It was personal. It was Kast against Wyl, and Wyl against Kast, set against the backdrop of their history, their principles, and the damage they’d done to each other. Kast flared steel. One last push, he thought. The last of the bloody light faded from Fallion’s Tears. As the mists rose to engulf the land, the last of the agonised cries faded into ominous silence. Seven figures strode through the mists, which seemed to flow away from them. Once, there had been a village. Now, there was only ruin, and seven walked in its wake. Night fell over Fallion’s Tears, and in the wreckage of their office and their lives, a good man killed, and a good man died. And then it was over. Silence. Nothing. The end. It is past the midnight hour in Tremredare, though the city never truly sleeps. Not Tremredare, the Jewel of the West, glittering where the cityfront meets the cold pellucid waters of the Mir as it rushes onwards, ever onwards, from the jutting mountainous bones of the Western Dominance. Not Tremredare, ancestral seat of House Heron. Not Tremredare, ancient since Kyril Heron first gained the Lord Ruler’s favour and ascended to the position of Steward of the city. The group of Watch leave the diner, with all of them splitting off into various directions. It is a clear night, with a gentle breeze, though the mists are thick on the ground, swirling about both of them, distorting familiar shapes into grotesques. Kast and Wyl are used to it, though. The nights are theirs, and the streets are theirs. This is their precinct, and Wyl will claim he knows every street, every nook, and Kast will say he knows every alley like his own sword hand. They are young, and while they have worked themselves to the bone trying to crack this case, they have at last cracked it wide open, and even the weariness cannot ward off satisfaction at a job well done, at a year’s worth of work having meant something. It has been a night of celebratory drinks on the sarge, and both of them have downed enough to feel a light buzz, the pleasant warmth of the alcohol staving off the night chill. The years yet to pass are spread open before them, pages in a book that has yet to be written. “Stories, eh,” Wyl says, for no particular reason at all. It is their way, conversations half-ended, half-begun. Years of history, and a grudging, wary respect turned to friendship, and Kast expects there will be more to come. “Yeah,” he says. “Stories. Told a few in my time. Made them all up, of course.” Wyl is an indistinct shape in the dark, but no less real as they walk together, coats slung over their shoulders. He staggers a little, and Kast reaches out, instinctively, to steady him. Human instinct, Kast thinks, for no particular reason. They’re all reaching out in the dark, sometimes. He thinks of the woman, who came forward. Who helped them crack the case. Sometimes, all you need is someone else. A helping hand in the dark. The knowledge that someone else is out there, reaching out too. “You know what you were saying about stories. About light versus dark.” Maybe it should be a question, but Wyl’s tone makes it clear it’s not a question, not exactly. “Yeah?” There’s a bright patch of stars in the night sky. Kast gazes upwards at it. Some nights, the sky is overcast and the stars are shrouded. Tonight, they blaze brilliantly. Enough light to set them on their way home. “I think you’re looking at it the wrong way,” Wyl says. “‘Cause from the way I see it, at some point, there must’ve been a great big nothing. Once, there was only ever dark. You ask me, the light’s winning.” The lights of Tremredare glitter, even this late in the night. There are districts bustling with activity, that never truly sleep. And overhead, the lost stars burn brightly, defying the dark. “Maybe so,” Kast says. “Maybe so.” This is Kast Speirs and Wyl Sharpe, walking home together, late at night. The last of the thrill of having cracked the Kendricks case is fading, replaced by a tired contentment, a companionable almost-silence. “Dinner at the Bent Boxing tomorrow?” Kast offers. “On me.” “Come on, you paid for the last round, you know the rules…” “The time at the Tin Hawk doesn’t count, I’ve told you this already…” The bickering fades into the Tremredare night, as the mists curl in closer, enfolding all within their embrace. As far as Kast and Wyl are concerned, they make a good team, maybe the best in the precinct, though neither of them will actually do something so crass such as admit it, and they can’t see any reason that might ever change. “And all the winds are like a kiss And all the years are nemesis And all the moments fall in mist And all is dust, remember this And all the light will be, will be And all the waves, the sea And all the waves; the sea, the sea And all the light will be.” —’The Humming’, Enya Shard of Reading was lynched! He was a Regular Villager! The Spiked have won, and Fallion's Tears has been destroyed! Thank you all for playing Been a fun experience GMing again, and I hope you had fun despite the chaos of my co-GM, @Wyrmhero. Due gratitude to Wyrm'alor for his help. As much as we spent most of the thread this game brawling, you are definitely the best bro a dude can ask for Thanks also to @Elbereth and the IM for this game, @little wilson for all the help with stuff. You know what Game Matters: Spiked Doc 1 Spiked Doc 2 Dead-Spec Doc 1 Dead-Spec Doc 2 Master Spreadsheet (Keep in mind I had to manually edit tallies in thread due to issues while test-driving the automated master spreadsheet, so a bit of it is off.) GM comments to follow when I'm less tired. I do have a post-mortem, just probably not right now.

