Arraenae

Some tips for the various roles we have: Stay alive and be more active. The elims can't kill you as easily, so you have every reason to speak up more. An active villager that needs two hits to kill is a fantastic villager. If we have a tineye in here, please send a message to the GM so we know how many of you there are. Try to include something that you can later use to identify yourself with later. One thing you can use is a vignere cipher. You would put in something like "IAMRAE" repeated over and over again, cutting off at a random letter. You'd use a key to change it to ciphertext. Then, if you ever need to confirm your role to someone, you can just PM them the ciphertext. Unless you have good reason to suspect that there is rampant emotional allomancy, it's probably not a good idea to Smoke people. This can interfere with scans, something that benefits the eliminators a lot. If you do think that there is elim emotional allomancy, you should prioritize those who are voting for people at a tie or near a tie. The elims will probably care most about close votes, either because a teammate is on the line or because they just want to mess with the village. You have a better shot at blocking vote manipulation if you Smoke the people the elims will want to target. Seeker. If you exist, you have a very, very powerful role. Thus, it's in your best interests to stay alive for as long as possible. Only roleclaim to people you have scanned as village. Find a way to announce your scans publicly. Whoever acts as your spokesperson will probably be targetted by the elims, unless they get protection. If you can find a Tineye and work with them, that would be great. Unfortunately, if you ever out yourself as a seeker, I'll want to kill you near the end of the game to confirm that you aren't an elim. Sorry. Try not to kill people unless you have a strong suspicion that they're an elim. If not, it's probably not a good idea to randomly kill people. If by the third cycle you have nobody to kill, then you can go for inactives who have been silent or near silent without giving an explanation. Obviously, don't attack people if they've said that they're going to be inactive because of RL circumstances. In the early cycles, the people who contribute a lot tend to be offed most often. Active villagers are more useful than inactive villagers, so you probably shouldn't bother protecting them. Later on, protect the people you trust. Soother, please try not to meddle with the vote in the early cycles unless you know that this person is an elim or that person is a villager. Votes are very useful for analysis, but if they've been messed around by a Soother, it's harder to analyze them. Village and elim soothes look the same on a vote tally comparison. If possible, please try to soothe an unimportant vote (such as a lone poke vote) so we know you exist. Same as the soother, please try not to meddle with the vote in early cycles. You don't have to change an unimportant vote to let us know you're there, because that'll cancel out your own vote, which is a very powerful tool. Please read through the above. I didn't type all of that at the expense of homework time for nothing, you know. On paper, you're the most useless. You have no abilities, just your brains and whatever notes you take. In reality, however, you're very important. There are lots of things that you can look for, such as faulty logic, people voting in blocks, changes in behavior, defense of known elims, ignoring the existence of certain players, and much more. Make sure to read up on past cycles as well as the current one to compare information. For example, if Meta defended Alvron and Alvron turned out to be an elim, you should take a closer look at Meta. Was Meta just a hapless villager, or was Meta an elim trying desperately to save his buddy from death? Sudden inactivity with no explanation is another thing to look for. If Amanuensis is an experienced player who has only ever been village and this game suddenly starts lurking, you should wonder what's going on. Sometime new elims go silent because they can't think of what to say. Additionally, try to make sure that your vote is on someone by the end of the Day. Try to include a reason with it. You don't need a rock solid reasoning -- maybe you just don't like that person's tone. Maybe they feel off. Gut can be more accurate than you think. When more people vote, it's easier for the village to analyze, so it's easier for the village to win. Make sure to vote if you want a village victory.

Just to let everyone know, nowadays blue text is for OOG stuff, not OOC stuff. For example: Did anyone see Moana? Is it worth seeing in theaters? or I live in the PST timezone so please don't lynch me for not responding to something at 3 AM my time. Blue text is supposed to be truthful, since it's not gametalk. If someone says in bluetext that they have to be low activity for this or that reason, it's truthful. If someone wants to show non-RP talk, purple text would be better. If something is in purple, people won't mix it up with OOG bluetext.

