Fifth Scholar

Night over! Silence till the next writeup goes up.

All kills occur simultaneously, though the Synod kill is not an action. The roleblock happens before any other Night action.

Turn over! Night to come soon.

In case you missed the edit, I forgot to initally mention that Striker was a Synod member. Carry on >>

Day Two: Hope Rekindled Frebarind Finisher or not, a heart attack in someone as young as Inadeus deserved investigation. The first person to reach him was Izzy Dedyet, who answered with a resounding ‘Yes!’ The crowd immediately mobbed his corpse searching for any sign that he had been the notorious killer. They uncovered lots of jewellery; rings, bracelets, bracers, necklaces, some of which looked to be pewter and others of shiny, silvery metal, but no obvious weaponry. Raven suppressed a sigh. If Inadeus’s death had been caused by foul play, it would be impossible to determine the culprit. She scanned the crowd for Landis. He’d been so far unable to protect his fellow Synod members, but he did influence in this town that she sorely lacked. She’d need his help in order to recover the body. Landis went over to talk to the town crier, who was shouting, “Finisher Finished!? Will the killings that have plagued our fair city cease, or continue unabated? Only time will tell whether the river will run red with blood!” As Landis got closer, Faleast suddenly turned to face him, still yelling dire portents of the future. Landis shivered. Would the man still have that excited glint in his eyes if it had been his long-time friends and colleagues that had died? He gathered himself and spoke. “Such an unsightly spectacle. Inadeus deserves to be treated with more respect than this. Unless it turns out he was the Frebarind Finisher,” he couldn’t stop himself from adding. Right as Raven managed to spot Landis, she heard the town crier next to him announcing “Clear the way! Clear the way!” Evidently, he’d had the same idea as her. The crowd, having found nothing to indicate Inadeus’s guilt, obliged. She could have sworn he saw a lot less jewellery on the corpse than there had been a few minutes ago, but the body itself was still intact. She could carry it by herself, but it would be better if another person accompanied her to ward off doubts of her tampering with the evidence. Looking around for someone to assist her, she saw a young man in steward robes hovering nearby, clearly unable to decide what to do. Raven herself had been wearing robes just like those no more than two months ago, and they marked him as being able to follow instructions at the very least. Taking a few seconds to access her copperminds, she assessed that his name was Vardenwith, that he was a pewter Ferring, and that he’d done such a poor job controlling that as a steward in training that he’d had to run away from the family he’d been assigned to. Raven winced commiseratingly. She’d also had to abandon her own steward job after being observed using gold Feruchemy, though Lord Devinshae had believed her a Kandra at the time. She’d fled before Steel Inquisitors who knew no Kandra had been assigned to him and might be familiar with more esoteric uses of Feruchemy could arrive. She was several years older and had Keeper training and the favour of the Tathingdwen Synod, while Vardenwith had none of those advantages. She motioned to him to help her carry the body and he obliged. He was tall enough to keep Inadeus level, but a lot weaker than he looked. “Storing pewter?” she asked. He looked surprised, and a little suspicious, but nodded. “I need as much of it as I can with that killer on the loose.” “You don’t think it was him?” “I have to be prepared for anything. And I’m better at storing pewter than tapping it.” “You may have cause to tap pewter in the near future if the killings don’t stop. I’m sure you’ll be able to do so when it counts” Raven remarked. She considered discussing her own experiences with pewter but hesitated. She’d already said too much; he assuredly wasn’t the sole killer but there was no guarantee he couldn’t be working with the Frebarind Finisher. Vardenwith stumbled a few times but the two of them managed to make it to the infirmary where Raven worked officially. She was able to dismiss him before he saw what happened next. The Canton of Orthodoxy was very particular on the proper way to dispose of bodies depending on their station, and they did not permit the practice of cutting open corpses. Best not to let Vardenwith know that she planned on doing that very thing. Hazen looked at the steward boy in front of him. He could hide his words, of course, but the contempt for his ineptitude was betrayed in the way his upper lip pulled up and grimaced at the mess in front of him. “You call that a controlled tap? You broke not just the plate, but the table! If you’re going to be a Brute in the Order–or, Lord Ruler forbid, the Synod–you’re going to need a lot more precision than that.” Vardenwith shivered. Hands quivering, he silently took the pieces of the plate he had shattered and dropped them into the wastebin. He wasn’t sure what to do about the splinters of the table. He was sure Hazen would reprimand him for that too. No matter what he did, it seemed that the other Terrismen in training would always catch on more quickly, make fewer errors, progress through the ranks as he was shuffled from teacher to teacher. His assignment in Frebarind was a demotion in itself, really. All the “good” Ferrings were already holed up in Tathingdwen. He could see why. Hazen was an awful instructor, and Vardenwith knew that he’d become even jumpier and more nervous since he’d gotten here. Which, of course, messed with his Feruchemy. He sighed, holding back tears at the memory of that ordeal and a hundred similar ones. That had been two weeks ago. Now Hazen was dead, and he was loose in Frebarind. He should have been ecstatic to escape his old life. But fear still gnawed at him. All the training and experience in the world hadn’t saved Hazen from the Finisher, and he failed to see how Landis would fare any better, even if the man was taking a more assertive approach. He’d spent most of the day inside, desperately storing strength in hope it’d do him some good later. But it made him tired, and when evening fell he was ready to fall right back in bed. He’d hardly been missed during the Day hours. Something, however, stopped him. Maybe if he stuck around, he’d finally uncover some of this Finisher nonsense. Maybe he was useless as a Feruchemist, but he’d try to be a half-decent detective. He took to the streets, tapping a bit of his precious pewter for a burst of energy, and after filching a loaf of bread from the stores nearby, he headed out in search of the murderer. Thirty minutes of searching later, and Vardenwith wished he was a Sentry. Or at least a Windwhisperer, so he could see through the darkness even with bleary eyes. If the Finisher struck at night, he was quiet thus far in Frebarind’s streets this evening. He leaned against the brick facade of the Laughing Salmon, still tired. His foot hit a stray object, and he looked down, seeing a discarded die lying face-up in the gutter. He leaned over to pick it up, examining it, and saw Jeral’s “lucky” dice he’d been throwing in the taverns the day before. It was now flattened, the marks distorted and the Allomantic faces lost. No, wait. He rotated it, and saw that one face still had discernible markings. But it was no marking he had ever seen. Two crescents, one spike and one dot. Like Pewter somehow, but..wrong, twisted, pointing down. Great. His metal couldn’t even survive the boot of a tavernkeeper. As he yawned, thinking his adventure over and the time for bed renewed, he heard another sound behind him. Pattering feet. He swivelled, and saw a hooded figure running down the alleyway. The Finisher! He had no time to duck out of sight–now was the time to put his abilities to use. He set himself, tapping strength as he felt his muscles bulge under his clothing. The Finisher must have been tapping steel, because the figure crossed the distance in a quarter of the time which would have been reasonable