Amanuensis

Ap the Apprentice The crowd moved the way water moves when the dam breaks — all at once, without negotiation, and entirely indifferent to what was in the way. The Apprentice was in the way. She went sideways before she went down, carried by a shoulder she never saw into a gap between a vendor's cart and the stone base of a banner post, and she pressed herself flat against it and held on while the plaza emptied itself of everyone who had, ten minutes ago, been singing. A Goron child ran past without his parents, crying in the high helpless way that meant he'd been crying long enough to forget why he'd started. Two Zora women held each other's hands and moved in careful lockstep, refusing to be separated. A man in a paper crown sat on the ground near the stage looking at the sky with an expression of someone doing very complicated arithmetic. Another explosion, north and close, and the crowd surged again and took the banner post with it. The Apprentice ducked under the falling pole, came up in open space, and ran. The Clock Tower was right there. It was always right there — you could not lose it if you tried. She used it the way her grandfather had taught her to use it: keep it in the corner of your eye and it'll keep you honest about where you are. She moved against the flow, which meant she moved badly, taking elbows and shoulders and once a full-handed shove from a man who wasn't looking at her and didn't stop to check, and she went down on one knee on the cobblestones and felt the skin go and didn't stop either. The shop door was open. Not ajar. Open, the way a door goes open when someone doesn't care about closing it behind them. The bell above it was ringing without pause, knocked senseless by the constant jostle of the frame. She stopped in the doorway because her grandfather was not in his chair. He was not behind the counter. He was on the far side of the room with his back to the wall and a blade at his throat, held there by a man in a linen robe the color of old cream, wearing a mask — all of them were wearing masks — Link's face in painted wood, the flat heroic calm of it wrong in every possible way on every one of them. She counted four. One with the sword. Three moving through the shelves with sacks, pulling masks from their hooks with the brisk efficiency of people who had done this before or had practiced doing it in their heads until it felt the same. Her grandfather's eyes found her in the doorway. He did not call out. He did not move. He looked at her with the particular expression he used when he was conveying a great deal of information through the fewest possible signals, the expression she'd spent eleven years learning to read, and what it said now was: go. She did not go. She had a wooden sword, which she was aware was a wooden sword. She was also aware that she was small and that the men in the room were not, and that surprise was the only advantage she had and it was already burning down like a candle. She did not think about this for very long. She had her grandfather's habit of moving first and accounting for it later. She came through the door low and fast and hit the nearest looter behind the knee with everything she had. It was not a skilled blow. It was not a clever blow. It connected mostly because he wasn't looking and because she aimed for the joint the way her grandfather had once told her joints were where even big things came apart. He went down sideways with a grunt and she was already past him, and something hit the floor and she looked and saw it and stopped. The Deku Mask. She knew it the way she knew every mask in the shop — by its hook, its placard, the particular angle at which it sat. She knew this one by the way her grandfather had once paused in front of it for a long time without speaking, the way he only paused in front of things with weight. One of the Hero's masks. Thirty-three years on its hook, though only for show, not sale. She snatched it from the floor without breaking stride and ran for the back corridor, the one behind the false shelf she'd discovered at age six and her grandfather had pretended not to notice ever since. She heard them coming after her. She pressed herself into the dark of the corridor and looked at the mask in her hands. The painted eyes were closed. The wood was old and warm and lighter than it should have been, the way things are sometimes lighter than they look, and she felt something from it that she could not name — not magic exactly, or not only magic, but the accumulated weight of having been worn by someone who had needed it badly and used it well. She thought about the actor-hero on the stage with his prop-ocarina and his shaking arm. She put the mask on. The world tilted. She had been told, in the abstract, what transformation felt like, the way you're told what falling feels like before you fall. The telling does not cover it. She came up on the other side smaller and lower to the ground and made of something that was not quite what she'd been made of a moment ago, her arms different, her center of gravity relocated somewhere in her middle, her mouth full of something that tasted like still water and old wood and the particular readiness of a drawn bow. She stepped out of the corridor. The first bubble she spun up from somewhere in her chest and sent into the nearest robe — he went stiff and stumbled backward into a shelf, and a cascade of smaller masks rattled down around him. The second one she aimed lower on the next man over and caught him at the shin, which was perhaps less effective but caused him to drop his sack and swear, and she was already spinning — the spin came naturally, like something the body remembered that she hadn't known it knew — and the rotation knocked him into the counter. Two down. One turning toward her with his hands out, crouching, trying to find her eyeline now that she was the height of a child's knees. She shot him in the face. He sat down. She turned to the one with the sword and her grandfather and stopped. He hadn't moved. The blade was still there, and his arm was still steady, and behind the Link mask his eyes were watching her with something that was not surprise. He had waited while his companions fell. He had let her work. That meant he had wanted to see what she'd do, which meant he'd known something was coming, which meant— "Well," he said. She knew the voice. She was certain she knew it. It moved through her the way a song moves through you when you hear it in a different room — present but misplaced, the melody clear and the context wrong. She reached for it and couldn't find it, like a word that vanishes the moment you look directly at it. "That's one the Hero's mask," he said. Not a question. He tilted his head with what might have been appreciation. "And here I thought we'd already found the most interesting ones in this shop tonight." His free hand moved to her grandfather's shoulder — almost gently, the way you hold something you're willing to damage. "Come out, little scrub. Drop the mask. And perhaps the old man keeps his voice for more stories." The Apprentice held very still. Her grandfather's eyes found her again across the ruined shop, past the scattered masks and upended shelves and the men sitting on the floor. His expression had changed. It said something different now, something she was still learning to read, something that had more words in it than she had years. Outside, the explosions continued their irregular conversation with the dark. New RP Side Quest The Happy Mask Salesman's shop is being looted by a group of men in robes and matching Link Masks. Ap the Apprentice needs help saving him! Ah, yes. So every cycle it resets. Postman can theoretically earn a total of 48 extra rupees per loop, or 96 total across the game, assuming they get the Postman's Hat twice. As stated in the Rules, you cannot bid for a Mask you owned in the previous Loop (staggered only)

