Fifth Scholar

Hamartano’s lightsaber continued to cut into the earth, sand flying up as Wizard’s blade pushed down on his, burying the few drops of blood which his previous strike had drawn. The Sith was speaking with those wild eyes again, repeating the same platitudes about decay and emotion he had heard countless times before. When he cut off his speech and swung the spear towards him, Hamartano was ready. The move was clear in his head: extinguish his lightsaber, throwing his opponent’s strike off-balance as he sought to maintain the bind and pushing him forward, then reigniting it and chopping him in half. It worked. Somewhat. Wizard leaned forward, his lightsaber now meeting no resistance, but the Sith was wily enough that his strike did not go as far amiss as Hamartano had hoped. He pirouetted as he began to lean, and the tip of the spear he held was now pointed at the gang leader’s arm, moving forward inexorably. The blue blade came on too late, and the tip gouged his free arm’s elbow, the electricity making Hamartano howl in pain. His muscles tensed, and his own strike, weaker than it should have been, was batted aside. As the next thrust of the spear came, Hamartano closed his eyes and concentrated through his exhaustion. He would not allow the Sith’s assertion, that he and the Jedi had gone down quietly, with no fight, to stand. Focusing on the rent piece of his cloak which now lay trampled in the sand, he sent it flying towards the spear-tip. It clung, muffling the electric current as it wrapped itself around the end, and Hamartano, feeling the pain recede, dragged himself back to his feet, deflecting the two blows that came towards him. Drawing his feet together, he began to swing more double-handed, overhand blows, heedless of the blood now flowing from his left arm—not subtle strikes, but also not ignorable. “Passion and decay?” he grunted. “Passion and spontaneity leads to decay only if it is embraced as an end, Dark One. When it is kept as a servant to order”—he punctuated the words with a particularly heavy blow and grinned back at the Sith—“it is still life itself. And you will never draw me away from that.”

The shaft of Wizard’s blade clave in two. Hamartano looked down, surprised, at his own work—he had intended to allow the Sith to block his obvious strike and then try some follow-up hits from above. But what had happened was clear; lightning sparkled at the fissure between the lightsaber and the spearhead, fully separating the mangled remains of reinforced wire, and Hamartano was barely able to pull his own blade free before the red lightsaber, still intact, began taking swings at him, the electricity-reinforced spear jabbing behind it. He should not have underestimated the frenzy of the Sith—he had made his opponent less coordinated and graceful, but perhaps more dangerous. Reverting to the most basic form—Form One—to bat away the swings of the saber, he kept a wary eye on the spear behind it, still crackling dangerously with that purple force. He berated himself. Precision was always his hallmark: it was what made him excel as a marksman, but he had let the rules of a lightsaber duel, the back-and-forth rhythm, escape him in his time back on Dreshdae where they had fallen into disuse. If he failed to anticipate his opponent’s reaction again, he might pay more severely. There were no easy fights. There was no rest until your enemy was in the dust in front of you, or you were yourself. Then, it came—the lightsaber withdrew momentarily and the spear stabbed forward. Hamartano barely caught it in time, thanking his master mentally for having trained him against such weapons, but even as he turned the thrust aside with the shaft of his blade, his opponent’s saber came slicing down. There was no blocking this. Hamartano rolled forward instead, keeping the spear at bay, and heard the clean chop and a faint smell of ash as his cloak billowed up behind him and was cut in twain. Skidding, he re-established his footing on his opponent’s left and flowed smoothly into his next attack, blade cutting up at Wizard’s ribcage.

