Devotary of Spontaneity

Most people would be willing to claim Keymaster, and it's interesting that Matrim is refuting an opportunity to not get voted on, but only the sacrifice should be willing to false-claim Sage.

I think you'll find that this is not true.

Sorry Droughtbringer, you were so close. @Lahilt, @The Unknown Order, we're really going to need you to vote today because everyone has a much higher risk of dying if people keep getting inactivity killed.

Technically it's possible that Danex could be the sacrifice and both Araris and TJ are working with him and betting on the 50% chance to win, but that seems less likely than other alternatives. It is plausible that people would be going for sacrifice wins because with two inactivity deaths, we're bound to have a sacrifice win or an everybody dies scenario if there were six rounds initially, five as of the reset.

Did @|TJ| vote Danex? And then I was a vote for Drought, while nobody voted Lahilt. I think Lahilt is the most likely sacrifice, between that and the odd thing about thinking the sage knew the sacrifice. It's possible two commoners could conspire to save the other by claiming sage/keymaster, but without a counterclaim I'll trust TUO being the Keymaster.

Well even if it's not Araris, we're bound to find the Keymaster somewhere so the sage doesn't have to claim. @Droughtbringer, Drought, is it you again? Vel had been so sure that she was about to die. She had known it was possible Azmine and Illwei were working together, but hadn't been willing to do enough to stop them. Instead of voting for TJ as a clear and safe option, she'd thrown her vote away out of what, pity? Guilt? The feeling that he shouldn't die just because it was safe to kill him? And then the sacrifice and his co-conspirator were pronounced winners and sent away to receive their reward and all Vel cared about as she closed her eyes and prepared for oblivion was that she'd failed her parents. There was a muffled explosion and she flinched, eyes snapping open instinctively. She appeared uninjured, but looking around she saw that one of the quiet participants who hadn't said a word now never would. Well that ruled out fighting back if their captors could detonate them remotely. And then armed guards were marching into the arena and demanding that everyone kneel and start begging for mercy. Vel complied immediately; begging for the chance to live just a little bit longer was hardly a new experience. All around her, competitors who had until recently been ready to kill each other now joined in common cause to spare each others' lives, and after long, agonising minutes their efforts were successful. The guards left to start a new round, leaving the corpse behind as a reminder and a warning of what would happen to them if they chose the sacrifice again.

Don't know why Lahilt's voting for TUO if he's not the Keymaster but okay. I think it is somewhat helpful to put votes in thread just to see what alliances people may or may not have, but it's also so easy to lie about it so maybe it doesn't help. I was going to vote for Lahilt if he's denying being the Keymaster but Matrim is right that he could be the sacrifice. How about we ask Araris @Araris Valerian if he's the Keymaster?

We probably deserve to lose here, but I would like to continue the game so I'll vote yes.

Well anyone who's had all the votes on them claimed is a relatively safe bet to kill today, though an active sacrifice would have reached out to someone to make a deal to win the game with them. A sacrifice who had one vote on them in thread easily could have split their votes, counting on 2 being enough for nomination. A sacrifice with no votes would have wanted to use their double vote, though again PM coordination means the sacrifice could have counted on one vote. So probably any of the people with two votes could be the sacrifice. Xino wanted not to die, but that's not necessarily a trustable reaction.

It's possible everyone who voted in thread cast the same vote in their PM. There's a lot more votes than indicated in thread. I think the most interesting thing is that Az got two votes without anyone voting on him in thread. Makes it somewhat more likely that he's the sacrifice, though of course it's difficult to tell the difference between someone who voted for themself because they're the sacrifice and someone who just didn't vote. Since Az didn't post, the latter is entirely likely. Illwei claiming to have voted for Az also means it's less likely that Az is the sacrifice. And then I guess Araris is claiming sacrifice?

According to Last Visited you had been on the Shard three hours ago. You can't die this turn. 7 people will be nominated, starting with the people with the most votes. If there's any votes on you, you're possibly better off nominating someone with no votes. It'd hard to tell since anyone who doesn't vote will automatically have at least one nomination vote and you can't tell who has and hasn't voted since only your PM vote counts.

