Kasimir

>Be Kasimir >Say nothing until your crush says it >Blink at her like a stunned owl >Discover that she's been dropping hints you were too dense to get >Maybe the time she held your hand should've been a good sign, eh? Except you were too busy telling yourself to PLAY IT COOL AND BE NORMAL. >Laugh-cry inside. IDK how she ever put up with me

Where did they say this? I have her note that distancing is a possibility in the previous cycle. If there's a post, I'd love to see it, as this currently makes no sense to me.

Anyway. Personal suspicions. I'll prepare this to be c&ped just in case. Someone may post while I'm taking forever to write this up. Someone might not. I just want to note that practically everyone who was on the lam for not posting at all posted. I will say it's more helpful when we can see more information (e.g. Elk Don't say I only complain about you!) as compared to when we have someone who posts and just kind of says nothing and vanishes again. Current Biggest Suspicions: Separate Category of Yeet: I was going to say more, but I urgently feel this needs to be addressed: Hang on a second. Where did this happen? Illwei never voted for Drake. I'm very certain of this. In fact, Mist said last cycle that Jeskeri could vote on Jeskeri for distancing. Why are you bandwagoning? Edited to add: @Young Bard. What is your opinion of the lynch now? I see you watching the thread. (Right, folks, forgive my incomplete list.)

[OOC] (I'm OOC so much now I should just stop using the tag....) Current vote tallies: This puts me in a very odd position because I am reconsidering my suspicion of Mat. Ultimately, I'd say it's a bit of a combination of "I need more information", discomfort with/the worry that I really am tunneling onto Mat, and the phenomenon of two of my suspicions (in different directions, mind) going on the Mat train. It can't be enough to say Jeskeri wouldn't interfere overtly in a lynch, because clearly, that's exactly what went down with Drake, who intervened to tie the Ash-Illwei lynch. What to make of that intervention is a headache and a half. Anyway. IMO, it's hard making sense of such a move for a Jeskeri. Let's look at the possibilities logically: [A] Korathi Ash, Korathi Illwei The Jeskeri have been previously happy to leave close lynches be. Remember Cycle One? We had Striker throwing a late vote on the Pyro cluster, and Vapor, Ash, and Devotary acting to yank the lynch away from Pyro and Ash and to Frozen Mint. We now know that both Vapor and Ash are Korathi. I'd argue that the Pyro cluster being oddly competitive is striking (lmao) enough that regardless of whether Pyro is Korathi or not, it's worth taking a closer look at @StrikerEZ. Moreover, while Vapor and Ash are both known Korathi, where does that leave @Devotary of Spontaneity? (Still, that does tell us that tie-breakers in Cycle One have primarily been Korathi. In Cycle Three, the tiebreakers were Matrim and myself, and arguably, TJ started the shift with a second vote on Vapor. That leaves it being another predominantly Korathi shift.) But then we had Cycle Two, where the Ash lynch and the Illwei lynch were super close. And that's where the trouble starts. Because this is our one known case where a Jeskeri intervened in a close lynch to enforce a tie. Suppose we stipulate that Ash and Illwei are both Korathi. What does Drake gain from forcing a tie? It can't have been to save Ash, because we know Ash is Korathi. And since this supposes that Illwei is Korathi, Drake would come under fire for tying the vote and killing off...another Korathi. Could it be because Drake had sought to pocket Ash and thus wanted to keep Ash alive? Possibly. Ash took Drake's side in the squabble