DrakeMarshall

"Or a broken sword. Sharp as hell, but lacking a point." "A window of insight into the will of the commoners?" Sheev said drily. "Perhaps." "Perhaps. It is hard to say what kind of resources the corrupted might be able to field. But perhaps a soother of more noble intentions could make the difference in the political arena," Sheev commented, toying with the brass nob on the head of his cane. "I wasn't aware you had a leecher in your service. A good leecher is one of the better investments a senator can make." Rae voted for Joe, I'm pretty sure. That's part of why I brough Rae up as a minor suspicion last cycle. It is possible that I am incorrect to eliminate Ark. I would not be as hasty to use a dagger were I an eliminator, but then again, I also would not use a dagger on the first cycle as a villager, so maybe this doesn't indicate anything about alignment. Paranoia is why, for me. I'm inclined to trust you specifically, but I am also sensing a big enough push to rush into lynching another constable that my hackles are up. In the absence of another major lead like a scan result, I would probably support lynching Gaea next cycle. But I can't shake the feeling that something doesn't add up.

"Ah, my mistake," Sheev intoned. "It seems I misread the indictment laws, we are indeed voting on imprisonment, not execution. Perhaps I got carried away." Sheev scratched out the word "execute" in neat handwriting and scribbled in the word "detain" before signing at the bottom with a flourish. "What do you think of the new allomancy sanctions?" He said casually. "Surely confiscating vials brought into the council chambers is a bit excessive." "Why, this is quite the window of opportunity for you, Gaius. Still, your proposal has it's merits. I'll support your cause, if I have the proper incentive to." Hm. Well, I already sort of trusted Striker, but more so now. I would have suspected Fifth for being bribed C1 as a way of eliminators consolidating wealth to buy something, except that Fifth is drawing attention to being bribed, which they probably wouldn't do if my theory was correct. I was a wee bit suspicious of Fura but seeing their paranoia in action is assuaging some of my own. As much as I really want accurate alignment flips, I'm a bit concerned by any push to be hasty about burning our last shot at guessing correctly, and therefore would prefer to wait one more cycle before lynching a constable. Hael asking about when Striker reported the scan result is either a really insightful point by a villager or an attempt to cast doubt on Striker's scan result. If nobody else is suspicious of Hael than I will leave off that for a bit, however I think it could be a mistake. In summary, I don't have a ton of leads. I'm kind of with Striker though that I think one of the corrupt would have tried to bus Lum. That's pretty common when somebody gets scanned. The possible suspects are: Devotary, Ark/Sunshine, Rae. I think elim!Ark's teammates would have cautioned against using the dagger C1, so its' between Devotary and Rae. I don't have very much to decide between the two of them, particularly because they offered rather similar justifications for voting on Lum, except that Rae's vote came in later.

"Yes, I have seen that opera," Senator Sheev reminisced. "Lovely music. Quite diverting," he said drily while scrawling out his voting slip for the summary execution of senator Lum. "Why do you ask?"

Agreed. I would prefer Lumgol has a lead of 3 votes on everyone else, so that at least a single bribery can't tie up the lynch and kill another player. Particularly since my price for being bribed is only 3 boxings, and I would honor any agreements struck, even if I would rather lynch Lum. Right now, Lumgol is leading by two votes, with Striker in second place. @Fifth Scholar I'm guessing you're not around this late in the cycle but if you are it would be appreciated if you weigh in on this.

Great. Considering there’s only one bribery unaccounted for, and there has been time for a villager to own up to it, I will trust the scan on Lumgol. Although I confess I have no idea what the whole PM chain thing is trying to accomplish since items are 1-shot. I’m also a bit lost for why nobody is voting for the person scanned as corrupt. This situation is a bit weird. Anyhow, no reason to make the lynch results needlessly inaccurate. I encourage following a credible lead from a scan result, but don’t pile on too many votes. With regard to voting habits, I’m not really talking about bandwagonning. My ideal policy is to vote for a legitimate suspicion for the duration of the cycle, and then at the very end of the cycle when it is clear that only a few candidates are in the running, choose between those leading choices and provide additional reasoning for that decision. Maybe it’s just me but that is not how I define bandwagonning.

