Steeldancer

LG87: Aftermath - The Ultimate Killer When Ancy awoke, he only remembered his name, and those beautiful shimmering rainbows. The memory of that place quickly faded away, but in its place, something else began to grow. Ancy admired his body in the reflection provided in a large body of water. It was beautiful. Perfectly toned, and a striking visage. He didn't know specifically how he had gotten here, or why he looked like this. But he did know one thing. He turned his eyes upon the city he saw nearby. He wanted... to inflict death. He smiled. ~ Over the next few weeks, he formed a Cult. A secret cult, who worshipped him and his designs. He heard things about political unrest and whatnot, but he did not care about any of that. And so, secretly, he and the people who joined him eliminated person after person, causing chaos in the city. Their group was so small that they were never noticed. Until it was far too late, and the city of Hallendren had already fallen into pieces. ~ The last infiltrator stormed the castle. He had to kill the last important Royal for his mission to be complete. According to his information, he was so, so close. Unfortunately for him, he got caught, and hanged. The Royal family survived, as did the King. The Revolutionaries were also rooted out, and thrown into jail for conspiracy against the crown. With the Royalist hawks having been essentially wiped out, that left only the Royalist Dove faction to advise the king. So, even as the city began to fall apart due to the antics of the Cult of Colors, the government of Hallendren reached out to other countries in order to end the Manywar. It remained to be seen how effective the policy would be, but surely it would be better than all out war. And so, this chapter of unrest closed upon the city of Hallendren. With international relations stabilized, the government would have to deal with the Cult. But... it might have already been too late... ~~~ Clanky (1): Archer Archer (5): Stick, JNV, Luck, Ash, Araris Archer was exed! He was a Foreign Infiltrator infiltrating the Followers of Edgli! 2 new commands were discovered. Protect [Player], at 45 breath, and Fetch Papers, at 70 breath. 6 commands have been discovered and the game can end! The game is over! The Cult of Colors, Royalist Doves, and Followers of Edgli have won! The Cult of Colors successfully matched sizes or were bigger than all other factions! The Royalist Doves successfully kept a single Royal alive, outnumbered the Hawks, and another faction won! The Followers of Edgli successfully kept a Returned alive! In fact, none of the 3 returned ever even got attacked... The Royalist Hawks lose due to not having any players left alive in the faction. The Adjuncts of the Scholars lose due to not having enough breath. JNV successfully collected 103 breath, and Stick collected 75, but no member had over 200. The Foreign Infiltrators lose due to not killing all the Royals, and not outnumbering anybody. The Revolutionaries lose for similar reasons. Here are the links for all the documents. Royalist Hawks Royalist Doves Revolutionaries Foreign Infiltrators Cult of Colors Adjuncts of the Scholars Followers of Edgli Dead Document The Master Sheet (admire how pretty I made it) Complete List of Known Commands Oh man I have a lot of thoughts about this game, but I'll put that in a separate post. For now, here's the distribution. Thanks for playing, everyone! Final Player List

Annnnndddd the shenanigans have finished. The game is over. I'll get the aftermath up soon.

Yes, it will. Or, well, it'll say the person was attacked and survived. It won't explain why.

LG87: Day 4 - Dove Shooting It was a massacre. Multiple people ran into the main dove hideout, stabbing everyone in sight. 2 People dead. That, and more bodies have been stolen from the mausoleum. And I, official recorder of the happenings in the palace, am tired. So that's all I have to say today ~~~ Sart has died! He was a Foreign Infiltrator Spy infiltrating the Royalist Doves! He had the Second Heightening! HOID WANTS INSTANT NOODLES has died! They were a Royalist Dove Royal! They had no heightening. (Yes, and before anyone asks, there is still at least one Royal alive. Otherwise I'd say so in the writeup, since it's Win Condition relevant). The bodies of Kasimir and Young Bard have gone missing! 2 more commands are required to be discovered for the game to end. The day will end in 46ish hours at 7PM MDT. Known Commands Player List

And I only just managed to get home in time for rollover. The night is over, no PMing and whatnot. I'll get the day up as soon as I get settled and have a bit to sit down and write. Thankfully Devotary is literally the best and has already recorded all actions.