Hamartano reeled, driven back by the two crackling orbs of lightning which spun towards him. Ataru excelled at nimbleness and craft and speed, but none of those mattered when you had twin circles of death barrelling inexorably towards you, and when your opponent had a weapon which gave him the same things. He shifted his stance, holding his ground against Wizard and the taunts he was hurling. The clean azure of his blade began poking into the patterns of erratic purple, disrupting the spinning rhythm, even as he felt a stray tendril buzz his arm, tingling painfully. He pressed, alternating the direction of his cuts, left-right-right-left-right-left, then long sweeping strokes for good measure, to gain more distance from the crackling ends of the spear. As he parried, Hamartano felt a sudden flame within him at the Sith's words that drove his zeal more than any mortal peril his weapons could present. Spitting into the dirt, he disengaged briefly, pushing Wizard away and sliding back himself. His speech, when it came out, had the pent-up frustration of the last week behind it. His eyes, brown as the sands, locked with the yellow tint of the Desann who stood before him. "You know my master well enough to know that finding him would be your doom beyond anything that I could work here," Hamartano said slowly. "But even if you did find him, what will you do? Reclaim this valley? I have watched and tended it for five years, five more than I needed to know that your side of the Force will always be stronger here. Yet still you fail. Still you cannot get past the barest hint of defiance from the Light. If you Sith are our hunters, then we harried heroes have had heart to run longer than you to pursue, and our lust to lose and to stand tall in that defeat will exceed your own will to win. It has always been this way, Sith. Your emperors sit high in thrones when they ascend to power, and they fret and worry at the slightest receding of their authority, knowing it will doom them. But Lord Skywalker, lost from fame, sits in some recluse I know not where, in I know not what mean place, and awaits his death, and still has heart and spirit to be with the Force, and the Light still spreads over all. In the same way my death will not matter. When the blood of the good is spilt, it is a testimony for the Light. But yours?" Hamartano's eyes became steely. "It is the witness and sign against you." As he spoke, he flipped through the air with a yell, feeling elation as he became almost weightless, and the Force surged within him, responding as always to his exhilaration. HIs lightsaber became a blur anew, and he, still midair, thrust its length at the middle of the strange weapon Wizard held, hoping to cleave it.

As the words burst forth from the Gungan’s mouth proclaiming himself as Sith, and the red light burst forth from the tip of the weapon, Hamartano felt a current of relief under all his adrenaline. He had chosen rightly. Even if he fell in the lonely sands, he would not be condemning another innocent to die. Sometimes innocents were vocal. Sometimes they held the wrong opinions and supported the wrong people. Hamartano usually had fewer reservations about killing such people. The last few days? With half the regulars at the bar dead, Sahje’s weighty looks had given him more pause about his cavalier attitude. It was the insistence of the council as well. Innocents were innocents. But this one was not. The red arc, trailed by a second bronze one sparkling with electricity, were aiming at his skull. Hamartano was surprised for a moment at the suddenness of the parry. It was an effective one, his lightsaber having been knocked aside almost completely, but his Force-heightened senses allowed him to duck beneath the blade, and bring his own back around in a curved arc, driving the electricity-protected base of his opponent’s strange weapon into the dirt. He exchanged a flurry of quick blows, saber meeting saber in loud flashes of light. Wubum had skill, and Hamartano’s Ataru was not as effective against his double-sided weapon, but he pressed on, battering blue against red, searching for how to make an opening in his opponent’s solid stance. Remembering his lessons, he kept his feet loose, looking to gain enough nimbleness for an opening. I am Darth Wizard, most ancient of my people. It was an interesting boast, and the only one of his titles that interested Hamartano. Who were the people he fought for? Who were their ancient ones? It was certainly not him. He snapped out of his reverie as the red blade came inches from his face. His people, clearly, were the ones behind him in the bar counting on him not to die, which was what mattered at the moment. He gripped his saber more firmly and spun it around, the force of the manoeuvre sending the Sith a couple paces back. He finally had the spacing he wanted. Feinting at his opponent’s right, he slid with alacrity and then jumped once he was in range, bringing the blade curving back at Wubum’s less protected left.

