Fifth Scholar

Yep, sorry, Elandera. As much as I want to vote for Doc, I’d much rather end this game.

Sorry for the double-post; I’m changing a vote, however, and didn’t want to edit. Shqueeves, Araris, as his status as an initial Wilson voter in the lynch that killed her remains a mark against him, and I’d rather kill an inactive who’d done something at least mildly incriminating.

I could get behind a Shqueeves lynch, if we’re killing an inactive. As for Governor, I’m getting power-hungry, and with little else to do right now, Drake Fifth. I promise to be a caring and respectable Governor, who the people will all love but never fear, because who wants to be afraid of the government?

I did indeed curse you; I apologise. However, the curse did not turn you into an Inquisitor. I scanned you as Vanilla last night, Elandera, and regardless of whether that happened before or after your Snapping is immaterial; you registered neither as Unsnapped nor Thug. I am slightly annoyed at allowing myself to tunnel onto Doc and Devotary (sorry you two, especially Devotary, who I actually got lynched), and not consider the presence of other vanillas. That said, you did a wonderful job of covering up your tracks, and even with the identity switch making things tough to analyse, you confounded and misled me and Burnt very well. I fully commend you; if I hadn’t scanned you semi-randomly, this game might have been very different after today. To the rest of you wondering what the storms I’ve been doing this game: I scanned the Lurcher N1, who still wants to stay under wraps, and whether they’ve false-claimed in thread, or have simply been lying low, is a mystery I’d like to keep so it’s harder for Elandera to kill him or her. N2 I got Rand obviously, N3 I scanned Bard which made me feel better about him, N4 I scanned Devotary, which returned vanilla, and I figured with her connections to Rand D2 that we’d found the Inquisitor; unfortunately, we hadn’t, so it was back to square one on N5, and I scanned Elandera after a brief PM where I hadn’t been able to guess her role, and I got impatient waiting. That led to yet another vanilla result, and here we are. I’m claiming now because I’ve served my purpose; after working with Burnt in PMs, and collecting roleclaims and piecing things together, we got the Inquisitor after several cycles of stalling. If I’m converted or killed, it’s not the end of the world at this point, as there’s no more need to test roleclaims. Also, either of those two, particularly the latter, might be a relief; considering my schoolwork, I’ve likely devoted far too much time to this game, to the point of overanalysis and tunnelling, which oddly enough, tends to turn out badly. Another apology to Devotary and Doc, here. If there are any Coinshots: Please hit Elandera tonight.

My focus is a bit broad, but I don’t want to preclude anyone I’m not sure about. People somewhat seem to be vouching for Bard, and I’ve not gotten much off Hael that would suggest he’s evil; in fact, I’ve got a pretty good village read on him overall, but I simply can’t clear him yet. I could probably strike those two from the list tentatively if we’re trying to approach a vote. Stink is in the same situation, but I trust him a lot less, on top of having literally no clue what he is. However, trying to lynch him is always weird, and since he’s at least reasonably active, we’ll hopefully accrue more content on him over time. Doc is a claimed vanilla, and Shane and Elandera are likely roleless, if Burnt wasn’t deceiving me. I still believe that Doc’s interactions with Rand D2 are weird and potentially a cause for suspicion, and that they don’t clear him in the slightest. I do not plan to vote for him again. Last time this happened, it caused a good deal of frustration, and we need to move conversation forwards instead of rehashing D4’s arguments. If I’m voting on Doc, after his emotional statements, I’ll be doing so after everyone else viable is dead. That leaves Shane and Elandera, and between the two it’s going to have to be the latter, simply because her flip will be more informative than Shane’s. There’s also a few points of suspicion; namely, BR was one of Aman’s top suspects way back in D1, and very much seems like the type to convert Rand; Elandera’s suspicion list, which is almost the opposite of mine; the fact that the Inquisitor tried to hit Burnt, suggesting that they were outside her confidence/PM circles (she’d claimed vanilla to me, at least); and the vote on Stink, which feels like a safe mislynch—I don’t trust Stink, but like our honourable GM, he’s easier to mislynch as a villager because you can automatically suspect him for a chaotic neutral playstyle.

