Kasimir

[TAG: RP, 276 words] [OOC: FWIW I sort of do? IDK but the irritation here feels genuine and makes me think of Illwei's frustration in...MR56 I think? Ironically.] TJ, TJ, TJ, TJ [OOC: As you all know, there's often a bit of a balance to be struck between timeliness and allowing players enough rope to hang themselves, or not killing the thread. Took an insane amount of setting up you would not believe how much, but we now have a redcheck on TJ. It...sigh. I kind of don't want to believe this but ngl I also can. In my eyes, this is a good look for STINK, due to TJ's pushing him, and moderately negative for Szeth. I'll note that there's one other reason to have a more positive read on STINK, which anyone paying attention will probably have worked out. In celebration of Wonko's return to us (sorry Wonko, hope this helps but uh, I'm sort of just writing fast and loose now: ) ] lxxv. bonestorm Soren and Valerra and Jarvik’d stumbled upon the Resterford records as part of the Fae Lore class that Master Alys was teaching, and then understood why Elena Resterford was accompanied by guards (imprisoned, Valerra’d wanted to say, shaking her head crossly) throughout the University grounds. “Most likely related to Sev Resterford,” Soren said, aloud. “Probably his daughter.” Sev Resterford, the Namer who had been responsible for the bonestorm. (It was always Naming, Kevan’d thought, somehow. Naming that made legends. Naming that caused Lannis Massacres. You never feared Rhetoric and Logic, because ordinary words, the words we used in our quotidian lives, could never hurt you. He felt like the people who could believe that were already so far removed, because words of all things could cut the heart deeper than knives. Cruellest of all perhaps were the words inside your own mind.) Elena’d left the Crockery—broken out, was the gossip—and soon the ever-present guards appeared, which probably meant the Masters’d sighed and agreed to accept it, or that there was more going on beneath the surface, Kevan didn’t know which. (Sev Resterford, who’d done things with bone and wind that they remembered only in harsh whispers. Who’d made the dead walk, and crucified the last of the skindancers. Who’d left Imre, cackling, at the head of an undead army. For all Kvothe was feared, there was at least one song about Kvothe. About Sev Resterford, there were hushed whispers, and wonder. But the root of wonder was fear; you saw them twined together when the ancients described falling stars and portents in the sky.) Who better, Kevan wondered, to deal with the skindancers than Elena Resterford?

[TAG: RP, 305 words] [OOC: Welcome back! ] lxxiv. suas sios The fingerings on the lute were, by now, familiar. In that sense, they soothed him. Kevan was an indifferent musician: he’d picked up bits of it here and there, snatches of song, in the way you did on Yll, which was entirely by listening to others, learning from them, and then putting your own flourish in the way you played the song. He’d heard this song, played by an itinerant musician who’d come to Tirnagh, and the tune’d stuck with him, and he’d set his own words to it, idly. Set it in Yllish, for no reason Kevan could possibly discern. He didn’t care for Yllish. And yet he’d set it in Yllish anyway, as though something about the tongue his grandmother continuously sought to preserve should matter so greatly to him. (Maybe it did. Some things struck too close to the bone.) Still, it was a haven in the middle of the clamour and bustle of the University. He sat by the willow, by the banks of the Omethi river, and played the lute. The words in his heart. “You should try for your talent pipes, you know,” Soren’d said once. Kevan laughed, merely, and shook his head. You needed real talent to get your pipes at the Eolian. While hopefuls continuously besieged the Eolian, some of them wanting to recreate the legend or the magic of Kvothe, well. You weren’t usually as good as you thought you were. You took the blows, Kevan thought, as he played that old tune, a song on his lips, the words in his heart. Up and down it went, leaves bobbing in the river water. You put your troubles in a stone, cast the stone into the water. The water tells you there is no truth, and it cleanses you. The water took all your troubles away.

[TAG: RP, 270 words] lxiii. fourth wall “Honestly,” said Kevan, “Do you ever get the sense that you’re just a pawn in a game, a rhetorical device for someone else to work through their great many issues, including those with undergraduate years in university, and also some sort of huge grab bag of the things they learned in university, mixed together with random character development, inconsistent characterisation, and atrocious writing?” “That is a curiously specific question,” said Master Anders. “Did you perhaps mean the Simulation Argument? Or the passage in the chronicled stories of Aethe where a man dreams he was a butterfly and then is unsure whether he is a man dreaming he was a butterfly or a butterfly dreaming he was a man?” “No,” Kevan replied. “Come on. I know who I am and I know who I’m not.” “Talking to yourself even for kudos and artificial game points and ridiculously arbitrary goals isn’t particularly healthy, though,” Master Bob pointed out. “Hey, you don’t get into this!” Kevan grumbled. “Do you know how much ‘character development’ in the guise of trauma I was put through in your Medica because the GMs and the IM sent the wrong result to a player? And how the player is even now trying to justify that bit of character development despite the mistake happening forever ago?” “The what,” said Master Bob, who’d gone back to licking a brick of tea in his cup. “A lapse,” Kevan said. He sighed. “Tehlu, I really hope I’ll get a more relaxed arc now. A nice beach? Something like that?” “Don’t stop believin’,” someone sang in the Eolian and smashed the piano keys.

[TAG: RP, 297 words] lxxii. submission Kevan gingerly held the endorsed form, which was, at the minimum, stained with coffee, though he really did not want to know if there was anything else there at all, no thank you, and scurried away from Master Volatile’s domain as fast as he could. It wasn’t so much that the Master Alchemist-now-Chancellor and him didn’t get along, it really wasn’t. They just didn’t exist in the same world. Didn’t share the same wavelength. Whatever sort of phrase you wanted to use for it. There wasn’t hostility or enmity there, just a complete…gap. Either way, Kevan’d at least only needed to explain his predicament once, staring very much at the forms and not at Master Volatile’s eyes. He’d surrendered the form when he was told to, and then—with an inner sigh of relief—accepted it back when it was endorsed, thanked Master Volatile, and then got out of the Alchemy department as fast as he could. He made a beeline straight for the Chancellor’s Office, and then slammed his completed paperwork down on the wooden counter. There was a curious series of dents there, and part of Kevan’s mind entertained the fantasy that decades of frustrated students had worn those marks into the wood. “27B/6, endorsed by my sponsor and the Chancellor, along with signed letter of approval.” For a long moment, as the officer pored over his papers, Kevan was terrified that the officer would tell him he needed another form for this one, or he needed witnesses to endorse the already-endorsed form or letter of approval. But evidently, this time, what he’d done was enough. Looking up, the clerk said, “Well, everything seems to be in order—” Praise Tehlu. “—I’ll process your application and get back to you by the end of next week.” Wait.

[TAG: RP, 313 words] lxxi. bureaucracy ii Unfortunately, despite the anger thundering in his head, despite his frustration spiking to unbearable levels, the Name of Water did not come to Kevan. However, it was, he thought, fairly unsurprising. While it was certainly known that some students at the University first began to Name in strong emotion, it was, ultimately, the stuff of gross exaggerations, legends, and stories. This situation fit none of them. “Unfortunately,” said the officer at the Chancellor’s Office, whom Kevan really wanted to throttle by this point in time, “We cannot accept your application to drop a class.” “What,” Kevan said, flatly. “Look. I’ve got my sponsor’s approval—” he waved the endorsement note from Master Bob, though Master Bob suffered from a terminal case of physicker’s handwriting and Soren’d teased him that he was beginning to develop it himself. “—and the 27B/6 form has been endorsed.” “Yes, well,” said the officer, “It has to be endorsed by the Chancellor as well.” Kevan took a deep breath. And then another. But the knots of tension wound about his head and throbbing in his shoulder-blades simply would not ease so easily. The red mist lingered. “Are you telling me,” he said, slowly, with an irked emphasis on each word, “You told me to get my sponsor’s approval and didn’t tell me I also needed the Chancellor’s endorsement on the form?” The officer looked at him as though Kevan was an idiot. “This is University policy,” the officer emphasised. “Naturally the Chancellor has to endorse it.” As though he was saying the sky was blue, or water was wet. “And is the Chancellor still Master Emon?” Kevan asked, resigned to having to go through even more bureaucratic hoops just to drop Advanced Sympathy II. “Oh, no,” said the officer, and Kevan’s heart plummeted into the pit of his stomach. “It’s Master Volatile now.” “Oh,” Kevan said, faintly. “Oh, great.”