A life attuned to the Force, a life of peace, begins with an ordered mind, Mart. You cannot expect your thoughts to be in disarray and the Force to obey you, for the true Force, the Light, the Living aura which flows through all things, is concerned fundamentally with their order. Everything is to flourish. You are to flourish. And to tap into this, to become more than a thug with a deadly glowstick in your fist, you must respect that order and synchronise yourself with it. It is the only way that uses the Light without inviting the dark to knock. So said his master, merely a few years ago, when Hamartano still observed the tutelage of man. His was never a life of peace. If you were to carve out a living in the harsh deserts of a world like Dreshdae, you did not do it in monkish submission to the elements around you. The elements would laugh at your submission and tear you apart. If you wanted peace with Dreshdae, you had to beat it down until it dropped its weapon and looked up with despair in its eyes. Only then could you choose whether to spare it or not. The Force, Hamartano reasoned, was much the same. As the blood pumped through his veins, the adrenaline pouring into his system as he readied himself to face the bounty hunter who stood before him, who threatened, along with all of Dreshdae, to sweep the planet and all that was on it along in its rolling tide of darkness, he knew that someone had to stand athwart the darkness and chaos. To push it back, to master it, to make it hide its face in the infinite sands of the planet. And then, peace would spring forth. The Force could return. And his own mind might achieve the rest it needed. Until then? The Force would have to beat at the disorder within him, even as he confronted the disorder within it. Hamartano felt like that was a fair trade. And as if making a deal in Sahje’s bar, he reached out to the Force and seized it, feeling it flow into him and empower his movement. He stopped his circling, lightsaber held in both hands above his shoulder, an azure blue line pointing directly at the sky. Then, with the fluidity and grace born of a thousand jumps off his speeding swoop bike, he launched himself into the air, sweeping the blade in a wide protective arc, directly at the Gungan’s head.

How will my true heir be known? Unless I should tell, he never shall. My instinct is always to guard, to guard, to guard. The time has come, however, to cast the veil of secrecy aside and step into the light. Upon this my confession, have some anagrams k 1 aaeiinopst 7 aadioon 3 adeeijorssx 4 aacddiilosvv 2 einoors 5 eegimnorrtux 2 aeelmmnou 5 May the best players win, Sith. Before this cycle is ended the seeds of wrath shall be sown; tread carefully when the harvest comes.

Mat (a few): Me, Drake, Mad before she retracted Fadran (1): Ash Wiz (1): you yeah we need more voters I think

Ideally lynching Mat or Wiz ends the game and we don’t have to find out

Not a huge Fadran fan, but his quick vote this cycle makes me suspect him less. Seemed like a very village reaction to the reveal. I doubt he’s evil without Mat.

Okay. I would just like to point out that currently we have like three votes actually placed, one of which is mine, and the Elims can pull out four to five if they’re feeling in the mood this cycle. This makes the current state of affairs Not Good. Y’all please vote for someone. We need hammer protection, as well as more info on where people stand. I have literally given you four options. It is not too hard

Because we were both under pressure? If only one of us did it, you gotta weigh whether it’s a cultist gambit. We wanted to remove that doubt (even though Mat has re-introduced it ). Also, making a more target-rich environment for Team Evil will hopefully confuse them enough that our actions stand a chance of working. Also also, it’s been a fun reaction test for you and Mat and a couple others so thank you for playing along You are correct, however, that I should vote. Your case against Mat is…compelling. But I am starting to get the same trust issues I was having with Mat earlier but with you now, whether this is fair or not. You and Devo were the two people I was trusting apart from Alv, you because you were agreeing with me on everything and Devo because she wasn’t, and on reflection the latter is probably a better reason. But if you’ve pocketed me, your team’s probably already won, and I have liked your reactions to the double claim better than Mat. So I will throw a vote on Mat provisionally. Mat, I am sorry if I am wrong on this one because you’re probably the best analyst left, but that’s also why I’m incredibly paranoid that you’re unflipped. This isn’t really fair and I hope to substantiate this later but also schoolwork is robbing me of a ton of time right now and that includes the time needed to make 3000-word shrek cases >> As a Jedi banking on only two remaining Cultists (maybe this was a bad thing to bank on? >>), if this is the case, the real Jedi have a ton of options to make us regret our actions. Counterclaiming is one, but it is not necessary. We can be Force Pushed into suicide like Hael, vote manipped into oblivion, fed to the salivating young apprentices they’ve been training up, etc. Drake’s idea is a good one, though there are probably even easier ways to go about it. The fact that nobody has tried to raise even implicit doubt, except you and Drake, who are very clearly not a team, should be enough to confirm our legitimacy. Side note in case I somehow die: if Matrim is evil, then Fadran should definitely be the next Exe if the game does not end. If Matrim is village I would say that Drake is probably 95% a cultist, so Alv and I will try to use our actions against him, and then Wizard makes sense for a teammate of his, as that’s someone he has avoided placing consistent pressure on. Fadran!DR without Mat is difficult to envision for me.