Alright, for Governor, Drake Marshall. If Bard is clean, then the whole ledger chain probably is, and Drake is the most obvious candidate for governor out of that bunch. As for suspicions, I’m in general agreement with sentiment last cycle that the last Elim might be inactive; however, with discussion already weakened, I don’t want to see it take another hit. Would others be willing to take out an inactive this cycle, or do we want to try lynching a more active person one more time?

I’ve had mild suspicion of Bard for a bit, and would be willing to lynch him. Drake’s points are decent, and I don’t know why people have been clearing him; if it was for the Kidpen lynch, if I remember correctly, that had a 30% chance of flipping incorrectly, and so the counterwagon on Bard wasn’t necessarily an attempt to save an Eliminator; further, it’s not like two opposing wagons, both on Eliminators, is unheard-of. People with money (like not-me) should probably pick up the ledgers out of the Market so we can keep scanning people. The more cleared-ish people we have, the better.

To clarify, I Rioted Drake’s vote onto Rae (sorry Drake, enjoy your shiny new donation to your hedge fund). She was probably my best lead, and I really, really didn’t feel like dying from two random votes yesterday. That said, I’m pretty confident that with only two votes, her flip is as accurate as it gets.

Quick analysis: -I would rather not lynch any claimed Mistings. -The Inquisitor probably targeted Burnt because she was attacked and protected earlier; perhaps it was suspected that she was a Seeker. Either way, a Misting still isn’t dead and I intend to keep that going. I’m actually glad Burnt was killed, in a very not-glad sort of way (sorry Burnt) because I’d started getting paranoid that she was the Inquisitor within our PM system, as she was admittedly only vanilla. -I’m a little surprised by the number of vanillas in this game. There’s at least five, plus the Inquisitor, if my PM claimants are to be trusted (they probably aren’t). -Has it occurred to anyone that Lum might be the inactive Seeker? I don’t like bringing this up, but we’ve not gotten Seeker results since Rand’s death, which roughly matches her activity schedule. It may be worth noting that we might not be able to rely on our Seeker to catch the Inquisitor, in which case we need to start looking at everyone with fresh eyes. -I’m a little disappointed that there’s no Doc kill. I don’t want to tunnel on him again and have that dominate discussion I guess I’ll broaden my focus today. I’d like to look at Haelbarde, Young Bard, Shanerockes, Elandera, Doc12, STINK as potential Inquisitors, or at least as prime suspects.

I check every box except “have anything approaching a reasonable amount of time for this game.” If you’re looking for analysis like I normally do, you’ll have to be disappointed; I have more vested in LG58 right now, and the way lynch flips work this game makes me reluctant to start analysis, because I have literally no way of knowing if any of it is right. It’s just destroyed my ability to meaningfully engage, though I’ll try to check in at least once a cycle. It wasn’t; as I said at the time, it was because the Elims were paranoid about my vote on Gaea nearly working. I still have those boxings, by the way, and might as well give them away since I can’t use them I protected Alv because I felt he’d admitted his crime. If Alv has actually wanted to defuse the lynch, I doubted he’d have been as passive as he was; he basically let himself be led to slaughter. EDIT: Two things. One, I’m fine with being lynched, as I’m not terribly active, but it appears the rest of the thread isn’t too much better; as such, if I wake up tomorrow dead, I’d like a list of reasons why. Also, even though I don’t like Fura’s attempts to direct the village, and am getting weird feels from Drake, they’re apparently both village, so Rae as my next suspect. I’m an easy lynch and don’t reveal much, so I’m curious why she’s dragging me into the noose. Other than my early stances on the constables, I’ve contributed little here. Also, please note something that I think people are forgetting; anyone bribing on the turn they’re scanned will show corrupt. I don’t think people are remembering that with all the ledgers and lynches flying around.