A good read, that. Didn't spot the castle and the train riding on the wasp eater's back. Nice. I'm pretty sure that drawing is also from only a few pages ago, so I take it you're up-to-date Hear hear. Fair enough Knives are a most excellent commodity. You can name them and you can use multiple at once, and either of those things is awesome in my books. I just place a lot of value in alignment flips, ergo wanting to lynch the constable I think is corrupt. Regardless, I don't want to lynch a constable today, seeing as getting it wrong would be Bad News for the village. With the exception of 1 vote on Gaea right now I think most people agree that we shouldn't lynch a constable today.

Hm. @Snipexe why did you vote on Ark even when you believed the name of the blade was written incorrectly? You yourself believed that this was strong evidence for Ark being set up, prior to GM clarification, so why did you still vote up Ark? Regardless, there are some things I missed about Snip's posts. I think Striker might be right. Which is honestly annoying. I don't like having a lead ruined, even if it's for a good reason. Can we please lynch somebody that isn't Snip or Striker. Preferably Bard for a suspicious vote on Joe but I'm open to other ideas. Also, @Butt Ad Venture is that a wasp eater in your profile pic?

Also, I just realized you can pass items this cycle. As a politician, my avarice will not permit such an opportunity to be passed up. I am now offering a 25% OFF DISCOUNT to bribe my vote!! I will change my vote by request in exchange for a gift of 3 boxings, 1 boxing below the usual rate. PM me for details. Hm. I'm kind of inclined to trust your instincts if you think Snip really isn't evil. Not that you're a better target of the lynch, in my books. Would you mind trying to explain why you don't think Snip is evil?

Sorry for the double post, but we are not supposed to edit votes into old posts. You're right. Bard. Snip. (to clarify, I hadn't really processed that Snip already had 2 votes)

1. A snip lynch is based on speculation, but considering every village-lead lynch will be based on speculation, I’m okay with that. The move to stab Burnt with a named dagger is clearly a bid to sow confusion, and from our PM I think you agree that the eliminators are trying to leave us confused. In the face of deliberate obfuscation the simple answer is usually correct. If Snip got implicated in this way and I didn’t get the impression that the eliminators want us second-guessing ourselves, my assessment would be that Snip was framed, but as it is, I find it entirely conceivable that Snip is in fact evil. 2. Idk, kind of just gut. There’s a reason she didn’t make it on my shortlist of lynch targets. 3. Yes, I am defending Striker. To make my case more clear (I apologize for not explaining it very well before): Fast trains are always suspicious to me. You know well that I am always up for defending those who are not being defended by anyone else. And while I’m not the best at picking lynch targets I have pretty good instincts at picking the right people to defend. People don’t usually pay attention to this sort of thing, but when a lynch develops, the homogeneity of the reasons behind lynching that person is significant. When people throw their weight behind a lynch train without even acknowledging that other people have voted on them or citing any of their reasoning, it’s suspicious. I don’t like it when people pretend they thought of a lynch on their own with no hidden motives when it clearly isn’t a coincidence that they voted for the leading lynch target. In my experience, when somebody gets nailed for a singular badly worded post, it’s almost never an elim. Hm. I believe you just want the black market to get knives Nothing wrong with that, though.

I don't consider it to be a poke. I want to lynch Bard. I would also support the lynches of either Snip or Hael if they came up.