[TAG: RP, 303 words] [OOC: Yes, and their identity. I cited worries that it was an Elim claiming to implicate TKN (yes TKN, I don't rule this out even now.) The Roleblocker agreed to have their identity disseminated to Wonko and myself. They can't kill us both at one shot unless TKN wants to go hogwild or something but that's what I have nahlrout for.] [OOC: Yeah, there's that. I'm sort of leaning both ways on this but having arrived at 50k, Analyst!Hard!Kas has actually arrived on the battlefield right now as I read through the threads for the first time and actually do post and vote progression analysis. Worth noting this now makes me V!read you, but, unfortunately, I guess I'm a menace when I play at 30% ] lxx. paperwork “Oh?” Master Bob looked up at him and then shook his head as Kevan related the entire sorry tale of his encounter with the Chancellor’s Office to the Master Physicker. “God, I remember and hate every single occasion I have to deal with the Chancellor’s Office. Sometimes, I wonder if every last officer working there is really a skindancer.” Kevan looked at him. “You don’t think they are, are they?” Master Bob mused aloud. “Maybe we should get Master Alys to check. The threat could be hidden in the Chancellor’s Office instead of the student body after all! We could’ve been looking in the entirely wrong place!” Kevan cleared his throat. “Well, Chancellor’s Office is pretty evil, si–Bob. But I really just need a signed letter of approval from you endorsing my 27B/6 form which gives me permission to underload in terms of classes for the term.” “But you aren’t underloading, are you?” “No, no,” Kevan explained hastily. “The form allows Chancellor’s Office to let me drop the extra classes you’d like me to drop. Then I’d need to take a lower level class to make up the minimum, and I’m fine with that, Master Anders has a fairly interesting class on social epistemology. It’s just that bureaucratic procedure requires me to first have permission to underload before I can get rid of any classes.” Master Bob shook his head. “I’ve never understood why the University has become so bogged down in forms and paperwork,” he admitted. “Aren’t we an institute of higher learning?” He signed the indicated underline with a flourish and scribbled out a quick note of approval, which Kevan fervently hoped would be enough. “Well, good luck with wrangling the Chancellor’s Office. And—” Kevan looked at him, queryingly. “—Do check, will you? And be careful. If they are skindancers.”

[TAG: RP, 378 words] [OOC: JNV asked for permission to pass it on to me and Wonko, citing [GAMBIT] concerns. They agreed.] lxix. bureaucracy Kevan really thought that he was about to have a fit. If he were a Namer, he supposed he would have already called the Name of Water and drowned the entire bloody Chancellor’s Office, and probably done the University a favour into the bargain. His head throbbed, between his eyes, and in a thick band of pain about his temples. Slowly, excruciatingly painfully, he said, “Can we start again from the beginning?” The officer from the Chancellor’s Office nodded politely. “You’ve told me I need to drop one class, because I have too many, and University policy—” “—your sponsor’s policy,” the officer said. “Right, my sponsor’s policy is that Medica students shouldn’t be overworked. Which I fully and completely understand and agree with, as rounds and shifts in the Medica are extremely exhausting.” The expression on the officer’s face was currently some variant of ‘so why is this my problem?’ Kevan really wished he had that luxury himself. Kevan forced himself to take in a long, deep breath. And then another. “Your office isn’t letting me drop a class.” “We have a policy about the minimum number of classes a student must take in a term,” the officer said, staidly. “You can’t be in violation of that policy unless you’re taking a term off, in which case the decision must be communicated to the University by two weeks after Admissions.” Kevan was this close to learning the Name of Water. He could feel it in his bones. “Your office won’t let me drop a class because if I do, I have too few classes. My sponsor’s policy requires that I drop a class because I have too many classes. Both of you have told me I can’t progress with my studies until I somehow manage to resolve this. Do you realise how absurd both of you are being?” “I’m sorry,” said the officer, but he really didn't sound very sorry at all, “But University policy exists for a reason, and I can’t simply give you an exemption.” “Let’s start again,” Kevan sighed. “Who do I need an exemption from?” “Your sponsor,” the officer from the Chancellor’s Office said, brightly. Kevan strode off. Damn it all, he hated bureaucracy. Was going to get it done yesterday, if he could.

[TAG: RP, 311 words, DISCUSSION, 222 words] [OOC: Well, tbf, two problems. First, keep in mind I've been 30%ing most of this game with zero backreading and running off raw impressions until this cycle. Last cycle was a bit halfway there as the mech puzzle drew me in. The second thing is that I do have STINK as a null, and also when I say V, I just mean some gradation of good reads. We're kinda late-mid-game to lategame right now, so it's clear I'm due revision, but that isn't happening just yet. As I expressed last cycle, I sort of have maybe three loose tiers in my head: Sart, TJ, TKN were all some flavour of Tier 2. Szeth, Steel are some flavour of Tier 3, and STINK's solidly a null, whom I've packed with Tier 3 for convenience. I kind of want to Tier 2 Ash but realistically have him somewhere in between Tiers 2 and 3. Functionally this means re-examination somewhere, but if I look at where I am right now, it's got to be somewhere in <Szeth, STINK.> for me barring major revisions. Which might come as I plough through a re-read of the gamestate.] [OOC: I mean, I felt you were asking a deeper question. There's no point accumulating EP - the point is to do things with it. Maybe it's just me though.] lxviii. words You had, thought Kevan, to be in Rhetoric and Logic to understand the power of words. Let others focus on the power of Naming; let Rothfuss wax poetic about what seven well-chosen words could do. One way or another, if you looked at words, and their power to persuade, to weave narratives and reality itself…well. So much of what he did under Master Anders, under Re’lar Jakob and El’the Aksel was about words. Being precise with them, because as Jakob pointed out, you wanted to be sharp with your conceptual analysis. When you analysed a word or a concept, you wanted to include everything which belonged under the cloak of that concept or word in your analysis. At the same time, anything which did not belong had to be excluded. This sounded both trivial and banal in theory, but was difficult in practice. Despite Re’lar Jakob saying it was fairly easy, they spent nearly three whole classes on problems with the Geschen analysis of knowledge as justified true belief. The problem, Jakob pointed out, was that the whole cottage industry in Geschen cases and reworked Geschen analyses demonstrated one crucial flaw with the Geschen analysis: it wasn’t complete. There were cases which, in theory, satisfied the Geschen analysis but simply didn’t constitute knowledge, intuitively-speaking. Words, Kevan thought, circumscribed things. They reflected how you saw the world, how you understood the world. Working under Master Anders, he was beginning to dimly understand just how important words were. He’d never been all that good with them, though. He’d never been much of a poet, or very precise, though he felt the lessons in logic were helping him, just a bit. With logic, you had to articulate clearly, to be very aware of the nuances of your translation. He felt as though he was learning, even as he wrestled with words and their meanings.

[TAG: RP, 312 words] [OOC: Don't strongly disagree, no. Between Sart and STINK, I'd probably V!read Sart more. STINK's sort of just there in nulls and I slightly worry about the LHF nature of his votes end of M1. Light Village read on TJ, even if I harbour doubts, and I don't feel Szeth gets too many more inactivity clears. Steel I think is pretty much in his V meta so as much as it's honestly pretty enraging, I'm willing to ignore him and move on. Generally lean V on Ash, at any rate. Maybe I need to relook, I dunno.] [OOC: Everytime you elevate, you lose five EP in that field. You also might lose EP to stave off insanity or if you've been on the Horns and got DP from a Master. Since people are likely sitting on low EP counts, they may need time to get back to it. I can't recall if lashed players can file EP either. Ah they can but they can't be elevated.] lxvii. cookies “Cookies,” Valerra said, patiently. “Hard biscuit, small spiced cakes that are flat and hard, chewy if you do them right, crisp if you don’t….” Kevan blinked at whatever it was he held in his hand. Valerra’d gotten the small and flat part correct, he supposed. As well as the hard bit. “You…stress bake, don’t you,” he said, flatly, intonation making it more a statement than a question. “And stress brew.” “Admissions are the most stressful time of the term,” Soren spoke up. He was inspecting his own brown paper packet of cookies, though unlike Kevan, he hadn’t yet taken one out. “Unlike certain Re’lar here—” “—God, I swear Master Herkimer will drift in and be in one of those moods,” Kevan said, fervently. “And then I’ll fail. I also think Master Volatile doesn’t like me much.” Soren rolled his eyes. “Pretty much every Master except Master Volatile voted to readmit you on a clean-slate basis as an E’lir, sponsored by Master Anders. And Master Bob raised you to Re’lar. I’m pretty sure you’ve got enough people in your corner. Meanwhile, I’m going to cry if Master Rhys lets Master Wyles savage me again. At least the last time, Master Alys asked me an interesting question about pruning techniques on miniature trees…” “Seriously?” Soren nodded. “I think she’s a fan.” Carefully, Kevan nibbled on the cookie. Just a little. He noticed Valerra watching, the crease of anxiety between her eyebrows. It was good though. It really was. Crisp, with a hint of spice and warm chocolate and molasses. “Fhanks,” he said, and somehow, the entire cookie had ended up in his mouth. He swallowed and tried again. “Thanks. You said these are cookies?” “You’re a fan then?” “Yeah, you should really sell it. You’re stress baking or stress brewing anyway. Might as well market it to everyone suffering through Admissions,” Kevan said, seriously.