for any human to attempt, and leapt into the air, fist raised with a long spike in it. Vardenwith recoiled. So fast! The spike whizzed past his shoulder as he swatted the descending arm with his own Pewter-enhanced one, but a kick from one of the Finisher’s legs drove the breath from his body. He realised belatedly that they had probably tapped iron during the descent. Full Feruchemists were unfair. Another reason he had hated Hazen. Growling in the midst of his gasps for air, he clumsily swatted at where he thought the Finisher had landed, and was rewarded with a cry and the sound of crumpling bone. His wild, uncoordinated strike had hit a stray forearm which was unprepared for his clumsy movements. Apparently being a klutz had some advantages. He wheeled around, but the Finisher was already prepared. One, two quick stabs with the spike. Vardenwith doubled over, bleeding. Still, the Pewter he was tapping let him continue despite the mortal injury. He swung again, a roundhouse blow which would have knocked the Finisher’s head clean off. Only hastily tapping the last of her Steel saved her, but as her head jerked back supernaturally quickly, the obscuring hood fell from the face of Vardenwith’s assailant. He gasped. “Stick!” The Treasurer was not amused. “Deserving death, you should therefore die!” she hissed, swinging the spike like a sword. This was a mistake; the smooth side bounced harmlessly off Vardenwith’s arm, and he flicked his wrist, tearing it from her grip. Summoning the last of his Pewter, Vardenwith jumped forward and tackled Stick, tearing as many metalminds from her body as he could with wild hands. The two tumbled across the pavement. Vardenwith heard her ribs crack and smiled in satisfaction. There was a tinkling as her detached metalminds bounced across the cobblestones. Vardenwith thought he even caught a glint of gold. “Not…useless…” he muttered, still clutching Stick in a viselike hug. He would crush her to death if nothing else could be done. Suddenly, a pain flared in his stomach. Then two. He lost hold of the Finisher, falling, gasping to the pavement himself. He had run out of strength in his metalmind. So close… Stick drew herself up, coughing in pain. The second spike was still in her left hand. “In accordance with the Lord Ruler’s will, I will execute his every will and command,” she intoned. A flash, and Vardenwith too was vanquished. Stick drew the spike out of Vardenwith’s heart distastefully. A mere Brute, and who knows whether the power would even take, or be worth selling. The society’s funds were running short, and the shorter they ran, the less they had to spend. It was a vicious state of affairs, and one Stick could remedy by her alliance with the Lord Ruler. Spikes with Feruchemical powers sold well. Spikes with those powers, plus a dead Synod, sold even better. She grunted, unhappy that she had allowed herself to be nearly beaten. She tapped tin, one of her few metalminds still on her person, and looked about for the others, ready to scrounge until she found them, heal with gold, and call it a night. It seemed the Cosmere had other plans. The first odd thing she noticed was that her metalminds were gone. Disappeared from the ground completely. The second was a blur of movement above her shoulder. Not trusting that she still had her steelmind, or anything left in said steelmind, she rolled normally, seeing a simple wooden staff go sailing over her head. A walking stick? She laughed contemptuously. She willed herself to tap everything she could at once. Based on the influx of sensory input, she figured she still had her ironminds, pewterminds, and one brassmind, in addition to her tin. It made sense–she had probably been subconsciously tapping pewter for some time to ignore the pain in her broken ribs. No zinc, which would have helped her think more clearly, but she cut the loss quickly. The metalminds she had were the metalminds she had. Time to use them. The walking stick swung her way again, and she tapped iron and pewter, hitting back viciously with her spike. She expected the flimsy wooden construct to shatter; instead, her assailant held firm. She again moved backwards, avoiding any retaliatory possibilities. How was she going to kill this man? Before she had any time to consider, her assailant struck again. He must have tapped steel, to move as quickly as he did, because before she knew it her Spike hand was engulfed in a tightly wound layer of cloth. She struggled to pull it free, but her assailant had her. Frantic, she stored weight, and managed to pry her arm loose as it lost its physicality in the cloth bind. The spike, however, was caught. She could only watch as the stick descended on her head. Thwack! She heard the sound and felt the pain, no matter how much pewter tried to dull the sensation, and crumpled to her knees. That was a pewter-enhanced strike if she ever felt one. Thwack! A warm trickle of blood ran down her face. She tapped brass to cool it, but knew she was dying. Her broken ribs flared, the pewter unable to keep up with her injuries. Thwack! When morning broke, the Frebirand Finisher lay in a pool of blood, in the very streets of the city she had once haunted. By morning, Raven had her results. She’d found a small puncture wound in Inadeus’s arm, and her autopsy had revealed symptoms of poisoning. It wasn’t a poison she was familiar with, which meant a specialised toxin that wouldn’t have been available to the general public. Unless there was another group out to kill Feruchemists, it was undoubtedly the work of the Steel Ministry. She hurried over to the Synod meeting with her results to find all of the Synod members already deep in discussion. One of their enemies had been killed in the night, and she’d been a full Feruchemist just like them, and spiked no less. Only an hour into the meeting did she learn that Vardenwith was also dead. Vardenwith (StrikerEZ) was spiked through the heart! He was a Village Brute and a member of the Synod! Stick (_Stick_) was beaten to death with a stick! She was a Spiked Full Feruchemist! Day Two has begun! It will end in a little over 46 hours, on Saturday 4 June 2022 at 10:00 PM EDT (-4:00 UTC). Thank you to Kas for handling PMs and spreadsheet actions, and Devotary for helping with the writeup. More Olaf/Kais/Faleast content is heading your way soon, but we figured it was better to get everyone killed for your viewing enjoyment There is an exe today, with no vote minimum. Once again, please remember to get in metalmind fill orders before running around doing every action available in the game. There have been few issues so far, so let’s keep up the streak Good luck! Player List: 1. Ashbringer as Faleast, a town crier surprisingly enthusiastic about announcing woeful tidings and most bitter lamentation as the destroyer comes upon us 2. The Unknown Novel as ExMach Inadeus, an otherworldly visitor and luck epic who claims power over chromium…at the very least Village Brute 3. Matrim’s Dice as Jeral, a older gentleman who recklessly flouts the local gambling laws in hope of one day buying that gold-hilted cane-sword he covets 4. Steeldancer as Steel, a street beggar with a shadowy past and a desire to one day join the Tathingdwen Tautological Society of Tautology 5. Archer as Stann, a clerk with patchily dyed blue hair and immaculately maintained blue flipbooks 6. _Stick_ as Stick, Treasurer of the Tathingdwen Tautological Society of Tautology Spiked Full Feruchemist 7. Elandera as Eran, an old woman who misses her twin sister who lives outside Tathingdwen and hopes her garden is doing okay 8. StrikerEZ as Vardenwith, a Terris steward in training who is sadly not catching on very well Village Brute; Synod 9. JNV as Venel “Sparky,” a noble kid who occasionally gets too emotional for their own good 10. Araris Valerian as Artwyn, a tired old carpenter 11. xinoehp512 as X the Executioner, a middle-aged lady who yells at her four bloodhounds in a thick accent 12. Alvron as Izzy Dedyet, who promises she has reformed her ways 13. Illwei as Eiwlil, an avid Jaist missionary who emphasises vigorous head-shaking in her preaching