Weewoo weewoo alarm bells have been set off by these words. Maybe. I'm willing to give one bad post a pass. To clarify, are you conceding that you were indeed trying to distance yourself? 1. I'm not so sure about you, but I'm pretty sure I get Alvron's reasoning. Two possibilities. Either Snip did kill Burnt, and so Alv would be avenging Burnt by lynching Snip. Or Snip didn't kill Burnt, and therefore has a dagger, which Alv might get by lynching Snip. It's a win-win situation. 2. This is the second time you are minimizing the significance of your vote. Why? 3. Many players I know tend to put their vote where it will count in the last stages of the cycle, even if they don't like the options very much. I haven't played a lot with you before, are you not the type to do that? Okay. Why did you vote for Burnt again? Alv voted on Joe himself, that wasn't a vote manipulation. I bribed Kidpen. Fifth's vote moving to Wilson seems like it accomplishes very little. What this might accomplish: Protecting Gaea Framing Gaea to protect Wilson Transferring boxings to Fifth The first two are very IKYK and not very helpful. The third option is interesting. @Fifth Scholar do you know of anyone who would want to give you their boxings? Okay, so it's spelled/capitalized correctly to be Ark's dagger. There's also the fact that the killer specifically targeted a player who already had a vote. What this might accomplish: A villager suspected Burnt and trusted Ark, and figured they would kill Burnt and ensure the dagger passed to somebody they trusted. An eliminator wanted to murder Burnt and pass the dagger to Xino, their eliminator teammate. An eliminator wanted to murder Burnt and frame Xino. The first option sounds unlikely. A 1-shot vig kill with no alignment flip is just not something it would make sense for a villager to use on the first cycle. The second option sounds quite possible. It's such an obvious eliminator tactic that it actually makes for a decent double bluff, and I wouldn't put it past some of you. Occam's razor (which I generally try to avoid throwing out of windows), along with the precept that "when a plan is hard to understand, it's usually the person who gains from it who is responsible" would both suggest that this is the case. The third option seems possible too. But if the eliminators gave up on keeping their daggers, why would they burn one of a limited resource so early? It only makes much sense if they are paving the way for a real "pass dagger to teammate" con in the future. The eliminators are banking on the uncertainty that the recipient of a dagger is an eliminator or not, either way. As to whether the original assailant is Ark, honestly, that's anyone's guess. My guess is probably not. It would be simpler to just not identify the dagger with yourself; when the dust settles with this whole IKYK it still puts Ark under unnecessary levels of suspicion. When it comes down to it, the only thing I can say with confidence is that the eliminators are obviously yanking our chains a bit, with a dagger named after Ark used to murder somebody who was only targeted by a single voter. It's unclear if Xino is evil or not, but for a 50/50, I wouldn't at all be against just lynching Xino to be safe, taking into account the fact that the average lynch is 30% accurate and 50% really isn't bad odds in light of that fact. Right, so the Joe lynch. I am suspicious of the Joe lynch. I am vaguely suspicious of Bard, Striker, Rae, and Hael. Interestingly, two of them threw their vote on Gaea this cycle, out of nowhere. This makes me Paranoid. Also interestingly, a lynch train on Striker is developing. What is really interesting about it to me is that different people are voting on Striker for seemingly uncorrelated reasons, yet the results are clearly non-coincidental. Therefore, my instinct says that Striker is not to be lynched. Anyways, somebody needs to play devil's advocate. Bard, you made a show of voting for Gaea in a post, where at the bottom of that post you landed on Joe, with no edits. This feels a tad staged, no? Other news, in light of the fact that the governor election requires a majority of all players behind one candidate, I just don't think a governor is going to happen. I've played in games before where majority votes are required to accomplish things. Even for actions way way less controversial than giving one player triple voting power, it's deceptively difficult to rally that kind of consensus. I'm still supporting my own candidacy and all but I don't really see the governorship going anywhere any time soon.

I don't suppose it's not too late to repeat my request for the people lynching Joe to lynch me instead? Joe isn't corrupt. I would stake my win condition on that fact in a heartbeat.

I was referring to the bit about nobody defending Joe

Dangit Fura, why you have to poke my argument full of more holes without even trying At least have the decency to do it on purpose Can't really say I'm suspicious of your reasoning, though. I will point out though that unless I misunderstood the survivor role, a formerly village survivor would be perfectly free to backstab the village and still meet their survival wincon. I imagine some people definitely not yours truly might entertain the notion of stooping to such vile acts of treachery.

