Fifth Scholar

Hmm. So at the risk of sparking the same debate again, I’d like Gaea dead. If Lum was the one to bribe my vote away from Gaea and onto Wilson, that smells a bit like conspiracy to me, though I’d be willing to give any players other state are suspecting a look. Sorry if my analysis is less focused/detailed; there’s a reason I don’t join QFs that often and the pacing is one of them.

Oops. I blame BR’s name being crossed out on the player list. I’d throw you in the suspect pool, but beneath the other three by a significant margin. Mostly the transition from BR to you is making it difficult to get a consistent read, so I’m unwilling to eliminate you. Rath’s status as the person who cemented the Randwagon at the end of D2, as well as just a generally good read I’ve gotten from his posts, is making me trust him. It’s a strangely nice feeling, as my normal reaction is “KILL HIM WITH FIRE,” which is unhelpful but might actually make me feel a bit better about my perception simply because it’s normal Maybe I should take a closer look, I dunno. That’s a fair point on Bard—I’ve not gotten through my analysis thanks to the QF but I’ll consider that when I do. I’d rather not intentionally tie the lynch, simply because I don’t trust vote manipulators, but would be fine letting the chips fall where they may, and if it’s a tie then so be it. This lynch ought to be a bit closer than the last one, though.

Hmm...Snip and Ark feel like setups, I agree, and Striker’s tone has been giving me very different reads than I had a few hours ago; that said, I think I’m going to stick with my gut, as the backlog here is a bit intimidating to pull a solid lynch case together in the two or three hours before I sleep, and my qualms with Striker are still lingering, if mitigated. I do want to respond to this, though: First, I love seeing you talk this much, Alv. If you can keep this speech quality up you certainly have my vote for Governor. That said, as an advocate of a Gaea lynch, I feel obliged to give some counterpoints. While your desire to cooperate with Burnt and kill everyone is admirable understandable, I work as much in-thread and with the lynch as you do in PMs and with items, plans, and the like. As such, my priority is purifying our lynches and ensuring their accuracy. While I wasn’t really around to protest the massacre of Joe, I’m still a believer in corrupt!Gaea—additionally, as to why we should “waste” another lynch on a constable, because knowing who is what alignment is the only way to perform reliable analysis? Without that, everyone is floating in limbo completely isolated from past events and other players, and analysis is reduced to a game of find-the-evil-sounding-tone, which simply doesn’t work, as some people will sound village no matter what, and villagers are essentially stabbing in the dark hopelessly trying to make contact, while the Elims, who have more coordination, can steer the lynch where they will. Confusion, in the vast majority of cases, only benefits those trying to hide, which would be the Elims. Also, finding Elims through connections is one of the most reliable ways of finding them at all, and your statement, that it can lead to a horrid mess when misapplied, is true of all lynching strategies and shouldn’t be used as a reason to avoid a particular method which has proved its usefulness time and again. Items disappearing will in most cases not happen, and at any rate will cause those using them to use them more cautiously than they otherwise might, knowing that they might not get it back—besides, any attempts to both use and keep an item within a faction will necessitate revealing to some extent those juggling the item, as we saw with Snip and the Dagger. The black market isn’t necessary to maintain the fun of the game, as seen in this very cycle; there’s really not much in there at all, and I believe that by increasing the value each individual item holds, and being careful to use it in a way that keeps it in circulation, we would add another fun dimension of planning to the use of our items. We need 18-20 votes to guarantee the unanimity you propose to reverse the lynch results, which is probably never going to happen. The most likely remedy if we keep the current system around is to have very small numbers of votes, which also doesn’t work—people with Boxings, and Elims with hammers, have too much of a say. The only way to restore the integrity of the lynch is to purify its results, which means taking another shot at lynching a constable. Finally, as for suspecting those pursuing the constabulary, I again disagree. I respect the desire to have a reliable lynch which will allow us to perform good analysis later in the game, and will defend those who share that desire.

