little wilson

Could be Monday or Tuesday. The Steelheart one was at the Orem B&N and that one was on a Tuesday. Firefight was on Monday at Jordan Landing. I think it'll start earlier than 9 though. I want to say that both the others started at 6:30.

There's not really a set week. We just sort of decide, either there or here in the thread. And if we decide there, we post a reminder here. It's always at 7 though.

We usually meet in the middle of the week (Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday) in the atrium of the JFSB. You do not have to be a student to go, since we're not actually a forrmally-sanctioned BYU Club. Slowswift and I both aren't BYU students and we show up every month. So if you want to come, come! Don't let your lack of attendance stop you because we would love to have more Sharders show up!

LON is all London airports. Heathrow and Gatwick start with an L, but the rest is based on their airports. That should help you out a lot. Newark, OHare, Venice, and Vienna are still wrong (you're really close with Vienna though).

Not quite, on that one, Landis. You've got half right, but you're wrong on the other half. Namely, Heathrow, Gatwick, Newark, OHare, Orlando, Venice, Munich, Zurich, Geneva, and Vienna. (Also, IND is for Indianapolis, but I assume that's what you meant)

Assassin's Creed, Angry Birds, and Warcraft. WLIU, name 20 airport codes and the airport and/or city they correspond to.

You can submit suggestions to them as well. If there's something you want that isn't on the site, you can chat them in the Help Center to suggest it, and they'll submit that suggestion. If they get enough suggestions for the same movie/tv show, they'll try harder to get a contract for it because they know people want it. I'm not sure why they didn't renew the contract for Doctor Who, but I went on there last night and suggested it to them. First time I did that, even though I've been thinking about it for a while (mostly in regards to Studio Ghibli, since those are only available via DVD). Doctor Who made me desperate.

Ah, relationships. This is also going to be a downer-post. It's also going to be long. You've been warned. I am 28 years old, soon to be 29. I'm also LDS, and I grew up in a city that was about 25% LDS (as for why that's relevant, LDS people usually only date LDS people. There are some exceptions, but that's the norm). I was a group-hopper in high school. I had a lot of friends. Not many really good friends, but whatever. I went to the girl-ask-guy dances, but I was never once asked to a guy-ask-girl dance. I never went to Prom. At one point in my senior year, one of my guy friends--a supposedly really nice guy--lied to get out of going on a date with me. This was not a lie to get out of going on a date period. It was specifically because he didn't want to go with me, despite it being a group date that was clearly just casual (though I had liked him at one point, but then he implied that my liking him was akin to a plague so....yeah. That was fun). I went to university at BYU-I. This school has a nickname: BYU-I Do. The school even provides counseling to graduating senior girls who are single. This isn't to say that everything is about marriage. But there's these weekly meetings called devotionals and about half of them are on marriage. I never went to them (yes, yes, I'm a very bad student). So while the classes are very educational and you learn a lot, the ultimate push of the school is towards marriage and education rather than just education, and they are both equally important and equally emphasized by the administration. I was there for 7 semesters. I went on 3 dates. The first was with a guy who was visiting from my hometown who was a friend of my sisters. We went to a movie. The second was a group date one of my roommates set up. For the third, the guy texted me to see if I'd go to a play with him. I didn't even realize it was a date until we were on it and he paid for me. (Note: Never ask someone out via text. Ever). Despite the school offering counseling, I didn't get it. I didn't need it, since I didn't transfer there to get my M.R.S. degree (though people I knew joked that's what I was doing). I knew I wouldn't get married at that school. I'd kind of hoped I'd get a little more experience though. Date a guy for a bit. Or something. I'm now in Provo, which is 90% LDS. I live in an area surrounded by people my age and at my stage in life. I go to activities and meet a number of people. One of my roommates is one of the most outgoing people you'd ever meet, and our apartment can be rather bustling at times. I'm also an extrovert. I may not be outgoing, but I love being around people, whether I'm talking non-stop or just sitting there listening to the group chatter. I've been down here for 2 1/2 years, and I've been on one date, exactly two years ago. It was a good date. Fun. But I clicked with the guy more as a friend than anything else and I had no desire to lead him on. Beyond that one date, I signed up for Tinder for a time, mostly as a laugh. While Tinder in most cities is reserved for booty calls, in the Provo area, it's actually used as a sort of dating service in a way. My roommates were really into it, always matching with guys and talking to them and then going on dates. The outgoing one signed up and less than a week later, she had a date. Got another one shortly after that. She only uses it casually now, but the other roommate still regularly goes on dates with guys she met on Tinder. I saw all this success, and I thought, sure, why not? Let's give it a test. I didn't really expect it to go anywhere, but deep down, I kind of hoped that maybe, just maybe, it would. Even just one date. I got some matches, but nothing more than that. My roommates had told me that they never had to initiate conversations with their matches, and I wasn't sure what to say anyway, so I wasn't about to initiate anything. If the guy did, I'd respond, though. No guy ever did. I'm pretty sure they were the guys who swipe right for all the girls just to see who they match with so they know who swiped right for them. They're the guys who aren't actually interested. I deleted Tinder after 2 months. It was worthless. I tried online dating for about the same amount of time, when I was still in Idaho. Got the same amount of luck too: zero. That's pretty standard for me. I'll give things like that an honest go for a trial period of about two months, even though I'm skeptical. Even if I don't really think anything will happen. But I'm a hopeless romantic, so it's hard to completely shut down that part of me that hopes something will. That maybe something will. But it never does. I know what some of you are thinking: it only takes one. I get that. I do. I know. But when it comes to dating and relationships, you shouldn't hope for the exception. When all your life experience points toward the fact that the vast majority of guys aren't interested and the very, very few who are aren't guys that you're interested in, that becomes the rule. If I had even one experience with a guy I liked who liked me back, it wouldn't be--even if that experience ended as an utter disaster. But I don't. So what I do have is the rule. To hope for that one person is to hope for the exception. And really, there's 6 billion people on the planet. If there's only one person out of all of those people, what's the point? I'm probably never going to meet him anyway. (I guess I should've prefaced this with a cynicism warning too....) As terrible as it may sound, I've kind of resigned myself to singledom. Yeah, yeah, I know, I could meet someone in my 30's. That happens all the time, even up into the 40's and 50's or older. If that happens, it happens, and that's great. But right here, right now, I'm not sure it ever will. But that's okay. I may be a hopeless romantic, but I don't need a guy to make me feel fulfilled in life. Sure, it would be nice, but it's not necessary. I don't care about the lessons I got in church that say otherwise--that a woman needs to marry and have a family to have a purpose. Or the people who say that I'll never get to where I want to be if I don't get married. They're wrong. They're all wrong. My marital status and/or my relationship experience does not define me, however depressing it is. I won't let it define me. But that hopeless romantic won't stop bugging me, even still. Ah, relationships.