That’s a wrap! Results in a bit. Hope you chose wisely

Since there are contradictory statements on a vote minimum, I will go with what is written in the thread and say there is no vote minimum for death this round. A two vote minimum was initially to encourage discussion, but with a smaller player size, it is a fossil of the old ruleset that can be removed, and it will not be in force for future rounds. (It is especially unhelpful if the game gets down to 2 or 3 players as well.) Edit: This also complies with the clause in the rules doc which says “unless noted otherwise” re: the vote minimum

SInce there has been confusion on this point and it is not explicitly in the rules due to an oversight: this game is role-madness. Everyone has at least one role.

Unless things have changed, it’s against SE rules to substantively alter the content of your posts in an edit—you can fix spelling/grammar things, add further content, or issue clarification on something you said which was vague or poorly typed which had the opposite meaning from what you wanted it to, but you cannot simply memory-hole what you did in a past post. This would extend to quoting and then changing to a paraphrase for the Archivists. Edit: Regarding quote-boxes, please don’t tamper with those—if an Archivist uses one but paraphrases inside it, I’ll probably not look closely enough and assume that they’re quoting Also just generally not a great policy to claim to represent what someone is saying exactly and instead inserting your own summary, so this goes beyond Archivists as well

Day One: Smoked Out The fire crackled, consuming the logs. Olaf found his gaze drawn to the hypnotic dance of the bright flames, all but imagined he could feel their warmth on his skin. Fire, thought Olaf, solved a great many problems. It was an insight he didn’t share with Kais. A few tables over, a woman with the elaborate tattoos of an obligator listened to a pair of young nobles, no doubt witnessing some agreement or other. The next table had a rowdy group studying their cards, throwing dice with all the earnestness of youth. Pah. Olaf did not feel half so young. “What happened to Frebarind?” he asked, abruptly. Kais flagged down a passing waiter, but to Olaf’s surprise, the man did not solicit more wine. Perhaps Kais wanted to keep his own wits about him. Instead, the waiter returned with a hot cup of spiced Terris tea, glowing a dark ruddy red in the firelight. “Burned, of course,” Kais said, matter-of-factly. “Paranoia is a dangerous force.” “But necessary.” “But necessary,” Kais assented. “In our line of work.” In general skulduggery, wondered Olaf, or in the subtle art of keeping alive the latest generation of a culture that the Lord Ruler had carefully controlled and curtailed and would most certainly lead to every last one of them being mercilessly executed if word of the Synod got back to Kredik Shaw. He shivered. For a moment, the entire room seemed full of shadows and spikes. “Frebarind burned,” Kais said again, quietly, almost as though to himself. He clasped the surface of his tea mug but did not drink, as though he was thinking to draw a little warmth from it. “But that came later. Without Hazen, the Synod-in-Frebarind was left leaderless, but they knew the Inquisition had its agents among them…” Landis, now the acting head of the Synod-in-Frebarind, because he was uniquely qualified, being one of the few Keepers in Frebarind who hadn’t yet come down with a terminal case of death, felt ill-equipped to the task that now lay before him. Word had come from Tathingdwen that the Synod was sending someone to investigate the situation. He shook his head in mute disbelief. Even now, the Synod favoured fact-finding and deliberation over decisive action. Hazen, Ias, Pashan, and Radur, all dead. There were only so many of them left, now. Hazen burned in his own home. The thought alone made Landis want to seek the bottom of a wine bottle. Drowning in the wrong sort of water, he thought, with black humour. Frebarind was changed, now. Four deaths in a row. Even where Frebarind knew nothing of the Synod, four deaths, one after another, and one so horrific as Hazen’s had drawn attention. Perhaps it was for the best. The Inquisition would have to be more subtle. He felt like a hunted man. Eyes in every shadow. He was going to have to fill his bronzeminds just to be able to sleep at night. If sleeping was wise. The gossip and chatter in the marketplace was all about the deaths. “Have you heard?” Sasanra was all but shouting, as she peddled her fried fritters to just about anyone who was willing to part with their coin. “The Frebarind Finisher strikes again!” Ancestors, Landis thought, wearily, buying a greasy skewer from Sasanra. They’d already begun to name the Inquisition’s knife. For it had to be the Steel Inquisition. They’d known the stakes, from the beginning. Little reason to stalk and murder so many of the Synod. He paused, mid-skewer. So many of the Synod. There was a traitor among them. Hazen had said as much, in their last