“You,” the man hissed. He pulled something out of his chest and held it in the air. “You can no longer control me!” As the village watched, the man’s breaths grew labored. Blood poured from his chest, spilling onto the ground below in a pool of red. Nicki shoved her way through the crowd and ran to the man’s body. This man had information! She had to get to him! She knelt down and grabbed him by the shoulders. “What do you mean by not trusting those pierced by metal?” she demanded. “ WHAT DO YOU KNOW?” The man’s mouth moved, but Nicki couldn’t hear what he said. She put her ear close to his lips and tried to tune out the murmuring of the crowd. “They’re coming…” the man whispered. “The koloss… koloss… coming…” The whispers died down into an incoherent mumble. “Koloss…” the man finally wheezed out. Then he stopped speaking. Nicki turned to stare at the man’s face. Sightless eyes stared back at her. “WHAT DO YOU KNOW?” she screamed out. “Tell me!” She shook his dead body again, as if the man would come back to life and speak the secrets of the cosmere. He didn’t. Nicki demanded. She begged. She pled. She yelled. She cajoled. She screamed. She threatened. She slapped his dead cheeks and shook his dead body so violently that his head whipped back and forth. The man’s blood stained her shirt and trousers, but she didn’t care. Finally, she set the man’s body on the ground and sobbed. This man had known something about those pierced by metal. He’d known something about Inquisitors. He’d known something about her father. If Nicki hadn’t been such a selfish brat and taken a nap before coming into the town square, she would have information to help her father with. But she had taken a nap, and the opportunity had slipped from her fingers. Nicki wiped her tears with the back of her hand. She couldn’t fall apart here. She still might be able to gain information from the man’s body. She opened the man’s hand and took the object the man had ripped from his chest. It was covered with blood. She wiped it off with her sleeve, and saw a glint of silver. It was a metal spike. The murder weapon? Nicki wiped off the rest of the blood, then pocketed the spike. "Who was he?" Nicki asked. "I need to know who he was."

Pregame warning: I'm still trying out that new Playstyle. You can expect me to react more quickly and strongly to accusations, and be more aggressive with suspicions. I'm also going to mostly separate RP and gameplay. Nicki is Nicki. Rae is Rae. (The important distinction is that Nicki's suspicions are not my suspicions. Also, Nicki is slightly loopy.)

"I'll do it," the man said. "As long as I get to come along." Of course not. The metallurgist was annoying and asked far too many questions. He gave Nicki a headache just by talking. But he had information. Information about Inquisitors that Nicki could use. "Fine," Nicki said. "Tell me everything you know." Nicki sat down. She propped her head up on her hands and forced herself to sit up despite her pounding headache. She couldn't stop. Not now. Not after she'd found her most solid lead in years.