[TAG: DISCUSSION, 232 words] [OOC: I am...hesitant about the Szeth pressure. I think it boils down to: what has he been filing EP in, that he only just elevated? A high demand field, perhaps, like Naming? Unclear. (I actually speculate here as we know Naming was like this: T1M2 JNV -> T1M3 Wonko -> T2M1 Wonko -> T2M2 TKN which means this might be the first time that Naming was this open. Considering how much I want to nahlrout druglord here :eyes: ) As I said, acknowledge I have a gut Village read of Szeth but it's nothing that can stand in/for this game landscape at this point. He's functionally just a null with good vibes so I do sort of feel fundamentally okay with that vote - here's my main thought. Pragmatically, he's told us upfront that he's seeking a pinch-hitter. Either this is true, or he is an Elim keeping a low profile. If he's checked out of the game, I don't think expelling him fundamentally changes our gamestate as the Elims would've hit him last anyway. If he's an Elim keeping a low profile, there's only one way to find out! Well, two. Smh guys I didn't expect to have to turn this game into an episode of Breaking Bad. But I guess that's what happens when I have 1337 vote powers and that's it. I need drugs to fuel a roleblocker rampage.) Szeth Szeth Szeth Szeth]

Thank you for the reminder I am going to step away because I have lost all ability to assume the best of things after repeatedly watching members on the Shard and on multiple Internet sites, inclusive of Tumblr and Twitter and Reddit, trash my discipline and consistently and confidently make the most wrong assertions about it. I don't care to correct anyone or to share expertise, and I don't consider it a problem for me to tackle anymore. People have been doing it on the Shard since I first joined, and they will continue to do so, but I will not be a party to it.

One must always smile because the philosophy of science or cog sci literature is probably the most saturated with scientists, even if no one who does not work in these areas will ever believe it. The sheer amount of ecologists, biologists, physicists, chemists, neuroscientists, psychologists, etcetera etcetera per capita is extremely amusing I'll further note that a background in science is often considered a necessity and my own supervisor has publications in both condensed matter physics as well as philosophy of science. I will never not smile when people tell me that this is "very far removed from reality."

Is it? Have you seen the philosophy of science or cognitive science literature? Do you work in these areas? Do you, for instance, work in the epistemology of expertise, or of testimony or social epistemology? Ned Block (2010: 34), "Attention and Mental Paint", Philosophical Issues 20 (1):23-63. Ineeed, this is very far off from reality. I guess we should demote neuroscientists too - they can all go home now, because they don't do anything that relates to reality at all!

[OOC: Considering withholding for the moment as Wonko is safe for now and they can't shoot both me and Wonko. Waiting on a GM clarification but thinks it means I don't need to sit on you with nahlrout so that's good. Sucks that JNV got put back in but that's the best world - we're forcing them to waste tempo on players who have already been sabotaged.] [OOC: Simpler answer then >> Elevations precede filing EP. In other words you're elevated off what you had, not what you just filed.]

Does it? Has anything I said, at any point, suggested that philosophy is disconnected from reality or human experience? Do you think that foundationalism as a philosophical position is particularly interesting, or that empiricists, rationalists, reliabilists, or Bayesians are particularly interested in definitions or intuitions?

[TAG: RP, 741 words, DISCUSSION, 770 words] [OOC: Performativeness, and then kill the scanner, or roleblock the scanner, and then claim to have been recalled. Alternatively, you claim to be roleblocked or redirected. It's pretty straightforward. How do you explain not wanting to be scanned, given that this would be an obvious and glaring red flag for any player? The fact you are obsessing about scanning and being scanned instead of directly taking action to help the Village, e.g. roleblocking, is seriously questionable - it demonstrates performativity and a passive mindset. If you think this is impossible for an Elim, I point out that you can say the exact same thing of E!Archer in AG9: why would Archer volunteer/agree to be scanned? So clearly he must be Village right? Oh, sorry, he was Evil. By your theory that doesn't happen - clearly your theory says this is impossible. Explain that. Naming is the most OP field in this University—it's limited by your creativity—and seriously the best you can do or want to do is to get scanned and then go spy on PMs instead? No consideration of whether anything more complex as a combination allows for a delayed death, jailbreaking, reversal of expulsion, the fact Naming punches through most protections in this game if the Namer is sufficiently creative? Pretty much anything hacky or screwy in this game requires Naming.] [OOC: Are you sure? I created PMs with at least four different players, individually, at the very start of this cycle, asking for their reads and listing mine. Among my set of reads, I noted I was downgrading my read on you due to general reactivity and also the victimology, i.e. the fact that two of the three casualties were Namers. Just because I have PMs doesn't mean I don't re-evaluate my reads periodically, and M1 was strange enough for me to re-evaluate. This would've put you on par with TJ and Sart, whom I had some reason to V!read but acknowledged I was harbouring doubts about, I don't think it's E!you gloating - I think it's E!you threatening to be a real difficulty to stop if we expel you, because we can stop you from elevating but we can't stop you from acting against Village interests. It's ironic because it almost means what we really want you to get slapped with is Conduct Unbecoming for a three Turn roleblock, but that's not something we can do very much to finagle the way this is. I do almost think you are trying to TWTBAW this.] [OOC: There's something that TKN is missing out here that I can't comment on at this juncture. If I die at the end of this cycle, someone else will drop it for me. Suffice to say this is pretty much wrong-headed. Nothing to do with trust group shenanigans, just rules stuff.] [OOC: Let me spell this out. You have the Name of the Wind. E!you knows you are a sunk cost, and the Wind is specified as an attack Name. I wouldn't be surprised if it can be used to supercharge a sabotage to a kill. You are currently invoking an IKYK to suggest that there's no reason to roleblock you, which is a tacit acknowledgement that on some layer, there is a reason to roleblock you. I don't give a damn about IKYKs. I give a damn about averting consequences - what's the consequence for us in the world we don't roleblock E!you, and E!you uses Naming to attack? Now, if someone confirms you absolutely can't kill with Wind, because I was asking about this, and El noted it was an attack Name, then sure, it's the Roleblocker's choice. Always was, anyway. Why do we care about confirming you? Why should we care about confirming you in particular, when confirming you doesn't remove the possibility that the Roleblocker is a Villager and we're in [KRAEM HAPPENS] world? What information does confirming you, after you have been expelled, offer us? (You in particular.) You yourself note you don't expect the Roleblocker to receive flak even after you are confirmed, so which is it? Why are you singularly obsessed with being confirmed rather than being Village? And why can't E!you first put the message, and then use Wind or a second Name to redirect the Archivist into reading you as Village? I don't rule out - even now - that we're in some variant of [KRAEM HAPPENS] or [GAMBIT] world but your aggressive insistence you need to not be roleblocked and confirmed Village and that this is the best, win-win outcome for the Village doesn't remotely make sense for the Village.] lxvi. mews It still felt so very unreal to Kevan: the anxiety and the knots twisting in his stomach all the way through his Admissions interview, the scrutiny of the assembled Masters about their table—one of them, a kindly, excitable man had winked at him when he hesitantly answered questions about treating a fever, and the other had a gentle smile that eased Kevan’s worries immediately when he asked him to name two valid forms of logical argument. And then after that: the news he was admitted to the University. That he would be chasing his dream, after all, one way or another. He felt as though he was floating, as though he was moving through some sort of dream. He was going to have to write his mother and his grandmother, to thank them for supporting him, to let them know he’d arrived safely, that he’d passed Admissions, no matter that it was excruciatingly hard and they turned down at least thrice as many applicants as accepted new students each year. He’d made it. He was going to be an Artificer, to learn to make the sorts of structures that endured (Aturan roads, again, in his mind), that made the world just a little better. At least the Masters hadn’t laughed at him when he’d said that, in response to the Chancellor’s question of why he’d wanted to study at the University. He’d figured it was best to save his money, and after talking through the options with the bursar and making arrangements for the payment of his tuition fees, decided to go for a bunk in the Mews. Sure, he was going to be sharing the room with three other bunkmates, but the way Kevan saw it, he got a free meal, and—well, he was here to learn, wasn’t he? He figured his roommates couldn’t really be that much of a problem, one way or another. Still, he couldn’t get rid of the excitement still blazing through his veins and the fragments of his nerves from Admissions, fluttering about in his stomach. Kevan stepped through the wooden frame of the open door and blinked. The sunlit bunk room was spacious enough, though Kevan figured some people would probably have considered it a little cramped. He’d had to sail the Reft to get to the University, though, and being crammed into a small cabin on the merchant ship had given him a healthy new respect for how packed a space could get. One of the new students was already there, unpacking. Kevan watched as his bunkmate set a succulent on the window sill, and then another potted plant, and another. Wondered if he was a gardener, or something. A gentle breeze came in through the open window, bringing with it the scent of green life. He inhaled, and rolled his shoulders. Felt the tension melt away, “Oh, hello there,” the student said. He looked over, and smiled a greeting. Kevan didn’t recognise his accent, but figured Aturan wasn’t his first language. “Just came in?” “Yeah,” Kevan said. “Well, come on, pick a bunk.” The student got up, went over to him and clapped a friendly hand about Kevan’s shoulders, ushering him in. “Pretty much all the same, but I recommend the one nearest the window, for the view.” Kevan laughed. They were on the first floor, in a squat, rectangular building, packed as far away from the University as you could get. The runner from the Chancellor’s Office who had escorted him here—an enrolled student, apparently—explained that the students at the Arcanum had their own bunks in the Mews, much closer to the main buildings of the University. “What is there to see, you ask? Well, my plants! I’ve got some real beauties growing here—this one’s selas, and it’s particularly finicky and hard to grow, and really I should be putting it somewhere to the side, because it thrives in shadowy places, but the flower itself needs sunlight, which is why it’s so hard to grow. Some botanists suggest growing it on a trellis—oh, I’m Soren, by the way. Who’re you?” “Kevan,” he said. Tried to smile, best as he could. Soren was a little too close for comfort, but it felt rude to say so, and…and Kevan liked his good cheer. If the other two bunkmates were as friendly as Soren seemed to be, his time at the University would be off to a good start. Tehlu, he really hoped so. [OOC: Anyway don't really care, not my problem, votes are cast, roleblocker will do whatever, chill, RPful game, I interrupt to bring you this special bulletin and I can now die in peace: @DrakeMarshall u asked me if i was sure bro u said i was a madman >:) whose insane now???? i m a veritable writing god & the sds may make me insane but they cannot take away my godhood >:)]