I’d prefer a later rollover than a complete extension, personally; I’m a little eager for results, perhaps, but this game is already stagnating and I’d like to hurry it along as much as possible.

To quickly address this, I don’t doubt that there are two Smokers—normally the Inquisitor wants to give up UberCopper at some point, so having multiple villagers whose bodies could be used to create a Smoker to cover for the Elims is distinctly possible. I know the Smoker that Doc does, and don’t find them suspicious—if you’d like, I could send a request back up the Seeker chain (assuming nobody above me has died) that they be examined, but suspecting them for a Smoker claim when it could be easily tested with a Seeker or Coinshot seems premature.

I apologise for not contributing much to discussion; to be frank, the incredibly large post counts to begin the game, combined with the busy-ness of my schedule, the untrustworthiness of the lynch, and the complicated chains of actions which I’m finding difficult to keep straight, have largely dissuaded me from analysis. I will try to reread the thread with fresh eyes sometime today and place a vote. One thing I can clear up now—Venture’s warrant is called Simuljustusetpeccator, and either he knows ancient Latin theological terms, or he’s an effective user of Google. Similarly, Elandera has a warrant now, which I’ve affectionately christened Homoencurvatusense, and which I used on her yesterday. I’ve gotten three warrants over the course of the game by now, with zero items to show for it. Sorry if the names are confusing, but I wanted a way to prove their origin.