In collaboration with Doc Nicki was on the verge of collapse when she finally saw the shop. A place to buy metals. She had to get there. She ignored the sputterings of her last bit of pewter and ran towards the shop. If she got… another vial of pewter… she’d be fine… mostly. Nicki almost threw herself onto the door. She leaned against it for a few moments, panting in exhaustion. She’d never ran for so long on pewter alone before. Once she regained her breath, she opened the door. Inside was a dark room, with a dim light revealing a man behind a countertop and a shelf full of vials. Finally, she could get more pewter. Nicki walked over to the countertop and waited for the man’s attention. When it became clear that he wasn’t aware of her presence, Nicki tiredly pounded the wooden countertop a few times. “I need… pewter” Nicki gasped out. By the Lord Ruler, she could feel the headache already. It felt like someone was pounding on her head with a mallet. The man - almost a boy, really, did not seem too perturbed at her crashing into his shop. He put down his book, chose a vial from the shelf and tossed it to her. Nicki caught the vial and downed it greedily. She burned the pewter, and its warmth chased away her headache and exhaustion. Her pewter was taken care of. Now Nicki needed to get supplies for her experiments. Now that she’d seen her father up close, she needed to diagram the physical changes. The first thing she had to do was figure out where the spikes were --she needed to know whether it would hurt her father to take the spikes out. The spikes seemed like the Lord Ruler’s claim on the Inquisitors, and Nicki’s father couldn’t live a normal life with spikes through his eyes. And how did those spikes get in there? Had they grown from his flesh? Focus, she told herself. Diagram first. How many spikes had her father had? Ten, fifteen? Better to go with fifteen. “I need 15 spikes, in the cheapest metal you can give me. Can you do that?” she asked the man. He disappeared into a backroom. Did that… did that mean he was going to do it? To help her? She didn't know what to think when he returned from the room with a mug and a loaf of bread, setting it before her. Casually, he leaned back against the counter. “Am I to understand that my humble shop has been graced with the presence of a Mistborn? Or some… poor theorizer who wants to be an inquisitor?” Wonderful. The man wanted some conversation. Nicki felt her headache coming back again at the prospect. “Does it matter?” Nicki said, exasperated. “Can you do that or not?” She reached for the bread. The food tasted glorious after days of nothing but pewter. He raised an eyebrow. Quickly, he moved to a drawer and brought out a lump of metal. As she watched, he pushed it into a furnace. Drawing it our, he hammered it. Quickly, efficiently, no strike wasted. Then he tempered it in water. Then he repeated the process. The process took five minutes, and there was now a perfect copper spike gleaming in his hand. “metals, I can provide. Even unusual requests. Spikes, though. What would your want with spikes, girl?” By the Lord Ruler, Nicki felt like the man was trying to make her headache come back. She didn’t have the energy to chat right now. Maybe coming here was a bad idea. She stayed silent as she munched on the bread. Once she was done with the food, she answered. “It doesn’t matter what I'm using these for,” Nicki said. “You make the spikes. I pay. You don’t ask me annoying questions. I don’t do anything I regret. Can you understand that?” Now he was smiling. A tugging of the lips, a smirk. “A threat?" He asked. He paused. “You're no Inquisitor, ” he finally said. “No Mistborn, either. What you are, then, is someone who's fascinated by spikes. A researcher? A self-experimenter? An idiot?” He shrugged. “Either way. The spikes I give you won't be used for decoration, I suspect. Now the man was simply stating the obvious. Rusts, Nicki’s headache was killing her. She clenched and unclenched her fists. “Can you shut up?!” Nicki shouted. “I asked for eight spikes, not a conversation. If you hurry up you can have your money and I can have my ten spikes to help my father!” He fell silent, his wry smile vanishing. His voice lost that edge, becoming quieter. “Your father?” He twirled the copper spike in his hands, the one you didn't remember him taking back from you. “He's an Inquisitor, isn't he?” Nicki stood up. This man knew something. He had to. He knew her father was an Inquisitor. Maybe he knew how Inquisitors were made. Did he know that Nicki was trying to find a way to de-Inquisitize her father? Nicki flared pewter and seized the man by his forearms, pinning them to his body. She shook the metallurgist. “Tell me everything you know,” she hissed. “TELL ME!” He fell very still. Slowly, he spoke, raising his palms. “You need me alive and unhurt if you need me to forge those spikes for you, dear.” He allowed himself a slight smile. “You know something,” Nicki said. “I don’t have time to play word games. Please. My father needs this information.”

That sounds terrible, Wilson. Hopefully the rest of 2017 will be better.

Is the title supposed to be a reference to something?

I'm signing up as Nicki, a noblewoman looking for a way to de-inquisitize her father. She's in Tyrian Falls looking for metals related to Inquisitors, which is her 57th lead in six years. I'd like to have the CR of theorist, where every few posts I come up with an incredibly wrong theory about Inquisitors, how they are made, and how they relate to the Spiked.

I might be able to draw some things, but I won't be available for the rest of the month. Are these cards going to be digital or physical?

@Elims, I'm flattered that you consider me a good analyst, but I didn't want to be killed so early for it. I like these discussion games! @Hael, thanks for running this game. It was fun to play in, even if all of my reads ended up wrong.

Smirk

I liked MR17 a lot for how it encouraged RP. First, there was a cycle with no lynch in the beginning, which gave RPers time to RP and strategizers time to strategize. Strategy-loving RPers got to do both. RP takes time and effort -- first you have to create a character you want to RP with, then you have to figure out what they're going to do, and then you have to write the thing out, and then you might want to look over what you wrote and edit stuff, and maybe there's so formatting too, and if you're RPing your analysis you have to make sure your analysis makes sense, and so on, and so on. Having an entire cycle at the beginning where I didn't have to also bother with analysis was really encouraging for me to RP. Second, Aman, the GM, gave me a character prompt. MR17 was set in the world of Red Rising, which I hadn't read at the time. I decided to make a character from a world I was familiar with, Roshar, and plop them into the Red Rising world. Aman's character prompt filled out the details and also gave my character, Nyanah au Thorne, a motive for being village. Since I didn't know the world too well, this was very helpful. I was able to RP off of the prompt, which I think improved the quality of my RP that game. I'm not sure if this is a coincidence, but it was also a game where my suspicions were spot-on. The RP definitely made me more engaged with the game. MR17 was a good game for RP, and I think it should be looked at for ways to encourage RP without setting heavy-handed rules.