meeting. Landis had refused to countenance this, had told Hazen he was being paranoid, jumping at his own shadow. And now, Hazen was dead, killed in his own home, burned, and the Synod was yet another Keeper smaller. Four Keepers dead in two weeks. How did it get to such numbers? A traitor, though. One of their own worked for the Inquisition. Or at least one of them. Hopefully it was the newcomer, Raven. She’d arrived only two weeks after the first death to replace Ias and none of the Keepers had gotten to know her well yet. If one of the Keepers he’d known and worked with for decades had betrayed them all… Landis threw the skewer away. He didn’t feel in the mood to finish it off. “Dreadful lamentable news!” the town crier—was it Faleast, after the ashmount?—was bellowing at the top of his lungs. “Three bodies found in the canal last night! Was it the Frebarind Finisher? Or do we now have a copycat on our hands! The watch has agreed to put a price on the head of—” Landis strode away. He didn’t want to hear this. Of all the damnable things the cursed watch could do. A price on the head of the Frebarind Finisher? Anyone could be the Finisher. Anyone at all. Frebarind would wallow in blood. But, he thought to himself, the watch wasn’t entirely wrong. Not about this. He needed to call a discreet meeting of the Synod, as soon as he could. The more of them watching each other, the better. Vigilance had its costs, but perhaps if they were careful enough, if they were watchful enough…Any agent of the Inquisition would find it hard to move against the last remnants of the Synod-in-Frebarind. And if the Inquisition’s agents really were refusing to discriminate between residents of Frebarind and Synod in their strikes, on the view that harbouring the Synod made anyone in Frebarind as guilty by association, then they had a common enemy. It wasn’t something he could go to the watch with, not even here in the Terris Dominance, but it was a start. Hopefully, it wasn’t going to be an ending. “Landis,” Kais said, quietly. “Hazen was a fool. The Synod-in-Frebarind would’ve been better off with Landis as Synod head to begin with. Hazen was always slow to act, even if he saw the danger. But it cost us precious time, communicating with the Synod-in-Frebarind. By the time word of Hazen’s death reached Tathingdwen and the Synod proper had decided to act…” “Rash action kills,” Olaf felt obligated to say. Leaping blindly into the flames under the illusion that action was better than no action was just as fatal. And if you knew how to take the reins of power, if you knew how to nudge discussion so people believed, thought, and concluded as you wished them to… “It does. But so does milling around uselessly in the hopes that blindly accusing each other will let the real agent of the Steel Inquisition identify themselves,” Kais said, acerbically. “Which, mind you, was more or less what was happening in Frebarind by that point.” Too many seemed to believe they had some special insight into others, some way of divining the truth of a man’s guilt from his behaviour. You could do that, maybe. But you always had to be careful that you weren’t believing what you wanted to. That way lay the burning-pyres. Not for the first time, Kais wondered if he had come to Frebarind too late. Or too early, depending on your point of view. “No, of course not,” Olaf said, sharply. “They have to be induced to identify themselves.” Set fire to their holes, and sooner or later, they would have to emerge, like rats, into the light of scrutiny. Kais nodded. “Induced, or otherwise discovered through preponderance of evidence,” he agreed. “Still, what Landis did right was to take seriously the warnings that the Synod-in-Frebarind was thoroughly compromised—though really, he would have to be thoroughly daft by this point not to notice—and acted on it, beginning an inquiry of sorts…” Day One has begun! Welcome to the game! You should have received, or will be receiving shortly, your GM PM filled with all the information you need. If you suspect information to be lacking, such as starting charges, please let us know and we will fix it as quickly as possible. A few things got shuffled in the last hours... There is an exe today. Ties are decided randomly, with no vote minimum to kill. A reminder: If you wish to fill a metalmind, please, please, please PM us BEFORE posting. Some metalminds have fill conditions which you will accidentally violate if you post indiscriminately. Look at your role and description, and ask Kas or myself if you are confused. As always, thanks to @Kasimir for an excellent writeup, and for handling the PMs. This turn will end in about 47 hours, at 10:00 PM EDT (-4:00 UTC) on Wednesday 1 June. Good luck! Player List:

Kas and I have ideas then WELCOME BACK

Thanks a lot to everyone who has signed up already! The game will start in a little under 24 hours, so if you're on the fence, you still have a chance to hop in This game can run at its current playercount, but as always, the more the merrier the bloodshed is