[TAG: RP, 797 words, DISCUSSION, 293 words] [OOC: Ok, but formally-speaking, aren't you missing the world where the Elim who sent in the kill had their kill fail, for reasons of being at Ankers/on the streets, or because they were a noble who got recalled? In both this world and an Elim roleblocker world, it's possible that the Elim kill failed - for reasons of being at Ankers/on the streets/noble recall - and the Elims sought to use that opportunity to frame TKN, who was already suspected. I don't think it's as plausible as E!TKN but nevertheless. It's not really a very risky thing to suggest TKN of all players because: A. already suspected, B. lack of elevation up to this cycle suggests/entails that he has no real actions to be carrying out, therefore you don't risk fakeclaiming a roleblock when the target took a provable action, e.g. in my case. It's not clear to me how JNV sharing this with the thread prevents a sabotage: are you considering the world in which there's a kill on JNV? I'll note the info has been shared with Wonko already, who is expected to return, and the Elims can't plausibly kill them both at once. If they do, they'd have to kill me too because then I know what this entails in terms of who has to be Evil for them to have a double kill capacity (hint: they'd need a Namer.)] [OOC: Depends on the type but yes.] [OOC: I've never actually considered failure to send in a kill even with inactivity - I feel like that's pretty farfetched. I think mech failure is pretty reasonable, however, as the recall and Ankers are both elements of the game, and the Elims might have decided a 15% failure rate was reasonably small.] lxv. desire Re’lar Jakob turned the piece of chalk about in a dusty hand, fiddling with it idly. “Can someone give me an example of a mental state that isn’t factive?” “Belief,” one of the students said, after some hesitation. “No, that can’t be right…” someone else said, frowning. “Well, it has to be, right? If it’s factive, then it has to bear the appropriate relation to truth. But you can believe pretty ridiculous things that aren’t true. My gran gets that way about shamble-men,” said a student. She wore a bright red scarf about her cornsilk hair, and her accent was pure Commonwealth. “Gets real careful around autumn, but…” she shrugged. “Shamble-men. You know how they are.” Some of the class nodded, some of them looked utterly disturbed, and the rest just looked confused or bored. Kevan hadn’t heard of shamble-men. But in Yll, you were afraid of the water-horses, the ones that’d drag you deep into the lakes to drown. You were wary of the death-singers, whose keening cry foretold the death of someone you loved (he’d never heard a death-singer, never wanted to, his father was lost at sea and perhaps that was why the death-singers had never keened for him, never cried for him), and you heard the tales about the muruach, the seal-folk, who were a different sort of peril altogether, the ones who walked among you. (The ones who wore the face of your own father, your mother.) Every culture, every people, he supposed, had their own tales, their own private fears. “Well,” Jakob said, drawing their attention back to the topic at hand. “It’s certainly possible for us to believe things that aren’t true. How many of you have believed that Admissions was going to be manageable, only for Master Wyles to suddenly ask you to calculate a Cealdim arbitrage problem?” Laughter rippled through the classroom. “Sir,” one of the students called out. “It’s not as awful as Master Herkimer asking you how many fingers he’s holding up behind his back. It was just one and it was his middle finger!” Jakob waited until the class had settled down again. “Well, Master Herkimer’s certainly a legend as far as Admissions is concerned,” he admitted. “I don’t know if that belief is factive though, and I don’t want to find out!” “It is, sir!” “Alright,” Jakob said, firmly. “Back to our topic. Someone else give me an example of a mental state that’s not factive.” Silence fell in the classroom. “Phoibe?” “Desire, sir,” the student said, her voice soft. She was sitting in the corner of the classroom closest to the window. “We can desire things that aren’t ours. Or aren’t true.” “Good,” Jakob nodded. “As I’m sure anyone who’s experienced unrequited love will know—my commiserations—desiring that someone love you back doesn’t mean that’s the case. But there’s an interesting historical example that demonstrates why desire isn’t factive. Has anyone in this class taken Master Alys’s history of mathematics class, can I have a show of hands? Just one? Alright, what’s your name?” “Henric,” the student said. His accent was pure Modegan, and musical. “I took it two terms ago, though.” “Well, what do you know about the Samosians?” Henric said, “They believed that numbers were sacred and everywhere. In music, in nature, in art…that you could express any number at all as a ratio of two whole numbers.” “Thank you, Henric,” Jakob said. “The Samosians were famous for many things. One of their defining beliefs—as Henric has pointed out, which we now know to be untrue—is the belief that all numbers are rational. They absolutely refused to believe there was such a thing as an irrational number.” Kevan blinked. That seemed…strange, but he supposed that was history for you. “Famously, a few historians like Deor record that one of the Samosians, Parsus, was shoved off a boat and drowned by his fellows for demonstrating that the square root of two was an irrational number. I’m not sure about you, but while I feel passionately about mathematics, it’s usually an aversion, rather than something I’d kill over!” More chuckles. “What I’m saying here,” Jakob finished, more deliberately, “Is that when I heard this in Master Alys’s class, this story really grabbed me as a case demonstrating how desire isn’t factive. This needs a disclaimer that Master Alys says some historians argue this story is apocryphal and we have conflicting accounts of what happened to Parsus and why he was cast out—I’m giving you the most dramatic one because I’m a tutor and I want you to pay attention in my class and remember things.” He set the chalk back down. “But the way I put it is like this: if people can desire the mathematically impossible, then by God, they can desire anything!”