with TJ over the Korathi wincon. To be sure, maybe Drake sought to connect himself and Illwei and draw suspicion to Illwei. It suits the Jeskeri if we mistake Korathi for Jeskeri after all. (Or maybe, as Pyro guessed, they've formed a temporary entete in their doc, in which case, they definitely want us suspecting/lynching Korathi. And I'd argue Drake is a player with a decent risk appetite, judging from what I've seen of him in MR43.) One last possibility: Drake really did want to see if anyone saved Illwei, because he suspected Illwei of being the Korathi Cultist. And no one took the bait. [B ] Korathi Ash, Jeskeri Illwei But let's suppose Illwei is Jeskeri. In such a case, voting brought another Jeskeri into the lynch. This is something we've not actually seen happen so far. Cycle Three had the competing lynch trains on me and Vapor, with the lower-level Striker cluster. And Cycle Two did have competing lower-level clusters for Sart and Matrim. In this scenario, I would wager/wonder if Drake's being subsequently lynched on the next cycle was due to his stunt in putting Illwei on the lynch. (This was last minute enough - he intervened 9 minutes before cycle close, meaning he might have only faced meaningful backlash during Cycle Three.) This might also suggest that at least one player, Drake, has partially adopted the double-lynch strategy that Straw brought up on C1 and was opportunistically trying to stack Illwei for a second lynch. But there's another possibility. Drake believed that Illwei was a Jeskeri Cultist and thought that creating a situation in which he baited someone to rescue Illwei might reveal if Illwei was a Cultist. Only: nothing came from it. No one blinked. And then Drake died. I think the bottom line is that it's...not really easy to reconcile which of the possibilities makes more sense. I do think/suspect Drake was setting Illwei up for a Cultist test. But if so: why Illwei? And why not Sart? Well, partly because the dominant discourse, I suppose, placed Sart as a Cultist. And there's the whole dynamic TJ was referring to. I did go back through the Cycle 2 posts, though, and I would think that makes more sense to me. Unless Drake was just opportunistically trying his luck (also possible), nothing about Illwei's posts in particular scream Cultist, just someone trying to be peripheral and that defensive tone I've mentioned a few times. Which makes me think Drake could be working off info in the doc. Here's the issue. I've developed more reasons to be suspicious of you since end-C3, predominantly your interactions with a known Jeskeri and your voting and activity patterns. These have not been addressed. Moreover, by peripheral - I mean that you appear engaged, but have had minimal impact or appearance in either the thread discussions or the lynch. You voted twice, both for Ash. In terms of activity framed as voting, that already sidelines you over the past three cycles. For comparison, Gears has exactly the same amount of involvement in the vote as you at this point in time, with more vote diversity and more engagement with the discussions. (@Elbereth, I'd just like to clarify: you last told me this in Oct last year, but we still can't share vote pattern visualisations, am I correct?) Your second Ash vote was cast early enough that I would argue it wasn't exactly wagon-forming and no one engaged with your reasons. Your spreadsheet post elicited responses, primarily from TJ and Ash, but that did not particularly go anywhere beyond that exchange with TJ and with Ash. I'd argue that's the perfect sweet spot for an informed minority to hide, and your interaction with Drake makes me suspect you lean Jeskeri. Edited twice for formatting fail.