Arise, arise, Riders of Théoden! Fell deeds awake: fire and slaughter! Posts shall be stopped, voting be ended, a sword-day, a red day, ere the sun sets! Ride now, ride now! Ride for Ruin and the world's ending!

Two hours left before rollover. Get those orders and actions in. Also, I may or may not have been paid to advertise on behalf of Lode of Luthadel (TM) - get your daily dose of backstabbing and betrayal by signing up for a faction game, if it's up your alley! Sign-ups close soon. Tell TJ I sent you, and do sign up 1 hour before sign-ups close in order to panic him and force him to redo his distro last-minute

Sir, this is a god-fearing dead/spec doc, and I will have none of your reign of terror afflicting our restless spectres.

1. Time-check: you have slightly around twenty-one and a half hours left in the cycle. Get those votes and orders in! 2. We had a slight weapons malfunction, but everything's perfectly all right now. For any dead player or spectator who has been ejected from the dead doc and requires another link to access it, you may obtain it from me, from Dead Doc #1 (I've updated the link), or from any dead player. (Dead players, please help me out here, and also please be responsible and not hand it to anyone who shouldn't have it. Thank you.) If you're Wyrm, you're not getting the link. That simple.

Elevator music? You called? Have some thematic soothing elevator music, y'all

Horizon Blue is great. Well-behaved and lovely shading!

Maybe not wax, but semi-solid so I just q-tip a bit and then spread it with my thumb Like this:

I see the problem, yeah. I used the wax form, so it's easier to grease it up, but I feel your pain. The TWSBI bottle of silicone grease is a nightmare to use. Imperial Blue is a great colour as well. Also, happy birthday! These are really great colours. Love Thunderstorm and Aurora Borealis for sure!

You know what, soddit. I'm not standing for this provocation from a lying Spiked traitor >> Illwei, Wyrm.

This is what I get for blessing your PMs? Illwei May remove vote and place it on Wyrm later instead. What can you do against the perfidy of men and betrayal /shrug

Player List: Rule Clarifications:

Day Six: The Brightest Fell “Honey, you’re familiar, like my mirror years ago Idealism sits in prison, chivalry fell on his sword Innocence died screaming; honey ask me, I should know I slithered here from Eden just to sit outside your door.” —’From Eden’, Hozier There’s that moment where you crack the case, or get your first real break. Sometimes, it’s like someone shined just a tiny bit of a light, and enough of the mist has cleared that you can see the vague shapes of how the different parts and persons of interest might fit together. Sometimes, it’s that bright ray of afternoon sunshine through the shutters in the office, and everything the light touches becomes clear as day. You understand, in that moment, exactly what went down in that case, and it all fits together just so. There’s no real hard and fast rule to this, except to keep on keeping on. Hard work, and a bit of luck helps to crack cases more than anything. If you can’t even be bothered to put your hat on, and get out there and ask the questions that need to be asked, well, life sure ain’t going to drop the answers neatly in your lap, most the time. Investigation’s work, I always say. Hard, thankless work, and if the cases you can’t crack, the answers you don’t have don’t eat at you like a wyrm rotting the core of an apple, then well, maybe you should look for another job. Sometimes, we get lucky. Someone lets slip some bit of information or other, one thing leads to another, and next thing you know, you’re staring at the entire case laid open, right before you. Just like that. More often than not though, you got to make your own luck. I was good at that. Kast had left and I nursed the headache for a while longer. Inside, I was pretty angry. Hadn’t let anyone get the drop on me in ages. Dunno why I started now. Part of me kept asking if maybe Kast was involved. I didn’t like that one bit. Worst thing I can think of is when Watch goes crooked. We know how the crime’s done. We know how to bury it so you’ll never find out. Never see it coming. And if Kast’d gone back to his old ways… Well. Wasn’t that going to be a right pain? Didn’t change my job none, though, I reckoned. My job was to put a stop to the people going around whacking the people of Fallion’s Tears with impunity. Didn’t matter who it was, whose face the perp wore. And if it meant having to put Kast under the ground, so be it. In the Watch, we treated crooked Watch as our responsibility. You keep your own house clean. And if Kast’d gone crooked, then I had to do the dirty work. The law don’t care about how you feel about it. Anyway, I wasn’t inclined to stay laid up the whole afternoon. Sure, my head was aching something fierce, but a bit of whisky’d fix that, and I’d dealt with worse before. We don’t get to choose when we work, and when we don’t, back in the Watch. If the perp you’ve been tracking for months suddenly shows up, you best be ready to grab your gear and go make the arrest, unless you’re struck down with the plague or something. I figured there were better things I could do with my time. My mind kept going back to how Mayor Wilson was acting, and the panel she’d looked at. Stands to reason: people don’t leave important documents, anything incriminating out in the open. Number of raids I’ve been on, you find evidence in the damndest places. False panel at the bottom of a desk, package wrapped in waxed canvas and dumped in the sewage of an outhouse—people have all sorts of ways to hide things they don’t want you to see, at least if they’ve got anything knocking about in their braincase. I figured Wilson was the sort to come up with some sort of crafty way of hiding it, and I wasn’t getting much out of our little talks. Which meant I had to make my own luck. Slipping into Wilson’s place wasn’t all that difficult. I vaulted the low wall. Still had it in me, I guess. Sure, I wasn’t chasing perps the way I used to in Tremredare. Those were years behind me now, but something like a low wall, yeah, sure, I can do that. Why not? I knocked on the front door, and then carefully hid. It’s a burglar’s trick they used in the merchant sector in Tremredare. See, if the knock is answered, you know someone’s home. And if it isn’t, then well. I was ready to do some snooping of my own. No one came to the door. So I worked the lock. Sometimes, the line that separates Watch from those we hunt down is a very, very fine line, but this was Fallion’s Tears and the latch that Wilson used wasn’t near as complex as some of those I’ve seen. It took me a while, but I’d worked it open, and pushed the door open. I headed straight for Wilson’s study. She kept a neat enough desk, I suppose. Plenty of papers in sight, but I dismissed them almost at once. She didn’t seem like the ‘hide in