Eh, I just listened to it, and the loudest part was my reaction to Dalinar's knife thing at the end. But Brandon paused there for a bit, and everyone was kind of aghast so....no regrets!

There's a recording of the whole signing. Rubix/fRR have it, and I'm sure Weiry will have it soon. I've got a recording of my questions, but that's it. EDIT: Actually, I recorded the reading as well. Note: The reading itself starts at 1:23; before that is Brandon talking about when to expect Oathbringer and a Cosmere novella compilation that will be coming out later this year. I apologize for some of the talking going on. I don't think it blocks out Brandon speaking, but I was sitting between Seonid and Aradel, so depending on what happened in the reading, we may have "whispered" and I think my phone picked up those whispers....

I plan to ask a follow up to both that question and the Lord Ruler one at the Calamity signing. I'm hoping that since it won't be 2:30 am, he might be able to math. Though he'll likely RAFO me on at least one of those. We'll see.

I asked a few questions while getting my book signed. Q. Has Odium used the weapon created by Adonalsium's opposition? A. RAFO Q. Is the gender of a spren bonded to a surgebinder based on sexual preferences? A. Not strictly. You're more likely to bond a spren of the opposite gender (or a spren that identifies as the opposite gender since spren have no gender), just like you're more likely, statistically, to be attracted to someone of the opposite gender. There is a correlation between the two but just because a male character has a male spren does not necessarily mean what some think it means. Q. How many Shards are whole at the time of Shadows of Self? A. RAFO. Ish. (He's too tired to do math, but he says it's about half-ish). Q. Are any of the Lord Ruler's descendants alive at the time of Alloy of Law? A. Yes. So....some interesting answers there.