Knowing Burnt (sort of), I would agree with you. Seems pretty in line with the last game I played with village!Burnt. Knowing Fura (sort of), I would disagree with you. Village!Fura tried something very similar in MR35, trying to get people to claim their attack targets to suss out eliminators. Incidentally, I was the loudest voice in opposition to said accountability, mostly just because I wanted to run around firing destructors at people unchecked, but that is besides the point I think this is pretty in character for village!Fura. Yep, I would throw myself in that camp. I'm pretty much on the same page as Fifth here, where I reckon the most inconvenient target is probably the correct one. Doesn't it seem weird to anybody else that of the three constables, one of them makes for a far less appealing target the way things are set up? Joe is kind of the obvious choice given his history as a GM, and at least to me the consequences for lynching Wilson seem vastly lower than the consequences for lynching Gaea. More to the point, I don't like the Joe lynch very much. I say this a lot, probably at least twice in every game I play these days, but this lynch is waay to easy for an eliminator constable. I am the only person defending Joe, and I'm only doing it pretty late in the cycle. As I am Joe's sole defender, the only particularly likely conclusions are that either Joe is innocent, or that both Joe and myself are evil. Unless I am evil, there is no evidence of an eliminator team trying to save corrupt!Joe. In short, if you want to lynch Joe, you might as well lynch me first, instead of wasting one of our very limited number of constable lynches. I'm serious, please go through me if you want to get to him. You can recover from my loss easier than from mislynching a constable. I also have to disagree with the fact that 99% of the decisions being made for which constable to lynch are based on mitigating the consequences of a constable's dying. That isn't going to get us any closer to finding the evil constable. Sure there's a cost to lynching any constable, which we want to avoid, but the cost to lynching the wrong constable is a lot steeper. If we get it wrong, we have to lynch a second constable, doubling the penalties. Not to mention we would have wasted a lynch. Not to mention we only get 2 shots at this. Losing the black market is a setback but it doesn't really compare to the setback of lynching a constable and choosing incorrectly. Why does poking inactives follow from there only being a few hours left? Not to put too fine a point on it, but isn't that kind the worst possible time to poke inactives, since they almost certainly won't show up in time to respond to your poke? Sorry if I'm being paranoid. This just feels like a really easy place to sink a vote.

Right, I think I’ve asked you before, sorry. Probably in a doc or something. Interesting. We’re seeing some pushes against every single constable. How this turns out will say a lot. Joe has a sense of humor, but Joe is also crafty. Personally I think it less likely that it’s Joe for this reason, though YMMV with this kind of IKYK territory.

Pretty good. I have no idea what it means, but I don't really expect to at this point. Personally, I appreciate a work that doesn't start with an infodump and just dives in. In terms of feedback, I would maybe streamline / clarify this bit of dialogue: In context, it isn't very clear what the first sentence means (maybe intentional, maybe not, idk), and the second one just sounds a bit clunky. In general it had a pretty good writing style and pacing. Other than that, I would also consider giving a nod to the fact that the main character can't actually see the stuff you are describing, since there are a lot of visual descriptions in there before he starts actually being able to see anything. It's a bit confusing from a reader's perspective. You have a knack for picking interesting premises. This seems somehow oddly metaphysical. I figure the lady is personification of something more abstract. Although, judging by her fixation with offering deals with vague consequences, her self-declared hatred of liars, and her asking for a seemingly unimportant item of personal significance to the main character, there are also some pretty strong Fair Folk vibes in there. For one reason or another, reality is clearly out to lunch. It seems most likely that this is due to an unreliable narrator. Although I won't entirely rule out something weirder than that.