plain sight’ sort, and if I were going through everything I could see, then I figured I’d be stuck here long enough for the Mayor to come here and rumble me. Wouldn’t that be a sight. Sure, I guess technically this was breaking and entering, but I couldn’t bring myself to feel all that bad about it. Call it Watch instinct, I knew that something wasn’t quite right about the Mayor. And I was determined to get to the bottom of it, rather than sitting around, waiting for enlightenment to strike me like the lightning. Maybe Kast’s distaste for Wilson wasn’t all that out of the blue, after all. So of course, first thing I went for was that panel she’d glanced at. Stands to reason: sometimes people give away things when they’re nervous or under pressure. They just can’t seem to help it. We make all these little slips all the time. Takes a cold fish to sit there and lie without a moment’s hesitation. It took some poking about to figure how it opened. I tried the joins, but they didn’t give. Sometimes, the trigger is somewhere else, another false panel, but I wasn’t about to start rummaging through the books. I found the trick of it eventually, though. You had to push on it, then slide it, and it’d come apart at the hinges and rotate open. Inside the panel was a little quaint cubbyhole with a bunch of papers. I glanced at them: financial papers, that sort of thing. Mayor was doing well for herself, I guess. But I couldn’t see anything odd about them, not at first glance. We had a guy in the Watch who could take a few hours and tell you everything about how the books’d been cooked. But he used to be accountant to one of the Herons, so I figure he’d know all about these things. So I rummaged about more. Turns out the cubbyhole was a little more shallow than I’d expected. Mayor was a pretty tricky gixie after all, ‘cause when I thumped, the back of the cubbyhole had another false wall. I worked that open after a bit and then I struck gold. Files tucked away neatly. I leafed through them, and those were the real books. Transactions after transactions, laid bare. And I felt the anger, the Watch’s anger. The one the sarge talked about, all those years ago in Tremredare, burning slow and steadily. Burning deep. Fallion’s Tears was my turf now. Was supposed to be Wilson’s, too. But the transactions I saw there, brokered by Leas Fel… They weren’t the sort of thing you bore easily. Dreamweed. They were harvesting and selling dreamweed, with Leas Fel acting as the go-between. To tell you the truth, I hadn’t regretted Leas Fel’s death one bit. Worse men have died, better men have died. We render justice to the dead and to the living, but I didn’t feel for him, not the way I’d felt for some vics. Now? It felt like justice. I’ve seen dreamweed, on the streets of Tremredare. Seen mothers ignoring stick-thin babes for their next hit. Seen those wracked in the shakes, when their weed runs out, when they’d sell anything, body, soul, kin, for just a little more dreamweed. Seen dockworkers lie on their pallets, putting it in their pipes and smoking it, seeking some kind of escape. Thing is, smoke enough of that stuff, and you start losing a handle on the world and your senses. I hated that stuff. Dreamweed was the scourge of the streets in Tremredare and try as we might, Watch’d always fought an uphill battle just trying to assert some sort of control. And Wilson and Leas Fel had been dealing in it? Well, feck. I heard the creak of the door opening. Erik was launching a hunt for the six villagers who’d just more or less iced a Mistborn in broad daylight. Kast hadn’t offered to join the hunt. He thought of it, but with the barricades up and manned, and the militia looking distinctly jumpy, he thought the better of it. Acting calm around Erik was difficult. Erik hadn’t mentioned the fields, yet Kast couldn’t help but think that Erik knew about the fields, somehow. That the smell of smoke still clung to his clothes, or that the fact he’d done something he hadn’t in years—so much for that clean sheet—was somehow apparent. He had to play it cool, though. He’d been Watch long enough to get that. People gave themselves away most often by knowing things they shouldn’t, or by letting nervousness get to them. Still, Kast was keen not to spend too much longer around Erik, and telling the other man that he needed to get back to work on the cases was a good enough reason. No one knew where the six had gone. Maybe they’d skipped town, though Kast doubted it. Not with the barricades the way they were. He didn’t like the idea they were hiding, though. Maybe they were innocent. Maybe they had been misled. Fear and rumours did strange things to people. He’d seen the blood soaking Fallion’s Tears over the past days. But if they were, they