I mentioned in the Bad Day thread a few months ago that I got rear-ended. I think I also mentioned that I'd had issues with contacting the other driver's insurance company. Long story short, his insurance was through his work, and the contact information on the insurance card was for the agency that sold his company the policy, but to file claims with this corporate policy, it had to be with the company itself rather than the agency. A very nice agent at this agency took care of that for me, but the company's agent who took over has been abysmal. She's been sending letters since the middle of November telling me that she's contacted me (she hasn't) and telling me to contact her (she never answers nor returns my calls) and then threatening to close the claim because she hasn't been able to contact me (even though she's never tried). She finally gave me the information to talk to a different claims agent to talk to them if she didn't answer (which, of course, she didn't). By the time I talked to this other agent, it was just before Christmas and I couldn't take my car in to get an estimate (since I work full-time and get off as the car repair shop is closing). So I waited until after the holidays were over, and apparently this agent is really impatient because she called me at the beginning of the month to tell me that if they didn't get the estimate, they were closing the claim. But hey--at least she called me this time and left a message, so improvement! The repairs estimate on my car is $1400. And because the repair shop is very good, they were booked until February 19th. My car's totally driveable though, so I wasn't worried about the wait. Well, they just called to tell me that someone cancelled so they can get my car in tomorrow. And since I got rear-ended, this insurance company has to pay for my car rental. And I fully plan on using this opportunity of driving a rental car to see what car I'd like to purchase when I finally upgrade from what I currently have. So they get to pay for my experimentation. And they get to pay significantly more than what I'd estimated the repairs to be (it's a minor dent on the corner of the bumper and I'd told them $400, forgetting to factor in paint, supplies, and labor. Oops). So my car is finally getting fixed, sooner than I'd thought. And I never have to deal with this insurance company and this agent again. Yay.

Oh, that's right. Does your sister still need a ride there? Or is she taking the bus?

I will certainly be there.

Did we officially decide anything for it?

Sorry to interrupt your daily slaughter, but I need to deliver a PSA: The site Info Encrypt will not be allowed for creating codes to communicate in any form from this point on. This includes communication in writeups, PMs, or codes in the thread, not only for this game, but all games going forward. There are a couple of different reasons for this. 1. Players should be using ways to communicate that they create or think of rather than using a program that someone else wrote, and 2. No matter the code you're using, you should be able to encode or decode it long-hand, which is not an option with info encrypt. If you'd like to discuss this more, PM me and/or Meta (since Alv is playing in this game and Gamma is busy with real life stuff still currently) and we'll be happy to explain it to you more. Thank you, and get back to murderizing each other!

Feather never said there wouldn't be an etiquette guideline. If you go back and read Chaos' posts about the rep post that is forthcoming, I think you'll find the opposite to be true. What Feather said was that there won't be a set rule of "you can *only* downvote a post that has these very specific things wrong with it." The rep system is meant to be to be at least partially up to each user's interpretation. But is there an etiquette? Yes. Absolutely.

And that's the great thing about differing opinions. Right now, there's no set rule about how the rep system should be taken. Different people have different interpretations of it, and while your interpretation says people shouldn't be downvoting for that reason, my own interpretation says that it is fine. What is my interpretation? It's based on the subjective value I place on a post for the overall community as a whole. If someone gets a Shard intent out of Brandon, you can bet I'll upvote that, even if that post has 95 upvotes already. If someone spends 15 seconds creating a meme that I think is funny, but it's got 40 rep, I'll downvote that. Because I personally don't think memes should represent the site and what we value overall. It's one downvote, among 40 upvotes. Do I really expect my one downvote to matter? Heavens no. But by downvoting it, I'm showing that I value other posts higher and feel that the upvotes on this diminish the value of the higher-quality posts I feel represent the site better (be those RP, art, WoBs, or theories). Jealousy is not a factor. Until the admins state the way upvotes and downvotes should be used, no one person's view of the rep system is more correct than another, and it would probably be best to not unfairly judge people simply because they don't adhere to your interpretation of the rep system.

This is the system that TWG had, and while some people *cough* posted an absurd amount of pointless RP in the These Stupid Titles thread to inflate their post count and gain new reps so they could continue posting in that thread about things like being a Lonely Hermit, Soup Kitchen Owner, or Abdicator, it was overall a really fun system. There were also 6-7 different classes, and you picked one when you registered. Student of Light Magic, Student of Military Arts, Student of Death, etc. Oooh, that could be interesting to have the Shardworlds be the classes..... Not sure if that kind of a system (multiple classes) is possible though.

I will readily admit that I've done this, but it's usually just for jokes/memes that deserve maybe 10 rep but have 30-40+. As has already been said, you don't need to click the little up arrow just because you found something funny if 15 other people clicked it as well. Unless you think it's a joke that deserves that much rep, and if you think that, then carry on.