The Lurcher is everywhere...and nowhere (seriously whoever it is deserves mad credit for their guessing skills, unless Burnt was a Thug) I’m inclined to think Burnt’s survival was very natural; the Inquisitor frankly has no time to waste on WGGs right now. Of more interest is the disappearance of one of the Tineye messages. They can’t have been converted, but their silence is still sad; after taking a quick glance through all the profiles of people playing, everyone should have been on to submit an action last night. We need the Tineyes to keep contributing, to maintain them as “landmines,” as someone put it earlier (who I am too lazy to look up). With no Mistborn counterclaim by now either, I’m assuming the third Tineye message N1 was Mistborn!Rand who promptly got converted. Oops. Onto analysis! For some reason or another (being attacked) I am hereby clearing this chunk of players: Fifth Scholar Burnt Spaghetti I trust the following players reasonably well: Devotary of Spontaneity Araris Valerian Rathmaskal (speaking of which) The Inquisitor had no dead Misting to convert with, and thus couldn’t. Haelbarde The following players need to produce more content, but I am dismissing them for now: Ark Shanerockes Sart STINK Snipexe That leaves my suspects as Young Bard Doc12 Lumgol Which I feel fits reasonably into my gut feelings about the three of these, and also the playstyle I’d expect the Inquisitor to use. I’ll look at each of these three later and then cast a real vote, but my preference is for Doc to be lynched right now.

I get that, I guess? But with that comment being public, it’s a simple matter for anyone to read it, decide they want to frame Ark with the dagger they have, name it and stab somebody with it. Striker’s support for a Gaea lynch is disconcerting, as I’m currently getting evil vibes off both, but ultimately recognisation that my reads on one or both are wrong is 1) less conceited and 2) less likely to lead me down a tunnel. I’ll stick with my vote on Striker, though.

Fair enough, then. In regards to my vote being Soothed, I’m 99.9% sure that was Aman working towards saving me after he retracted his vote; if you believe it to be my doing as Inquisitor!Fifth, you’d have to assume that I have Spikes for both extra actions and Soothing, on top of the existing UberTin, UberPewter and almost 100% likely UberCopper. That’s five spikes, which is entirely unreasonable for the current player size.

To clarify my actual position on that lynch, as I feel your explanation distorts it slightly, I was against lynching a Misting for the sake of giving the Inquisitor a conversion, which is what Aman was advocating, wishing instead to hold a normal D1 lynch, voting on those we believed suspicious, which at the time was Aman because I had a fundamental disagreement with his stance, and suspected the Inquisitor had Spike(s) that allowed him to mimic Soothing. It gained them trust for the rest of the game. I’m a little confused how you go in your analysis from the above two statements, in which you mark me as village/not a likely Inquisitor, and then list me under your mild Elim reads. I would not mind being Seeked if people have genuine concerns about me, but would personally prefer to see my own suspects targeted Sorry for the response to old stuff Just figured we should bring discussion levels up. @Doc12 While I don’t have the time to respond fully to your post, I’d like to quickly address two things: 1) You’re not suspect for defending Bard, as both of you can’t be evil right now, and 2) I’m not sure why you’re advocating that you be Seeked when your claimed role cannot be told apart from the Inquisitor UberCopper Spike. (Sorry to sort-of out you if you’re not evil, but you’d admitted that you told Rand your role, so the village might as well know now as well)

Extra point of fun, because yesterday was fun; in case people didn’t realise from the vote count, my vote got knocked off Gaea and onto Wilson. Seems even more suspicious to me now, and I would actually like to rescind my statement at the beginning of the cycle. I think I’m fine with a Gaea lynch today, but will still wait because killing a person might be useful too. Currently, I’m in agreement with Fura that Striker feels off; the opposition to Snipexe’s lynch was just weirdly worded, and his role in helping lynch Joe yesterday is another point against him. On the other end of the spectrum, at the risk of getting pocketed by her again, I think Devotary looks relatively clean from yesterday’s lynch and would like to see more from her.

