Elenion

So hold on... when Rae was converted, that means that nobody Snapped into a Tineye, because we've only had one Tineye death and PMs are now closed. Huh. I'm getting tired of just following the crowd cycle after cycle, so I'm going to vote Kipper because he's inactive and has been shown to have extra lives.

The normal red and green are no longer there. For example, the options for green are now "Emerald" or "Dark Emerald", and neither is the standard green. Emerald Dark Emerald Green using the code The other colors have been similarly changed.

I told someone in PM last cycle that I'd make another massive analysis post this cycle, this one about Seonid. Hopefully this doesn't turn out as long as my last one... Well, first thing I notice is that Seonid doesn't post too much. Not much to analyze here, other than the "I haven't seen anything suspicious yet". When Stick made a similar comment it aroused my suspicions, but that ended up leading to a mislynch. So I'm just going to rate this post Neutral. Here Seonid attempts to put pressure on Lopen by suggesting that Lopen make a claim of what he did C1. However, this would be a definite bad idea, because that would tell everyone whether Lopen was currently Warding odds or evens, whether he's got a role that would have him make any kind of nontraditional lines (Assassin and Duelist both use lines that I can't see being very common among villagers, so if Lopen had made one of those it would be a giveaway to his role), and what action he was prohibited from doing C2. For this kind of action-fishing, I'm rating this post Elim. Here's what that revealed action could have told the elims about Lopen, in greater detail: Claim: Info that would be gathered (other than just odd/even): Warding Vigoring him would have be useless Forbiddance Vulnerable to elim-kill that night unless protected by another player Making Possibly an Artist, may be a good player to PM for info Vigor Definitely a Duelist Revocation Definitely an Assassin Silencing Because of no vote being negated, he must have had a strong suspicion to make him use non-upgraded Silencing Nothing detectable Definitely a non-Rithmatist Here Seonid makes a backtrack, despite assuring Rand that he thought it all through beforehand: he goes from last post's call for Lopen to claim in-thread, to suggest Lopen either claim in-thread and reflip (still a bad idea, because an action discloses other things than just odd/even, as I listed above) or PM Seonid about it. I'm calling this Slightly Elim for the backtrack while telling Rand otherwise. However, I do like that Seonid isn't willing to let up without hearing from Lopen again. It fits with Seonid's stated goal of putting "pressure" on Lopen. So does Seonid asking any Lopen-scanners not to claim until Lopen has responded. This reads Slightly Village. First off, Seonid confesses to being active in PMs but lurking the thread. Having PM contacts is not alignment-indicative, and neither is admitting that you're lurking. Neutral. Second, Seonid chooses not to vote on Aman despite his gut. Had he done that earlier in the cycle, he would have had time to vote on Aman and switch it off if nobody else thought the same. But the way things turned out, Seonid voiced suspicion of Aman without actually voting on him or providing any evidence that might have gotten Aman in trouble, so that could be a distancing tactic. Slightly Elim, for the possiblity of distancing. Related, Seonid's voting on Ecth was self-preservation, and despite the vote-count at that time not putting Seonid in much danger (4 on Ecth, 1 on each of me, Seonid, Ornstein and PK, with talk focusing primarily on PK) I can't fault him for caution. Neutral. That's all of Seonid's whopping 4 posts. For some reason I thought he had posted more. Tally: Elim: 1 Slightly Elim: 2 Neutral: 3 Slightly Village: 1 Village: 0 And I think I've just found my vote for this round. Seonid @Seonid Do you agree or disagree with my analysis?

I think worldhopper relationships might end up similar to the Returned relationships in Warbreaker, except that there's now kids to complicate matters. Knowing Brandon, Hoid has probably had relationships before, and his kids are making cameos in the story but not playing major roles.

If Wilson was lying like that, the real Soother could just claim in-thread and there goes Wilson. It would be suicidal.

@Jondesu The first is "There's always another secret".

Live by the kill action, die by the kill action. The second law of SE.