Final Thoughts of the GM There are a number of things I want to comment on. Some of these are to explain why I did certain things (with the role distribution) and others are to explain my take on certain issues and how these can be fixed (if they need to be). The Diagrammist Team In order to have both teams (other than the Diagrammists) start with an equal chance of winning, I needed the Diagrammists split equally between the teams. So an even number. With 36 players, that meant 6 or 8, since I judge things on a percentage level, with the eliminator team somewhere between 15-25% of the total players. Out of 36 players, 6 players is 16.6% and 8 is 22.2%. I went with 8 because of a comment Phatt made in the last game, about how he’d never seen a team bigger than 6, so therefore a team bigger than 6 probably would never happen. Well, I make it a point to mix things up when I see comments like that. Do things people don’t expect. If the players expect 6, I’ll do 8. And 22.2% isn’t a bad percentage. That said, I knew with 8 players, it would be a strong team. Especially when the role distributor I was using came up with which 8 they were. But Kas and I were curious what an Aonar/Maill/Twei/Ada team would do, and we decided to run with it. When the role distributor then gave them a Cook, a Surgeon, an Elsecaller, and an Edgedancer, I was a lot more concerned, but then I realized that Polking went entirely inactive in the only other game he’s played. While that’s not a guarantee that he would go inactive in this game, I was strongly betting on his going inactive, and since he was the Edgedancer, that helped balance things out a bit. It meant that one of the two KR roles--and one of the protective roles at that--would not be around, and that would leave the Diagrammists open a bit. I was counting on at least one other player on the team going inactive as well, and one did--Tony. The last thing I distributed was the ranks, and when Kas and I decided to run with the role distribution, I said right off that the Diagrammists won’t have anything higher than Captain, because they already have power in their player numbers and roles/abilities. They don’t get the information factor of knowing who is on which faction. They had 3 Captains, and 5 Regulars. The 2 SoH Captains even ended up under the same Commander so they wouldn’t start out knowing both SoH Commanders. Lynch Protection Lopen made multiple comments about how there was no way the Diagrammists would have 2 lynch protection roles. Yet they did. The reason for this was that those roles weren’t inherently lynch protection roles. They simply protected from one kill attempt. The lynch counts as a kill attempt, so it can protect from a lynch. However, those roles cannot self-target, and with 3 Cooks, double-tapping (or even triple-tapping) is a simple matter, and would negate the protection the person would get from the lynch. I was expecting people to be double-tapped here, with so many kill roles, and the knowledge that the Surgeon and Edgedancer can protect from the lynch. Even with the two lynch protections, though, there was a full 2 cycles where the Diagrammmists didn’t have any protection whatsoever, because both Polking and Twei were inactive. Ada revealed himself right at the start of this period. Had he been lynched when he revealed, he would’ve died. Even if he’d been lynched the cycle after (when it was a tie between himself and Tony), he would’ve died. Another reason why they had lynch protection was because they had no vote manipulation abilities. There were 4 Ardents in the game and 2 Lightweavers, so 6 possible vote manipulations, and the eliminators didn’t have anything. Outside of their numbers, they couldn’t do anything to affect the lynch. The Faction Game This is an interesting issue, because I made it definitive to clear up the issues LG4 had, where the two factions worked together to take out the evil team, but the GM had balanced the game assuming they would attack each other as well, so the evil team wasn’t set to handle two teams going against them. I figured if I made it more clearcut, that that wouldn’t happen. It would split the focus a bit. However, there was still a chance that the teams could win together. At one point, early in the game, Orlok (Thaidakar) asked what would happen if all the KR’s died. I was ecstatic that he asked that, because it meant that he--the leader of his faction--was thinking about working together with the Sons of Honor, and I knew they needed to in order to stand a chance against the Diagrammists. See, I balanced the two teams with the Sons of Honor having more protection abilities (5 out of 8), and the Ghostbloods having more firepower (2 out of 3). The Ghostbloods need the Sons of Honor to help protect them from the Diagrammists, and the Sons of Honor needed the Ghostbloods to help them kill the Diagrammists. And once things came down to the faction game, the SoH could protect themselves from the Ghostblood kills. But this didn’t really happen. Right from the get-go, the teams decided to go for the faction game, which elated the Diagrammists and had me incredibly worried. Finally, when Bort made his comment comparing this game to MR7, I used that to intervene and explain why this was not the same way. I tried to let it be known that I was just fine if the two teams teamed up against the Diagrammists. In fact, I wanted that to happen. But it did’t. The people who’d been pushing for working together got drowned out by the people pushing for the faction game. Lack of Communication & Information As I already stated, I’d intended for the Diagrammists to start with less information due to their ranks, and this worked for a little bit. Everyone assumed that the Diagrammists knew all the alignments, but they actually didn’t even know half. Until Maill posted his list, trying to phish faction-information out of people. That shifted the information