Arraenae

If you noticed, I've been RPing Nicki as a Thug since before this game started.

Pewter helps a lot.

Nicki ran through the night, swift as a hawk. Mist swirled around her, covering her like a white blanket. The ash-stained walls, broken windows, and scrabbly brown plants all blurred together into a monochromatic mass. Nicki ran. She dodged over piles of trash and uneven cobblestones with ease, and leapt over roadblocks like they didn’t exist. It was so peaceful here, just her and the path she chose. Nicki could almost imagine that she was back in Luthadel, on one of her daily runs with her father. Even before Nicki had Snapped, she’d been faster than him, so she always took the long route so they could finish at the same time in the Fountain Square. After Nicki had Snapped, she’d sprint through the long route twice so they could still finish at the same time. Now that Nicki’s father was an Inquisitor, he was just as fast as she was. Faster, even. Nicki shook herself out of her thoughts. She didn’t have time to be sentimental tonight. She had a mission, and she needed to complete it before anybody would be awake to object. Nicki recognized a building with a spear stuck on top -- some Survivor’s Church, according to Rin. She turned left. Then she turned left again. The graveyard of Tyrian Falls was larger than she’d expected. It was at least double the size of a normal ornamental garden, with headstones everywhere. Most of them were white, so they blended in with the mist. Nicki groaned. She had to search through all of this? Just for a body? She’d be better off murdering a skaa. Still, Rin had seemed a little weird when Nicki suggested the idea, so the people here must be very attached to their skaa. Nicki crouched down and read the name on the nearest headstone. Nicki’s fingers brushed the marble. It was cold and wet with condensation. “Baron von Piffertiff the Third, the one percent,” it said. Some sort of Noble? Nicki moved on to the next headstone. “Maill,” the next headstone read. “Our Beloved Cobbler. Dead, but not Gone.” “The Amazing Wyrm,” said another headstone. “Surprisingly mediocre.” “Clancy the Twice Spiked,” said a fourth headstone. “Still looking for his blood.” Nicki frowned. Spiked? Was he part of whatever conspiracy was blackmailing her father to serve as an Inquisitor? Nicki would have to research this Clancy. “Herwynbe, faithful Terris steward,” said yet another headstone. Nicki paused at this one. Wasn’t there a Herwynbe steward here? Maybe the Nobles here liked repetitive names. It wouldn’t be that surprising. Nicki had known some Terrisman breeders who named all of their Terrismen the same thing. The Herwynbe commemorated by this headstone was probably an ancestor of the current Herwynbe. “Wyra, ever argumentative,” the next headstone said. “El.” “Rent the thief (good riddance!).” “Kassien Estvaril, apothecary. Died too soon.” “Gidomara Grae, who couldn’t procrastinate on death.” “STINK, a talking horse.” “Our Panda Jain.” “Unknown, Origins Unknown.” Nicki almost walked past the headstone she was looking for. “Kip Pikker, good-looking even in death.” She stopped and then walked back. There it was. She flared Pewter and then began to dig. The ground yielded easily to Nicki’s hands. She scooped up clod after clod of dirt and tossed it to the side. The ground was cold and hard, but Nicki didn’t mind. The warmth of Pewter in her gut warded her from the discomfort of the dirt. Nicki had dug through worse before in the slums of Luthadel. Finally Nicki’s hands hit something hard. Wood. She cleared out the area around it, then started to pull. Nicki grunted with effort. Finally, Pikker’s coffin slid out of the earth. Nicki stomped on the coffin’s cover. The glossy wood shattered under her foot, and she stepped on something hard. Nicki removed her foot and began to break the wood. She cracked the wood, ripped out nails, and pulled off boards. After a few minutes of dismantling, Pikker’s body was fully exposed to the night, ready to be taken back. Death had not been kind on Pikker’s looks. His body was already beginning to swell, and his eyes protruded out of his head. Some parts of his skin were already a sickly shade of green. Nicki gagged at the smell. She tried flaring Pewter, but Pikker’s body still smelled as awful as before. By Lord Ruler, had she really planned to take this thing back to Rin’s shop? Nicki took a deep breath and immediately retched at the smell. Then she grabbed Pikker’s body and dumped it into the bag she’d brought. Nicki ran back to Rin’s shop as fast as she could. This time, she took the shortest route she could, to distract herself from the rotting corpse slung over her back. Before long, Nicki had reached the metallurgist’s shop. She pushed her way through the door and the room she’d taken over from Rin. Nicki opened the bag. She tried to slide Pikker’s corpse out without touching it, but in the end she had to scoot his body along the floor so it would fit across the length of the room. It looked a little more beaten up from Nicki’s run, but at least it was in one piece. Finally, Nicki had a body to experiment on. She sighed in relief and accidentally got a whiff of Pikker’s corpse. Nicki retched and ran out the door to find a place to vomit in peace.