[TAG: RP, 945 words] [OOC: Genuinely curious how you think repeatedly dropping PMs about PM scanning, especially strategies to allow scanning past cycle messages in the game, doesn't come off as an Elim looking to take down the Villager who found them before that player can be softcleared. I don't really want to TWTBAW this but I want to point out that that's not really inspiring confidence in your being Village when people already didn't trust you in the first place. At the very least, you should be aware of how this comes across, and not be shocked Pikachu when people distrust you even more for this.] [OOC: How does JNV revealing their contact stop a sabotage? And you're referring to previous games, correct?] [OOC: Sigh >> Any chance you have an elevation in Arithmetics?] lxiv. knowledge “Knowledge,” said Re’lar Jakob, “Has to be factive. Can anyone tell me why?” Still an E’lir sponsored by the Master Artificer then, even if he’d found himself curious about what Rhetoric and Logic had to offer, Kevan looked around at his classmates. He was one of the odd ones out; not too many of Master Rhys’s E’lir, much less Re’lar or El’the were particularly interested in Rhetoric and Logic classes. (There was a disparity here, Kevan was beginning to discern, to understand. The common view at the University was that the Arcanum was where you went, after you’d proved yourself knowledgeable in the fundamentals, including Rhetoric and Logic, chemistry, and Arithmetic, among others. But above all, you had to be proficient in basic sympathy. Then you went to the Arcanum and you stopped touching the boring, mundane subjects and your life began. But Kevan didn’t feel that way. There was something heady, even exciting about the way Re’lar Jakob was teaching them to unpack and dissect ideas, the sort of thought that you could take apart concepts, even the way people came to know things, just as you dissected any device in the Artificery, distilled it down to first principles (okay, you didn’t do this in Rhetoric and Logic, not always, at any rate, Re’lar Jakob was pointing out that sometimes, you didn’t particularly want to have to reinvent the wheel, you just wanted to accept certain principles and see where they led you; a kind of exploratory work, or faith, or ‘we can’t completely work from the ground up so let us take certain precepts and build on these foundations and presume they are true, and then.’) and then sought to understand how it worked, and perhaps, if you were good enough, to build it a little better than it had been before.) Jakob waited. The class was silent, punctuated by the soft whisper as pages rustled and students leafed through their readings. “Aaren,” Jakob called out, and a Cealdish student looked up. “Do you want to help us out here?” “Because knowledge has to be true,” Aaren said, in a clear and resonant voice. He wore his hair in braids threaded with all sorts of colours and glass beads at the tip. “A popular analysis of knowledge in terms of individually necessary and jointly sufficient conditions casts knowledge as a justified, true belief. Factivity just is the requirement that knowledge, as a mental state, bears the appropriate relation to the truth.” “Very good, Aaren,” Jakob nodded. “Geschen’s analysis is considered to be crucial, but also fatally flawed. Can anyone suggest why?” “Because there are counterexamples referred to as Geschen cases,” Kevan offered, tentatively. The readings had stated as much. “Good. Can you say a bit more about Geschen cases, Kevan?” Kevan frowned down at his readings, wishing he’d marked out the relevant passages a little more clearly. “They’re cases where the subject, ex hypothesi, has a justified true belief, but we don’t seem to think the subject knows. One example is of the traveller in the Yllish countryside. He isn’t used to seeing livestock, as he’s come from the city. So he sees a rock, and the light isn’t very good, and it looks very much like a sheep to him, and so he thinks to himself, ‘I know there is a sheep right there.’ But of course, it’s just a rock.” “Well, he’s just wrong,” one of the other students muttered. Kevan rolled his eyes and wondered if he’d done the readings. “Yeah, but that’s not the whole case. The traveller can’t see it from where he is, but there’s a sheep behind the rock. So he’s sort of right as well.” “That’s right,” Jakob said, drawing all eyes back to him. “On the face of it, our traveller has a justified true belief. We all gain knowledge by seeing things: if I asked you how you knew that oak tree was there—” he pointed out the window, at the oak tree in the courtyard beyond, “—well, you’d tell me you saw it with your own eyes. That’s perfectly reasonable, right? It’s justified. And in this case, it’s certainly true.” The students were nodding, slowly. “So in the case of our traveller, he sees the rock, and he mistakes it for a sheep. But that belief certainly seems justified—seeing is a pretty good way of learning about the world. Our colleagues in Artificing and Chemistry, for instance, learn about the world through empirical evidence, which includes observation. And it’s certainly true—because there’s a sheep behind the rock. And he forms the belief about the presence of a sheep. So he has, all things considered, a justified true belief—thank you Kevan. But here’s the two jot question: is this knowledge?” This time, it was Aaren who responded. “I don’t think so,” he said, slowly. “There’s something weird about it. It’s true, yes, but by sheer luck, isn’t it? Even if there wasn’t a sheep behind the boulder, he’d think there was one anyway.” “Very good,” Jakob nodded, and added, ‘SENSITIVITY’ to the chalkboard. “Geschen cases have created an entire cottage industry in attempts to fix Geschen’s analysis of knowledge, usually by diagnosing why they are so screwy. We call this one ‘sensitivity,’ and it was first proposed by Robert Nazar—it’s the idea that in all nearby possible worlds where p isn’t true—p being any kind of proposition, the subject S won’t believe that p.” He looked at the varying expressions on the face of Kevan’s classmates and laughed. “Well, we’ll talk through each of the responses to Geschen cases, and then discuss why they might be inadequate. They’re quite straightforward, I promise you.”

[TAG: RP, 388 words] [OOC: I'd thought it was different for expelled students. Might have misunderstood this. Assumed they get immediate Imre access. Ah okay yeah Wilson says that it's not immediate, my bad. There's currently a five jot contract for sabotaging me in Imre. I'm very sad that my Art / RPing is so unappreciated What's your view on the current RB situation? Elim trap? Not Elim trap?] [OOC: You say this, and also threaten to go on a broad PM spying spree in PMs. I don't really feel that's a way of building trust, and it encourages RBing you. I'd agree however and echo that any other RBer should claim, please go to JNV and Wonko. Wonko's at GenCon but we pray to Tehlu he'll be back by the 7th August and with us.] lxiii. northern skies Sometimes, the home-longing welled up in him, raw and vicious, and Kevan couldn’t decide what he really missed: his mother, his grandmother, or those halcyon days with his father, before his father had been lost at sea (always the sadness in his eyes, though you could never glimpse it directly, it always had to be out of the corner of your eye, in brief flashes, it was so fleeting you could imagine you dreamed it.) Sometimes, it was the sombre grey skies, and the rolling green hills, and the lighter, dazzling blue of the ocean beneath the rich green cliffs jutting out from the land. He missed the deep greens and blues; Eithne’d made him an impressionistic painting of Yll from the Centhe Sea, done in strikingly intense watercolours and mixes of hue and small, precise brushstrokes blended together to create a seamless interplay of light and colour. The jagged cliffs, the ocean below. He wasn’t—alright, he was Yllish, accepted that, accepted he was, as Eithne was, a product of their time, (relational always, the empire had claimed Yll, and Yll had left its own mark on the empire and you never got out unscathed, never could quite uncover those prelapsarian times, or be anything more than you were)—he wasn’t ardent about reclaiming old Yll, and yet the painting somehow seemed to intensify the pangs of homesickness in him when he first saw it, and yet it also soothed a raw hunger in his soul, one he hadn’t known he’d felt until this point. “Thank you,” he’d told her, then, the words all but catching in his throat. “It’s…so beautiful. Striking, even,” and she beamed, rightfully proud of it, he hadn’t known she could do such art. Even now, as an El’the promoted too soon (perhaps because he was promoted too soon, too little removed, only two years and a half years away from the young E’lir who’d first come to the University, fresh off the boat at Tarbean and gaped at the Aturan roads and Imre itself), he— You never really got over it, he thought. It could sneak up on you at the strangest of times, overwhelm you. Even when you’d thought you’d settled in, that you were past it. The sense of dislocation, the feeling of exile. The raw, powerful longing for northern skies.