a bit in the Diagrammists favor. On top of that, one of the village Runners wasn’t using his ability, all the Diagrammists were active, and people were going for the faction game. I needed to throw something else in to help the village more. I talked to Meta, and we came up with the Rank PM idea to mitigate the lack of communication and help the village out more. The Diagrammists had 3 Captains, sure, but there were a lot more village ranks. In theory, the rank PMs would go to more villagers than Diagrammists. In practice, that was not the case. Within an hour of adding the Rank PM mechanic on Cycle 2, three of the SoH ranks had started up PMs with Diagrammists. One of those was the SoH Commander that the Diagrammists didn’t know. At the same time, Restares had role-claimed as Restares to another Diagrammist in the thread, and at that point, I just threw my hands up into the air and said “fine.” I refused to mess with anything else. On the information side of things for the village, the Scholars were not the only information-finding roles. I understand that not knowing the role/alignment of the dead can be problematic, but there were a number of information-gathering roles in the game, and those came out in abundance in the late-game, when it was almost too late to stop what was happening (and once Polking came back, it was). The Assassin was the obvious information-finding role, since they track people and see who target the person tracked. But the Artifabrian can target people and take an action from their target, and they know what action they steal. Araris stole protections from 3 different Diagrammists: Ada, PK, and Maill, in that order, from Cycles 1-3. So PK’s protection was before he’d roleclaimed. What with the other information gathered by the assassins, that could’ve been incredibly problematic for the Diagrammists. And that’s just two of the information-gathering roles. The Lightweaver was another, and they also learned what type of action they illuminated. Then there’s the Edgedancer. Feligon got spied on a number of times. At least once by both village Edgedancer. One of the cycle he wasn’t spied on (but this cycle was right after he’d been spied on), he PMed Twei and told her that he wasn’t able to access the doc. Had he been spied on, the Edgedancer would’ve known he was a Diagrammist. They wouldn’t have known who his teammate was, but if they knew who all he was in PMs with (he was telling people), they would’ve figured out that too. At another time, Burnt was going to spy on Ada’s PMs one the same cycle he’d blatantly tried to manipulate DeathClutch (which is partially what made DeathClutch so certain that Ada was evil). But then she switched her order to Stink, and didn’t see nearly as much as she could’ve. It took a bit for the Edgedancers to start learning things, but once they did, they got a lot. That said, a lot of that information didn’t get released until late-game, if it got released at all, because people were worried about the faction game. What Would I Change? First, I want to say that I like the restrictions on PM and the need to branch out and gather information in ways outside of role/alignment. It requires a little more creativity. So I wouldn’t change either of those things. I also like the faction idea, with the Rank PMs opening up communications a little bit more. With active Runners, this game could’ve turned out a lot differently (there are a lot of things--not necessarily activity-related--that would’ve made this game turn out a lot differently). However, the focus on the faction game at the beginning was a major issue and really hurt both the Sons of Honor and the Ghostbloods a lot. The faction game was meant to be a mid-to-late game consideration, but I’m not sure how to make it so without removing the threat of the faction game entirely and making it exactly like LG4 where the teams can claim to win without actually acquiring that win condition. I don’t want a secondary win con that is more just a “bonus” win con. Those are too easy. So I’m not sure how to fix that, and any ideas there would be much appreciated. The one thing I know I would fix is removing the Diagrammist Doc. The coordination by the Diagrammists in the late-game, where they were able to plan a last hour lynch on Seonid, made it obvious to me that it was way too easy for the Diagrammists to communicate, especially considering the problems the village was having. By removing the doc, it means they have to communicate via PM, and the PMs can be spied on by the Edgedancers, meaning that they have to be very careful what they say, just in case someone is listening. All-in-all, while this game had its problems with communication and information, a lot of that was situational and I think the game would turn out very differently given another run-through. It was very close, despite the Diagrammists only losing one player. Had the Cooks, when they were targeting inactives, gone after Polking, the Diagrammists would’ve been down one more. Had Seonid repeated his action from one cycle the very next cycle (which he did the cycle after that), Ada would’ve been dead the first time you guys tried to lynch him. Had the Bondsmith survived longer, that also would’ve changed things (and that’s also the part that I was most saddened about, since the Bondsmith was my personal troll in this game, with that alt win con. I was so hoping for some fun things with that, and not just because the role distributor gave the role to my brother….). I think it was a good game, and everyone played very well. Special mentions go to Kynedath who did an exemplary job for her (his?) first game, Ada for somehow staying alive for 5-6 cycles after revealing himself, and Lopen for pegging every single active eliminator in one fell swoop (okay, it was too late to do anything, but still, I thought it was impressive). Well done, everyone, and thank you for playing.