Prelude: The Sign of Fire As far as canalside inns went, the Sign of Fire was among the oldest, and the most reputable. The foundation stones had been laid, or so the legends went, in the days of the Deepness, the deep dark days before the Lord Ruler himself had slain the evil and ascended to divinity. Prelans and nobles alike tarried at the Sign of Fire, partaking of the house fare and the wine before their journey led them ever onwards, down the winding waterways towards Tathingdwen proper. Everywhere you looked, Kais said, was water, taking you where the proper flow of things were, whether it was to Tathingdwen, or the water eagerly seeking out the Channerel, and from the Channerel to Luthadel, the beating heart of the Final Empire. (Kais wasn’t much of a poet. But the house wine at the Sign of Fire did that to a man.) The water took you past majestic Torinost, where on a quiet day, the ash didn’t fall, and you could almost believe you lived in one of the days of legend, with skies a crisp, pale grey, and the air fresh and clear. Stories, mostly. And the follies of bards, some of whom wore bright copper bracelets that gleamed as they played the lute and the harp. Count Olaf, the newly-minted head of House Ffnord, set down his wine glass. Anticipation warred with caution; caution won out. He had not been acclaimed as lord of House Ffnord by utter recklessness. Yet, even accepting the invitation had been some form of risk. The promise of House Ffnord entering into a business contract with House Jerzy had been subtle, but it was the sort of promise that you had to respond to, because of the sheer opportunity it offered. Could House Ffnord afford to pass up this opportunity? And then there was the caution there: why meet in the Terris Dominance? House Jerzy was a Western House, famous for its fine wines, answering to the Herons of Tremredare. What business did any Jerzy—or their representative—have, meeting at an admittedly celebrated inn with admittedly fine wine in a Dominance so far from their own? So far, Kais had seemed painfully exacting. He’d wanted to know about the funds House Ffnord was prepared to offer, the state of House Ffnord’s previous ventures, figures, accounts, and schedules. A minor insult, really, that the head of House Ffnord had been met by a glorified secretary, but Olaf smiled tightly and swallowed it. A newly-minted House Lord could afford only so much assertiveness. And the letter had the secret marks, etched into the edge of the paper, indicating authenticity and urgency. Which meant that the Synod, too, was keeping a close eye on things. The thought brought him back to his wine glass. It was good wine, and Olaf felt his mood ease a little. Tathingdwen was a city of secrets, and the Synod was the best-kept secret of all. It was very much like the Synod to proceed with this level of skulduggery. Wheels within wheels. Generation after generation of Keepers, preserving the collective knowledge of the world within their copperminds, against some distant future where it might be needed. Always hoarding, in some desperate, blind faith. Risk endangered not just one member of the Synod, but the painstakingly-gathered treasure trove of human knowledge. “I presume,” Kais said, “That we can trust to your discretion.” He sketched it; slowly, with his index finger, the sign for authenticity again. And there it was, and Olaf wondered if it had been just that: some lie to wrangle him north, to the Terris Dominance, when really, any true representative of House Jerzy should have been satisfied with a meeting in the West. He made the recognition sign, slowly, deliberately, aggravatedly. “Do you represent House Jerzy, then?” Olaf wanted to know. He did not like the feeling of having been used. He did not much like being led on a merry chase under false pretences, either. Kais nodded. “This much is true. House Jerzy has been looking for new distributors with access to more lucrative markets. It was suggested that House Ffnord has those capabilities. The question of course is whether we have common interests, and the contract is suitable.” “I believe we’ve spent the past hours establishing that House Ffnord has the connections that House Jerzy seeks,” Olaf said, tightly. Two layers at once. Always deception, always another secret. “Have you,” Kais said, a seeming non-sequitur, “Heard about that business in Frebarind? A nasty affair, that.” “No,” Olaf said, tersely. “I can’t say I have.” “I think you’ll find it—interesting,” Kais said. The fire crackled with warmth and light, but Hazen still felt cold. He unfolded the letter again, and read it, but the words never changed. They know, he read. They’re coming for you. Get out as fast as you can. It was tempting to dismiss it. The Synod was too well-hidden; generation after generation holding fast to the secrecy that was their chief tool of survival in the Lord Ruler’s harsh world. But there were the deaths. Ias had drowned; a simple boating accident, they said. Canal boats were well-known to tip over, if the boatman wasn’t careful, and the boatman had been drunk. It didn’t matter that Ias knew how to swim. He’d gone under the boat, and hadn’t been able to get to the surface. Hadn’t stored pewter either, though Hazen wasn’t certain if tapping pewter would have helped. Perhaps it would only have meant that he would have drowned faster. Ancestors’ mercy, Hazen thought. A terrible way to die, drowning. And Ias had always that bright smile, the one that lit up an entire keep with its warmth. The boatman responsible was dead soon after: an attempted mugging gone bad fast. They’d found the murderer, and had strung him up without mercy. But it didn’t matter. The boatman was slain, and Ias was gone; another source of brightness faded from the world. Perhaps he had simply burned too brightly. But then there was Pashan, who had been run over by a wagon, and seriously injured. The wagon-driver had been distraught, and had sworn again and again that something had spooked the horse. Hazen did not think the man had it in him to lie, and yet the horse, a solid raw-boned draft-horse that was getting on in years, was placid, and Hazen would sooner swear that he was Mistborn than believe that the horse had spooked. Pashan had died in her sleep, days after. Radur had been knifed in an alley while on the way home. There were only so many unexplained deaths you could accept, before you had to start to ask questions. Before you had to wonder if there was something more sinister at work there. The Synod had sent them all to Frebarind. Hazen had been proud to accept the charge