Well crem. Looks like Dalinar wasn't lying. If any Coinshots out there feel up to it, he should be open to attack now, if he doesn't get protected again. Or you could go for the person with the next most votes, Herowannabe. Or go for the person you're most suspicious of.

Oh, maybe this is because the elims want to protect themselves (besides you, if you're an elim). Maybe one of their own members gathered a lot of suspicion and they wanted to protect that member. Drake also called for Stick's death by Coinshot -- they could have chosen to protect Stick. The elims might have thought that protecting you is in their best interests, but it certainly wasn't their only option. @Elbereth, Silverblade, Droughtbriger, Sart, and Orlok, I don't remember any of you posting anything inthread today. Please try to say something, so we know that you haven't died in your sleep. Mentions aren't working for me, so I'd appreciate anyone who could mention these people.

You know what? Dalinar. If he's an elim, then he has every reason to lie about having pewter. Besides, pewter protects from one attack, not an infinite amount. If he does have pewter and survives this lynch, then our lovely coinshot can attack him again, or perhaps choose a different target that they think is an elim. (I hope the one who attacked him last Night was a coinshot, at least.)

Alright Stink. Updated. (If you can't read my handwriting that's your issue. :P)

I'm pretty sure you know that in-game "village" means Not Spiked. Matilda-speak is one thing, but calling a player village when you have no reasonable way to know that is another thing. Also, if anybody is interested, here's my visual summary of D1. Orange lines are votes, blue lines are defenses. If anybody can get anything useful from that, kudos to you.

Madagascar said this D1 after Wonko voted on Headshot. How the storms does Madagascar know that this is Headshot's first time as a villager?

I was going to explain my reasoning for voting on Lopen more in depth yesterday, but I couldn't find the time. (Do you know how annoying it is to have a parent following you around and asking what you're typing as you desperately try to type a coherent thought on a phone? It's even worse than when that same parent is hovering over your computer at home, too.) I've had a bad gut read on Lopen since D1, when he immediately echoed what I said about Dalinar and then voted for him. I've also gotten a slight good gut read from my D1 PM with Lopen, but I don't trust my PM reads as much. Lopen's surety about a Spiked lurcher protecting Dalinar was what tipped me into thinking that he's probably Spiked. I'm still not certain that Lopen is Spiked, but I thought that voting on Lopen was better than rehashing everything I said about Dalinar D1. Will look at this thread more closely after lunch.

Lopen. You know for sure that the Spiked lurcher protected Dalinar and not Stick? I wonder how you learned that. Perhaps from the Spiked doc?

I think Lopen's theory about Kipper is a little too convoluted. Yeah, maybe they thought Kipper was a seeker, but maybe they wanted to go for someone with a smaller chance of being protected. Or maybe they wanted someone with no strong positions on anything.

One thing that seems far more likely is that the elims have a lurcher. They could have saved Dalinar either because he is Spiked or because they wanted to make him look Spiked. Does this remind anyone of the N1 attack on Wilson? If (and this is a big if) the person who protected Wilson was an elim who also protected Dalinar, the only conclusive thing we can say is that the elim team is an intelligent one. That said, I think Dalinar is still worth probing, for the reasons I mentioned earlier. Can anybody give me a vote tally of before the HH vote switcheroo 30 minutes before rollover, during the HH switcheroo, and after the switcheroo, at rollover?