Alright, I have some time. Not nearly as much as I’d like, but I’ll take what I can get. Let’s tackle my case against Devotary. Going post-by-post: This post I’d mark as NAI overall. There’s some village notes, such as mentioning the possibility of a suicide conversion, and also some sections that read more heavily as evil, particularly the section where she evaluates the Inquisitor’s motives—whether this is village!Devotary stepping into the Inquisitor’s shoes, or Inquisitor!Devotary trying to mislead us about her thought process, it’s mostly safe speculation and assertions, so NAI. The first paragraph sets me on edge, somewhat—it’s again speculative, but I’m wondering why Devotary left the possibility of a daytime conversion dangling, and didn’t bother asking for clarification publicly or privately in or before her post. It seems to serve little purpose other than sidetracking discussion into speculative NAI territory, which is a good place to hide Elims, and to avoid needing to say anything controversial which might expose the Inquisitor to attention. The second paragraph read village to me at the time, as I was in the middle of debate with Aman and this post seemed to agree with my ideas, but in retrospect has no inherent village qualities to it; I’d mark it as NAI leaning village for the advocacy that we not wait too long to pursue the Inquisitor, but as it’s not too hard for the Inquisitor to say this, it’s not much of a bump up in my read. All good points, though obviously not too contentious if Devotary was evil. Still slight village read though, if I’m being holistic. Again true, though NAI, of course—that said, I’m reminded of how much I appreciated Devotary agreeing with me when debating with Aman. Posted towards the end of D1, with the debate between myself and Aman. I...am honestly confused by this post; Devotary’s ideas seem to jump around a bit here, at least in the first paragraph, and it’s hard for me to follow her progression. She seems to sort-of defend Lum? I’m not entirely sure; either way, this post seems like mostly a scattered collection of thoughts, and I’d give it a slight Elim read, as it fills up space but did little to advance discussion. Hmm. On the one hand, I sympathise with the confusion rollover must have been, and believe that village!Devotary would act similarly; however, this vote makes perfect sense for Elim!Devotary—she gets Aman killed and a guaranteed conversion, and potentially kills another villager if Aman Soothes (I’m leaning into Lumgol simply being a disengaged Villager). Also, the end of the post seems off, as if the confusion/stress was somewhat falsified; I don’t recall Devotary having ever made such an exclamation, and doing so at the end of a D1 lynch when the impact of her vote would be, at most, a decision of whether or not to certainly kill a claimed Seeker, makes it seem a bit exaggerated. After seeing Aman vote for himself, she retracts, keeping the votes balanced and maximising the potential for all three of myself, Lum and Aman to die. As such, Inquisitor lean for her actions at the end of D1. This was to BR/Elandera, and is NAI on balance—Devotary would defend her actions from either alignment—but as BR mentioned, tying the lynch only increases the likelihood that more innocents will get caught up in the lynch, so for doubling down on this, slight Elim read. Second and third paragraphs are very safe, and again NAI on balance. This post from Rand is when I really started feeling more uncomfortable on Devotary during my reread. It’s a very common strategy for teammates to express mild suspicion of each other in thread, or to ask brief questions to distance and give an appearance of interacting with them in thread; this post does all of the following, as it’s standard hedging/distancing, an easy question which doesn’t pressure Devotary on anything specific, and overall not enough actual pressure that she’s in any danger of being lynched. This may seem to fall into these similar patterns almost too easily, but there’s a reason those patterns are well-trod; they’re very effective at first glance. I didn’t start seriously looking at Devotary until D4, and partly because of this. Overall, heavy Elim read. Devotary’s reply to Rand and I. Not much to go off here—the first paragraph is a farther defence of her D1 actions; I do agree that the comment stating unwillingness to lynch just Lum or myself is a little suspicious, but I’m a little more taken aback by the last sentence in the second paragraph. She says the Inquisitor would want to kill Aman and bring down as many people with him as possible, which was exactly her stance—the stipulation that the Inquisitor likely wouldn’t have been vocal about it seems to deflect attention from herself as well. Also, knee-jerk self defence can be a sign of villagers as well as Eliminators, but hunting for those who are overly defensive certainly isn’t bad policy, so NAI there. In response to Araris’ vote pointing much of the above out. I’m a bit curious about this post, as I got the general impression from Devotary D1 that she disagreed with Aman’s logic that we should allow the Inquisitor to convert; this seems to support it. Another response to Araris. Agree with most of it, but ultimately the points raised are NAI other than the emphasis, again, on killing a Misting, which might have been of interest to Inquisitor!Devotary wanting to build a team. Agreed with Sart that this is very suspicious—Devotary helped diffuse the bandwagon on Rand, throwing cold water on the possibility of a counterclaim, and immediately tilted the lynch towards Bard and brought up Striker as a possibility, who was the eventual lynch. Without being part of the voters that made Rand false-claim in the first place, this voting by Devotary looks very suspicious, and smells of assistance in saving Rand. Devotary also consistently votes with Rand here, and secures the majorities against him—once vote majority shifted away from Bard to Striker, she immediately moved to secure it, and I get the feeling Rand was preparing to move the other way if necessary. As seen here. Overall NAI—just statement of facts, though both to serve to diffuse points brought against Rand and his Mistborn claim. Presumably Inquisitor!Devotary knew Rand was the original Mistborn, and that no counterclaim was forthcoming. NAI response to comment by Lum. We interrupt your regularly scheduled programming to bring you...Rand! This is, again, textbook hedging and distancing on an Elim teammate by mildly suspecting them and questioning them. Back to the main show... Votes Rand after the Seeker reveal. I will note that I was a step above Devotary in the Seeker chain, and that there was a minor delay in the transfer of the scan results to the thread through her, even after she’d read my PM, though that may have been Doc typing up his elegant accusation more than anything else The rhetorical question is interesting; it seems to distance Devotary from the possibility of being evil, as she was online with Rand at the time, so slight Elim read here. The first paragraph is very true, but also very NAI; village! or Inquisitor!Devotary could reason through it with ease. Not really sure what to think of the second paragraph; it feels like glorified fluff, almost, but there are good points in it, I suppose? If Devotary is evil, the reason she converted Rand may be concealed within I’ll go ahead and mark the whole thing NAI. Sart’s post D4 accusing Devotary makes me trust him independently of his more recent Smoker claim. While that’s fair, the complete lack of scepticism you demonstrated, along with the considerable help you gave him in dodging the lynch (in addition to potential earlier ties) makes me suspect you more than I otherwise would. The point on Doc is fair, as I still don’t trust him, and believe that he’s evil if Devotary isn’t. I’m slowly falling asleep so let me skip Devotary’s last few posts, mostly focused on last cycle’s lynch (only thing notable is a focus on increasing suspicion on Doc, and then switching to lynch Ark, who was the more likely Misting). The basic point of all this is that Devotary is probably the Inquisitor unless she can claim a Misting role that invalidates all this analysis. @Devotary of Spontaneity, do you have a provable role, or any piece of evidence that would preclude you from being the Inquisitor?