Let's nominate Ashbringer, who's been around but hasn't posted. Vel had known for over a decade that her parents couldn't afford a child. It had been clear from their tiny apartment and cheap food and the fact that the other kids at school had better clothes and toys that her parents would have been better off by themselves. Her parents had refused to hear of it. "Everything we do is for you, little one. We make sacrifices and go into debt so that you have a chance at a better life than we had." This had been accepted with an understanding nod, and an internal realisation of a responsibility to grow up and make enough money to get them out of debt. Growing up was characterised by an intense focus on school, as this was both interesting and the only clear way of career advancement. There would be no competing at a money-making level in non-academic fields against children who had extensive leisure time and could afford fancy equipment and private lessons. Vel did participate in team athletics, after parental encouragement in the hopes of health benefits and also a chance of making friends, but only the former was achieved. Vel always felt disconnected from everyone except family members, which would eventually be a problem in finding a spouse who could help solve financial problems simply by existing especially if they were rich, but this was a problem that couldn't be solved by dedication and hard work the way schoolwork could. Eventually, she decided this problem could wait until she was old enough to marry without parental permission. When she was old enough, she quit athletics to seek gainful employment, which her parents reluctantly allowed only so long as it didn't interfere with her schoolwork. "It's a parent's responsibility to take care of their children, not the other way around," they said. "We want you to do what's best for you and not worry about how it affects us. You'll understand this someday, but for now just know that we love you and we want you to be happy." "It'll make me happy to get a job. As your daughter, it's my duty to repay all the sacrifices you've made for me my whole life, but I promise I won't let it prevent from doing well in school the way you want." Seeing her parents' faces showing a complicated set emotions that looked to be a mix of shock and disappointment she added, "and I don't want to play team sports anymore anyway, so I need something to fill that time and a job could be fun." After a week of heated private discussions, her parents finally relented and allowed her to look for a part-time job. There weren't a lot of great job opportunities for a teenager who had to attend school full time and dedicate hours of time at home to keep her grades up in the need to graduate at the top of her class, but Vel was able to find employment doing manual labor for marginally better than the absolute minimum workers were legally allowed to be paid. Her social life dropped to zero as she stopped pretending the masks she wore in different circumstances were anything other than lifeless façade. Her parents were by far the closest outsiders to knowing the real her, but even they could only see the entirety of a construct. Vel didn't even know who she was at this point, but figured that was less important than fitting the person she needed to be. Her family was eating better these days and she was still on track to be successful in life, and that was what mattered. Finally, after years of grueling effort her hard work mostly paid off. She wasn't at the top of her class, falling behind students who'd had the free time to fill their schedules with the most difficult classes, and she wasn't accepted into all of the universities she'd wanted because she didn't have much to show for herself on the extracurricular side of things and hadn't been able to spend bucketloads of money and thousands of hours preparing for tests, but she'd done well enough to get full scholarships to multiple good universities and free tuition to the school of her choice. When she lamented that even with free tuition it would still be expensive for her to attend, her parents assured her they could take care of it. "We've received correspondence from a new loan company. They offer loans with very generous terms to 'economically disadvantaged' people and I hear they're willing to give huge payouts to kickstart the careers of people they think will make it big with just a little help. We know you're all about self-denial, but just this once accept something for yourself please?" Distracted by a rare feeling of exuberance, Vel agreed. The next morning, Vel woke up to find that her parents were gone. In their place was a letter addressed to her sent by the same loan company that had offered to pay her university bills. Hands shaking, Vel opened the letter. "Dear [Redacted]," it began. We are delighted to hear that you have accepted a loan from us. Welcome to the family! Please come to our nearest loan office at your earliest convenience to discuss terms." Underneath was the addresses of all the offices scattered throughout the country, along with a postscript. It read "P.S. Your parents will be waiting for you when you get here."

I see we're trying to trivialise all sage claims for the rest of the game. If we all get keymastered we'll be sorry. I guess sage is also less easily confirmable than I was thinking since a commoner could easily go along with being called the keymaster by a false sage.

Sometime before the sacrifice can guarantee a win, which they can definitely do at three players since the sage would vote for the sacrifice on purpose. Worst/reasonable case the last round wants to have five people still alive assuming two deaths per cycle. Starting with 15 players, killing two per cycle ending up with three total survivors at most makes 6 rounds max. Five rounds is also plausible, but we shouldn't count on that. We should have at least a little bit of coordination during the execution phase, since ties between commoners will kill us too quickly and make sure that the sacrifice wins if we don't all die to the keymaster. And then a sage who isn't a nominee should claim who the keymaster is at the start of the execution phase, but coordination can also let a sage who is a nominee know to claim if we're about to kill the keymaster. We shouldn't automatically kill the sage in that case, as a sage who knows they'll lose either way might decide not to say anything and also because a sage claimant could theoretically be a sacrifice.

The sage is the best person to execute, since they're confirmed to not be the sacrifice, so the sage will never claim during the nomination phase. They might not even claim in the execution phase if they're a candidate if the keymaster is about to die, since the sage loses either way if either they or the keymaster dies. We could agree to be nicer to sage claims to make sure they can stop us from killing the keymaster without inevitably losing for their trouble. @Sart, does the sacrifice still lose their extra vote at low remaining player count?

Illwei, Chantara.