So Dalinar was attacked and protected, as he predicted. Lovely. Kipper seems more likely to be the elim kill.

Nicki pounded on the door. "Sharpe!" she called. "Are you here? Stop ignoring me!" Like before, nobody answered. Nicki continued pounding on Sharpe's door. Why wasn't he answering? Was he ignoring her? The door began to buckle under Nicki's fist, but she kept knocking. Something cracked. The wood under Nicki's fist splintered. She stopped knocking. "I'm tired of knocking," Nicki yelled. " Answer me before I break down your door!" No response. Nicki sighed and took a few steps back. She brought her right leg back and brought her hands up to her face, the way her father had taught her. Then she turned and kicked Sharpe's door. The door flew off its hinges and crashed into the floor. Something behind the door shattered. Tiny wooden splinters floated in the air. It mixed with the ash that drifted through the now-open doorframe. Nicki peered into Sharpe's house. "Hello?" she asked. Nothing. Nicki walked in the door and surveyed the room. It was empty, except for a few pieces of furniture. A small table stood in the center of the room. Sharpe wasn't here. Nicki snorted. He should have at least put up a sign, so she wouldn't have had to kick down his door. She looked through Sharpe's desk, which was filled with newspapers and documents. Nicki found pen half-tucked under a stack of handwritten notes. She took it and wrote a note on a mostly clean sheet of paper: Nicki put the note on the table and then left. Hopefully Sharpe would find her note soon.

Why are PMs closed? Madagascar, who asked for you to make a tie on Dalinar?

Has Assassin spoken at all in this game?

I remember one time when I was frantically searching for my eraser. I looked all over the classroom for about five minutes and got very panicked. Then I realized I'd been holding it in my hand all along. Or, maybe you could write the other episodes of that adventure... It might not be the same as what Brandon would write, but at least you'd be filling the gap with something.

Sart, can you put a translation of your posts? I can't understand anything you're saying. The door didn't open, so Nicki pounded on it again. "Sharpe!" She called. "I have a case for you. It's about the man who was killed. Sharpe! Are you listening? I've got a case!"

If you're village, I can understand your reasoning. It's very tempting to sit back and let the better players do all the accusations for you. Even better if you wait for a seeker, who is confirmed to get the right results. The issue with this line of thought is that the seeker might not exist. Or they might be Spiked. Or they might have a string of bad luck and keep on hitting people who are Smoked. Meanwhile, the elims will continue to kill the villagers, one every cycle. The number of elims will stay the same and the number of villagers will drop. Yes, a Seeker, if one exists, could be accurately identify the elims. The problem is that waiting for them is too slow and leads to a game of follow-the-cop. So everybody has to step up and say something. It's true that your vote isn't particularly likely to land on an eliminator. But that's true for everyone else. The way you find an slim (without a Seeker) is through analysis. Lots of it. When you post your analysis, you generate more analysis. And then others will have more things to analyze. They'll react to your analysis, which in turn will give you more information for your own analysis. Analysis begets analysis begets analysis. And analysis is how we catch elims. I know it can be scary to accuse people, but it's the best way to find the elims. Sometime you have to threaten people a little bit to make them speak. Then you can decide if it's worth pursuing that suspicion or not. In this case, I'm starting to lean towards you being a villager. I'm not sure I like how certain people, such as Lopen, have reacted to this. I'll take a look at your stuff and decide before rollover.