weren’t going to clear their names by hiding. And if they were hiding, and if they were malicious, they were unknown quantities to defend against. Kast didn’t like that idea much. Some of the villagers were staring suspiciously at him. Maybe it was the fact they’d realised he was a Coinshot. He hadn’t killed with his metal in years, though. Kast supposed that was a good thing. Another thing that separated whoever he’d become now from the young rusher he’d been, back with the Red Knives. Or maybe it was the fact they hadn’t cracked these cases, nevermind that they’d have had a full team working on them in Tremredare, if it was high-profile enough. Kast ground the heel of hand against his eyes. He was so fecking tired, and the more he tried to work out the various things going down in Fallion’s Tears, the more he was convinced that it was part of some complex game someone was playing. If only he knew what the score was. Tap. Tap. Tap. Each step with the cane seemed to grind fire into his leg and hip. He’d been leaning more heavily on El’s medications to function. Probably shouldn’t, but it was alright, wasn’t it? It was only pain, and it was his candle he was burning out. Maybe that shouldn’t matter, either. Why did his mind keep going back to the burned out hulk of the Steel Crow? Kast didn’t know why, and it was maddening that his mind had latched onto it and refused to let go. Maybe because it was arson, which made it a separate case. Another crime, so soon, in Fallion’s Tears? There was an outcry from the group of militia ahead. Kast cursed and pushed himself again, rushing forward as fast as he could. “Sorry, militia business—” one of them had begun to say, before Kast shouldered past him and went to the body on the ground. No. Not a body, not yet. “He’s one of the investigators,” snapped another of the militia. Kast paid them no mind. Fleur Tieste lay on the ground, bleeding. Whatever he’d been struck by, it’d been a blunt weapon, Kast could tell that much. He wasn’t sure how Tieste was still breathing. For now. “You’re the detective,” Tieste whispered. Blood leaked from his mouth. “Aren’t you?” “Yeah,” Kast said. “Look. You’re going to be okay. We just need you to lie down, and remain calm, and tell me who attacked you.” Tieste coughed, and the movement seemed to worsen his condition. “Been better,” he managed, at last. “Don’t lie so well, do you, Speirs?” Kast shrugged. “I’ve been told I have a good poker face.” “Trusted…” Tieste whispered. “Wasn’t a good idea...Did we even have a chance?” “Yes,” Kast said. “We did. We still do.” He wasn’t sure why this mattered to him, talking to a stricken, dying man. Maybe it was because something about Tieste seemed to exemplify the helplessness that Kast felt. It cut straight through the fog of weariness and laid open bone. People were dying, one after another, because neither Kast nor Wyl were doing their jobs. Maybe it wasn’t true. Maybe they were doomed, anyhow. But he felt like he owed it to the dying man to tell him what comfort he could anyway. “Don’t lie so well…” Tieste said. “Speirs. You ever loved anyone?” Kast hesitated. He closed his eyes. “Yeah,” he breathed. The pain never really went away, did it. “What happened?” “I killed her,” he admitted. “Had to. Was good at killing. And she was hurting people I cared about. Only way. Had to be me.” Maybe it was easier to admit this to a dying stranger, however brokenly, than it had been to really tell Wyl about the end of the Red Knives. And Wyl had never really asked, never really pressed. “Know the feeling…” Tieste smiled, sadly. “Loved her. Still do. Gaux was bad for her, but I never...Never listened, never said a word. Never told her...how much she meant...And he killed her. I killed her, my Marianna.” He gripped Kast’s hand with his bloodied one. “I killed her,” he said again, fiercely. “Never told her. It matters.” “You still carry it?” “Grief,” Tieste said. “Just love, persevering.” Maybe Kast could understand that, after all this time. Tieste’s eyes slipped closed then, and Kast knew he was gone. Another man dead. Another weight that Kast was going to have to carry. After all this time, he supposed it was funny he still felt the guilt. He stood up. The militia eyed him nervously. “Sir, I mean, Detective, what are you going to do?” “I’m going to crack those cases,” Kast said. “What else is there for me to do?” This is what it is like to be Kast Speirs right now: You are a man divided. Part of you still kneels on that street in Fallion’s Tears, nevermind your bad leg. You hold the hand of a dying man, and for reasons inexplicable to yourself, attempt to offer him what comfort you can. Perhaps part of you somehow senses that you both carry the same wounds, even now. The persistence of grief. The