Day 1-A had no execution, but MoMs can kill tonight.

LG110, Night 1-A: A Terrible Fate, Indeed... Night 1-A will end on Saturday, February 21st @ 10:00 PM EST. The last customer of the evening was a Goron who had wandered in from the North Gate smelling of snowmelt and celebration, turning every mask over in his great stone hands with the careful reverence of someone who had never held anything so small and fragile in his life. He bought a painted bear with a gap-toothed grin, tucked it under one arm like a clutch purse, and ambled out into the early evening with a rolling contentment that made the bell above the door laugh twice. The Apprentice watched him go and then turned to find her grandfather already watching her. "Go," he said. "I haven't finished the inventory—" "It will be here in the morning." He settled into his chair behind the counter, the one with the cushion she'd stitched for him two birthdays ago, now flattened to a disc of good intentions. "The inventory is not going anywhere. The show, however—" He tilted his head toward the window, where the orange light of a setting sun was beginning to gild the edges of the Clock Tower's face. Somewhere beyond the glass, a drum struck up, and then another, and then a brass section that had clearly been practicing all afternoon and was now absolutely certain it was ready. "—is going somewhere quite specific at quite a specific time." She had her green cap on before he finished the sentence. "Eat something from the vendors," he called after her. "Not the spiced nuts. They'll give you dreams." "What kind of dreams?" she called back. "The kind that make you wake up uncertain which one was real." He opened his ledger. "Go. Shoo." She was almost to the door when she stopped and looked back at him — the white hair, the slow smile, the way he held a pen like he was composing rather than accounting — and felt a small, sudden pang she couldn't quite name. It passed. She chalked it up to the spiced nut warning and pushed out into the evening. Behind her, the bell laughed. The Happy Mask Salesman listened to it until it stopped, then glanced at the wall where a single hook hung bare above its small handwritten placard. His pen paused over the ledger. He looked away. Then, from the direction of the South Gate, came a sharp knock — not at the door but against the frame, the particular rhythm of someone who had been celebrating since noon and was now fairly certain this was the pottery shop. The Salesman sighed, set down his pen, and went to let them in. A man in a paper crown fell through the doorway and looked at the walls with an expression of pure, undiscriminating joy. "I'll take that one," the man said, pointing vaguely at everything. "Of course you will," said the Salesman, and helped the drunkard to a chair. "Let's start smaller." The plaza was a living thing. It breathed in the smells of roasted corn and candied apples and the particular honest sweat of a crowd having a genuinely good time. It exhaled music and laughter and the occasional whoop from someone who had just won something at Honey & Darling's. Banners caught the last of the daylight along East Street and turned it into something ceremonial. The Clock Tower rose above it all with its patient stone face, and beneath it — so small and bright and fizzing with energy that she could have been a firefly that had learned to walk — the Apprentice stepped into the plaza and immediately stopped to breathe it all in. The Carnival Stage had been erected opposite the Tower, a broad wooden platform draped in moon-silver cloth and lit from below by lanterns in blue and gold. It was already packed five deep on all sides. She wriggled through with the practiced efficiency of someone accustomed to small spaces and stock shelves and came out near the front just as the drum roll settled into something stately and the first actor strode onto the stage. He was young, playing older — or perhaps he was old playing young; it was hard to tell under the makeup. He wore a green tunic that had seen careful work, a pointed cap, and a little wooden shield painted gold that caught the lanternlight when he turned. The crowd applauded like they were greeting a returning friend. The Moon was out. She noticed it the way you notice something that has always been there but suddenly chooses to be noticed: a pale and enormous face gazing down from the darkening