Right; if all the lynch discussion is going to happen in the last four hours of the turn, please allow me to clarify that I will not be around for it. *sigh* The Joe lynch, to me, was suspicious as heck, and I’m in agreement with Drake that it was far too easy—however, I don’t clear Drake for pointing this out, as he could easily be corrupt and trying to come out on the right side of history. The Wilson lynch was also too easy at a certain point, and I remain fairly confident that Gaea is the corrupt constable. That said, I’m not placing an immediate vote on her, as it might not be in our best interests to take away our only remaining constable lynch D2. For now, I want to investigate closer into those on the Joe lynch, as at least some of them are evil.

That’s near-unanimity, I’m pretty sure. If @shanerockes could have gotten online and provided his thoughts, it would have been even more lopsided. As things stand, I propose we vote for Coinshot targets in purple again tonight, and for Seeker targets in orange. While I’d still like to see greater activity from Shane and Ark, I think my preferences have shifted towards killing Doc and seeking Young Bard. They both possess ties to Rand, but I suspect Doc a little bit more right now, and feel as though killing him will be quicker and potentially more effective than Seeking. However, as I’m statistically probably wrong about the two of them, I’d be curious to hear who else people are currently suspecting. The Rand lynch kinda did shut down discussion tremendously, so we need to start it back up again.

This is true, and targeting the Constabulary with our first few lynches is probably a good idea; without the ability to correctly discern alignment, this game will become an absolute headache. However, I believe Constable General Altea (Gaea) to be evil, rather than Joe or Wilson. The idea here is that the hardest decisions require the strongest wills, and ultimately shutting down the black market, while being a hefty price to pay, is a price higher than losing free PMs or having a random Survivor role floating around; therefore, by paying it, we’re more likely to be rewarded. Also thematically I feel like Joe would make Gaea evil, though I’ve no hard evidence to back that up. As for Governor, I vote no leader. I’d prefer giving this to someone scanned with a ledger, and the Elims can’t hammer this vote if we don’t let them, so we might as well wait to hand it out. Also, I’d be less willing to trust those putting themselves up for it—at best, it’s a bid for glory, and at worst, they’re seeking control of the lynch in the later game. Three votes is a lot, and giving it to anybody D1 seems reckless and potentially deadly.

Yeah, I feel a bit guilty for sending that PM to you asking for your thoughts, now... To be fair, while shortening the cycle is an option, I’d be fine with putting votes for people we’d like Coinshot or lynched later in purple to keep people contributing analysis in the few hours left in this cycle. I’d support this, and would encourage anyone on right now to pop in and vote. Hmm, yeah, the attack on me makes more sense now; I had been pursuing Rand, though I’m not sure if I was actually anywhere close to the Inquisitor, and going by my pre-existing suspicions on people other than Rand as a potential cause of attack is probably reading too deeply into things. I would argue yes, Rand would claim if the Inquisitor was on, especially if the Inquisitor did not have vote manipulation; the bandwagon was swinging towards Rand with not-insignificant force, and the Inquisitor defending Rand too much could have brought both down together. I’ve yet to read the end of Day Two again with the depth it deserves, but would tentatively suggest that the Inquisitor is somewhere among Bard, Devotary and Doc, but that if anyone should be Coinshot it’s inactives or minimal contributors like RayOfSunshine or shanerockes, to prevent a slow endgame if we kill the Inquisitor. The real question, now that Rand is dead, is who the Mistborn is. Unless Rand was converted as the Mistborn, they’re still out there and felt not need to counterclaim Rand at the end of yesterday.

Alright, seems fair enough. Randuir, that Mistborn claim was a gutsy move. You’re to be commended—but unfortunately, it looks as though we must kill you.