I am going to ask that you trust Alvron and I enough to have confidence in our own abilities and how they interact with things. Our clears are clear. We would not have identified them as such otherwise. One of the four left is a bit of a failed clear, if that makes you feel any better. We are not just throwing around actions and saying “guess it’s not them.” Our biggest trump over the eliminators was our identity, which I’ve given up to publicise the analysis and make sure this cycle doesn’t turn into a two-way train on us. I am not relinquishing our second trump of our specific action strategies, particularly when there are possible cultists in the “clear” pool who would love to avail themselves of an opportunity to guess how we’re thinking. Why we’re revealing now? Force Sense is recharged (we claim, enjoy your IKYKs Elims ), thread is getting devoured by unnecessary focus on us and general malaise so this puts some life into it, and we have the pool narrow enough that we figure we can strategically kill through it faster than we ourselves will die

We did not manip D1-2 (in fact we have not done so all game), and were Force Pushing like madmen. Two of these people are cleared for that reason, a third is a different mechanical clear for a reason not pertaining to our actions but rather something that happened to us. We know how it happened, which is why we are clearing the person in question. We also do not want to reveal more information because it might have a chance at biting the Elims in the behind See above. Now I’m curious The thought has entered our heads, let’s just say

Hamartano heard a faint buzzing in his earpiece. It was the first signal he had from it for days, after the attack on the comms device. He turned the knob, hearing the whining noise of static—then, through the haze of noise, a voice calling clearly. He paused. A frequency he wasn’t used to, yet unmistakably transmitting something. “Hamartano, over.” There was a second’s pause. “It’s time. Over.” Elation sprang up in Hamartano’s chest. “Copy!” he yelled, his exhilaration carrying his voice over the loud revving of his bike’s engine. He tore the earpiece out and shoved it in his jacket. The bike tore away out of the desert sands, the bolts of the now-armed gizka falling harmlessly past him. Hamartano was brooking no delay. The bike rattled as he pushed the accelerator as far down as it could go, and only when the engine started cutting and choking did he reduce its speed. He was still tearing up ground, though, and jumped off his still-speeding bike as it came in front of the now-familiar bar. Sahje looked aghast at the unmanned vehicle; at least, he did until its retreating form trampled a row of ten gizka as it screeched to a standing halt, gleaming in the sun. The gizka stood up, disoriented and disarmed but very much not dead. Humtumb the gizka man ran forward to grab them up, and Hamartano shook his head slightly. Well, he could occupy himself with what he pleased. More important matters were ahead. He strode in. Glares greeted his arrival. Apparently, doing in the shifty local ecologist hadn’t done wonders for his reputation. He briefly considered whether the homicide could also be classified as a breach of the Codes, then swept the errant thought aside as he mounted the tallest stool and pulled out his blaster, pointing it squarely at Smarts, the technician. Hands scrambled for weapons elsewhere in the seats, but Hamartano was ahead of them. He flipped the catch above the trigger, and the length of the blaster shrank, contracting into itself. The trigger folded in, becoming a simple button lever, which the swoop gangster pulled with a flick of his thumb, sending out a blinding blue rod of light. The two shots which had been fired at him were deflected into the roof and the ground below him. Hamartano was not interested in further casualties. Yet. Lightsaber in hand, he addressed the group. “I am on the Jedi Council,” he proclaimed. “And we have decided it is time to show ourselves to you once more.” He pointed at Nees Bac, who he acknowledged with a smile, the first Hamartano had cracked in ages. It was good to drop the false animosity. “The Jawa man has been my helper here. A little short, but the Council thought he’d do alright. And he has. Saved that one—” he now jabbed his finger at Turtle—“from some Sith a couple days ago. He’s been the one actively fighting them, you know. Had the nerve to put me on reconnaissance, saying the Force would guide him to his needed targets. I guess it has. Me, I just rely on Old Faithful here.” He patted his lightsaber hilt. “That said, the both of us have been doing some watching and messing around with the Force, and we’ve got news. “GIZKA MAN!” he hollered, and Humtumb stumbled in. A thumb flew in his direction. “Gizka man is not one of those Desaan types we’re supposed to be hunting. Neither is the midget”— he pointed directly at Moff—“or the quieter guy there”—his finger alighted on Kalabel. “And unless the Sith have gone even more Force-mad, it ain’t Turtle either. Doesn’t stop ‘em from being in league with the unsavoury types, but it does leave us with only a few people to check.” He retracted his blade and jumped down. “Jev. Smarts. Lib. KD. One of ’em wants me and Nees dead. Reckon it’s Smarts, from my sense of the guy, but it’s never too soon to be exploring other people too. I ain’t never felt good about Lib, and KD has been tailing Smarts too much for my liking anyway. One of ‘em wants to try me, they can come at me. I’ll be ready with this guy.” He flourished the lightsaber and ignited it once more, twirling outside and sending four blasts deflected into the hearts of the gizka jumping up and down near the entrance. “But till then y’all gotta make some choices.” In case my RP was not clear: @Alvron and I are the Jedi. I, like Anakin before me, am not particularly good at this Alv has been better, and submitted the Force Sense that saved Turtle C2. (I’ll let you guess how he chose a target ) We both agreed on Hael C3 and managed to get a Sith even though I’ve been doing much more terribly in-thread with my analysis. And sorry about that show we put on yesterday. It was kinda necessary to make sure we were both under enough lynch pressure to not get hit till our Force Senses recharged. We will be protecting each other this cycle, so Elims don’t even try to hit us (or do ), and we also have a “cleared” list. These are people who for whatever reason could not be Desaan Reborn. Note: they can still be cultists!! These are mechanical clears based on our action results. This group is @DrakeMarshall, @Madagascar, @Ashbringer. Turtle is also clear by virtue of his being attacked C2. This leaves Matrim, Fadran, Wizard, and JNV as options for the last Desaan Reborn, with weaker suspicion on JNV than the other three due to activity patterns and tone. Please make something of all this information, because I have not been able to and also stop trying to kill me >>