Wyrm, thanks for the writeup. Aon's detached calmness on the brink of death made me giggle. (I know I'm dead and this isn't related to the game in any way. I'll be a good little dead player and shut up now.)

Oh... whoops...

So, last cycle, three people were tied. One of them would be lynched at random. I think all three were villagers, because if one was an elim, wouldn't at least one of the other elims have added a vote to one of the other two villagers, rather than leaving the loss of a teammate to chance? This gives me a slight trust toward JUQ and Arinian. Other people have pointed out that maybe the other elims weren't online at the time, or they thought it was better to lose a teammate than to suspiciously tip the tie a certain way. If Nyali was an elim, it seems like this is trying to convince us that there aren't any elims in the C1 lynch. I doubt that JUQ and Arinian are elims together -- JUQ tipped the tie towards Arinian. Few eliminators in their right mind would try to bus their teammate C1 with no reasoning, so JUQ and Arinian can't be elims together. I think we would learn a lot if we lynched either one of them. Vote Tally for C1 All timestamps are in PST. Bolded lines show where new votes have been placed. 7:55 PM -12:00 AM Beginning of the game. So far everything just looks like normal pokevotes. 12:01 AM - 4:00 AM The votes spread out even more. Two votes are now on Arinian. 4:01 AM - 8:00 AM Arinian, Ecth, and Cloudjumper are now tied at two votes. Kasimir is the first person to vote on Ecth for his mention of the Five Tenets. Len also looks on Google, and calls out Ecth for mentioning the Five Tenets. 8:01 AM - 12:00 PM Cloud votes on Arinian, which breaks the three-way tie. Act of self-preservation, maybe? Then Arinian and Ecth are tied by Kynedath. Afterwards, JUQ votes on Arinian, which puts Arinian in the lead. 12:01 PM - 4:00 PM As Stick promised, once Arinian posted, she retracted her vote. Nyali votes on Ecth, which puts Ecth in the lead. The wagon on Arinian disapates a little. 4:01 PM - 8:00 PM Ecth ended in the lead, and got lynched. If Arinian is an elim, I think Len and/or Kynedath is also an elim trying to make sure he didn't die. Also, it's possible that if Nyali is an elim, she retracted because she counted the votes and realized that Ecth had so many votes that she didn't need to vote for him. We'd gain a lot of information from Arinian's death, and I think he might be an elim. Arinian. Another thing I've noticed is that Doc and Lopen both voted for Cloud and died. I think Cloud is worth watching. EDIT: whoops, Cloud is dead. If anybody else wants to analyze that, go ahead.

In one game where Ecth was an elim, Len accidentally saw Ecth's doc and had to be killed by the GM. Len and Ecth definitely have a history of at-home conflicts, but I don't know how strongly that would motivate an elim Len to want to kill his villager brother. I don't think other SE siblings have pushed for each other's deaths because of that before.

Whatever Alv's doing, he seems to be having a lot of fun doing it. I think we'd learn quite a bit from his death. Alvron.

Yep. Hardball, Part II, Chapter 7: "Leave no shot unanswered." Part of the new playstyle I'm trying. Basically says, when people say bad things about you, respond as quickly as possible. Has a fun anecdote about how not responding to George Bush's mudslinging did bad things to Michael Dukakis's political career.

Also, I can't see the relation between a sentence ending randomly and having that written in a doc. When elims copy and paste stuff out of docs, like what Aman always used to do, usually they have people read over it. I'm pretty sure if I was an elim, they'd point out that the Stick section cuts off randomly. I don't copy and paste things in short paragraphs, I usually transport it all in one chunk, which means that stuff in the middle will be transported, and the only places I can lose material is at the very beginning or the end, if I don't highlight everything. Maybe you copy and paste things from docs in little paragraphs, but I don't. It won't result in a random sentence being cut off in the middle of a wall of text.

Oh. Whoops. This is why you don't type while eating lunch. I meant to say that it sounds weird and Stick knew it sounded weird so she put in some joke whitetext to defuse the weirdness of it. Also, I've been on finals schedule for the past few days, which contrary to most people, actually gives me more time to play SE. The last finals was yesterday, so now I'm completely free of school.