Cycle Twelve: According To Plan The surviving faction members gathered discreetly in a room that Deadeye had secured. Still, Lopen swept the room, suspiciously, his drawn knife in hand, before he grunted and slammed it back into its scabbard. “Nothing I can see,” he said, to his companion. “Doesn’t mean he isn’t planning to kill us.” “If I’d wanted to kill you,” Deadeye said, contemptuously, “You’d already be dead. Count yourself lucky today, Ghostblood.” Lopen stiffened at this remark, and opened his mouth to make a biting reply when his companion placed a firm hand on his shoulder. “Today,” Sheon Idris said, “We are neither Ghostbloods nor Sons of Honor. We face a common foe; one who has eluded death far too many times. Remember that. We do not have time for this.” Reluctantly, Lopen nodded. Now, Sheon addressed Deadeye. “And you,” he said, coldly, “May consider yourself fortunate that we are currently concerned by other affairs, Son of Honour.” They exchanged between them a glance that mingled respect as well as a weighing of the other. Finally, Deadeye inclined his head and the pair moved on. Next to come was Elba, her own crossbow slung across her back. “You don’t look like you’ve been getting enough rest,” she commented. “You shouldn’t be pushing yourself too hard.” “Speak for yourself,” Deadeye retorted. “You look like you’ve been wrung through a Highstorm, woman.” One by one, they streamed into the room, eyeing each other with the wary distance of the hunted, all carrying weapons and various means of self-defence. Finally, Slalassalas strode in, his sword belted on at his side, and said, “There’s no one else,” and closed the door. He stood in front of it, drawing his sword and grounding the point against the stone floor, and then assumed a position of watchful ease. “What’s he doing here?” Lopen demanded. He began to rise, but Sheon Idris calmly held him down. “Well, then,” Deadeye said, ignoring Lopen’s interruption. He folded his arms across his chest. “I’ve called all of you here because I mean to hunt down every last Diagrammist in Urithiru, and we’re going to do it now.” “What do you think we’ve been doing for the last few days?” Torren wanted to know. Deadeye rolled his eyes. “And how successful you lot have been. Just look at you: Agrigar Leiken is still breathing and still in Urithiru, and his colleagues are still operating among us.” Sheon Idris said, “I’m not the man who failed to kill him.” “No,” Deadeye said, angrily, “You went and made a storming deal with him, man! What were you thinking?” “Enough,” Elba said. While her voice was not loud, it was firm, and it carried in the room. “If we keep deciding who is to blame, we will be dead and the Diagrammists will win. Deadeye. What is your plan?” “Slalassalas has kindly agreed to stand guard for us,” Deadeye said. “He’s supposed to be a more than competent swordsman. No one leaves this room until the Diagrammists are dead. I mean to get all of them at once, in one fell swoop.” “Except for Agrigar,” Lopen said. Deadeye scowled at him. “We’ll deal with him later,” he said. Lopen was going to make a snide comment about that, when Sheon tapped his arm, lightly. Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed Sheon’s fingers flicking gracefully through the motions of the Ghostblood silent code. Ask him about Agrigar, Sheon signed. We must talk them out of killing him--I think Torren is suspicious enough, don’t you? Careful not to stare, Lopen glanced discreetly at Torren. He didn’t trust Slalassalas, he thought. The man had claimed to be another scholar--as if anyone could simply do that!