Alright, fair. Still does not change that I mainly suspected your Hael—>Mad switch rather than anything else there. Given that I actively suspect Wizard, probably would be gunning for Turtle were he not (almost) mechanically cleared, and only tentatively v!read Drake, I don’t think I’m giving anyone a “pass” here. You also went beyond them, though, by expressing bafflement at the kill, which set off all the alarm bells in my gut. I get the feeling >> It did not stop me from e!Reading you based on tone, no and it probably won’t in the future either See the thing is, you’re entirely correct that I am basically hunting up a reason to think you’re an Elim but that’s because my gut has been screaming at me all game every time you post, and I am a firm believer in gut even when it is a servant of Shai’tan (if history is to be believed, I listen to gut more when it is serving Shai’tan >>). You have had weird interactions with Hael, mega weird interactions with Fadran, and are in a good position to be a more vocal eliminator in a world where I am choosing to trust Devo and Drake (God save us all). Thing is, again, I respect e!you enough to not give me much in your posts to work with if you’re evil. You can appear village, which is why my re-read started pulling my analysis back that way. But what you’ve done so far has largely only helped the Elims, and in that sense you’re in a similar bucket as the late Hael. (Yes, pot and kettle, I know >>) But alright, Matrim. It is possible I am grading you on a scale and you’re right that it’s not entirely fair. I would like other opinions on you (in fact, if other people could just talk more in general, that would be wonderful!). Thank you for pointing this out, village point to you. The Bookwyrm and Alv trains are really the only ones I am considering joining if we’re trying for consolidation, but I prefer Bookwyrm for the probably bad reasoning that I trust you and Drake more than Mad. I’ve had this suspicion for a while, and Bookwyrm was likely the most suspicious out of the [Fadran, Wizard, Bookwyrm] group that voted me and then did the weird C3 thing where the other two voted on Fadran. Actually, that kind of makes me want to flip Fadran, but I am not further dividing these trains >>