persistence of love. We kill what we love, in the end. Part of you is the man walking into Mayor Wilson’s home. You don’t like Mayor Wilson, never have. Something about how extremely reasonable she seems has always made you feel guarded around her. You don’t trust people like that. You want to know the decisions you make are your own. She had always a way of talking secrets out of you, talking you into things. Maybe Wilson reminds you of her, and you don’t like it one bit. The door is ajar. Immediately, that sets off your Watch instincts, every last one of them. The former Red Knife is screaming a warning, too. You shift your grip on your cane. It has been sanded down from the days you used it as a dueling cane, but you can still fight, as best as your bad leg will let you. And you have Steel and coins. You burn it, keeping an eye out for any moving lines. All your senses are on high alert now. Nothing. Cautiously, you advance into Wilson’s home. You don’t call out. The silence is eerie, and it sets you on edge. Maybe it’s best to call a warning, but you figure that it’s better not to. You want to catch the intruder unawares. In the end, though, it is you who get caught unawares. You advance into the study, and what you find there breaks you, shatters you, sends you falling into the dark, and you must catch your cane and the doorframe to steady yourself and you can’t breathe. It feels like sword training again, when the instructor sweeps your legs out from under you, and suddenly you are falling and the ash-clouded skies are sullen above you. Because Mayor Wilson is dead. Someone killed her. Blood pools on the carpet. And you, with your keen eyes, you have spotted immediately something that doesn’t belong. Blood glints off an object you’ve seen before. Numbly, wearily, you limp forwards, bend down, and scoop it up. A battered pocket watch. You have one just like it, but it’s not yours, of course. You know whose it is. The face of the watch is stamped with the insignia of the Tremredare Watch and the glass inside has a spider web of crazed cracks running throughout. It is bloodied, and it has stopped forever at the time and hour of Wilson’s death. You trusted him. You looked up to him. He saved you. You saved him. You have never considered yourself a good man. You know yourself and your failings intimately. But you have always considered Wyl Sharpe to be a decent man in a world of bad men, and you have always implicitly tried to live up to the standards he sets. He is your friend, your brother, your business partner, and the voice of your conscience. And he killed her. He killed Mayor Wilson. You snap the gory pocket watch shut. The insignia of the Tremredare Watch is still there, beneath the blood, mocking you. It’s always the ones closest to us, you think, numbly. This is the Watch in you talking, the one who knows. They are the ones who cause so much suffering. The pieces fall into place like Watch recruits at reveille, because you have often been too sharp for your own good. Why Wyl was so insistent that Sara had been murdered. Why Wyl had not been killed. Why the killers felt the need to threaten. Distractions. Little inconsistencies your mind had latched onto, only now built into a single damning picture. This is what it is like to be Kast Speirs right now, grieving, reeling, stunned, horrified. Betrayed. In the end, you pick yourself up. Because you must go on, because one way or another, the Watch stops their own. And if it’s Wyl going around killing in Fallion’s Tears, then you owe it to his victims, to the man he was, and to your principles to stop him. Just you. You take a deep shaky breath, and then another. You cannot afford anger. You cannot afford grief. You cannot afford guilt, or betrayal. You were an assassin, a killer, in a life long past. You draw on that icy calm right now and breathe out each of those emotions. You straighten up, pick up your cane, and hold on to that preternaturally still state of mind, and prepare to kill again for the first time in years. This is what it is like to be Kast Speirs right now: dutiful, and going to war. Mayor Wilson was killed! She was a Village Mayor! TJ Shade was killed! He was a Regular Villager! PMs remain open! The Day has begun and will end on 16th March 2021 at 2300hrs SGT (GMT+8)! The Writings on the Wall: and

Oh, that's sweet! What Studio did you get? I sometimes eye the Glacier, though realistically, I know I don't like smooth grip pens so >> Moegiiro looks great, as does Yozakura. If you ever take a photo of how it looks in your pen, share? I feel the F-C woes - my first few attempts leaked. Their video on how to do silicone grease helps, but I'd also advise overdoing a tad as compared to underdoing. It guarantees no leaks