Ah yeah. Spent too long nursing the post. Then I have even more reason to keep my vote where it is.

[OOC] #1. I'm keeping my vote on @Elkanah for the time being. I've seen you monitoring the previous cycle, I know you're there. If you don't post this cycle, El has confirmed you'll be dead, so I likely won't leave my vote on you, depending on how the lynch shapes up. I've done a re-read of the past cycles, and I'm still struck by how, like Drake, both indicated I might be looking for an easy lynch by voting on Sart in C1, and then proceed to ignore that Drake did the same thing by poking you and leaving that vote there. First, if I'm looking for an easy lynch, and that makes me vote Sart, how does that make me Jeskeri? A Jeskeri would be interested in voting Cultists. Funny enough, guess who doesn't care about easy lynches? A Cultist. So why are you voting for what is, in your eyes, a typical Cultist profile, hmm? Second, - I've said this before, I know - if you mean I'm looking for an easy place to park my lynch vote, then I marvel that you don't think Drake leans Jeskeri for doing this. What could be an easier way to appear engaged with the game by poke-voting and just...not doing anything about it? (I'm not looking to bring up the poke/stab vote debate here, mind.) What's even more interesting is that we now know that Drake was a Jeskeri. I submit it's perfectly consistent that a Jeskeri would overlook this in order to deliberately avoid having to say much about another Jeskeri, much less pushing them into the limelight. Third - Tunneling on Ash could be due to lack of time and a desire to appear engaged. I do agree with TJ it's a strange move for a Jeskeri to make, given that Ash did end up being lynched, and that would have been a rather bad look for a Korathi. At the same time - you seem to have relatively slipped under the radar so far. I'm probably more or less the only rulo who thinks something isn't right about this. Moreover, let's take a look at the vote situation when you threw that vote on Ash. (I omit Ash's vote on Devotary and mine on Hael as they were not live by then.) Hael was the most recent voter. I bolded him, and I've linked the two posts for reference (Hael's and Elk's.) Illwei was leading (very slightly) in the lynch until Hael voted for Sart, tying things off. 22 minutes later, Elk votes for Ash, creating a three-way tie. The risks of killing a (now-)known Villager would not be that high. It's 1/3. And indeed, Illwei continued to save himself by throwing another vote on Ash twenty minutes later. That's not much of an inherently risky play, and I'm not sure I buy that it's necessarily a bad Jeskeri move. And if you do flip Jeskeri, then it's worth looking at the other trains. (Also: Another point in favour of the claim the Jeskeri might not be obviously mobilising the lynch - just as with TJ, no one jumped on my Drake vote, either.) #2: Just to recap, these are the people who stand to be dead by the end of this cycle if they do not post: Bard, Elk. (I've @ -ed them enough times, I'll give them a break and stop being obnoxious about it.) Of the initial pool, Devotary managed a post at the end of last cycle, Striker has showed up this cycle to ask for a tldr;, and Mist posted late last cycle as well. This has the potential to be less devastating a bloodbath than I'd feared at the end of the last cycle. Though it will really depend on what is going on. #3: @Mist since you keep asking - it was bait. TJ figured out what I was doing and poked me in a PM over it. I haven't played SE games in a while but older players like Hael and Sart (well, normally) likely remember I have a history of self-voting at times. I had the peripheral voter profile in mind, and figured that doing something kayana like self-voting could be bait for an easy poke-vote that didn't budge. Just to see if anyone else was going to fit the Jeskeri profile. Unfortunately, no one bit. I guess no one wants to touch the kayana Still working on the reads. I intend to get them up without running too far into the cycle end. I do also want to interact with some of the ongoing discussion so I will do that in a bit. Need to get something RL done first.

[OOC] What's the basis behind your distro guess? The 1/4 rule for Cultists? It's a nice guideline, I'm just curious about the underlying assumptions. I've been so far taking it as the need to lynch Jeskeri, but I realise that nothing in the win con says we have to bring those deaths about. @Elbereth: 1. Does the Korathi win con include personally killing one Jeskeri? Or does it count if there is faction warfare? (Related to 1.) 2. You say "All win-cons are game ending." If the Cultists kill the last Jeskeri Practitioner, does the game end with a default Korathi and Jeskeri loss? This doesn't seem correct to me because neither the Cultists nor the Jeskeri would have fulfilled their win con. I am going to go back and do deeper analysis. At the moment, I want to highlight what TJ said about Lotus - yeah, I would agree that we could have seen opportunistic Lotus targeting, but importantly, we didn't, and the fact that Lotus was in fact targeted in doc should give us a notion that a number of Jeskeri are adopting the "Conceal, don't feel, don't let them know" approach. (I still wonder if the reason Lotus was voted on was backlash to opportunistic voting - Pyro?, or something in doc. However, I need to re-evaluate my suspicions to accommodate new information so...) Anyway, I'm going to do that analysis rather than wondering what else to say. Be back. Edited to add [OOC] marker. What is RP...can you eat it...