Okay, with how quiet everything is, the Elims clearly aren’t feeling too threatened. So, if no one else will make reckless decisions, I will. Alvron gets a stay of execution. I am getting suspicious of Matrim. It is 12:30 AM, where I make only the best decisions but I have had an itch to start this Exe for a while now Why do I think Mat is evil? Let’s review his actions. D1 he pokes Hael. I am not claiming to be a poke vote scientist here—I understand that a variety of philosophies undergird the usage of this sacred institution. However, generally speaking, initial poke votes by eliminators are more likely to fall on other eliminators than on random players, because they are often cheap distancing points. (There at times when this goes awry, LG41 most notable among them.) This philosophy makes me mildly suspect Mat in light of Hael’s flip, especially given the transience of the poke dealt. He then retracts for Hael and votes Mad by the end of the cycle, starting that wagon, only to pull off it once it had another vote and hop onto Shining instead. Whether Mat knew about Wyrm’s vote or not here is rather immaterial; the point is that he charts a course from voting an Elim to…not doing that. (Note also the wording of the poke on Hael, which could be construed as a good joke if e!Mat.) Note also the Fadran interactions which are just weird and seem artificial; cannot tell if it is a pocket, a pairing, or just me being bad at reading tone. My brain also does not know whether to take the persistent refusal to join a Xino or Szeth train as villager-y or TMI. Then there’s his first post of C2, which bleeds eliminator to me: This whole post just sounds like an attempt to sell the “confused villager” angle. Note the consistent bafflement / surprise he feels the need to express about pretty much every aspect of what’s happened. I should, I should, I was deceived, etc. More Fadran interaction, Shining vote placed immediately even as he quasi-defends Shining against Fadran’s accusation of an amateur move (this probably points to v!Mat if it’s not NAI, tbh), then his response post to me, which was the original thing that made me retract my paranoia of him. Looking back it’s still fine, but I don’t get the village vibes I did from it on my first read-through. The next few posts do give me stronger v!Mat, but it’s mostly on tone which is always the thing I’m susceptible to, so I’m intentionally rating it lower. Then my bandwagon happened. I was initially v!reading my defenders, but looking back at what Mat said, and considering that there were no Elims in danger, he was free to defend me from the weird train at will. (Note, again, Fadran doing the same in close accompaniment. And then joins the wagon later. Have I mentioned I have no clue what to make of Fadran? >>) His Shining vote is fairly persistent except for a brief switch to Xino, but I respect e!Mat enough that I’m not reading the oscillation as necessarily Village. So C2!Mat was best Mat, probably, even though the interactions are still weird (and his defences of me and Drake and Fadran also felt odd). And there was that one terrible initial post. C3!Mat also starts off rocky, casting aspersions on Shining as a result of the vote manip but failing to vote him directly until much later. Does a very high-effort multiquote the tone of which reads Village but the substance of which is a little less even—there are good Village and Elim bits in there, and this is getting too long anyway >> Point is, this is probably the post other than mine which makes The Case Against Shining. Reads list is generally good, though it studiously avoids saying much of anything about Hael. I could say more but I’ll just leave this here. My brain will power me off if I’m not asleep soon and then I’ll lose this post as I reread I think I actually became less convinced of e!Mat. But. I’m tired of oscillating on everyone and I have a handful of suspicious things on him, so y’all talk about it and give me something to say come morning

I was flagging Bookwyrm earlier for TMI defences of Shining despite voting/pushing (?) him C1 but I don’t know how much credence I put in those views. My reads are in a bit of a mess and unfortunately I disagree with Shining on most of his except the ones on me, Alv, and JNV That said, if Alvron gives me some indication that he is a villager with interest in finding the eliminators through voting, I am happy to switch to Bookwyrm. He was the main Shining defender who I thought was suspicious irrespective of Shining’s flip (this designation also applies to Wizard, though less so). @Ookla the [Redacted] Yeah voting would be helpful. Or just posting in general