[TAG: RP, 553 words, DISCUSSION, 215 words] [OOC: Literally Mat rn: "Smdh guys I've been frickin' telling y'all this non-stop."] [OOC: Rub it in why don't you I've been living in the Mews and eating ramen, just to prepare for my damn nahlrout spree >> Well, I admit I also wanted to try my luck, see if I could get a Bodyguard for the Archivist. Am sad to inform y'all Bodyguards are also 30 talents. This is sheer class discrimination right here. Drake had the right idea about throwing off our rich oppressors smhhhh.] [OOC: Fair - my read would be less of gambit to do so and more of an opportunistic gambit taking advantage of the unexpected action failure. I'll note that in light of the lack of alternate RB claimants, in a V!TKN world, it really does have to be action failure happening, which means the demographic who could conceivably be at Ankers, and it rules STINK out, as STINK was lashed. But I stress I don't think this is the intuitive read of the situation - it's basically LG94 all over again. No competing claims, most likely explanation is the RB, and the circumstances mean it's important to operate in the most likely world.] [OOC: Despite expulsion? Huh. I was wondering if you were responsible for that contract ] lxii. being Kevan would admit this: he had a fondness for wordplay; for the lines in poems that caught the breath in your throat (where it had always been caught), for elegant turns of phrase in papers and books, the ones that made you stop right there, and run your finger beneath the line, along the page, taking it in again and again in hushed appreciation. “The starry skies above me, and the moral law within me,” Kehant had written, and Kevan could not imagine he would ever miss that pause of rapt admiration when he read that line, had almost wanted it scrawled in a calligraphed manuscript page for his wall. (Jarvik, surprisingly, had a good scriv’s hand, and had volunteered; Valerra had a clear and unmistakable print, and Soren’s handwriting was, to put it mildly, a barely-legible disaster.) He remembered a class with Master Anders, back when he’d been an E’lir and Master Anders had been teaching them the painstakingly precise skill of translating statements into predicate logic, using the existential and universal quantifiers. “All men are mortal,” became the statement ‘∀x (Px ⊃ Qx)’, which was a sobering if depressing example for the class, but also a classic that seemed to be in most of their textbooks, including the logic textbook that Master Anders had assigned them. It took time, but Kevan’d learned to read it, spelling it out slowly but then with increasing facility as he worked his way through the exercises in the textbook and the supplementary tutorial handouts. You read this as the statement that for all entities x, if they had the property of being a man, then they had the property of being mortal. (And then, of course, the arguments about why you couldn’t just do it with ‘∀x (Mx)’ except that that postulated that everything was mortal and didn’t seem to capture the full statement. And then you started quibbling about meaning and logical equivalence.) “Kehant is a man,” became the statement ‘∃x Px’, which was an easier thing to translate: that there existed some entity x of which the predicate P was true—or that x had the property P, of being a man. Annoyingly, you had to get the translation right, Master Anders warned them, and scholars could dispute translations. Did in fact, dispute them all the time. There were arguments over how you translated Kripke’s arguments in Naming and Necessity, and depending on the translation you used, and the modal logic system you used, it was possible for Kripke’s arguments to be valid or invalid, and then you had to get into a fight about whether that was a problem for Kripke or for the modal logics in question, but of course, all of this was out of scope for a class meant for students and E’lir. (Kevan’d heard those words as a promise: take more classes, learn more, understand more, and then we’ll discuss Kripke and modal logics and paraconsistency, and felt the excitement and the thirst to learn more grow within him.) “Well,” Master Anders said, “Let’s take a moment and deal with this statement instead. ‘All jelly beans exist.’ Anyone want to have a go at translating this?” He glanced about the class, and then shook his head. “I am joking about the word ‘being’ here. You should all be laughing.”

[TAG: RP, 515 words, DISCUSSION, 210 words] [OOC: Hard to say. The pharmacy in Imre has nothing out of stock, which at least says something about any quantity of purchase they've been doing, but Assassins are currently 30 talents apiece, and these prices fluctuate with the market, so I am curious if the Elims have been saving for them. I don't think they've bought any as we'd otherwise see more costly prices due to Assassins going up and down with supply and demand. If Araris and Mat are immediately punted to Imre, they can confirm my statements, if even one of them is Village as well. Sorry guys, can't really buy an Assassin. I only exist on a grad student stipend but I can absolutely become a nahlrout druglord and become the god of roleblocks ] [OOC: Wasn't sure about which end you fell on and how tight your finances were. I could do a spreadsheet to track minimum and maximum funding estimates for each player but I'm kind of intending to have *grits teeth* a nice, chill, RPful game, and adapting my personal KKC finances spreadsheet to track this doesn't sound like my idea of fun and sounds like hardKas territory, so I'm pretty much gonna just back-of-the-envelope (shhhh Drakebro don't @ me >:( ) here.] lxi. burnout There was a point, Kevan had discovered, when you just didn’t want to do anything, when your mind screamed rebellion at the idea of going through ever-more papers on materia medica in other parts of the Four Corners, all painstakingly collected in some segment of Archives history. He felt tired. He couldn’t force himself to focus. He’d been shut up in his room all day: when he wasn’t at the Gyre and Wade, he was in the Archives, tutoring, at the Medica, or in class, and he was going stir-crazy. He wanted those lazy sunlit afternoons, studying with Soren and Valerra. Even those days from his first tenure as an E’lir, arguing about the basic principles of Artificing with Jarvik and Soren, or playing corners, all four of them from the same bunks in the Mews. Maybe you had to lose something to grow, sometimes, Kevan thought. You had to let go of some of what had shaped you, and in the process, confront the person you’d become. He wondered if this was something the E’lir he’d been would’ve ever imagined, when he’d first set foot in the University and passed his Admissions interview. He didn’t think he could’ve reached that point, but he was just sick of research, just wanted to do something mindless and fun. Some of the El’the in the Medica and even Aksel had warned about burnout, about the need to pace yourself and take breaks or you’d work yourself to the bone and lose the will to continue. The second-highest attrition rate in the University was to the Crockery: the highest attrition rate was attributed to students who’d just…burned too brightly, and too fast, and burned themselves out and dropped out, left without their guilders. Sometimes, Kevan thought they were too quick to think of those El’the or Re’lar or even E’lir who’d left the University (“gotten ploughed,” they’d called it) as failures. Sometimes, you couldn’t make yourself carry on. And there was no shame in that. He’d nearly gotten ploughed after all, if not for the kindness of Master Anders; unexpected grace from Master Artificer. He wondered if all he’d bought himself was a stay of execution. Wondered about leaving; wondered what they would say about him, if he did just that. Went back to Yll, to his mother and his grandmother, and he felt the ache all over again, the home-longing, and beneath that, the scar that had formed over the raw, open wound of his father’s leaving. In this world, you loved, and were loved; left, and were left behind. It was the deal, pain bound up into love from the very beginning. Grief was the price you paid for love. (There are faerie stories, even on Yll, especially in villages along the rugged slices of green coast where he grew up. These stories are always from the perspective of the survivors: the ones who have been abandoned, left behind. The sea gives, and the sea takes. Every village has a mariner.) He felt so very tired, and so very ready for there to be an ending.