This sudden bandwagon on Ecth has me worried. Nobody is defending him, but if he is an elim you'd think that his teammates would be crawling out of the woodwork trying to discreetly defend him. Maybe Ecth's innocent; maybe it's a bus; maybe his teammates can't risk the suspicion. Since I have no better reads at this point because my analysis of Lopen came up neutral to village, my vote is staying on Ecth. Speaking of my analysis of Lopen... 1. You did tell Orlok that his numbers were optimistic, but in your post you emphasized how dangerous it would be for the elims to use vigor. However, as I pointed out the elims could use vigor in suicidal ways and still keep their numbers full because of the resulting conversions. 2. You backtracked because you justified your vote on Seonid, then immediately removed it, thereby stopping the discussion about it. But I guess it would have been much stranger had you not justified the vote before moving it, so I concede that point. 3. Not much to bring up. 4. @Amanuensis Is reacting strongly to suspicions on him from his suspects typical of Lopen? Overall, I'm feeling good about Lopen's responses, so I'm kicking him up into my village reads category.

Unto Aman I bequeath, temporarily, Nightblood. May it help you distinguish friend from foe and destroy evil in all of its forms.

@Ecthelion III You're also suspicious to me. Despite using a fallacious strawman argument to vote on me, you have not chosen to refute my points or to retract the vote, suggesting that you're more concerned about your vote being on me than than the reasoning behind it. Ecth, please either refute or retract. @TheMightyLopen Thanks for responding; I'm short on time right now but I'll get to responding to you tomorrow. Until then, farewell. I'm going to sleep and then I have morning church.

Okay, my analysis of Lopen is done, and it's a behemoth. Here goes: First paragraph, Lopen addresses the Warding problem. He provides a reasonable estimate of the number of elims and Wardings needed to combat them. Secondly, Lopen proposes a pairing system. The problem with such a system is that if two elims are paired together they could just trade off killing and Warding without looking suspicious, and even if that doesn't happen it gives the elims more information than they already have. But the chance of two elims being paired is low, particularly if an RNG is used, and the information spread can be mitigated by the judicious use of Makings, as he specifies in his next post. Overall, I this post reads village to me. Lopen addresses a problem, and his solution is fairly-good if you consider it with the components he suggested later such as Making your partner periodically. Using Making on your partner in the partner system would make it difficult for the elims to make a kill, thus making the information that the elims would gain from the partner system worth less. This strikes me as village. I concur with Lopen on his second and third points, but whether elim or village he probably would have brought them up. Neutral read on them. In paragraph 3, Lopen understates the danger of Lines of Vigor. Even if an elim gets caught using Vigor, they could just claim Duelist. Or, in the worst case scenario, they die to the lynch but helped gain their team a convert, with the end result of 1 fewer villager, a fresh and possibly-unsuspected player on the elim team, a lynch that made no progress against the elims' numbers, and therefore an unanswered elim kill that cycle. And that's the worst case. Best case, a conversion happens and none of the Vigoring elims were scanned. This understatement strikes me strongly as elim. Lopen reads correctly on Stick, which is a minor point in his favor. Elim!Lopen could have done that to gain cred for defending a villager, but I think that he would have done it with more subtlety. Lopen is neutral on SB and Straw, which is logical seeing as they hadn't given us much to work with. Lopen read Brightness as a villager, the same read that I have on her. He calls me out for not following the discussion, and although I had a reason it seems like a fair call-out to make. I read this post slightly village. Here Lopen backtracks, defending his vote on Seonid from Joe but then removing it a couple paragraphs down. He then votes on Straw without voicing any sort of suspicion of him, only because he's reading village on the other candidates. He also mentions that he doesn't think Straw and Aman are "teammates", which is interesting because he doesn't specify whether that's teammates on an elim team or teammates on the village team. But that's just a semantics gripe, and he uses it again in his next post so I'm not that concerned. Overall I think this post is slightly elim because of the backtracking. Here Lopen qualifies his vote on Straw and voices suspicion of me because of my voting on Stick. He reinforces his Aman/Straw point, and notes who he's suspicious of if Straw is an eliminator. All of this strikes me as non-alignment-indicative neutral. Lopen's Line of Making assertion seems empty, because even if someone had used Making on him and found something suspicious they probably would have posted it with or without his invitation. Neutral As for Lopen's suspicions list, he went from being "a little suspicious of you Len" in his previous post to "I've got a village read on... Elenion as wall, but less so", in this post. Between those posts I didn't do anything that should have led to Lopen's trusting me more other than not being on the Straw bandwagon, so this seems slightly elim. Sort-of-relatedly, he calls SB out for voting on a villager, when he himself did the same thing to the same person. Lopen's points sound good, except that if he was trying to catch the elims by using Making he shouldn't have proposed the Makings in his next post after proposing the partner plan. Lopen's basically restating what he's already said, so here's another one for the neutral pile. Lopen's suspicion of Aman, although I don't really suspect Aman, seems slightly village and founded on reason. And... that's up until the end of C2, and I'm done with analysis. I've already commented on Lopen's one post this cycle, so that's the end. Here's our totals: Elim: 1 Slightly Elim: 3 Neutral: 4 Slightly Village: 3 Village: 3 *slams head on table* Lopen, why do you have to be so darn hard to read? Right now you're on the village side of neutral read, but still in the neutral category. @TheMightyLopen Some of the things I've marked as red flags might be due to misunderstandings between us instead of actual elim tells, so I'd appreciate if you went through and looked at each of them. Edit: I don't know what in elimination happened to those quotes. They weren't like that when I hit post.