[OOC] Couldn't sleep so I figured I'd check in. Cleaning up an ink spill. FWIW guys never spill ink on the floor, I think my hands are permanently blue now and I look like I just killed a smurf Other pen friends have told me to get rid of my hands or use bleach. Eurgh. #1. @Elbereth - Fair enough. I interpret this to mean that @Young Bard and @StrikerEZ and @Elkanah are still on the chopping block. Mist has posted and so has Devotary. Heads-up guys, if these people don't post, we're looking at 3 potential deaths this cycle. I don't remember Elk saying anything at all last cycle. #2. @Devotary of Spontaneity - I'm sorry, was I supposed to lie down and get lynched? Ash voted to save himself, too. There was pretty much no other good move to make. Unless I was dead certain that Vapor was Korathi and going to actively help the Village, from a win-con perspective, the only way for me to play to my win con, knowing my own alignment, would've been to save myself (since I'm certain of my own alignment) over saving another possible Villager (and even then, I went back and forth about Vapor.) If you follow the vote counts, the votes on me and Vapor were 3:2. Voting for Vapor wasn't about suspicion, it just gave me a 50-50 shot at survival so I took it. If you think that's unethical, then I accept the charge. It probably wasn't ethical to save myself at Vapor's expense. Sorry, @Vapor. I'll continue to do my best for the Korathi. #3. @The Young Pyromancer - Okay, this makes sense to me. I'll re-evaluate from here. #4. @Matrim's Dice - You mentioning your unease at your suspicions voting... How do you think it makes me feel when one of my main suspicions votes to save me? But anyway I am going to re-evaluate everything in light of Drake's alignment reveal and TJ's. Agreed about Illwei, but my point about rigid suspicions was more cycle to cycle, and I felt your dropping of Illwei was really sudden. What motivated that? It's definitely not as egregious as Elk focusing on Ash, to be sure. Right. Brief thoughts before I continue to clean up and go the hell to sleep. T1. I'm pleased to see my gut feeling that @TJ Shade and Ash were involved in a Villager-on-Villager slapfight was not wrong. And TJ: "Life is a gift… for those who know how to use it." I will do my best as long as I'm still alive. Now that we know TJ is Village, it's easier to get some clarity about the TJ/Ash faultline, I think. I will need to go back and look at that. I still think TJ's analysis of the Sart situation makes good sense to me. And I want a closer look at his reads/arguments. T2. I am interested in looking at what Drake has said and done, now that Drake has been lynched. Some interesting things: Drake voted for @Illwei and considered the fact that Ilwei and Ash were tied and nothing happened to be indicative that Illwei was Korathi. This needs more analysis than I can give it right now (pls let me desmurf and sleep) but I thought I'd flag it for the thread. Drake also went for @Haelbarde last cycle, and @Elkanah and myself on Cycle One. I feel like the vote on myself indicates that Drake's strategy was to appear mildly engaged, but this will really need more Elk and Hael and Illwei analysis as well. Drake also suggested we focus on fringe voters, and even suggested a revival of the Contribution Crusade. Note that his definition of fringe voters differs from the criterion I've been using in vote analysis. The question is whether we think he was trying to redirect attention to inactives (hint that Jeskeri are actives?), or whether he was just trying to obfuscate in general. (And was he even trying to use the Korathi lynch? If he was, then we should see the opposite result, i.e. we do have Jeskeri inactives! - Did he maybe get voted on for this difference in strategy?) Does this mean some Jeskeri were on the Ash/Illwei competing trains? Unclear. Why did the Jeskeri go after Drake? Does it have anything to do with his public votes? Or was he involved in weird drek in the doc? If public votes - Illwei? Hael? Elk? Myself? Drake. Lotus, and xino all fit the profile of peripheral voters. Unclear if this will continue to be true of Jeskeri. More analysis required. Drake also put mild trust reads on myself, Illwei, and Mat. @Matrim's Dice, I'm curious if you think he was trying to pocket you. Right. Now let me sleep. And before that: Elkanah, who do you suspect now? What do you make of the game? @Illwei, same for you.