I'm gonna push rollover back an additional 30 minutes due to travel delays and my desperate need for food as soon as I get home.

LG87: Night 3 - New Policies That day, no one saw the king. He rejected all food and servants, opting instead to work on his new proposal. Meanwhile, an assassin - his own cousin- sent to kill the king was caught! He was a revolutionary who desired the overthrow of the government and an establishment of a government of the people! The king never heard about him or his dream, because the messenger carrying the message was turned away as the king slaved over his legislation. Finally, at the end of the evening, he emerged. His advisors took the piece of paper, and read it. It was illegible. The advisors looked to the king for clarification, but he was already asleep on the floor. The new policies would have to wait. ~~~ Young Bard (8): Sart, Matrim, Wizard, Ashbringer, Stick, JNV, Clanky, Archer Young Bard has been exed! He was a Revolutionary Royal with the Second Heightening (yeah, I know I forgot about this. Everybody so far who's died has just been first and second heightenings.) A new command was discovered! Follow [Player] 30 breath. Shows actions that player made that night. May be used multiple times, but only on the specified player, for the cost of an action each time. 2 more commands must be discovered before the game can end. The night will end in 24.5 hours (I'm pushing rollover back one hour because I'm going to be traveling home right up until rollover, and I want to make sure I'm home before I do it). Known Commands Player List

The day is over! Night will be up soon.

The turn ends in half an hour! Time to go read some PMs.

I swear I'm not crazy Signing up as DumDum Rock

LG87: Day 3 - Where'd the Body Go? "Two deaths in the breath market? What is going on?" the king asked in shock. "It seems, my liege, that people have discovered by torturing people to death they can get larger amounts of breath from those who have more, rather than paying the exorbitant amounts those at the market are asking for their breaths." "I demand that we have guards posted at the market during the night! We cannot have any more deaths occurring due to our negligence!" "Also, the body of Dedarriel seems to have gone missing. We suspect a rogue awakener, due to the reveal of the lifeless command, but we have no idea who is at fault." "Locate them at once!" demanded the King. "We already have our best detectives on it, my liege." The king sighed. So much was going wrong. Many of his supporters had been murdered in the past few days. What was he supposed to do now? Perhaps... perhaps he could make an important policy decision. He nodded at this thought, and went off to his desk room, to go draft some ideas. ~~~ Xinoehp has died! They were an Adjuncts of the Scholars Royal! Kasimir has died! They were a Royalist Hawk Royal! TUN's body has gone missing! Other dead bodies are still lying around. The Day will end in about 47 hours, at 10PM EDT, 7/15/22 Known Commands Player List

The turn is over! Hope you got your actions in. It's about to be a wild ride.

LG87: Night 2 - A Case of Opening One's Mouth Dedarriels country had been antagonistic towards Hallendren for a long time, and he had been selected to tear down their government from within. And for a long time, he did his duty. But one day, he began to ask, "are these people really all evil?" And from that moment on he secretly desired to reach out and see if perhaps they could work together to win the Manywar. His mistake came in when he finally decided to confess his true story to someone. He decided to tell some of the most nationalistic, anti-peace government officials possible. He was promptly strung up as a foreign spy. Thus we learn, if you're a spy, don't tell anyone you are. It'll probably get you killed. ~~~ TUN (12): Kas, Araris, Bard, Ash, Clanky, Sart, Stick, Luck, Hoid, JNV, Archer, Matrim The Unknown Novel was exed! They were a Foreign Infiltrator who infiltrated the Royal Hawks! No new commands were discovered. The night will end in 26 hours, at 10 PM EDT, 7/13/2022. Known Commands Player List

Alright the day is over! Time for a flurry of PMs from me, then I'll get the night up.

If anyone made any researching actions or other day actions that I haven't replied to yet, I probably missed them somehow. And since my family decided to take off for the movie theater horrendously early, I'm stuck doing rollover on mobile. In other words, if I messed up, please just let me know ASAP. I'll end the turn in 15 minutes, mobile or bust

I'm gonna go see Thor with my family tonight, and since things seem set in stone here, I'm gonna end the turn early. I'm gonna end in like an hour, if that's all right with all of you. The night turn will then be a bit longer to end at the normal time.