Thanks for the heads-up. I'll post an updated tally. 1. Adhesion -- 4 2. Gravitation -- 8 3. Division -- 7 4. Abrasion -- 6 5. Progression -- 5 6. Illumination -- 5 7. Transformation -- 7 8. Transportation -- 4 9. Cohesion -- 4

@TheMightyLopen I wasn't paying very close attention to my language when I wrote that, so I can't tell you why I used "confirmed". In my mind that post used "cleared". @Ecthelion III I think you skimmed the thread too quickly, because both of those points you bring up are strawman arguments. I didn't "try to get a lynch going on Stick"; I joined an existing pair of votes. The lynch was already going towards either Stick or Straw; I just found what I thought was decent evidence and followed it. C2 I decided not to let the Stick bandwagon get out of hand too fast because I didn't want it to kill discussion. I've explained good bandwagoning versus bad bandwagoning in at least two previous games that you've been in. It's not like I went back on my suspicions; by the end of the cycle my vote was on Stick. It's nearly midnight and I still haven't gotten far on analyzing Lopen, so that isn't happening tonight. Maybe tomorrow, when I get some time.

@Sart I think your timer is off. It says 23 hours, not a day and 23. Stick wasn't evil. That's not good. According to Orlok's projections, now we only have one more day before we start being in serious danger of conversions. In light of Stick's alignment, it's time for me to reevaluate some of my reads. Joe: my primary reason for voting on Joe last cycle was because he tipped the lynch away from Stick. Now that Stick has been confirmed village, I'm back to a neutral view of Joe. Lopen: I'm going to need some more time to analyze him. I hope to have a follow-up post tonight all about Lopen. HH: Stick's final vote. I haven't read too much on him either way, but might be someone worth taking a closer look at. Those who voted on Stick: I'm not suspicious of you any more because of it, seeing as I did the same thing. PK: I can't remember what Jon's point was for voting on PK, but I'm reading village on him thus far by gut. That's all for now; I'll vote later this cycle after more discussion has been done.

@TheMightyLopenI saw your TEST message, but I kept it quiet because I didn't know who might have sent it. I honestly thought it was a new player. Rae

Dangled out of an airship, because if I end up dying, death by a fall is much nicer than death by being crushed by a boulder. Would you rather be a bridgeman or Sadeas' mother/father? *evil laugh*

Hurt Transformation, heal Adhesion 1. Adhesion -- 4 2. Gravitation -- 8 3. Division -- 7 4. Abrasion -- 6 5. Progression -- 5 6. Illumination -- 8 7. Transformation -- 7 8. Transportation -- 4 9. Cohesion -- 4