--and had proceeded to produce dissenting research, involving controversial interpretations of certain pieces of key evidence, in support of the claim that Cla had been a Son of Honor. Ridiculous. The truth was objective, Lopen thought. And if there were two disagreeing voices, then it only indicated that one of them was wrong--or that both were. Torren, on the other hand: he had been at the window when Agrigar had escaped, Lopen thought. Why hadn’t he thrown a knife at the man? Why had he been content to chase the man? It had been Torren who claimed that Agrigar had slipped down a rope and disappeared. And again, the second time, it had been Torren who had claimed to have seen Cla with Agrigar, just as Deadeye had mentioned seeing Torren with Agrigar. Who to believe? He signed, Acknowledged, to Sheon, and said, “We need to deal with him now. The more we leave him to later, the more dangerous he becomes.” Deadeye sighed. “Look,” he said, irritably. “We’ve tried to kill him. Several times. D’you want to try again and then just have him laugh off the attempt? I’ll tell you what we need to do: someone saved him. Someone’s saved his life each time we tried to kill him, and as far as I’m concerned, that person’s Torren.” Torren said nothing. “Well?” Deadeye prodded. “What do you have to say in your defense, Torren?” His hands were already reaching for the nocked crossbow slung across his back when Torren’s hands swept up from under the table in a blur of motion. Deadeye felt something sharp embed itself in his throat, and then he keeled over, dead. “Idos Domi!” Sheon Idris swore, as he stood up. A slender Shardblade coalesced instantly in his hand, the tip beading with water. “Elba! Lopen! To me!” But Elba, too, was collapsing. Walter Kysley stood over her, the knives in his hand dripping with blood. To his side, Yallah had produced a glowing fabrial but made no move to assist her. “Treachery!” Maximilianos Sebarial gasped, as he tried to duck under the table, but a crossbow bolt ripped straight through his throat and he fell, limp, onto the stone ground. Gold Frank prodded him with the toe of his boot and let out a satisfied grunt. He grinned at Lopen and Sheon, already reloading his weapon. Slalassalas stepped aside from the door, to let in Agrigar Leiken. The erstwhile Cook carried a massive Shardblade, still gleaming wetly from a recent summoning, and he acknowledged both of them with a brief nod. “Sheon Idris. Lopen. I had, of course, expected you to survive this.” “Was he one of yours?” Lopen demanded. “Did you plan this together?” For, he knew, this meeting had been a trap. A most elaborate, cunningly-planned trap, meant to get the survivors into one small room and then to turn the room into a charnel house. Agrigar shook his head. “No,” he admitted. “It was entirely Deadeye’s idea. Unfortunately for him, he believed that Slalassalas was not one of us.” Slalassalas said nothing. He did not even raise his sword and assume a guard stance. He was perfectly relaxed. After all, Lopen thought, his blood running cold, they had lost. There was nowhere to run. “And?” “And nothing,” Agrigar shrugged. “You’ll both have to die, of course. As much as I respect how you’ve played the game, you have lost after all. It was inevitable; exactly as the Diagram predicted.” His eyes flicked from Lopen to Sheon. “And of course, if we let a Knight Radiant walk out of this room alive, it’d ruin our plans.” He shrugged apologetically. “You’ll find that none of us are carrying Stormlight, Sheon. I’m afraid we’re well prepared for this.” In a deceptively lazy motion, Sheon Idris, the former King of Arelon, raised his Shardblade, part in challenge, part in salute. “Have you heard an old saying about rats?” he wanted to know. Agrigar looked politely confused. “What about them?” “Never put a rat in a corner,” Sheon Idris snarled, “Because a cornered rat will fight--to the very end.” He gave Agrigar a cold nod. “To the death, Leiken.” They fought. Sheon Idris (6) : Frank Au Faliu, Agrigar Leiken, Arran Faenel, Torren, Walter Kysley, Slalassalas Torren (3) : Sheon Idris, Deadeye, Elba Agrigar Leiken (1) : Maximilianos Sebarial Sheon Idris (Seonid) was lynched! Deadeye (Kynedath) was killed by the Diagrammists! Maximilianos Sebarial was poisoned! The game is over, and the Diagrammists win! Game Links: Master Spreadsheet The Diagram The Tranquiline Halls Thanks a bunch to Kas for helping me so much with this (the writeups were almost entirely his), and I’ll post my closing thoughts later today. Thanks for playing, everyone! Player List:

Time's up!

My first book was Mistborn, but my favorite series is Stormlight. Book is WoR, for the simple reason that my name is in the acknowledgments. If the criteria is less subjective, though, my favorite book would be one of these three: WoK, Mistborn, or Warbreaker.