To clarify, you believe that I, as Inquisitor (as the convert could have gained only Soother powers), decided to attack myself after a cycle in which I needed a dead Misting to have any hope of converting another player anytime soon, and in this way burned an extra life to keep suspicion off me? I suppose in some cases I might venture to do this, if I was already under a lot of suspicion, but a gambit such as this during the opening rounds, when I was under little suspicion to begin with, has no purpose for Inquisitor!me when I could be narrowing the village’s numbers advantage and setting myself up to convert later. As I’ve already detailed, I couldn’t have been converted N1, as there’d be no way for me to survive a N2 attack, so the only alternative is Inquisitor!me willingly sabotaging myself for little to no reason. Also, I’d protest that I’m naturally suspicious; I’ve been mislynched once in my entire SE career, and that was only for executing mass-scale deception and phishing. Inquisitor!me has far more incentive to trust myself to talk my way out of a lynch than to try a WGG which only draws attention. A longer analysis post is forthcoming, with a vote. I hope that the Inquisitor is within our grasp by D4 at the latest.

Hmm. While I perhaps understand that, it also seems like a good way to cover for not having any powers at all—you can make up what you had based on results rather than needing to state and then confirm them, no? If we don’t get a counterclaim today, I’d certainly be more willing to trust you, but there’s still the possibility that you were converted as the Mistborn, and then lost your powers, so...call me paranoid, but I’d rather have as much proof as I can. (I suppose a Seeker result would confirm you as well, though that’s contingent on us actually having one )

Tineye 1: Please do not reveal. We’re doing fairly well stalling the Inquisitor right now, and I’d like to keep it that way. The longer it takes him to convert, the easier he is to catch. Tineye 2: Couldn’t agree more As for my attack, NGL, I’m a little surprised I was chosen; if I was the Inquisitor I’d certainly have taken a stab at Rand as Mistborn, which does ring a few alarm bells. Rand, what power do you have this cycle? You should probably be open about it if you’ve publicly claimed, though with no counterclaim yet I’m more willing to trust you, I suppose, than would perhaps otherwise be typical? Anyone who didn’t answer on the Night thread should probably check in here to confirm there’s no counterclaim for Mistborn, though. Also, if the Lurcher who saved me could not shoot me a PM, that would be great; converting me would compromise your identity, though I am a little curious why you saved me. (No, I’m not a Thug, which can be proven by lynching me, if it comes to that )

(Needless to say, if another Mistborn is out there, a counterclaim should happen immediately—there’s no way there’s two Mistborn in a game this small) It struck me that way at first as well, but all in all, killing our Mistborn for something we could probably just check through Seeking/lack of counterclaiming seemed detrimental to me. Unless ubercopper is set up so that the Inquisitor could deliberately mislead about their role, or there are no Mistborn in the game, I’m fine with what the end of yesterday did, though obviously am disappointed that Striker wasn’t evil. Overall, lynching Mistborn!Rand would have been worse, giving the Inquisitor’s concert access to quite a few potentially dangerous powers. As for conversions, I’m relatively confident that’s something only the Inquisitor does.

@Randuir What is your current Mistborn power? Not Thug, I presume?

Hmm. Fine, Rand, though part of me thinks the Elims will kill or convert you if you’re telling the truth, and that we’re making a big mistake if you’re lying. All Seekers, please Seek him tonight, and Smokers please don’t interfere. I disagree here—depending on how other votes fell, and on the activity of his teammate, it might have been harder for him to wriggle out of things. This is essentially a surefire way to buy him two more cycles of life if he is evil. Huh. I’m generally confused where the Bard suspicion is coming from, other than what looked to be a genuine misreading of Lumgol’s post. At the risk of creating too much of a tie, StrikerEZ, as I’ve more suspicion of him at this point than Bard, and he may be the only person on my suspect list close to being lynched other than Rand, and the price of a failed lynch on him is too high.