[OOC]Interesting. Well, so here goes, I'm going to post this before I sleep because rollover is at an awful time for me and I should stop staying up late - Read this in event of my death (if I don't die don't read this part it's too embarrassing kthxbai) Read this part regardless of whether or not I am dead, thanks: Voting Analysis: A Framework: First, I did more voting analysis, incorporating the results of the past cycle. As mentioned previously, I am looking for several types of voting profiles: Voters who meet these profiles, I contend, may not be necessarily Jeskeri. Sometimes, they could be a Cultist. Or they could be a Korathi playing differently. But I contend that this framework is a good place to begin in terms of gleaning suspect pools from vote analysis. Results of Voting Analysis: Here are my results: I stress again that my use of broad profiles is a way of pointing to whom to look at in specific voting and lynch discussion contexts. They are not about positively IDing the Jeskeri. We have to do further analytical work from there. Reads and Suspicions: I am obviously suspicious of the sudden train forming up my myself, especially given a few people I'm suspicious of are involved in it. I'm going to highlight why I think these people are suspicious. I advocate in particular the lynch of Matrim's Dice, or Pyro, though I am also suspicious of several others. Kas's Top Suspicions: Weaker Suspicions/Inconsistencies: Tentative Trusts: Special mention to Sart: I strongly suspect Sart is a Cultist. Sart's voting history has been to target active Korathi, namely Straw and Ash and myself. Furthermore, Sart isn't really attempting to clear up any resulting confusion - which, I'd argue, is what a Korathi would do, because fueling discussion is one thing, confusing your own team is another. The Korathi need to: A) stop engaging with Sart and just ignore him, B ) remember that he's got a vote as well, and C) decide on whether they want Sart alive or dead and just do it. I don't see future analysis being helpful in this regard. My personal take is that one way or another, if the Cultists are shutting down active Korathi, like it or not, this will become a major problem for the Korathi w.r.t. to our goals of finding Jeskeri. Oh, and I mildly disagree about the contribution crusade - inactives, by their nature, don't argue back. Of course, if we have people in-thread defending them, that's another issue. But now that we've said as much, will this still happen? Go after low-activity people, if you like. The filter exists precisely to deal with inactives. I anticipate another three deaths this cycle, with the brunt likely to fall on the Korathi. And notice we have four inactivity filters due to go off next cycle, if I'm right. That could be up to six to seven deaths. As much as I suspect Pyro, I do think Pyro makes a cogent point about a potential Cultist/Jeskeri alliance. Get cracking, people. Well, time to roll El's dice Pyro, Vapor. May Domi have mercy P.S. @Matrim's Dice ...Pyro is basically claiming he disagrees because the three dominant lynch clusters from D1, himself, Ash, and Mint, were all three of them Villagers. Now obviously, I disagree that Pyro is a Villager. But that's all Pyro's saying.

[OOC] This is why I was supposed to go back to RP playstyle! Or Kamemesir! Because I play and then people die (see: MR4 (I think?)) or Village is inactive or whatever, and then I feel guilty as hell and then I say, "Ah, Kas, you have a bit of spare time, why don't you stop doing NaNo for a while and just look at the votes a little bit." And then the next thing I know, it's 3AM and I'm awake and nothing is clearer in my head and I have no NaNo progress. Sigh. Someone please save me from myself and my bad decisions Edit: Oh drek sorry misformatted changed sorry RIP anyone on mobile sorry

Urgh. Yeah. I was going for de-anonymised actually, but same difference

[OOC] Okay. I was doing up some analysis, and have not finished, but: @DrakeMarshall Drake, I'd still like to hear from you. #1: Doc was announced in rules to be anonymous. Ignorance or deliberate distancing? #2 and more importantly: if you think there is a better chance of Ash being a Cultist than Ilwei: why vote Ash? The Korathi win con involves Jeskeri Practitioners, not Cultists. Found scratched into a cracked leather belt: Edited to add: Forgot to link. Here is Pyro's post.