of leading the small branch of the Synod there. Frebarind was a bustling settlement, and the Steward of Tathingdwen was sparing no expense in investing in it. With the flow of funds came nobles and obligators, and various opportunities for the Synod to establish a presence in Frebarind and to listen in on the secrets and whispers of power. Not everyone had liked this move. The traditionalists had claimed this was too ambitious; that the Synod’s place was in the shadows, that this stepped too close to attempting to place a hand on the rowing pole. Their place was not to steer the boat, but to keep to the shadows beneath the water. The pragmatists had claimed that this was their chance to establish a new presence, and every available opportunity to increase the Synod’s resilience should be taken; they could not always rely on secrecy to save them from the Lord Ruler. The historians had flatly claimed this was a distraction from their sole task to preserve knowledge and ignored everyone. Did this sort of disagreement drive Keeper to kill Keeper? Hazen didn’t know. The thought was a distressing one. And now, days later, a letter had come to him, borne swiftly by water, and by the secret channels and ways that the Synod knew of, and bearing the etched markings for authenticity and urgency and secrecy, and a dire warning. Hazen bowed his head. He was the head of the Synod-in-Frebarind. Leaving was deserting his post, abandoning those under his care. And yet the letter had come, but it bore only a warning; no strict orders to leave. Decision made as swiftly as impulse; Hazen balled the letter up and tossed it into the crackling flames. “No,” he said aloud. He had a duty, and he was charged with the protection and the safeguarding of the Synod-in-Frebarind. His place was here. Even if staying here killed him. The watchman cried the hour. All was well. Few were brave enough to dare the mists, although the nobles and the Allomancers among their number might very well claim the mists as their own. In a small, unremarkable house in Frebarind, Hazen lay still on the ground, blood pooling onto the carpet. His arms were badly burned. The fire roared; the Keeper had stuffed it full of important documents, preferring destruction to having those documents used against the Synod. A desperate move, perhaps. Or a dying man’s defiance. It did not matter. Flames spread across the wood-paneled study, and across the house, and in an hour’s time, the house itself went up in a shout of fire. “Hazen,” Kais said, “Was a fool.” He looked at his wine glass, but his gaze seemed distant, recalling. “The Synod’s eyes and ears had received word that the Synod-in-Frebarind had been compromised, but we were not certain what the nature of the compromise was. I sent warning to Hazen. He chose to ignore it.” An entire branch of the Synod compromised, Olaf thought. It sounded disturbingly familiar, as though it was the same story, the same pattern, playing itself out again and again. He thought of that business in Luthadel, and the obligators. “And then he was dead soon after, and the Synod-in-Frebarind panicked. As though any reasonable person would not have been concerned after the first death!” He shook his head. “The Synod debated, of course. As always. The traditionalists screamed that this was the end, that everyone had to go back into hiding and the Synod-in-Frebarind had to be severed—” he made a sharp, cutting gesture with his free hand, “—forgotten, abandoned as lost. The historians didn’t care, but didn’t like the idea of abandoning our own. The pragmatists pointed out that cutting off the Frebarind branch meant we had no way of assessing the extent of the damage, or reasonably figuring out how much the Steel Inquisition knew, or how much trouble we were in.” The Steel Inquisition. Words to chill the heart, even now. And as the newly-minted House Lord of House Ffnord, Olaf was sternly resolved to stay on the right side of the Steel Ministry. Even the lord of a Great House gave way when the Steel Inquisition got involved. “Surely the most reasonable resolution was to assess the situation,” he temporised. “The Synod in Tathingdwen, no matter how well-informed, was too removed from the situation in Frebarind to make the necessary decisions.” Kais nodded approvingly. “That was the conclusion they reached eventually, when wiser, cooler heads prevailed. I was in Tathingdwen then, because Lord Jerzy was attempting to negotiate cultivar access with another House, and could be easily dispatched to Frebarind.” “How bad was it?” Olaf asked, curious in spite of himself. He had not heard of the Frebarind affair; he had been somewhat removed from Synod politics since his accession to the House Lord’s seat, and yet there had been something in the messages from the Synod of late. Something that suggested weight, foreboding. “The Synod-in-Frebarind was thoroughly infested with Spiked infiltrators,” Kais said, with distaste. “I don’t know what Hazen thought he was doing, but it needed to be purged, to the root...” Welcome to Long Game 86: A Stricken Match! The Terris Synod in the quiet town of Frebarind is threatened by Spiked servants of the Lord Ruler in their quest for the knowledge sought by the Keepers. Fail to root them out in this formerly sleepy town, and the last bastion of Feruchemy will be left vulnerable to his minions. This game is a rerun of LG48, but features minor edits to a few of the Ferring roles, and a slight change to the action system as well. Otherwise, it should function fairly similarly. You may access the rules here. Clarifications asked from LG48 are already in the doc, so please check there first to see if your question has already been answered. Also, please note for story and character purposes that this is a prequel, as Olaf has not reduced Tathingdwen to ashes quite yet. He's getting there, though. My co-GM for this game will be the wonderful @Kasimir. You have him to thank for the intro writeup, as well as all the writeups going forward. He will also be doing his best to fill your PMs with sarkastic commentary as he feels it is needed. The IM, to whom you may bring concerns, is @Devotary of Spontaneity. I plan to begin this game in roughly one week’s time, on Monday 30 May at 10:00 PM EDT (UTC -4). Should rollover change prove necessary, or an extension due to untenably low player counts, I will make an announcement in-thread. Thank you all and I look forward to a wonderful game! Good luck to all! Quick Links: Player List: (Note: if you do not give me a character description, I will give you a bad one. Please make one )