sky with an expression of absolute serenity, eyes half-lidded, neither kind nor cruel but simply watching, the way the very old watch the very young at play. The stars were already visible around it, smaller and uncertain. The Moon needed no introduction. ♩ There was a world like any other With fields and stones and bread And underneath a rolling sky A boy who wouldn't stay dead ♩ The lyrics floated out over the crowd on the voice of a woman somewhere stage left, full and clear and pitched to carry. The Apprentice felt them land in her chest like chimes. Around her, people who had heard this song every year for as long as they could remember mouthed the words without thinking. She was watching the actor-hero chase another actor across the stage — this one in a jester's costume, wild-eyed, wearing an elaborate replica of a terrible mask, all swirling purple and gold — when she noticed the Clock Ward. He was standing at the edge of the crowd, helm on despite the summer heat, watching the audience rather than the stage. Not far from him, another. And another. They were spaced around the plaza like fence posts, present and immovable and scanning. She counted seven from where she stood. She'd seen two more near the South Gate on her way in, stopping a thin man in a traveling cloak to ask for his papers. She'd heard her grandfather mention Mayor Bremor once in the same breath as the word thorough, in the same tone he used for words like loud and sharp. ♩ He played the song the world forgot He played it past the dark He wound the hours like a clock And kindled morning's spark ♩ The woman's voice reached the chorus and the crowd surged forward half a step. On stage, a man in silver Zora scales dove dramatically through a ring meant to suggest the ocean and came up with a bundle of glowing prop-eggs to thunderous approval. The Apprentice forgot about the Clock Wards entirely. Each vignette unfolded with the breathless logic of a dream: the Deku King sat upon a ridiculous throne that wobbled every time the actor playing him gesticulated, which was often; the ghost of a Goron hero materialized from a trapdoor in a gust of theatrical smoke and the crowd went very quiet for a moment, the way crowds do when something catches them somewhere unexpected. A man in a great shaggy goat costume ran in circles until he tripped over his own hooves and went down to the kind of laughter that could only mean yes, exactly, that is precisely what that felt like. A firework cracked overhead, green and gold, trailing sparks like scattered rupees. Another followed it, blue this time, blooming into the shape of the Zora's emblem before it faded. She tipped her head back and watched them burn themselves out against the Moon's pale face and felt, very specifically, that she was standing in the center of something she would want to remember. ♩ Oh, the giants heard him call They heard him from their sleep They cupped the Moon between their hands And held while people weeped ♩ A third firework, and a fourth, cascading now, each one higher than the last. The crowd cheered at each one. The actor-hero raised his ocarina. The actress-Moon on stage — a round-faced woman in silver paint who had been moving through the background of every scene with a slow and cosmic patience — turned to face the audience directly for the first time, and the crowd fell hush. The Apprentice's hand found the tin ocarina in her pocket, and she held it there without taking it out, her thumb running over the holes. ♩ They held it like a child awake from nightmares While a boy named Link climbed for the Moon Where children played beneath a peaceful sky And there, at last, the darkness met its doom ♩ He did not know how long he had been on the floor. The lantern was still burning. That meant something — not too long, then. The ledger had fallen with him and lay open on the wrong page, the pen still capped, which meant he'd put it down himself before they came through the back. He tried to be grateful for small mercies and found he was too old for it at the moment. He pulled himself up by the counter's edge, counted his teeth with his tongue out of professional habit, and stood very still until the room agreed to stop moving. The drawer. He had not opened it since the morning. He had not needed to. But he crossed the shop in three long strides — longer than he'd moved in years, which told him