Illwei(3): Devotary, Squirrel, Chantara Devotary(2): TJ, Mat Squirrel(1): Tani Chantara(1): Illwei

So I am still dying for voting on non-Illwei trains. Or at least that's TJ's reasoning. Not entirely sure where Matrim went from voting Chantara to not even considering her a suspect, but I guess it's the RB claim or some other PM thing. An elim roleblocker would have needed to know three people's locations every night to be useful alongside the elim spike and Coinshot kills so might not be usable, but on a three person elim team would mean that no scan could take place so if that's the number wouldn't have been used unless the elims were confident of being able to kill two people per night for the rest of the game without scans. Squirrel wouldn't have lied about being roleblocked. An elim Squirrel accusing a village Esooa would be a dangerous move but might have worked if Esooa flipped Soother. Not especially likely but I wouldn't say we lose if Squirrel is an elim.Tani likely is a Lurcher since she probably could have stayed quiet instead of risking another Lurcher, although two village Lurchers wouldn't be out the the question with targeting limitations and an elim Coinshot. Being a Lurcher isn't proof of alignment since we had a village Coinshot. For non-train people, I've mostly been coasting on village Mat since D2. Probably should have looked at this more closely but I'm not going to unless Illwei is evil. TUO being evil likely means we haven't done a very good job pressuring elims. TUO and Mat are presumably not e/e, and I'd say TUO isn't e/e with Illwei either. TJ certainly isn't an elim with Illwei. Not sure why he's not willing to vote Mat after putting him into a 1/2/3 with Illwei and Esooa but I'm also going with early village read on Mat and it's not like his alignment has changed since then. I feel like I'm willing to see if TJ's right about @Illwei at this point. Floating around on Archer is odd, I reflexively dislike asking for location claims, and knowing Illwei's alignment would clear a lot of things up, with the main downside that killing village Illwei + two kills tonight makes a 3-3 tie, though this is true for any mix and at least Illwei isn't a Lurcher and presumably not the Soother. So I'll vote for Illwei.

I see we're revealing locations immediately after the last two people who had their locations publicly claimed got killed. I guess a maximum of two people can be killed per night and so any claims after that won't increase the single night death toll, but we don't need to give the elims more options to dodge Lurcher protection if Tani is indeed a village Lurcher or target roles they might want dead.

I lost internet connection ~ an hour and forty five minutes before rollover and then an hour before rollover forgot about trying to fix it until after the turn ended. Four people is not a majority, and Squirrel, Illwei, and Mat had all previously expressed suspicion of Archer in order of least trusting. Esooa was the only one whose most recent opinion was town reading Archer.

As in you implied to Archer which two locations you were not in? Elk could have asked you about a location you were in if he'd heard from someone else in that location. What would Squirrel be lying about? An elim Squirrel with village Esooa wouldn't benefit from accusing someone he knew would flip village since it would implicate him next cycle, and village Squirrel lying about being roleblocked makes even less sense. Well you are brazen as an elim so this is irrelevant. This is somewhat more relevant. You weren't in danger until my vote two hours before rollover, two hours before rollover. Squirrel's vote forty five minutes later put you in critical danger. Chantara putting a vote on Illwei an hour before rollover is the main concrete thing that could be an attempt to save you, since your and Illwei's switch to Mint looks like self-preservation on both your parts.

I was always going to vote for you, it just took me long enough to write my post that Illwei cast their vote first. Why do you think people should have been gut reading you as village? I saw trying to kill someone apparently without regard for who, with some residual desire not to ignore suspicious behavior from you after the last LG, and voted for you. A chart doesn't verify you, though mostly this is because not e-e doesn't mean that one of them isn't evil and the fact that I associate you and spreadsheets with the Reckoners QF where you were an elim. This seems to run into the same problems as before, since the elims would only have one location scan as of N2. Did Archer know that you'd claimed an accurate location to Essoa? Is there any way he could have gotten your location without a location scan or him being teammates with Esooa?

A second person votes for me without any explanation. Mat at least mentioned that he doesn't like my votes, which I'm not sure what specifically the problem is other than that he had Archer as null+ to light village as of D2. Well Elkanah definitely claimed a location to multiple people and apparently didn't switch up which one he claimed every time, so it's not impossible that he claimed an accurate location to an elim and got killed for it. That would require a Coinshot to have learned Kas's location and decided to kill him. And then the elims scanning Squirrel just to roleblock him would still be weird.

Considering if he's killed is fine, but also something an elim who doesn't expect to be killed could say. The second part seems like it would only be relevant if Archer and Illwei are evil together, which is looking unlikely given Illwei's vote this turn. I don't see how 'elims would offer up their location first' fits with town reading Dalinar for claiming his location to three different people. Is there something else about this part you were referring to? And then Elk and Mat for their own demerits? Not having e-e pairs tends to correspond with not having a lot of connections to other people in general. I prefer going for possible e-e pairs, although admittedly my current vote is not that.

What made you go from 'Archer's recent question makes sense' -> Archer town -> strong Archer town? Who are the people you're willing to kill today? Are you trying to keep people alive if you have more not e/e pairs for them?