[OOC] He might have been. I didn't mention it in-thread but El's clarification made me also look at those peripheral voters in my notes and to flag those with low thread activity. I was not interested in further pursuing it because that is kind of exploiting meta-reasoning about the GM and El doesn't like that Just me speculating further though it doesn't really help us so I should drop it, but storm it, I hate puzzles My thought was that: voting is secret for them, yeah? According to the rules, in the immediate cycle it is. The votes get revealed after that. So people wouldn't know if the lynch was redirected [in the sense of people organising a counterlynch to hit target B instead of target A] but targeting xino is just so strange that I have to wonder if people in the Jeskeri doc organised (whether by PM or whatever; Cultist doc?) to drive the lynch to xino instead of...whoever was being publicly suspected. Xino's being active in the Jeskeri doc is immaterial, because doc activity as we have both cited, does not count to activity, and without a thread post, xino would have died to the filter anyway. Or maybe they decided to park the lynch on xino. Keine Ahnung. (Hmm. A belated thought: maybe they wanted to deny us the chance to do some vote analysis. After all, xino did and said nothing in thread, so we can't use the Jeskeri lynch results to help us make sense of what's going on.) [OOC] Except that's not what I said. I said: Let's put this back in the context of the debate (FWIW, remember I was trying to get this in at about 1 minute before the cycle ended and did not precisify my language as much as I wanted to. I also didn't get to engage with Gears about why I was not comfortable with the sudden vote-switch and felt that it was compatible with a Jeskeri or Cultist seeking Korathi cred!) You and Straw disagreed about whether the Jeskeri would try to mobilise the Korathi lynch to achieve a double-Inquisition that targeted Jeskeri. So here's my question: who died to the Korathi Inquisition on Cycle One? I'll link it for you, if you like. Mint. A Korathi. We even had a last minute vote wagon (which is normally sketchy as all heck and I'm still side-eying) slam down in favour of getting Mint killed. My argument is that you are not exactly wrong precisely because any weird last minute activity only shooed the lynch towards a Korathi! The issue is not what the Jeskeri did, it's what the Jeskeri didn't do. They didn't control the lynch and direct it to among themselves. The mere fact that we had a Korathi lynch is demonstrative of the fact that there was no Jeskeri control or that there was insufficient Jeskeri control. [Edited to add: Or that Jeskeri are trying to direct the Korathi lynch towards suspected cultists. As I said in a previous RP post, the problem is not what the possibilities are, our problem is figuring out which one is the most likely true.] I say 'not exactly wrong' precisely because we don't know (and didn't know then) about competing lynch trains, like Ash or Pyro. Yet whatever went down, whether the entire lynch was pure Korathi or not, our last minute actors dragged the lynch to a Korathi. In fact, this cycle's results also shed light on last cycle's. Remember there was a competing lynch train for Ash in Cycle One? We now know Ash is also Korathi. Which tells me that our top two lynch trains (excluding Pyro) were not Jeskeri-targeting. This should imply that either: the Jeskeri are voting opportunistically (I still think this might be what happened with Lotus), or that they're hiding in the margins of the game. Or both. (Or I guess, a third option: that they're unenthusiastically participating in Korathi lynches just to appear engaged and involved as Villagers, even if they don't actually care.) I don't know if that's what went down this cycle though, because of the Ilwei wagon. I disagree with @DrakeMarshall precisely because we haven't really seen Jeskeri targeting behaviour in the final lynch (re: Mint lynchtrain), though to be fair, that's last minute voting activity. Suppose Ilwei was JP. The Jeskeri would be happy with a 50% chance at lynching one of their own, knowing any last minute activity would be suspicious as hell. The thing is, the whole "no one saved Ilwei" thing is a bit sketchy to me, because that, if anything, would be Cultist activity. And we're not interested in cultists! We're looking for Jeskeri! That does make me side-eye you a little harder, Drake, even though I accept I'm probably also working off MR43 mindset here [Edited to add: The one case in which I can think of in which Ilwei is JP and gets saved from the lynch is if the JPs think Ilwei is likely JP rather than a Cultist. So, my question is: is this what you think should be happening here, therefore making Ilwei unlikely to be a JP? How do you have access to what the JPs think about Ilwei, hmm? ] (And I used to belong to the old-school 'save your buddies' Eliminator school of thought, but I do know players like Elan and Tess are more hardcore about risktaking and throwing teammates to the bus-shaped wolves. So even that is no guarantee.) I just woke up, so sue me, it's a public holiday, so Eid Mubarak to anyone celebrating I'm gonna do life stuff and come back later if I have time to do some analysis. Also edited for formatting.

[OOC] Woke up with kler migraine again and saw cycle. First thing—I'm surprised xino was lynched. Seemed inactive and Jeskeri would have nothing to lose if they let the filter sort him out. El already clarified that thread activity is required. Wonder if someone tried redirecting. Guess they aren't for Gears's plan after all. Ah well. Not our problem. Ash should at least yield more vpyng analysis. As should Geafs, though indirectly since we now know Hears os Korathi. RIP Gears. Time yo continue your work. As anticipated the cultists continue to target Korathi.

Sorry to hear :/ Take one if you need to, yeah? Either way your own welfare should come first Edited to add: @ GMs, I'll stop taking up your thread except to note I don't have the stamina for an LG. Could I ask for a spec doc link?