I am an idiot and the Jedi are not. Nothing new there I guess >> I am genuinely sorry, Shining. I did reconsider after your analysis, but should have made that reconsidering more public--I think I fell into the trap myself of trying to seem village, and calling 'halt!' on a wagon I started was not in my self-interest. Probably should have been done anyway, though. First thing I will be doing this cycle when I get a chunk of time is going back through all of what you said. It's suddenly relevant So the Sith led us on a merry chase, but given that in total none of the wagons in the last three cycles have been on evil players, I am going to start looking at the non-voting population a little more closely. I think that should begin with Alvron. I also completely understand if people want to look into me as well

You counted me in your vote tally and then tagged me for not voting. Make up your mind

That long post last night did not happen, sorry. Would say that it's my fault but at this point I think I can start blaming my professors >> Multiquote time + bonus Hamartano RP: You can always throw a vote on Shining. More seriously, this response reads...oddly - it's almost a form of thanking the doctor, which generally reads elim to me, but unless the Jedi were foolish enough to recruit a Sith apprentice last turn which just so happened to get protection powers, there's no way you aren't village, so any analysis you can do would be helpful since you're the closest thing we have to a cleared individual. hmm yeah I am not really buying the enforced casualness here +1 to Devo's post here. Sith have incentive to manipulate in either case. I will note that if Silho is village, this means that the Sith did not have incentive to vote, which, assuming that he is dying today, is something we should consider in light of his flip. If he's village, I would put far more suspicion on the non-voting people yesterday. This, meanwhile, is actual thanking the doctor. So yeah. More points against Silho. This kind of post is indicative of Wizard's general style this game, which is one reason that I would be voting for him were I not invested in figuring out Silho's alignment (and suspecting him more) right now. Nothing in this post, despite its length, takes a firm stand on anything--it offers general terms for a blanket "condemnation" of the entire populace and leaves it at that. Even his last two sentences manage to hedge Similar vibes from this Bookwyrm posting, though this at least asks some decent questions about last cycle, and proffers some sentiments with which I can agree. Actually. Never mind, I revise my initial impression. This is the most V!Bookwyrm vibes I have gotten from one of his posts all game. Nonetheless, I think his interactions with Silho are odd, especially his well-timed defences of him last cycle, which were the kind of half-committal ones you tend to see from teammates who are afraid of the steel cords and group-seating bus Wonderful. I am suspicious of Shining. I will agree the logic behind last cycle's trains was suboptimal or nonexistent. My vote was initially concerned with "not dying" and getting people to ask what in Braize Fadran and the others were doing, and then moved into a general preference of Silho over Xino, as Xino had seemed to at least be trying to address things while Silho seemed to take little interest in game-solving with his votes and was throwing them around rather haphazardly. In fact, this is/was my chief complaint against him this cycle as well; he has directed all his efforts into saving himself, and has repeatedly insisted the wagons against him are due to "elim influence," but he fails to take significant interest in who these eliminators might be, which is the chief thing contributing to my current elim read. It seems that the eliminators in the world Silho is trying to paint chiefly exist with their intentions to kill or frame him, and the identity is a minor bother that he'll sort out later. This is much closer to the mindset of an eliminator concerned with survival than a villager concerned with survival and with making sure suspicious people are identified and killed, etc. This can also be seen in his response to my request to him for dying words last cycle, where he failed to name any suspicions or leads specifically. I have colour-coded this Wizard post to helpfully demonstrate how every statement, major or minor, AI or NAI, is qualified somehow. This is less an issue for the second line, but for the first and third it's the kind of hedging I've noted on him all game and is only fuelling my elim read of his behaviour. Not going to vote for @Alvron anytime soon, but I agree that I would love to hear from him. Probably the best Silho post he's made (because hey! it's analysis where he is sorting through people) but I still disagree with a good chunk of this, most obviously the v!Wizard and e!Fifth part. (and, shockingly, the e!Devo part, which I swear, if I am going to have to choke on my shoe after the game, I will: I currently v!read Devo...God save us all >>) I agree that my wagon last cycle has little bearing on my alignment, but you have failed to identify anything actively suspicious about me that would justify a vote. Also, as nice as your colour-coordinated schematic is, we sadly cannot assume you to be village with quite the same enthusiasm you are blessing your own analysis with, so removing that presupposition makes me sceptical. Why do you think JNV and Hael are the most suspicious on the Xino train? And, if the two main trains at the end of last cycle were both village, why do you think the Sith would prefer one over the other, see a need to divide their votes, or even vote to begin with? This leads into another point, which is that the best v!Silho argument I can see atm is that we had only 2/3 voter engagement last round in terms of people who actually ended the cycle having voted, which is a bit lower than I'd expect if a Sith was up for the shrek. That said, the existence of vote manip, and the seeming reticence of the Jedi to employ theirs, might change the calculus enough where this is no longer a real concern. Next post I should look at the abstainers, though. [Hamartano RP forthcoming]