It’s hoodwinking me, as I can’t keep up with the progression of the chain, clearly. First of all, I very much respect Snip’s stance at the beginning of the cycle, and though I don’t hold to all of it, he certainly doesn’t deserve to die. At a skim, the case against Bard is fairly unconvincing given that he is probably village, but is better than killing Snipexe, and I don’t have time to select a better candidate. It might (might) also resolve the uncertainty surrounding the ledger if we manage to keep vote counts lower than they were last cycle, and get as reliable a flip on Bard as we can. I don’t understand the case against Kidpen, which is why I can’t vote for him in good conscience.

Guys, guys, if we don’t lynch a Misting we can stop the Inquisitor from converting again! More seriously, Araris, you’re probably right about a tunnel on Doc; while I’d like him dead to assuage my paranoia, that’s true of everyone at this point, and I really just need to expand my focus beyond just him. Analysis and a vote coming later tonight, maybe edited in here.

@Araris Valerian, I fully acknowledge that I’ve not been a terribly useful participant in this game; turns out doing six AP classes and cross country at once doesn’t leave much SE time in one’s schedule. I’ll admit I was only skimming during my analysis, and placed a rushed vote. I’m not evil; you can scan to check me, or lynch, as I’m not being very much of a helpful force right now, but you’re still my best lead at the moment, so that’s why my vote was where it was. I will try to make sense of everything going on, but to be completely honest I’m not going to be the driving force I typically am; time is simply not my friend. In regards to the ledger chain, I feel like people are ignoring the possibility of Bard/Drake being evil, and then hoodwinking Striker and Fura, but if I tried to articulate this more thoroughly I’d probably fail. Vote to come in a bit.

Doing the voting thing again, though apparently neither the Coinshots nor the Seeker are very willing to follow through on this (or share the results), shanerockes,Bard. I’d like to see some of the more inactive players gone, to speed the game up a bit without us needing to take a hit to discussion. It was fortunate Ark was a vanillager, delaying an Inquisitor conversion yet another cycle, though something will have to give eventually. Meanwhile, active players should be Seeked, so we don’t kill reasonable voices pitching in to discussion without a fair examination beforehand. Updated suspicions list (most—>least): Doc12 Devotary of Spontaneity (rise in suspicion after rereading thread, not a bad Coinshot target if not pursuing inactive) Young Bard (Araris had good points on him but I’m still paranoid) Lumgol Snipexe (the Misting claim looks like a deflection tactic somewhat) shanerockes (needs to talk more) STINK (probably merits a closer look at some point) Sart (has had generally good points, making an effort to vote) Haelbarde Elandera Rathmaskal (might be a good Seeker target later?) Araris Valerian (good effort + points + tone) Burnt Spaghetti

I don’t trust Alv one whit on principle, and would not hesitate to kill him, but agree that a lynch on him in light of his claim is not the best idea; I too doubt that Elim!Alv would be heartless enough to kill El just as she got back into the swing of things. That said, I would love it if someone with a ledger scanned him. Then we could better decide what to do with him. I’m currently voting on Araris, and while that may change eventually, I still feel as though he’s the best candidate based sheerly on positioning in yesterday’s mess. He’s also been FLYING UNDER THE RADAR! Scandalous!