The GMs be like: "Yesssss, come to me" everytime a slain refugee from the QF pops over

Sure, though I admit I'm more sensitive to mischaracterisation of my own arguments I think I've had to clear this one up a couple of times already. I wanted to see what Sart had in mind and I voted to call his bluff. Your presentation makes it sound like I objected to the no-lynch proposal off the bat, whereas as I have mentioned previously, Sart used extremely strong and aggressive language and a threat. I wanted to see if he was bluffing or trying to intimidate players off voting (what good would that do?) so I took the bait. For this one, I would argue that working off what we had before Hael clarified later in this cycle, Hael had already made it clear that he wasn't voting because of the claiming qua claiming, he was voting because of a negative gut reaction to Pyro's - urgh, is this even a gambit? Well, shenanigans I suppose. (Though on relooking at Hael's post again, I feel as though Hael has once again shifted position...) I would agree with this, except that he did disagree with a specific Straw claim: on Jeskeri self-targeting via Korathi. (In fact, given last cycle, not exactly wrong.) Okay, I'm just gonna post this and come back to things later. Just know I'm wary of you but not outright distrustful.

[OOC] When you find out, do tell me, because I sure don't know [OOC] Hmm. I'm still feeling a bit iffy about this particular cluster, but given you're the initial voter, and we're both working under time crunches, I could kind of see this being a thing. I'll need to think harder about it. I admit that since Lotus could just be opportunistically jumping on your vote, I am side-eying Striker harder than I'm side-eying you I do want to make some comments about the existing main discussions though, beyond just voting pattern analysis, so: TJ: I'm meh about TJ. As I said, I think TJ is cracking down really hard in terms of use of language, and I think it slips a bit towards sophistry. (See: the whole issue with Drake's talk of losing the majority, which spiralled into an issue with Straw and Ash intervening.) IMO, I do think TJ is being overprecise. I'm not taking this game seriously but the three body problem here is throwing me off in terms of working out the interactions, and I'm a pretty average player. It doesn't rule out that Drake or Ash are really making incautious slips due to being from a different faction but it's not enough to sway me against them. I do think that this line of argument has been pushed way too far for what it can do - that does make me mildly suspicious of TJ, but at the same time, I'm leery of diving into the mudpit to join everyone else. Pass on this. Elk: Unlike most people, I actually tend to be more suspicious of people who post comprehensive reads Because my immediate question is what are they framing and how are they framing things. (So I do have some issue, for instance, with how Gears characterises some of the posts, though whether it's my own version of the TJ precisification problem, IDK.) But in this case, I'm a bit more interested because of Elk being part of the Ash train, and also, Elk being surprisingly peripheral for the rest of the cycle and (so far) into this one. Ilwei: No opinion, mild distrust. I read the arguments against Ilwei as being fundamentally based on comparison to Ilwei's LG67 playstyle. I wasn't in LG67, so I have no basis for comparison, though I vaguely recall LG67 Ilwei being a bit more helpful. Ilwei reads as being defensive right now in tone, which could be exasperated Korathi, or basically any other faction. What is interesting is that two players I don't particularly trust are pushing the Ilwei lynch. Ash: Urgh. The issue is that I don't disagree with some of Ash's points on TJ, I just think that like TJ, Ash is blowing up small issues and assembling them into a big package. These issues don't particularly point to Practitioner either, though I'm happy to be shown how they do. Again - staying out of that mudpit. Pass. (On a gut level, I think this has gotten so involved on a minute level I am not certain it's a Jeskeri fight at all. But that's my gut talking, and reason says to distrust them both.) Gears: Same issue as with Elk from the start. Add that to the shift from Ash to Mint, and I'm definitely rather dubious. Same issue with Ash - some blowing-up. Same as with Ash and TJ, could be a D1 issue. But the Jeskeri proposal is a good one. If Sart is really a cultist, and in the Jeskeri doc, then the Jeskeri will probably want to go for him at some point. Pyro: Don't understand at all what Pyro is saying. If someone can translate that for me, would be great. Sart: I've gone through Sart's posts again. You don't seem to want to be read at all this game That vote on Straw makes little sense to me - strategic disagreement as a reason for voting is different from calling a bluff. You don't seem particularly concerned with making a targeting distinction. At the same time, I still have no idea what the gambit was supposed to be doing. Stir discussion, yes. How? In what ways? To what end? Mat: Still interested in why he thinks Ilwei's faction has any bearing on Pyro's. Mild distrust for post about his suggested lynch happening and "the possible shade it would throw on me in the case I'm wrong." You were the first person to place the vote on Mint (for admittedly iffy reasons, as Gears points out, but it's D1.) The wagon appeared afterwards. So why the disclaimer? Almost as though you knew which way the lynch would turn up and were commenting conscious of that. As I doubt Drake is going to pop on in the next 50 minutes or so, Matrim it is.