Devotary made a call, and for now we're going to hold off on any rule changes unless we deem it necessary. Which is fine with me. Carry on with your scheduled murdering.

While I agree with this, I also feel that, now that I'm looking at it a bit closer, having the infiltrators and revolutionaries able to win together and the Doves and Hawks not kind of betrays what I was going for in the game. I was counting on the element of betrayal to be the balancing factor there, and perhaps counting on play styles for balance isn't the best idea. Making things more even between the Primary factions is... well honestly what I should have gone for from the start. For reference, I'm thinking just adding a clause that says "including the infiltrators" to the current Revolutionaries win condition. That will allow short term stuff to continue as currently going, without making things set in stone as to an "optimized" game, at any point. I'd rather nip this in the bud now than have the problem get worse and have this game be unfun for any players, as that is my personal priority. I don't forsee this changing anything currently going on in thread, for instance.

Possibly. The fact of the matter is the infiltrators still have a night kill, while the other factions only get an exe, which needs to be negotiated between factions. But yeah, it will certainly reduce the Infiltrators chances of winning, especially given what's already happened so far in the game. That's why I gave this some thought before proposing it. The only problem from my perspective on making the Infiltrators joinable was that I added them as one of two elements of "You cannot absolutely trust your faction," the other being the cowardly elite, which has heavy costs on using the ability, as designed. So making them joinable would have taken away that element of the gameplay I was looking for. I wouldn't necessarily say that hasn't worked here either? There are also abilities that have not been discovered yet that can further swing the game, but... I'll let those be discovered later on.

Alright I, being me, am going to jump in to the fray because I'm not some aloof GM who loves his game being broken. Especially my first faction game, which I knew had a lot of moving parts and whatnot. So the fundamental problem here is that while the Revolutionaries and Infiltrators have a reason to collaborate, the Doves and Hawks don't, giving them greater vote advantage and reason for the neutrals, who I designed to be a swing group, to side with them. No other issues? Pretty much everything else is working out as intended so far, which I'm good with, other than maybe a heavier than intended reliance on PMs, but given the nature of the game I'm ok with that. However, I made that interaction mostly by accident, and when asked about it, didn't necessarily think about the consequences of that choice. In other words, I am willing to make a slight change to the win condition of either the Revolutionaries or Infiltrators to make them unable to win with each other, putting them on equal footing with the Royalists. That's what I'm reading to be the main issue right now, and I don't feel it would affect the game immediately too much besides making it a more healthy game to play, since technically the game can't be ended yet anyway. I would ask for Devotary's input on this as well. When originally set up this way, the idea was that the win condition for both to win together was so complex I didn't think it was really feasible without some form of betrayal, but... yeah clearly that's not working. And it's only D2. Would it be ok for me to make this change? Would this create the game environment for this LG to be played to completion?

Thanks for asking! My leg is fine, tho my arm has a large set of scratches on it that haven't healed yet. Someone else is taking care of it now, as I'm at the beach with my family. Thus the beach related tags I've been including on each turn. The waves were nice and big today.

I've already PAFO'd that question, and I'll PAFO it again.

LG87: Day Two - The Death of a... Scholar? With the discovery of a new, cheaper lifeless command, the scholars were understandably excited that night. They spent the whole time they should have been sleeping poking and prodding at the body, noting that as far as they could tell, it was just as functional as a normal lifeless, which usually cost around 50 breath. One scholar, named Yallacero, was particularly fascinated by the lifeless, and stayed up even later than the other scholars to continue to study it. And so, no one was there when the lifeless killed Yallacero. It was found holding a sword over his bloody body the next morning, completely unresponsive. It seemed to have been given a command to kill Yallacero, and then had its security phrase changed. And no one knew who had done it. With the new discoveries, breath became a premium item in Hallendren. All went out to purchase as much breath as they had coin to acquire. For this "Biochromatic breath" that all people had one of could truly do amazing things when had in large enough quantities. ~~~ Fifth Scholar died! He was a Royalist Hawk Royal, with the First Heightening. The Day has begun! It will end in about 47 hours, at 10 PM EDT 7/12/2022. Known Commands: Player List

Alrighty enough shenanigans, you know the drill! No PMs until the day goes up, all that.

Uh, turn ends in 20 minutes! Or, I guess, 17 minutes but ya know