Correct. I may be famous for bandwagoning, but I try to either use my bandwagoning to cause discussion or hold off on joining the bandwagon until the discussion can occur. In this case I'm doing the latter, and I think it has contributed to the increasing amount of analysis after the beginning of this cycle. I plan on joining the vote pile on Stick--like I said in the post in which I voted on you, I suspect her more than you--it just was too early in the cycle for a bandwagon as large as what my vote would have made it. As for distracting from the Stick lynch, this isn't like last cycle where the voting was on the edge of the knife. The Stick lynch is almost certainly happening, bar anything crazy, so what I'm doing is making sure we end up with a good bandwagon on a good suspect instead of a bad bandwagon that kills discussion. Now that I look over how the voting is going, it's probably time for me to stop stimulating the discussion on Joe and put my money where my mouth is when it comes to suspicion based on evidence. Joe. Stick. Isaac "The Hammer" Jones sidled into the dining tent, a massive, canvas structure whose walls were printed with the names and seals of the different United Isles. It was evening; dinner was long past and most of the people had dispersed. A few still remained and and around the dining tent, loitering, chatting, or otherwise killing time. Isaac Jones, however, was here for a far superior purpose. He flipped a coin to one of the cooks, who responded by tossing him a bottle of his favorite JinDo wine. Jones sat down, uncorking the bottle, and took a small swig to wet his mouth. A battle with the Chalklings really took something out of a man. Looking around, Jones spotted a Rithmatist leaning against the tent wall nearby. It was Joel, or at least that's what the others called him. And since Jones wasn't a greedy man, just a proud and vain one, he flipped his go-to cook another coin and said "Joel over there looks a little thirsty. How about getting him a bottle?" "Hey Joel, want to join me for a drink? Eases the mind as well as the body." @A Joe in the Bush

I was the third to point the finger at Stick last cycle, and I'll admit I was surprised when I saw that we had ended up lynching Straw on far less evidence than we had against Stick. As Aman said, there were multiple points where ties were broken in Stick's favor. For that reason I'm inclined to vote Stick, but the last two posts have done the same thing. Instead, I'll vote Joe for reasoning below. As far as the votes on Straw went, I trust Brightness based on gut, Lopen seems okay because of how open he was about contacting DA, and HH was being HH and choosing a bandwagon based on gut read. That leaves Joe. Although I'm more suspicious of Stick than Joe, a Joe vote is better for discussion.

Spec doc link, please. I'm already in two games at the moment.

Today I had a surprise job interview, the awards dinner for a math competition, 3 hours in the car, and 2 yet-unfinished AP Bio packets, so I have no time right now. Sorry. @A Joe in the Bush No, he wasn't.

In a PM with another player last night, we both voiced suspicion of OmeGaster and Manukos as possible Inquisitors. Here's why: 1. The Inquisitor gave UberCopper away early, while many SE veterans would have saved it for the late-game. 2. Prior to conversion, both Jon and Rand had been mentioned in the thread as players who would make good converts. This supports a theory that the Inquisitor was relatively inexperienced and so based their conversions off of the observations of others. 3. Ornstein was killed early, which is strange considering most mid- to high-experience SE players tend to leave new players alone, at least until the late-game. 4. Both of them have been online from time to time (at least according to the other player in that PM), but have chosen to either not post or post a tiny amount, suggesting that they may have something to hide. 5. The majority of active players have claimed a role and proven themselves. While none of these is very strong, together they paint the picture of an Inquisitor who fits the playstyles of Manukos and OmeGaster. I wouldn't suggest dropping the Rae lynch in favor of one of these two; that would be unwise. But what this does give us is something to brew about.

Isaac Jones' first few Lines of Vigor went wide of their marks, but luckily didn't hit the Wards of any friendly Rithmatists. His next volley hit the crowd of oncoming Chalklings indiscriminately, breaking off two-dimensional heads, arms, and fangs, but did little to slow the furious charge. As the Chalklings drew closer they fanned out, breaking into small groups to face down the individual Rithmatists now setting up in defensive positions. Jones took this time to sketch up a pair of defensive Chalklings, each a heavily-armored knight with a more-than-slight stoop and a large warhammer. The latter element, although unorthodox, was almost a signature of Jones'. The former was due to a couple too many drinks. @TheMightyLopen Can you elaborate as to why you have a Village read on Stick?

Aman & Orlok. Rand is an excellent player, but I think our representative should be a long-time member of SE.