[OOC] I had a long RP analysis post :/ I lost it all thanks to a keyboard accident. I am very annoyed. I tried to rescue it, but. Hyperlinks in post link to posts I reference. Found on a scroll of paper rolled up tightly and tucked into an empty bottle still smelling faintly of berry wine:

[OOC] This Found scratched into the broken wheel of a cart: Edited for formatting. Again -.-''' Edited to add: [OOC] Striker, you can consider yourself included in the question, as I forgot you went after Pyro too.

[OOC] Check this out. I'm at work now so I don't have time to RP or say anything substantial. I'll get on at least once before the cycle ends.

[OOC: Thanks! Alas, I have to drop it for the moment. I have a killer migraine thanks to yesterday's stunt, so I'm going to drop the RP style for the moment, do this, and crash. I'd like to engage more with game stuff but that's not really gonna happen right now. 54: I don't especially suspect Sart i.e. I'm not convinced of his relative Korathi-ness, but I don't have strong beliefs on what he might be. As far as I'm concerned, my default stance to any player in a game is that of suspicion. My view is just that as a player who has a history of doing kayana things in-game, I cannot consistently do kayana things to stir discussion and also hold it against Sart for doing it. (Which is what Sart claims is the reason why he did it anyway.) Whether Sart is truthful or not is another issue altogether. I do think this raises several questions: two of which specifically I am curious about, what sorts of discursive gains does @Sart expect from this move, and also, why then bluff about voting for the first person to start a lynch going? 75: With the caveat it's all D1-type analysis and largely gut-driven because I do not have the time to go in-depth - I'm especially interested in connections and omissions between players. @Elkanah is right to point out that Sart could be an easy lynch (*I actually don't think it's that straightforward, but not important. Someone had to call Sart's bluff, and in my eyes, it's interesting (though admittedly I am immediately not sure what to make of it) that Sart pulled back from going into a tie situation, especially since he is being voted for. I also think the logical thing to do is to vote for Sart when calling his bluff, since that put him on top of the lynch and gave him an incentive to do something ) So, I mentioned being interested in connections and omissions and shopped around for quick votes that were just as easily retracted. Hello, @DrakeMarshall Whom Elk puts into NAI. That's something I want to keep an eye on: is there a motivation for this? Perhaps some connection there The TJ issue with Drake strikes me as another claim that's... okay, yeah, it's D1, but I honestly think it's a bit of a D1 sophistry slapfight, which makes me wonder if @TJ Shade is trying too hard. Sure, the Korathi wincon is rooting out the practitioners. But I would argue that if we lose majority to them, it makes it significantly easier for practitioners to control the second lynch. It's a necessary condition but not a sufficient condition for losing the game as Korathi, so I'd say that I'm not particularly interested in losing that canary in the coal mine. With TJ comes Straw and Ashbringer because they're locking horns. I'm still trying to work out the cluster here and what bothers me about it. Anyway, thanks for the clarification on Hael's claim - I was definitely worried about it coming so late in the cycle, and with no independent agreement. I'm still a bit bothered by it too, but I'll take a look another time. This was supposed to come a lot faster but there was a cockroach and I was summoned to be the instrument of protective fury so... Yeah. Sorry.]

[OOC] Is this a good time for me to role-claim ninja? But thanks - I've been trying a more integrated playstyle since QF29 both for reasons of fun/challenge and in order to not get over-involved in games when I can't afford to over-commit/go ham Glad you're enjoying it!

Found piece of repurposed paper shoved into a half-opened box of rations, and scribbled hurriedly: Edited for formatting because I bjorked it again. Entschuldigung.

[OOC] I'll try to give thoughts later if I have the time. Really crunched rn. Just gonna add that Pyro asked me, I said I was not, and then our conversation ended.