Arrae

@Drake Marshall, are the Evil players Fae? Drought, I saw you posting in Discord. You're online and you have internet. Say something please, @Droughtbringer?

At this point, it looks like Wonko has the most votes. Would it be possible to take the votes off of him? I'd rather not lynch him today, because this is his first game back in a while, so he's essentially just a new player who happened to have experience in mafia games similar but not the same as out current ones. C2 we can kill him if we want, but I really don't want to have more C1 deaths of a returning player. Also, @Alvron,@Aonar Faileas, @Arinian, @Cadmium Compounder, @Droughtbringer, @Devotary of Spontaneity, @Eternum, @I think I am here., @Megasif, @Steeldancer, @Walin, @xinoehp512, none of you have put down votes. Do you have any thoughts on the game? You only have 3 no-vote free passes, and it would be a shame to waste one of them so early in the game.

Huh, why on me?

But why should I? Prodding lurkers and hearing them talk is satisfying.

Bold added for emphasis. Mind explaining this statement, Fifth? Also, could someone who's read KKC put everything they know about the Chandrian and Fae inthread under a spoiler?

@Aonar Faileas, I see you again. You're still lurking. Say something, anything, and I'll take my vote off of you. Come on.

Hey Aonar, I see you lurking. Saw you lurking three hours ago, too, and you still haven't posted anything yet. Come on, say something.

Alev sat with the rest of her squad, surrounding Yusef and Mirac around a grubby board of Tak. They watched, annoyed, as Yusef picked up one piece, considered, put it back down, and then picked up another piece. A bead of sweat rolled down his forehead. "Make your move already," Alev groaned. "We don't have all day." "Yeah Yusef," Mirac said, smirking. "We all know you're going to lose, no need to drag it out." The other members of Bravo Squad joined in the catcalls. Finally, painstakingly, Yusef reached for a black piece and moved it with trembling fingers. "That's your final move?" Mirac said. "Not as bad as I expected, but not good enough." Immediately, he moved his pieces, and the trap snapped shut. Bravo Squad watched in enthralled rapture as Mirac ruthlessly took down all of Yusef's pieces. "Hey, break it up, break it up," Omer said. Unlike the rest of them, his Lieutenant's uniform was clean, with even a hint of perfume in the sharply crisped folds. "We've been shipped to the front, men! We leave at noon, so you have two hours to pack everything up. Get moving!" The soldiers swiftly set to work, taking down the tents and folding their bedrolls. Even Yusef, slow as he was, helped Mirac pack away the Tak pieces with a newfound energy. The front, they were being shipped to the front! Alev packed her bags feeling as if a thousand butterflies had jammed themselves into her belly. She'd never killed someone before. Alev watched her squadmates, imagining them in formation, jabbing spears into a faceless enemy just as they'd been trained. The front...She could already smell the acrid tang of smoke in the air, brought by a breeze that whispered of war. Alev woke with a start. The front! She'd thought those nightmares were over. She rubbed her nose wearily, trying to get that cruelly familiar scent out of her nose, but the tang of smoke refused to go away. A bright blue light shone through the cloth of her tent. Alev frowned, and hesitantly peeled back her tent flap. Intense blue flames licked at Shreya's tent. It danced in the air, spreading faster than should be possible. Hoarse screams sounded from under the hiss and crackle of the flames. For a heartbeat, all Alev could do was stare at the fire, beautiful in the way Mirac had destroyed Yusef so, so easily, despite all his careful consideration. Then Alev sprang to her feet to fetch a bucket.

Yay! Drake's back!

I wish I could sign up, but I don't want to be in two games at once. I'll take a link to the spec doc.

Aha! Caught you, Fifth! Using my mystical powers of deduction, I have concluded you must be a namer, or in contact with one. Hands up and freeze!

Oi! I at least had some reasoning in my post. You had nothing. You're the true bandwagoner here, Drought.