Tempting. If I wasn't voting for me, I would probably want to elect you Young Bard. Yes, I quite agree that we must keep at least one constable alive. God forbid that us nobles ever have to do any honest work for ourselves Although, you didn't entirely answer my question. I wasn't asking if lynching in general is a good idea, because I'm pretty sure it is. I'm asking if you think we should have a D1 lynch, considering that the cost to not having one this cycle is considerably less than usual. Oh, it absolutely is. It's a 100% shameless power grab For what it's worth though, a villager who really wants the role really has no other recourse but to nominate themselves. If I had a more tasteful method of offering myself up as governor, I would gladly do that instead, but only evils have that luxury. What theater production? I quite agree that this Drake person makes a solid argument I also quite agree that being paranoid about Drake is a good life decision (although, for the record, if I were evil, I would either be pushing for no governor, or setting up a heated rival candidacy between two different eliminators and laughing evilly as either outcome favors me and nobody suspects they are on the same team ). Full disclosure, if I ever somehow manage to get 50 boxings, I will not hesitate to use them to murder you all, but it isn't very likely. Daggers claiming is an interesting idea. On one hand, this is a pretty good point, because the meta about power roles not claiming totally does not apply in this game. On the other hand, it isn't clear to me how knowing specifically who has the daggers would be helpful. Is there a reason why dagger holders specifically should claim, and not the holders of other items? Are you hoping to force the eliminators to be accountable for their kills? I noticed that dagger kills show no alignment flip, which makes them considerably less useful for a villager (even if getting to name a dagger sounds awesome regardless). Villagers should use them carefully, considering they don't give any alignment flip. Hm. I could actually get behind a lynch on a constable. Alignment flips are hecking important and it's less vital to lynch a regular player in this game with no per-cycle kill. Gaea. With regard to the governor vote. To be clear, in my case, it's seeking control of the lynch in the later game (maybe also a bid for glory but that's secondary ). I already said I'm planning to save the power for dire circumstances only; I'm not claiming it's anything but that. I don't enjoy being powerless in the end of the game when eliminators start to make their final push.

Right, lets get started. First of all, am I the only one who found it weird that the elims don’t get a kill? Maybe the last run of this game will elucidate, there’s a chance I’ll get around to reading it, but my guess is that the elims start with a bunch of knives. I’m having a hard time thinking of another way to balance it, although I also suspect Joe could easily have dreamed up something that hasn’t occurred to me yet. Anyways, we should probably start voting. I’m a bit more okay with a no lynch this cycle than usual, since I suspect the elims can’t technically make any progress until lynches start happening. But, I would prefer to have a legitimate lynch discussion, regardless of whether we actually follow through. And I am also quite partial to getting moar loot. Bard @Young Bard, what do you think? Do you believe it makes sense to lynch somebody this cycle? There is also the matter of another kind of voting entirely. I think that DrakeMarshmallow guy seems like he could do a bang up job of being governor (plus I’m the only one I actually trust at this point, although I don’t expect that to make a difference to any of you ). My pitch: I’ll be pretty active, regardless of how this goes While I’ve admittedly been itching for a chance to change this, I’m historically really quite bad at concealing myself as an evil, if being bad at something can even count as a selling point For most cycles, a difference of three votes is able to swing the lynch. Personally, I’m not the biggest fan of this happening too often. If you want somebody to use the governor role to its fullest extent every cycle, probably look elsewhere. But if you would prefer the governor use the role only rarely when they feel it is particularly important, that is what I’m planning to do. I am the senate Seriously though, in a game where you can take any number of actions in a single cycle, voting parity is important. Choose your governor carefully. @A Joe in the Bush is it possible to elect constables as governor?

While we're on the subject... Is it possible to have multiple daggers / is it possible to start with multiple daggers?

Only tangentially related to this, but I just thought of something interesting. Somebody who has a dagger can't get the same dagger back immediately after using it. But could they get a different dagger? So like, if two people both voted for and stabbed a single target, would they just trade daggers? Also, the rules imply not, but just to make sure: can constables be knifed? I don't see why not, Senator. Technically, it's your birthright. Noo join the dark side We have bad prequel references. And cookies. Did I mention the cookies? They definitely aren't spiked.

Please sign me up as Senator Sheev.

An inquisition. I rather did not expect this. May I please join the spec doc?

Interesting. I was starting to get paranoid about Striker after Stick flipped but contrary to popular sentiment, I absolutely did not see Devotary being evil. Something to remember; I think I have a better idea how to proceed in the future. I appear to have forgotten one of my own rules. The rule is that anyone who slips the noose too many times is probably evil. It shouldn’t really come as a surprise that I originally conceived of this rule because of Alvron. That was a nice touch, to make us second guess ourselves at the end, even if it was frustrating at the time. Well played, elims. Thank you to the GMs. Until next time.