Cycle One, Things That Seem Weird, Part One. Sorry if this seems like rambling, I typed this partially as I was eating lunch. Ecth says that he's innocent and he feels like he should know what the Five Tenets are. 9:11 PM PST. Len votes for Ecth, saying that Ecth was talking a lot and and his gut told him Ecth was an elim. Doesn't mention the Five Tenets. That seems like a rather quick amount of time to get a gut read based off of someone's activity, since the game only started 3 hours ago, but I suppose a gut read is a gut read. 11:20 PM. Nyali votes on Assassin in RP and doesn't give a reason. Assassin hasn't posted at this point. Looks like a poke vote. 12:50 AM. Kasimir puts a vote on Kynedath. Doesn't state a reason. Kynedath hasn't posted yet. Another poke vote? Stick says that C1 lynches always hit villagers, and voting is fun since "you can vote on whoever you suspect without rising suspicions on yourself later on when that suspect turns out to be a villager bc 'it was just C1 and no-one had any solid reads'." There's also white text that says "I'm an elim. Jk. Lol." She poke votes Arinian for being online but not posting. I'm not sure what to make of this post. It sounds weird, but it also seems like Stick knew it sounded weird and put in a Hael says that items don't affect gameplay or show alignment. 3:17 AM. Kynedath asks Kasimir if the vote is a poke vote, and also votes on Lopen. You all already know what I think of that, so I'm not going to repeat my analysis again. 6:40 AM. Kasimir jokes and makes it obvious that it was a poke vote. He votes for Ecth for his mention of the Five Tenets. At this point Ecth hasn't said that he owns the Five Tenets item, so I suppose it could have looked like Ecth was confused about flavor text in his PM/in a doc. Kasimir seems familiar with Elder Scrolls. 6:48 AM. Assassin RPs. 7:12 AM. Len RPs and says that the Five Tenets are related to the Dark Brotherhood, the elim team. He asks where Ecth heard about the Five Tenets. 7:42 AM. Kasimir says that he wants to lynch someone C1. He gives context about the game and the Five Tenets, which he says are "of the Dark Brotherhood." He mention's Hael's clarification and says that people have started with flavor items related to their character. He votes on Ecth (again) and asks where he has heard of the Five Tenets (again.) Ecth still hasn't said that he owns the Five Tenets item. Since Kas mentioned flavor items and Hael's clarification about items, he seems to have considered that Ecth might have the Five Tenets item. However, he seems to have missed the bit that says items don't show alignment. 8:15 AM. Nyali quotes Kas and says that she thinks items are distributed only semi-randomly, so having a book on the Five Tenets is a little suspicious. She says this contrary to Hael's clarification that items "have no bearing on the player's alignment." Nyali's theory goes directly against the WOH (Word of Hael), so it is blatantly wrong. She does not vote on Ecth. 8:21 AM. Kynedath agrees with Nyali (also going against the WOH). He retracts his vote on Lopen and puts it on Ecth. 8:59 AM. Stick wonders if Ecth has Five Tenets-related items, and says that if he does, she doesn't know what to make of it. This brings the total number of people who have missed the WOH about items being unrelated to alignment to four. 9:13 AM. Kynedath responds to Stick and says that that's the premise of the accusations against Ecth. 9:15 AM. JUQ calls the entire thing a bandwagon, and votes on Arinian. As others have noted, this does not put the lynch at a tie, this actually breaks the tie and gives Arinian one more vote than Ecth. Interestingly enough, he doesn't challenge the reason of these votes. Another person who has missed the WOH, maybe. 10:08 AM. EDIT: @Kasimir, I know I pushed hard against Kyn for "Day one stuff". That's how I get my suspicions. I look for wording or tones or arguments that feel off, and Kynedath's did, for reasons I outlined both C1 and C2. If I don't pick on those things, I'm rather useless as a player.

@STINK, I'm focusing on Kynedath because I found him suspicious last Cycle, too. Sure, I could vote for Alv. In fact, you've inspired me to reread the C1 thread again, so I can take a closer look at him. I might even vote for Alv next Cycle. But I'm voting for Kenedath because he stands out more than Alv for pinging me off twice in two cycles.

Kynedath. Your defense of yourself, just like your accusation of Lopen, strikes me as off. You voted on Ecth because of his items, but when information was given that items had no bearing on alignment, you kept your vote on him. You wanted more information. It sounds like you actually didn't care what Ecth's alignment was, as long as you got someone lynched. It might be true that most D1 lynches land on an innocent villager, but that doesn't mean that we strive to have them land on an innocent villager. You sound like you wanted someone dead for the sake of it, something that an eliminator would want.

@Alvron, what happened in MR18?