Fair enough! I’ll take this next one then. Unfortunately I’ve already got a volunteer for co-GM…but having you as a player would be great too! I’ll send my ruleset(s) to the committee and then post signups.

If no one else can run a game, I am fine abruptly returning from hiatus to do one, provided I have a co-GM, as at least one of my slots should be high enough on the list. Summer has suddenly expanded my SE time That said, I won’t get in Steel or Ash’s way. edit: I should mention that if I’m running any game, it’s probably this one, or a standard Tyrian ruleset, or if I’m feeling crazy and there are enough people, this three-year pet project which needs a ton of people. Given that KKC is being run later this summer, though, simple is likely better ed2t: tagging @Ashbringer to make a decision so one of us can get this show on the road

Don’t worry Mat, I can be your cage-shuffle-squat bro for the cycle as well (after I get sleep…this also applies to everyone who has graciously PMed me )

K gonna explain last cycle quickly: was feeling the Stick/TUA thing was weird, I was around for rollover and on mobile. Saw a lot of people viewing the thread and resolved that if there was a last-minute push onto Stick, I’d swing to TUA after seeing the message, and if not, I’d hold. Didn’t realise I was on the final post of the current page of the thread - 8:59 rolls around, I get the notification “there is 1+ new reply” and I know if I hit the button to load the reply on another page, it takes too long because mobile has to load the new page, I have to read it, retype (in bbcode) my vote, and submit in less than 20 seconds. Instead of that, I just hit “submit” and hoped for the best. Instead of a hammer, it’s Mat’s joke post, and the rest is history Interactions: Mat/Stick is really weird. I have a strong village read of both independently but whenever they talk to each other my gut screams “e/e” Thaidakar wagon is odd, and I’m not too convinced by it. I find the defence of Biplet in particular a bit odd. Steel is being weirdly self-pres-y, which mildly fits his elim game, but 1) he’s my bro and 2) I don’t really like killing people on the grounds that they like living too much, at least when it’s D2. D4 and onwards, that might be a more open question. I don’t really plan on using my zinc unless you go for Steeldancer again, so I’ll just vote and see what happens. Side-eyeing Araris and TJ from recent interactions. No opinions on Archer. Please don’t kill Bort.

Hi I am now alive and should be able to commit to full activity will read thread and multiquote and vote sorry >>

The Unknown Aon

This is more what I mean, if you were neutral I would expect you to be doing pretty much exactly this from what I know of you as a person, so the lack of prior experience isn't terribly pertinent TBF I missed your retraction, but now with the TUA swing I kind of want to keep my vote where it is >> Understand on the Araris provocation thing though, I was doing something similar with my own poke. I'm probably gonna read through the vote interactions again but it might be staying up as a stab As stated above, it was a prod to see what would happen by Stick, and how the thread as a whole would respond to me putting someone clearly in the lead. Also, I felt it was a weird joke to make given timing, and suspected it might have been an attempt at cheap village tone points. Don't know if the fact that things are trending the opposite way so far for me is good or bad >> I'm gonna hazard a guess at yes To be fair, there's been less game-relevant discussion than usual and more banter, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it does make decision-making harder I agree that I don't understand the arguments against TUA, and still less the swing of three sudden votes against him, which could be a ploy to get him cleared or a bus, but I doubt it. I would rather take down Stick (even though she's very fun to play with) for similar reasons you outline below (the main caveat being that, for quite obvious reasons, I doubt our interaction was e/e ). I am agnostic on JNV and Tani, and Steel is my bro so I'm not excising him D1 if it can be helped. Might re-read the thread and annoy everyone by starting splinter wagons on a gut read >>

I appreciate the support even if I’m getting weird gut reads off you right now Nothing will go wrong Joking aside, I think Steel’s reminder about starting items is a good one; whether steel or no, we shouldn’t be surprised if vote manip, protects, extra lives, etc., come out of the woodwork where we wouldn’t initially expect them. Hullo Stick. Care to explain the vote? At least I was nice in LG74 and let you live Gotta start an essay soon so I get the pain >> Agreed that the Bort votes are odd, and am tempted to read them as very slightly evil on reflection because their joking nature carries no actual weight and lets people try to get by under the very thin skin of “the Elims wouldn’t do that,” a thought process which I’ve never been a huge fan of. Tani [fake-]claims evil fairly regularly D1, so I’m not going to read into it more than I have to even if I do think it’s unnecessary. Thank you for the not-dying support, I appreciate life I have no reads beyond a few gut analyses here and there, but so far Kas seems to be in village/neutral meta, Steel is chill in PMs so I’m biased towards liking him, I’ve not run into elim!Mat in the wild yet so I’m reading him village even if it’s not on solid comparative grounds, and Araris and Stick stand out as slightly odd for reasons I can’t quite pin. I refuse to read Orlok until I get more data on him, so NAI for now.

Bro I am half an hour into my chill, quiet, RPful game, please reserve judgment >> Also, c'mon, after so many elim games in a row, RNGesus wouldn't make me evil again, the universe needs to balance out eventually >> Agreed on item coordination, and I would also be wary of doing it in PMs. Aside from the thief getting his pick of targets, there's also sheer numbers; if every elim is in contact with even one or two villagers who are coordinating this way, and people are being honest, they can get a pretty good map of interactions. Not saying there's no benefit to sharing or coordinating, just be aware that any information you give can and will be used against you in the wrong hands, and you've got to decide if the info you get is worth that risk.

Welcome to SE! And no worries, you can't do much worse than others of us in their debuts :glances in AG4: AG6: the game so nice they ran it twice Disclaimer for the whole game: I am not planning on going insane with role-analysis, multiquoting, wallposting, rereading, and other compound words I will not have time for when my Greek memorisation charts are currently nearing seven pages per verb >> Therefore, you will be treated to chill!Fifth, who RPs, PMs, might ISO a guy or two, and votes on gut. C'est la vie. If/when I break this promise don't @ me, just yell at me in PM and I'll try to chill out again. C1/2 at least I should be pretty quiet, since I've got two essays/tests before Thursday and then a church retreat on the weekend, so don't expect insane activity from this front

Welcome back Bort This game looks very interesting, and although I might have lower C1/C2 activity Striker has said that is fine, so…I will enroll as Christel Groenloben, a surprisingly cheerful old skaa lady who hides behind a tough-as-nails exterior. Let’s see what happens