Nicki jogged through the streets of Tyrian Falls, trying to gather her thoughts. Her clothes were still stained with the man's blood, but she didn't mind. She'd dealt with worse before. Her feet hit the ground in a repetitive pitter-patter, creating a relaxing drumbeat that drowned out the rest of the world. The man who died had said not to trust those pierced with metal. He had known something about Inquisitors. What else had he said? Something about not being controlled? Someone had tried to silence him with the spike, and the man had pulled it out, unaware that doing so would just unplug the wound and hasten his death. The man must not have known very much about first-aid. Nicki snorted. The spike was an odd weapon, but it had done its job. Nicki might be able to use it to find the man's murderer. From there, she might be able to find why someone had wanted to keep this man from speaking. The man had also mentioned something called Ruin. He'd talked about control, something about not being controlled by ruin anymore. Was it a codename of sorts? It didn't seem like a conventional skaa thieving crew's name. But Nicki had only ever worked with the thieving crews in Luthadel, so maybe the names were different here. Perhaps the man had been part of Ruin and then tried to leave life as a thief. That would explain why he'd been killed. Maybe this Ruin was also coercing Inquisitors such as Nicki's father? Nicki recognized a streetsign from the informant's description and slowed down. She had arrived. She stopped and then looked around. Wyl Sharpe's place was in one of the grimier parts of town. The walls and street were covered with ash, and the windows looked like they hadn't been cleaned in years. This was the place where the famous detective Wyl Sharpe worked? He needed to hire a servant. Nicki reread the streetsign. She was in the right place, at least. Now she had to see if the detective was would be willing to take her case. Or if he would be worth the money to hire him. Nicki took out the spike in her pocket and knocked on the door.

I'm suspicious of most of the people voting on Conquestor. It seems weird to bandwagon on an inactive on the first Day. It can be difficult to tell who is truly inactive and who is just stuck with a bad schedule if you wait less than 24 hours to call them an inactive. If any of the people voting on Conquestor -- Len, Madagascar, Sart, and Dalinar -- are found to be elims, we should take a look at people who had a lot of votes around that time. At this point in the game, voting on someone for being inactive is meaningless. Anybody can vote on an inactive without having to put much reasoning. Dalinar's post was very non-committal. He said that he thought I wasn't suspicious -- after I already clarified what I meant with the actives/inactives thing. Next, he said he didn't see the reason for lynching Nyali. Then he claimed suspicion of Nyali. He also claimed suspicion of Lopen and Arinian for voting on Nyali. Finally, he votes on Conquestor as a poke vote. Dalinar looks like he's contributing, but he's not saying anything meaningful. If he thinks that Nyali is suspicious, why not lynch her? If he finds Lopen and Arinian suspicious for voting on Nyali, doesn't this mean that Nyali probably isn't an elim? I find Dalinar suspicious for his lack of commitment to a certain suspicion. He seems like an elim trying to fly under the radar by talking without contributing. Can anybody tell me how many games Dalinar has played?

Alright, turns out I got mobile access. Let's see how much stuff I can cram into here before my lunch ends. Nyali, Bugsy, and Magestar, I'm flabbergasted that you thought that I was telling the lurchers to protect inactives because actives are unimportant. Yeah, of course this is part of my master plan to make actives (and I consider myself in this category) die early on. Of course I want to make this game turn into LG28, where around a half of the players were inactive. I just love hearing players and spectators tear their hair out over the lack of activity. Geez. What sort of person do you think I am? An elim who somehow doesn't think saying inactives are more important than actives would raise the alarm, someone who wants to have all the fun sucked out of the game along with the actives? Nyali, I suggested that Soothers cancel lone poke votes because the village also benefits from having an idea what our lynch margins must be if we want to be certain. Besides, a soother changing poke votez is one not changing the lynch results. In early cycles, I want the lynch to be certain. If someone changes who is lynched, we don't know if an elim did it to mindgame us, to save a teammate, or if a villager did it. Will post more later. Lunch is over.

Sorry for not being able to respond sooner -- I had computer access but couldn't sneak in a post with the teachers and tablemates watching. I meant protect actives over inactives. Actives get targeted earlier. Inactives are kind of useless. Sorry for making the wording unclear -- I was already 30 minutes over my normal computer time limit. Also, I'm interested in knowing what roles there are this game. I realize that most games I don't express much interest in role strategy, but I decided to give it a shot. I likely won't have computer access until around 7-8 PM PST, so please mention me if you have any specific questions.

I think one thing we can safely assume is that Wilson was picked for a reason. It seems unlikely that a group of people would use the RNG machine and land on her. Thus, the elim team this year probably isn't composed entirely of newbies. They selected her for a reason, which implies that there's probably at least one experienced player on the elim team. There's a slight chance that a group of complete newbies picked Wilson because she's a mod and therefore must be good, but I think it's pretty unlikely.