Drake! @Bort, it's the quiet ones you gotta watch out for now And our GM's been nothing but quiet.

*sees Bard's post *checks the countdown timer I think Drake is going to be very happy at all the redistributing he needs to do...

Yay! You're joining!

After the troupe broke for camp, Alev moved to a secluded clearing to practice her juggling. She didn’t like being this far from the others, especially as the sun was slipping below the horizon, but she couldn’t risk anybody getting hurt. She glanced at the spindly black trees, then tried to push the image out of her mind. A forest was a forest, and as long as the ground was relatively flat it shouldn’t matter for her practice. Alev reached into her pouch and brought out three wooden machetes. The edges were blunted, of course. With no moon to light the area, she didn’t dare use anything other than her practice swords. She took a deep breath, then began juggling. It started out slow, at first. Then, as she warmed up, she sped up and added a few tricks -- a toss from under her leg here, an especially high throw there. Her fingers flew, faster and faster, barely a blur in the night. To an outside observer, it would have seemed as if the wooden blades bobbed and weaved of their own volition. A sudden breeze blew against Alev’s skin, cold and biting. Her concentration slipped. A machete smacked onto her palm, handle first, then fell onto the forest floor. Alev snatched back her hand, swearing, and let the other machetes drop to the ground. She checked her finger, where a small purple bruise was already blossoming. Alev swore even harder. Evidently, she shouldn’t juggle at night, when she could barely see her blades. She didn’t feel like practicing any longer, so she picked up the swords and headed back to the now-lit campfire. As she walked back, the wind brushed past her, and she could almost hear the sound of a low chuckle in it. Edit: in case it's not clear, sign me up as Alev! I should have more time this week, I hope...

What if the islands were disks floating around a pole attached to the ground, like this? It might not have the same look, but the islands would still be technically unattached.

I'm banning myself from signing up until AP tests are over, so if I do, it'll be Wednesday afternoon at earliest.

I want to sign up, but I have APs coming up. I might be able to play this if signups were extended another week, though.

Rand, I lend you my metaphorical pen, for both essay-writing and storytelling. Just don't use it for defenses, it's pretty much useless for those

This strikes me as something interesting, and maybe the root of the issue here. I'd have thought that it would be fairly easy to recognize that they're not a regular and recurring player if only because we're not familiar with their name and profile pic. Since clearly that's not what happened with Bort, it shows that we're measuring newness by some other metric: uncertainty in posts and less logical analysis. Most newbies take a few cycles of watching to catch on, and we know that most of what happens before that is flailing around in the dark, so we're more forgiving if they accidentally whack someone in the head. But we're also less likely to consider players who don't flail to be new. Take the AG4, for example, where a lot of people doubted that Fifth Scholar (Ivory Dragonfly) was new. He seemed like he knew what he was doing, despite proclaiming his inexperience, so how could he be new? Turned out that he'd just read previous games before, so he had an idea of how things were supposed to go. At the same time, Fifth made several mistakes more common to newbies, such as trusting people just because they roleclaimed. It seems obvious to any regular and recurring player, but usually it's something that has to be learned firsthand. I think returning players fall into a similar gap. They've played SE before, so they mostly know how things are supposed to go. That means less flailing, so we don't recognize them as new. However, they won't know some things that are obvious to regular and recurring players, and will make mistakes that offend the sensibilities of our current meta, because they don't know what our current meta is. But we judge them as if they do. That's where our problem lies: returning players lack the markers of obviously new players, so they don't trigger the protective instincts we reserve for newbies. That leads to us treating them like regular and recurring players when they lack the ability and knowledge base of current regular and recurring players. I don't know if there's a solution beyond pointing out that they're returning, not recurring. Still, that seems like a good place to start.

Wow, thanks for all of the nominations, but I think I'll have to withdraw from this. AP tests and finals are coming up soon, and my summer schedule is still in a flux. I wouldn't feel comfortable representing our community when I don't know when I'll be available.

Oh hush, Steel