[TAG: RP, 1015 words] [OOC: @Araris Valerian, @Matrim's Dice: In the world either of you are Village and in Imre (do not know expulsion mechanics): A. What's the last contract available in the Black Market? B. Did either of you happen to buy nahlrout? Can't say more, but am mildly concerned in an E!TKN world.] [OOC: Can neither confirm nor deny that it is actually true that the mindblowing conversation I had with a prof I was tutoring for was that grades didn't matter since you're required to curve students and as long as you don't give a grade that's egregiously wrong, no one cares if you agonise for several days about how to restructure the B+/B/B-/C+ tier to be Most Fair to the students because it's always relative to the batch of papers, even if it's pretty easy to articulate a set of criteria for a paper with Teh Suck and one with Teh Goodz,] lx. grading Kevan stared at the stack of term papers he had yet to grade and felt the beginnings of a migraine throbbing; between his eyes and coiling about his temples. It was a strange feeling, being on the other end of the midterms and grading what the students had submitted. The logic component was easy enough; they were doing the fundamentals of logic (the memory of working on the disparate parts of the midterm logic assessment: the problem set assigned, the entire group of E’lir disputing how the problem set was best resolved, and the problems of translating statements and arguments into predicate logic, even if it was classical logic, because one never mentioned Gram Priest, not without memories of Master Anders’s admonition, “Of course you can ignore noncontradiction. If you are Gram Priest and working in paraconsistent logics…”) which meant problem sets, which meant grading translations (Tehlu, were some of the students awful at translation into predicate logic, and if your translation was faulty, your tree was often faulty, which meant your tree couldn’t close when it should, which meant that your proof that an argument was valid was wont to fail even when it shouldn’t have), which meant… Headaches. Those, at least, had an easy resolution. He stared balefully at the pile of rhetoric papers. He’d allowed them a choice of topic from the issues discussed in class: the problem of evil was popular, but too many students seemed to be unable to distinguish between the logical problem of evil and the evidential problem of evil, which meant he ended up seeing papers drifting between the two and those were fundamentally different challenges to the existence of God, much less Tehlu. A stunt that would’ve probably gotten them hauled in for questioning in any environment that was not a Rhetoric and Logic classroom at the University. And that was just scratching the surface: there were papers discussing Alasdair’s similarity argument, and Nikolaos’s simulation argument, and in most cases, he saw errors of reasoning and improperly applied rhetorical techniques. The most recent paper was meant to be agitating for skindancer rights (privately, Kevan wondered if that particular student was just being edgy or if he was supposed to report that student to Master Anders and then set the problem aside as being one for much later) and the student in question had only the vaguest idea of how to go about doing ethics and wound up mis-citing several Cealdish authors in the bargain. On top of that, there was the issue of assigning grades. He’d figured he’d seen so far maybe one or two students who very clearly deserved an ‘A’ grade, but so many of them languished in the ‘B’ to ‘C’ zone and the gradations thereof, and he couldn’t seem to decide how to grade them. He’d give a mediocre paper on the ontological argument a ‘C’ grade but then return and revise the grade upwards because he’d discovered the next tranche of papers were so awful that they deserved a C instead, but then to be consistent, he’d have to reread the other batch of ‘B’ papers and… And the turnaround time was supposed to be a week. When he’d mentioned his struggles to Aksel, the El’the had just laughed at him. “The first thing you’ve got to do is to get it out of your head that there’s an objectively correct grade you have to give to them,” Aksel said. Kevan gaped at him. “But…” he spluttered. But he couldn’t. But it wasn’t fair, he thought, and it was so very important to him to be fair to the students, and this was a yardstick for how well they were doing in the class and informed Master Anders’s view of who he wanted to sponsor, and how to pitch their Admissions questions subsequently. “But they deserve better than that,” he said, at last. Inadequate for what he was thinking. Aksel folded his arms and leaned forward. “You’re thinking that the fact there’s no objectively correct grade to be giving them means you can give them any grade,” he said, seriously. “Or at least, you’re making that argumentative move. And that’s incorrect. There are papers that are clear ‘A’ papers and papers that are clear ‘D’s or ‘F’s.” “But then….” “What do I mean by no objectively correct grade?” Aksel spread his hands out in a shrug. “It’s that simple, Kevan. There’s no correct grade you can give in majority of cases. It’s all relational. What does an ‘A’ really, truly mean? Is there some Plotinic Ideal of the ‘A’ paper floating out there somewhere? If there is, I’ve never heard of it. And that’s the point. All it means for the student to have gotten an ‘A’ is for the student to have put in an outstanding paper. It could be Re’lar level, it could be just clearly better than the others, but nowhere near what you might think of as ‘A’ standard. It’s really about the system, and what it means. It’s a marker for Master Anders to know how the students are doing relative to each other, and so it often doesn’t really matter if one student gets a ‘B’ and another student gets a ‘C-.’ He’s still aware of the relative range they inhabit.” Kevan was silent for a while, trying to wrap his mind around the idea. It seemed so terribly wrong or slapdash, and he said so. “You took your grades seriously, didn’t you?” Aksel asked, his pale eyes knowing. “Yeah,” Kevan said. “Didn’t you?” “I did,” Aksel confirmed. “I got over it in time. I think that’s part of the tutoring experience. Especially for those serious, hardworking students—E’lir—like we both were. You start to understand the point of the systems. You stop defining your own worth in terms of the letter your tutor or Master Anders gives you. And then, you stand on your own.” And then, you stand on your own, Aksel had said. He had sounded so free, so unbothered. So unburdened. Kevan wondered what it would be like, to be that way.

[TAG: RP, 843 words] [OOC: I'd say you deserve it for sending me that long PM sussing TKN when I was like "Bruh I'm chilling why are you doing this in my chill RPful game >>" Why are you trusting the reads of a guy who was giving this game 30% of attention on the analysis front until probably when the missing sabotage made my mech-analysis brain kick into high gear Also worth noting I'm cool with the claimed Archivist scanning my vote manip for my alignment, as that's a public Event. I'd honestly still stand by it - I haven't really profiled him as the super gambity shenanigans guy but more a backscreen planner when he's Evil. Trying to PM me about you is very firmly in the first category less than doc mastermind. I'll just have to update my mental profile.] lix. obligation “There is so much obligation in Shaeyre,” Aksel was saying, “In her Annalects, she writes about duty. ‘Wolves howling / I cannot find rest / because I am powerless / to amend a broken world.’” Where poetry met philosophy, Kevan found himself thinking. “Duty, assuming all tasks, can betray arrogance. The idea that we can know what must be done and do it properly.” “But that is the heart of the Lethani,” said Kevan. “That there is a knowing there. Because we are as part of a world as the flight of cranes, as the diving seals. This is what conditions recognition of the underlying relational structures that governs reality, and makes it possible in the first place.” He didn’t want to be thinking about the skindancers, or the threat they posed. Shaeyre and Kehant Duhen, two sides of the same coin. Shaeyre cared about obligation: as above, so below. She agonised about the necessity of amending the broken world because you were always a part of the world, and no matter how you tried to run from it, any brokenness in the world, any sickness or illness in it, as the skindancers were, would eventually have some form of impact on you. Kehant Duhen had written about self-obligation, but also to others. “Act,” Kehant wrote, “only according to that maxim through which you can at the same time will that it become a universal law.” And elsewhere, “Thus, act that you use humanity, in your own person as well as in the person of any other, always at the same time as an end, never merely as a means.” Two formulations, according to Vahani, of the same categorical imperative, though Master Anders was less convinced this was true, and the last Kevan’d heard, Re’lar Bergon was writing a research paper seeking to ground duties to future selves and future generations in both of Kehant’s formulations. He wasn’t a Namer, or anything more than an indifferent sympathist. He didn’t particularly care for alchemy, and suspected Master Volatile more or less felt the same way towards him. There was little enough that he could do. And there were whispers that Cavothee had been caught—and stopped—trying to sabotage another student, which would’ve made him one of the skindancers. Odd, Kevan thought, how you could go for most of the term without thinking about the skindancers, and then news like this reminded you that the University was under siege, that the students were being threatened by more than just the ever-present midterms. As an El’the, his schedule was in some ways more relaxed: he attended fewer classes, and the ones he did didn’t always have midterms. As a tutor, he found his task was to grade and administer the midterms, which was a whole different kettle of fish from being subject to them. Sure, there were Admissions, but Master Bob and Master Anders had indicated those were different as an El’the: less stressful. The other Masters might ask you questions, but they by and large deferred to the judgement of your sponsor. A far cry from the combative process that Kvothe’s Admissions had often been. Kevan sometimes wondered how much was simple dramatic licence—narratively, it served to place severe financial pressure on Kvothe’s University years and raised the stakes for that part of the Chronicles rather than give Kvothe a smooth passage through the University—and how much was the reality. He didn’t trust that so much any more; not after history classes with Master Alys. Realised that the actual records of Kvothe’s tenure were probably somewhere in the Archives, if he so cared to dig for them. Realised, as well, that he really didn’t. At some point, the whispers, and the inevitable comparisons to Kvothe—all of it had faded to a background murmur, particularly as the student body found other sources of gossip that interested them. And it seemed so unbearably trivial in light of teaching, in light of the Medica, in light of the state of his research. There was little enough that he could do. The principle of explosion was a neat party trick, but it wasn’t going to be able to let him logic the skindancers out of existence. (And did he want to? This felt like it should be someone else’s problem, like he should be allowed to enjoy his time at the University, and he had so much he needed to focus on, and he didn’t have the energy to deal with them, and yet—and yet obligation didn’t particularly care about what you wanted. It held regardless of your desires or your priorities.) Obligation, in the work of both Shaeyre and Kehant, was a powerful force: they never seemed to consider that you could just say no, that it was possible you just ‘didn’t feel like it.’ If you were obligated, then you had to do it: no ifs or buts about it. For a few long moments, Kevan contemplated the thought of just…ignoring his conscience. Then, he sighed, and headed off to the apothecary to see many scruples of nahlrout he could buy.