something about the quality of his fear — and dropped to his knees and opened it. The faded blue cloth was there. It lay flat. He pressed his hand against it and felt only the shape of the floor. He sat back on his heels. Somewhere outside, a firework went off, muffled through the walls, and the crowd cheered. The bell above the front door rang with the vibration of it. Rather than a laugh, it sounded like a whimper. Then the Happy Mask Salesman covered his face with both hands. "A terrible fate, indeed..." The finale was building. The actor-hero and the jester-Skull Kid stood at opposite ends of the stage, and between them the actress-Moon waited with her silver hands folded, and the crowd was so quiet that the Apprentice could hear the wood of the stage settling. Even the Clock Wards had turned to watch. Then the jester-Skull Kid stepped forward and held out his hand. And then a second Skull Kid dropped from the sky. There was a moment — half a breath, maybe — where the Apprentice thought it was planned. The costume was too good for it not to be: the same knobbly silhouette, the same splayed posture, but the mask was wrong. It was always wrong, the prop they used, good craftsmanship but obvious, the purple just a shade too even, the eyes a shade too dim. This one caught the lanternlight and gave it back changed — older, heavier, the color of a bruise at its worst — and the eyes were not dim at all. The jester-Skull Kid took one step backward and then sat down on the stage very suddenly, as though his legs had decided the matter without consulting him. The second one landed without a sound. The crowd murmured. Somewhere to her left, a man laughed and said something about the budget this year. Someone shushed him. The actress-Moon had stopped moving. The figure in the real mask turned to face the audience, and the Apprentice felt the tin ocarina go cold in her pocket. "Thirty-three years," it said, and the voice carried without effort, the way thunder carries — not loud exactly, but occupying all available space. "Thirty-three years you have been celebrating a story. Eating his food. Singing his songs. Teaching your children his name." It tilted its head. The mask's eyes caught no light now, or caught all of it, or both — she couldn't tell. "He is not coming back." The crowd was very still. On stage, no one moved. The actor-hero still had his prop-ocarina raised, and his arm was beginning to shake with the effort of holding it. The figure spread its arms wide, the way an actor takes a bow, and lifted slowly from the stage — not jumping, not pulled by a wire she could see, but rising — until it hung between the lanterns and the Moon's enormous face, and the Moon above seemed to lean forward, almost curious, almost eager, and the stars around it seemed to hold their light. "Let him rest. You will join him soon enough." The first explosion was not a firework. It came from the direction of the North Ward and it shook the ground through the Apprentice's feet and up through her knees and into her chest, and for one long moment the crowd simply did not understand what had happened. Then the second one came, closer, and the understanding arrived all at once and became a scream that belonged to no one person and everyone at once. The Apprentice looked up. The Moon's face, serene all evening, was beginning to change its expression. Slowly. The way a sleeper's face changes when the dream turns. Above the Clock Tower, the Skull Kid — the real one, the wrong one — spread its arms wider still, and laughed, and the sound of it went up and up until it was indistinguishable from the next explosion, and the next, and the screaming of the crowd that had, three minutes ago, been singing along. In her pocket, the tin ocarina offered no comfort. Alas, it was only tin. RP Quest: Become the heroes Termina needs! Save as many people as you can! The Happy Mask Salesman Player List 0 Amanuensis Happy Mask Apprentice, AKA 'Ap' 1 @The Unknown Order Heroshi 2 @Araris Valerian "Grouchy old guy (or gal)" 3 @Wahrheitswächter Wahi 4 @Ashbringer Coliver 5 @coco.pudding Amora 6 @|TJ| Cosmetica 7 @Honors Ghost meeee 8 @Haelbarde Link the Goron 9 @Wonko the Sane Zymni 10 @Doc12 Thistle 11 @Burnt Spaghetti Cindra 12 @CoderDrag0n8 Squircle 13 @Mistfallen Soldier Kieran 14 @Divergent Gor Elam the Goron 15 @Archer Ouae the Zora 16 @Hoid Slayer Avery (Foreign Cousin of Heroshi)