Hey guys. Fifth here, undergoing a very abrupt transition into “has no time for anything at all including catching up on the *checks Discord again* 1000+ message GM DM” but I promised El a postmortem, so here it is. I wish it was longer and more well thought-out, but this is the best I can do with the time I have. It’ll probably overlap a lot with El’s but there’s not much I can do about that. Writeup was handled marvellously by Kas, not gonna try to beat that. Schoolwork sucks. Please forgive any tonal issues here, it’s probably a result of me not being able to proofread this and trying to be concise, and not because I’m actually angry at you The Good I was very happy to see all the RP and general fun that happened over the course of the game. Some shoutouts (which might again be an echo of the awards): Croc for scams and an amazing gambling empire, Iguana for puns, Cham for sticking to a difficult CR, Dyring and Kellehrt for amazing village characters, Scorp for some truly brain-breaking anagrams, everyone for the elite memes, Dingo for stubbornness in staying in RP, and a ton more who I am definitely forgetting. Thanks for making Tyrian your own. To the village: holy storms. Y’all killed it. I have comments on balance below, including role distro, but an ironclad fact is that this distro was designed so that there was no version where a mechanical solve or a NK could bail out the village if their analysis failed. It took y’all a couple of cycles, but you all figured it out. Four Spiked in a row is incredibly impressive, even if the team kinda failed to distance And contrary to what a lot of takes might say, it wasn’t just Kel and the KGB. All of you guys kinda rocked both at the actual analysis and doing a lot of weird things to make sure that you were widely village-read come endgame. Excellent analysis all around, and you deserve this win 100%. Activity was generally very good, even if my PMs did not appreciate you guys >> The few pinch-hitters we had to pull in all did a great job, especially Rhino, who initiated the Great PM Revival. Players were generally very proactive about alerting us to problems and issues before they spiralled completely out of control. As GM, I appreciate this, even if my firefighting skills aren’t quite what they were. I think the mods have a lot more to say on this with the IMing reforms, but thank you guys regardless. The Bad Yeah, this distro was a risk, and maybe a bad one in hindsight. We had a more sane variation which gave vil a Seeker and had the Spiked as Thug/Soother/Smoker/Coinshot/Regular, but I discarded it, as I figured the Smoker would just stay glued to the CS and that’d be no fun for the rest of the village or the Spiked. So we mixed it up by giving the Spiked maximum gambiting potential: a Lurcher for WGGs and other gambitry, the MB as a wildcard, and the two Regulars as “expendable” members that could take risks in PMs and in thread, letting the power roles lurk. I’ve said enough in spec and elim docs, I think, about the Thugs. Four was a mistake, but that’s only because of the way the game played out. If Penguin was never scanned and remained under suspicion, the Thug dynamic looks a lot different, with two possible misshrekkings on a villager. So, uh, yeah. That didn’t really happen, did it. I think the Spiked got screwed from D1, when Cham came under pressure and they made the largely unconscious collective decision not to distance or bus anyone. Once Gorilla fell due to The Gambit, they were all implicated, and the next few cycles were basically knocking over dominoes. All the gambit pieces I gave them went largely unused because they didn’t have the stability to pull them off, and once Ostrich called Beagle’s bluff and the KGB formed, the Spiked were pretty much toast. Another issue: really really bad luck. Spiked kills got confused N2, but even if they hadn’t and Elephant had been attacked, she’d drawn Pewter. Swan’s scan hit a Village Thug, which is about the worst possible addition to a trust group you’re trying to massacre as quickly as possible. It’d almost have been better if Cham got scanned. Open PMs and people’s willingness to share meant that Hyena’s Falcon ploy backfired spectacularly. And they just wouldn’t kill Kel, who was consistently marshalling the village against them. Otherwise I don’t really regret this distro. The three Tineyes did what they were supposed to in providing some redundancy against the e!Coinshot, and the village vote manip also was fine - since you couldn’t role-clear and since village manip often backfires (such as taking Gorilla out of the tie on D1), I don’t think it was an issue as much as the Spiked’s early loss of the Mistborn and propensity to hit every Thug in the game. The Ugly *sigh* Here we go with meta issues. One at a time here, and again, this is way too concise, so if you want elaboration on any of this, please tell me. I’m not intending this to be an extensive litigation, but just a brief perspective on a few things. The D3 conflagration. Not too much to say other than that a brief refresher of SE’s rules on arguments is always helpful before you jump into one. There were a lot of other factors at play here, but the overriding message I would take out of the mess that it became is that playing passive-aggressively and taking debates too seriously has adverse effects on everyone, not just the people yelling at each other. It’s a game, y’all. Winning a day’s worth of shrekking arguments ain’t worth tearing apart your friendships here. Mayoring/trust PMs: There’s gonna be a variety of perspectives on this one, but I fall on the side that this was a legitimate concern in this game. Being part of a trust group, whether intentionally or not, is always going to create a kind of power imbalance among the village, and the people not in the group are always on the receiving end of that imbalance. That’s not to say such groups are inherently bad or can’t work, but when it’s being constantly alluded to in-thread, and used as a way of dismissing or confirming arguments based on private conversations, I think frustration with it is understandable. A decent argument could be made that one of your jobs as a villager is to look into these groups and question them when they start using this logic, but it’s equally true that it’s not great to have those arguments advanced in the first place, especially when it can make people feel shut out of the game. Overall, I think the KGB and all the village PMs did a decent job of appraising the village as to what was happening in PMs and keeping them and their analysis as an essential part of the game (which is good, because they would have sidetracked themselves into very destructive paranoia), but could have done a better job in communicating that to everyone in the first place. I have a lot more I could say but I think I’ll wrap it here, both for my own sanity and yours. Thanks to El and Kel for doing everything after the game ended. Life hit me like a ton of bricks and I was not ready, so I’m grateful they stepped in >> Actually. I lied. The game in three memes: the village, the Spiked, and the GMs. Let's end on a happy note