[TAG: RP, 471 words, ANALYSIS, 760 words] [OOC: Fair - mostly in the paucity of a claim, pretty much has to be an Ankers world I suppose. Or a Noble world. But TKN becomes the most likely candidate in a Noble world next to Szeth.] [OOC: I think the claim has prima facie plausibility. TKN's a pretty good candidate for the DK, given general inability to elevate. That being said, expelled players keep their abilities, so I do feel it's probably crucial to I can see a world in which this is a SD play - we expel TKN, SDs kill JNV, and this info is lost, since expulsions already satisfy the SD wincon and are flipless. I've asked JNV to talk to the claimant about also claiming to Wonko. This way, we guarantee someone survives no matter what and can hold the claimant accountable if there's anything that's genuinely weird about this situation. That being said, there are probably three scenarios here: [ROLEBLOCK] TKN puts in the kill, and gets roleblocked. I'd still question a set-up/team that has TKN putting in the kill - minimally, I think it'd imply the teammates having preferable actions and/or having been lashed. I am not fully sure that STINK is Evil in this world though - the TKN/STINK interaction didn't really read E/E due to TKN's very quick walkdown, but we can litigate that a bit later. I do think there's some analysis that needs to be done on STINK's dual TKN/Szeth vote, but again - can be litigated later. It's possible they felt it was safe as no one expected Ash to late vote for TKN. [GAMBIT] TKN is Village. A SD claims anonymously to JNV. They intend to kill JNV this Turn, we expel TKN, and get two Villagers for the price of one. I am not sure [GAMBIT] is fully satisfactory but it'd probably point to the <Mat, Araris, Archer> set in terms of capabilities. Maybe TJ, not sure. Prima facie, the gambit world has a lot to offer it: expelling TKN won't flip him, TKN is just suspicious enough to people you could get away with it, and with JNV also dead, the roleblocker doesn't need to reveal. But no, I kind of lean against this variant - they'd want to cultivate Village cred with JNV, I think. So probably no to the JNV kill. Either way, it's worth taking precautions, and I think Wonko is a safe backup in the event we discover evidence this is [GAMBIT.] [KRAEM HAPPENS] TKN is Village. The roleblocker is also Village. The Elims actually just missed an action and kept quiet about it. In this world, a player in Ankers (Mat? TJ? Sart? So helpful smh) put in the kill, or Szeth did. (V!Archer credences, plus we stipulated that TKN is Village.) In my view, [ROLEBLOCK] is still the most likely world. This is the primary possibility we need to investigate. I have a mixed view of [GAMBIT.] I think de facto fliplessness makes [GAMBIT] a much more viable world than we might think, prima facie, compared to a normal SE game. At the same time, I always believe we need to go for the simplest explanation, then interrogate the more paranoid ones. To be very clear, my view is that we should take precautions against [GAMBIT] but this should not be the primary world we play for. I don't think [KRAEM HAPPENS] is impossible. But I do think it's unlikely. In terms of priority, it's still the last option anyone should be reaching for. [OOC: Tfw I agree with Mat :eyes: E!Aman says hi from Threnody.] [OOC: Good RP takes time, y'all, smh >> And it's my gaming weekend with Wyrm and Wyrmbro >>> you guys.] [OOC: I'm satisfied with this response to the Mystery of the Missing Sabotage, and it feeds my V!Ash credences. I may now rejoice and go back to RPing to hit 50k.] TKN delenda est TKN delenda est TKN delenda est TKN delenda est (Just to be clear, I'm in Imre, hoping to pick up a cartload of nahlrout, so I can go hogwild roleblocking people. I can't actually do this. But by Tehlu, I've wanted to.) With regard to TKN - he spent multiple Turns not elevating, so potentially may have a decent chunk of EP in other fields. This would allow him to be able to offset any DP Masters put on him. To this end, I'd strongly recommend we get a solid bloc of votes on him to ensure lashing minimum, expulsion preferable: @Sart @Szeth_Pancakes @Wonko the Sane @Archer @|TJ| @STINK @Steeldancer Roleblocker, IDK if you can do this, but if you can, would recommend you put another roleblock on TKN this Turn. [OOC: Yes, actually. He'd offered to get scanned at about the start of this Turn, which probably feeds into the kill block.] lviii. leaves The leaves were falling from the old oak tree in the courtyard, one by one, fluttering down to join the pile of dry leaves among the cobblestones. “Someone has to be cleaning the courtyard,” Soren mused, looking up from his book. “Raking the leaves, and getting rid of them. There isn’t always a pile when we’re here.” His hand was bandaged—Kevan hadn’t been on shift when Soren’d come through the Medica, having injured himself in the Fishery—and Kevan fought back the urge to ask for his hand, to check the bandages. No doubt whoever it was had done a perfectly fine job there; Fishery accidents at least were fairly routine. If they weren’t, half the University heard about them. “Cut myself while preparing the lathe,” Soren’d explained, earlier that afternoon. “Don’t worry, nothing major. I was just careless. Wanted to rush the installation, and then well, you know. I guess I’ll be the next statistic in Merin’s safety lecture next term.” Kevan shook his head. “After the number of times she picked on me? C’mon, you deserve some of her attention too. Now she’ll devote at least a couple minutes to lathe safety, though it’s too lathe to save you—ouch!” Valerra’d flicked the cork stopper of her bottle right at him, and it rebounded off his head. “That was awful,” she informed him, sternly. “And you deserved it.” “I don’t think the solution is to give me a concussion,” Kevan muttered, rubbing at his head, where the cork stopper had struck. “Someone like you?” Soren laughed. “Please, will you even notice?” “Probably not,” Kevan said. “Dizziness, maybe, but concussion can result in an altered state of consciousness that’s more difficult to detect on your own part: it’s normally the responder who has to monitor for—” “I surrender,” Soren said, flicking his hands up in the air. The book thumped back into his lap. “Shouldn’t have tried to argue with the Medica student.” “Where did it get to?” Valerra said aloud, casting about for where the cork had gotten off to. “I’m not helping,” Kevan informed her, lazily. “You lost it, you go find it yourself.” “Well, then,” said Valerra, giving up after a few fruitless minutes. “Guess I’ll just have to finish the wine myself.” “Come on, you were going to anyway, you’d breached it, a cork wouldn’t—” “Hush,” Soren said. “No one needs any sense right now.” He made a ‘give’ motion towards Valerra. “Share.” There were simple pleasures in life, Kevan thought. Things you had to hold on to, in the middle of leaden grey skies. Reading books, studying together. Sharing strawberry wine with friends, in a courtyard. The cool breeze. Valerra finding her lost bit of cork, too late to be of any use. Soren laughing, the crinkled brown leaf falling into the palm of his outstretched hand.

[OOC: Thank you! @Szeth_Pancakes, repeating the flag, just to have all of this in one place. (Borked now that I'm replying to TKN, but oh well! My apologies. Were you recalled back as a noble?] I forgot that Mat said this. This shifts things IMO: I think it's reasonable to get a teammate to make the kill, thinking they were in the Mews, and then having it fail because Mat was actually at Ankers after all, and that lodging was taken into account. This might have implications for the plausibility of STINK being on that team. I'm going to need to think this one through. (One read for instance is that then Mat is the logical candidate to send in the kill it isn't as 'incriminating'.) It's equally possible then that the Mat explanation is incorrect, which means we are looking either at a Noble or someone likely to be at Ankers. In that branch, I do think STINK shows up as a candidate.]