Day 1-A is now over. Please get a snack, a drink, and standby for Night 1-A. I am aiming for a proper write up tonight so it might take me some extra time.

~15 minutes remain the Day to get any last minute activity Rupees / submit Mask bids

Just a heads up, dropped off my coworker now and it's roughly a 15 minute ride home from here. Night is likely to be posted after 10:30 but I will be as fast as I can o7

Yeah so the 10 rupee stipend is only for the game start, you can think of it as your allowance to spend at the carnival

3.5 hours, although I will need to drive a coworker home, so the night might take a bit of extra time to go live

Sounds neat to me. I always enjoy throwing alternative votes like this into games as it makes another point of analysis

Sorry! I will set up the spec doc tonight, at work currently

You can lose 2 as long as you gain 2, but that means y'all get to do the Final Day exe

Yeah, otherwise villagers could theoretically refuse to vote anyone out to ensure the Boss Mask is won by numbers. Also the tie-breaker being value based means that RNG prioritizes the least active.

Yes, so day deaths are guaranteed no matter what (even if no one votes, the player with the least Rupee+Mask value will die). So whoever has the most votes will die. In the case of any ties, the activity value is determined first and then RNG will determine if there are vote and value ties. It would count as 2, I just ask for you to make the separation clear so there is less ambiguity for me, as you did in this post.

I think the average is closer to 3 weeks. This game is anomalously long due to the time loop nature

Approximately 9 hours and 30 minutes remain in the Day to earn Rupees with Activity and submit your Mask bids.

As for the Blast/Fierce Diety, they permanently break when used once, so no more uses period. This means if the Blast Mask goes off in one Loop, it will be unpurchasable in future loops

I should clarify that if someone managed to get 10 Rupees from the Day Turn, they would be afforded the Rupees during the Night and be able to purchase higher-tier Masks accordingly (Burnt's instincts were correct). The stock has all the Masks from the jump, the only limitation is your personal finances. This also assumes they spend no Rupees during the Day on a Blue Mask, however, as then they'd no longer have 20 for the Night.

If/when someone becomes a holder of the Postman's Hat, I will let it be known that Rupees can be spent on PMs. It's a passive effect and donned automatically unless they somehow also have the Bunny Hood (extremely unlikely), although I do suppose the owner of the Postman's Hat can *refuse* to send all PMs (no selective picks), in which case I will inform players that their message was not delivered / refund the relevant Rupees during the coinciding turnover.

So every Cycle (Day+Night), each player can earn 10 rupees. This means 30 rupees per Loop max. If you die, you'll start the next loop with 20/50/100 depending on how many times you've died. This means players who get killed once or twice will always have 10 less than the max, but players who get killed three times will have 100 in Loop 4 to spend on a Silver item (10 more than the max). In any case, players will be able to earn 10 more rupees on the first Day of a new Loop to spend during the first Night of a new Loop. Bunny Hood and Postman's Hat can help earn some extra Rupees too, but keep in mind that if you die, all your held rupees are lost (which is why you get the 20/50/100 payout upon resurrection).

Yes, sorry. Elims have 1 kill every night. Clear separation in one post is fine. That's mostly to make sure I don't accidently mistake 2 for 1. As for the moon and as of right now, it's how it normally is. Still got a face but it's not angry looking, and it's a safe distance away.

I mean, I am fairly open to allowing most anything so long as it fits within the setting. I would just say run any specific questions by me and I'll give my two cents, if you have a concern. That post was good however, no notes o7

Every dead player is resurrected each Loop. Since (assuming each kill/exe goes through and there's no extra death), 5-6 players will die each Loop, which means town will need to determine who among them is good/bad based on the winner of the Loop's Mask. In the first Loop only 1 elim needs to die for town to win the first Mask, from that point on, 2 will need to die. There will be no way to tell if 3+ die in one Loop or if the elims will use their NK to throw analysis off, however, without a deeper layer of analysis. This becomes slightly more complicated when Masks come into play.

You're perfectly okay posting here! These sign-ups will probably be locked by a mod soon but as long as non-players don't post in the actual game threads, we are good! I am glad it piqued your interest! The SE community is always searching for fresh blood to keep it alive as the veterans age out into adulthood. I hope you'll consider joining the next game, which will likely be much simpler / not have any hard limits on player count. But yes, for the most part our games are based on Sanderson works where we adapt it into a Mafia/Werewolf/Among Us type format, with RP based on the source-materials lore as well as roles/powers from the source material. This game is a rarer exception into non-Sanderson works. Economies for power distribution are on the rarer side as well (usually my staple mechanic, I like giving players a choice that is also built on active participation). Generally roles will be randomized much like alignments, however. As for RP, there are plenty of people who play strictly for the social deduction game aspects, although we do try to cultivate RP whenever we can, so no worries if you think that would hold you back.

Divergent summarized it pretty well here as well. Also, GM clarification! Someone has already asked if you can attempt to buy 2 Masks, as the Blue Tier costs 5 and everyone started with 10. I will allow this for everyone. You can set up contingencies, but only if you have the funds to set aside for each (so 5 and 5 if 10, or 20 and 5 and 50 if 80, etc). I will, however, also rule that you can only successfully get one Mask in a single Day/Night (but not a Cycle if you try both Day and Night, assuming the Mask is still in the Shop by nighttime)

1. Yes, only 1 Mask exists per Loop (no role-repeats or paradoxes here). 2. Rupees will not be spent if you do not receive the product.