I may or may not sit down to write up a full condemnation tonight but I will say for the present that an elim team which does not include Shining requires a lot more tinfoil than I am comfortable with. I'll throw Wizard and Bookwyrm on that team for good measure. There are simply no better groupings of Sith than I can see.

Tried to read through this cycle one last time and did not make it through, but I find Bookwyrm’s consistent defence of Shining interesting (he was doing this at the beginning of the cycle when Mat and Fadran were on him as well), and don’t think it reflects well on him whether Shining turns up evil or good. It looks either like defence of a teammate or an attempted pocket. Paradoxically (?) I am also still unhappy with Fadran Given how much I’ve been hopping around, though, I think I will stay on Shining mostly so we get resolution on him and his voting patterns. (Jedi/Apprentice people please use Force Push or something on Xino so he can stop being a black hole of discussion as well.) Shining, while I understand you are frustrated if you are village, are there any last minute thoughts you have for us, assuming you are killed? That may be more helpful than pleading for your life at this point. (Xino can answer this as well in case he’s killed with manip.)

This but Old English for me >> Assortment of thoughts on recent developments: I do not know what I think about Xino specifically requesting a Shining Exe, rather than adding his vote back to me. It seems that nobody is interested in Fadran, which is probably fair, and my vote on him has largely served its purpose anyway. Right now there have been a lot of retractions and a general unwillingness to commit to someone, which is normally a bad sign indicating the Elims are not under much pressure, or that the village is listless, which feels equally bad. I did my promised reread last night when I took a break from responding to the thread, and got frustratingly little out of it other than a reminder that Wizard is avoiding scrutiny that was on him previously, and that there are quite a few people getting away with minimal posting. Ultimately, Shining’s votes have seemed actively worse to me than Xino’s, so I will vote there out of the two current options. Drake is asleep, but I would like to know if @Devotary of Spontaneity or @Alvron or @ookla the POKE VOTE have opinions on Xino’s persistence as a candidate, whether last cycle or this one, and whether voting him out would yield substantially more information than Shining or Wizard.

No. I’ll go back onto Fadran. Frankly, that vote makes zero sense to me. There is no reason I am even a target for this Exe besides a combination of paranoia from my past games, a vague desire to go after the Szeth voters (of which I was not one until the last second, and basically tried to cement a decision made by others so that the Elims couldn’t mess with our heads by condemning someone else with vote manip!), and gut. I cannot respond to any of these, and they make no material engagement with my posts, my thought processes over the last two cycles, and my petitions that we actually take a look at some of what led to these situations being created. Additionally, none of the votes on me explain either why the Jedi would manip onto Szeth, or why, if I am a Sith, I both slammed a vote onto Szeth in very public, last-minute fashion AND made an obvious manipulation to do the same thing, when one would have sufficed. Am I that desperate to protect Mad? Xino? Are these even reasonable teams for me to be on? There are entailments to me being evil, which nobody is explaining, and it’s quite frustrating seeing four or five votes go on me for this when they’re not being considered. /impassioned speech yes yes strategically I should be voting Xino and it would help make sense of last cycle and I’ll probably do it eventually but I would really love for the people who have kept their votes on me this whole cycle to have to think through some other worlds first.

Mostly baseless. I blame, in equal parts, you being Melkor the last time I interacted with you, a previous read-through where I felt your posts were weird, and an unwillingness to trust any analysis that I myself did not perform. Also a healthy heaping of gut. This is why I'm rereading