If you’re village, I will do both. In fact, I’ll do it right now—sorry, Doc. I’d re-evaluate my vote on you if it weren’t for time constraints, but currently with the limited analysis I’ve been able to perform in my head from rereading the thread last cycle, you’re still my best bet. Also, fair warning that after this post, I will not have any sort of sustained presence here between now and rollover. If there’s a Seeker scan or something that requires me to change my vote, I’ll see it, but little else.

What the absolute storms happened when I was gone. Also, leaving the vote counts that low was...eesh. That was part of why I felt everyone had to start voting for constables—the vote counts got low enough that manipulation was too easy. While I suspect Alv, obviously, after a cursory skim over the madness of yesterday, I’m actually more suspicious of Araris for dropping a largely unexplained vote on Wilson and then seemingly leaving. My best guess for an Elim team right now would be Alv/Araris/Fura?/fourth player off the top of my head. Again, sorry if I’m less helpful right now—my head is still swimming in the mess you guys put up an hour or two ago (seriously you guys need to get better sleep schedules, at least the Americans ), and with school starting back today I’ll have less time for analysis. That said, I will make every effort to chip in here when possible.

First of all, I’m sorry if my suspicions have caused or contributed towards this fatalistic attitude—this post disconcerts me, as I’ve tried to be honest about my suspicions on you and work them out, and didn’t intend to make the game unfun or stressful to the point where you don’t feel like playing anymore. Also, as Elandera said, you’re not a bad player, and even if you were that’s not an excuse to kill you or not have you around. If people judged by success in finding Eliminators, I’d have been laughed out of the community after AG4. We don’t do things that way here, and I am deeply sorry that you regret coming back to the community. With that said, I’d appreciate it if you could shed a little more light on your PM with Rand; specifically, do you know why, as a Spiked convert, he would contact you with the false claim two hours before rollover, thereby locking him into it at a later date? And do you have any idea why he would PM you over another player, and to the exclusion of everyone else in the game, when your sleep schedule and time zone made it unlikely that you’d see the PM to begin with? I would rather you...not do this, though I’ll go ahead and cast a preemptive vote for Snipexe to be Seeked tonight, as making this claim and relying on the fact that we wouldn’t lynch him is a viable Inquisitor move. (By the way, do we know of any Seeker results last night? I know the Coinshots are still saving their kills for something, but the Seeker now has two results that we don’t know about, though they’d presumably not sit on anything suspicious.) I’m getting this same conflicted feeling about Doc, but ultimately his lynch will probably be the most informative for the village and allow us to move on; additionally, ignoring the uncertain emotional reads I’m getting from his posts, the logical side of me currently favours him.

As an extension of my earlier argument, what would constitute “solid evidence” that one of the two is corrupt? The writeups aren’t revealing anything, and conjecture is the best we have to go on. In effect, I feel like those taking the stance that we don’t have enough information on the constables are simply trying to dodge the necessity of taking an actual stance here on which one is guilty. We will never have enough information to definitively know which Constable to kill. The best we can do is take the best guess we can based on what we do know, and in my mind, that’s a Gaea lynch. But postponing on the grounds that we don’t have enough information is simply deceptive—we never will, and using this logic will lead to continual delay with untrustworthy lynches dominating the information we do get on players.

What do you mean by this? We’ll always get an accurate lynch result on a Constable, so the lynch can be as close as it needs to.

My question to those advocating that we wait to lynch the second Constable: why? We’re only going to start losing voices and opinions as the game progresses, so getting more input now, while there’s still a reasonable bias towards villagers, would be quite helpful; further, regardless of whether or not we catch the corrupt constable, we will get good reads on the Elims at the very least, as they’ll be obliged to push the lynch towards the incorrect constable while at the same time distancing themselves from a poor outcome.