Right. I’m coming back here, and after finishing my look at Rand, am comfortable leaving my vote where it is. The depth of his reads and analysis isn’t what it normally is, and while part of that is likely busy-ness, another aspect of it may well be him attempting to coast by as the Inquisitor. I stand by my non-Inquisitor reads on Bard, Devotary, and Hael, and would perhaps add Araris to this list. Lumgol, as Rath mentioned, is unusually quiet and should perhaps be Coinshot. I would like @Devotary of Spontaneity, @BrightnessRadiant, @Lumgol, @shanerockes, @STINK, @RayOfSunshine and @Haelbarde to weigh in with votes, though, if possible. Also, as a Seeker presumably could not check Ark’s vanilla claim, that might also be a good target for a Coinshot? I’m thinking our Seekers and Coinshots should start focusing on the less active players, as they’re more likely to dodge the noose and they’re much harder to analyse. I think the general activity needs to go up, though, so we have the ability to perform any kind of analysis at all. Rath, that collation is useful. I’d be wary of anyone there with an excess of S’s or N’s, as they may be trying to keep up a seemingly active front while not saying much of substance—clearly, that’s not true for every post, but it’s something to note, and makes me want to look more closely at Striker, Snipexe and Ark.

Gah, sorry everyone for posting and then kind of leaving this to sit. I’d intended to get around to this both last night and earlier today, but had other concerns and commitments distracting me. Hopefully this post will make up for some of that. I will note, to begin with, that I’m far less comfortable with both Bard and Randuir than I was at the beginning of the day, even, but that my non-Inquisitor reads on Devotary and Hael are mostly holding. That’s a bit generic, but I hope to explain it a bit later into this post. Onto analysis! First, I’m growing increasingly uncomfortable with Randuir, enough to merit a vote. His first set of posts are pretty much fine, with nothing much noteworthy or suspicious other than slightly odd tone, such as the weird kind-of joke he made about Devotary, which felt off and disconnected from the rest of his post. My issues start here: In my mind, this is a good way of expressing villager-y sentiments without needing to say anything too controversial; I agree with the basic logic present here, but would argue that an Elim has just as much incentive to post this as a villager, and that the phrasing about the retaliatory vote scaring people away from voting for a player is wrong at best and deceptively misleading at worst; if anything, it’s only called down greater attention on Shane’s head than he would have been under otherwise. Just as Araris is faulting Bard for essentially looking for a target, I feel the rhetoric Randuir employs here is out of step with many of his villager tells, and represents the pursuit of any object which may feel like a lynchable offence. My read on this post flip-flop-flips between paragraphs; the first paragraph is again a fairly safe statement to make from either alignment, but my issue lies in calling both Aman and I’s statements NAI—I would have taken a different approach if I’d been the Inquisitor yesterday, and besides, such blanket statements tend to diminish or dismiss the actual AI content which can be gleaned from debates such as the one Aman and I had. The second paragraph reads more village—while he’s wrong, I find villagers are more likely to be looking for and noticing smaller things like what he mentioned. Finally, an inactive vote fairly late into the cycle is...unhelpful, and is an easy way to dodge having to give a real opinion on anybody. This vote stuck despite Rand being around at or near end of day, when he would have needed to take an actual position in the whole Aman/me/Lumgol mess. Instead, by opting to stay out of it, he reduced our ability to evaluate his stances, provided less AI content, and washed his hands of any villagers that died from that lynch. Further analysis of Rand, and also Snip and Araris, forthcoming. I just ran out of this chunk of my free time and want to post something, as I haven’t since the beginning of the cycle.

To clarify, I had forgotten/not realised that giving up all their spikes would mean death for the Inquisitor, and so was operating under the assumption of a three to four man team. Thus, two or three conversions + Inquisitor = three to four man elim team, which I judged to be fair at the time. I feel like Inquisitor!Bard would have been more careful about the whole Lum thing, though my perception of him may be coloured by the amount we’re agreeing; we agree[d] on Devotary, we have a similar shortlist for Inquisitor, etc. One thing I don’t agree with is the suspicion of Hael, as I don’t think his defence of Aman last cycle was particularly noteworthy. I’m looking harder into Rand, Snipexe, and maybe Araris as Inquisitors, and after some analysis my vote will probably fall somewhere thereabouts.

Thanks It’s been pointed out, but certainly worth repeating that a casual style is true of STINK irrespective of his alignment; one need only look at QF25 for proof that the carefree and jestful nature he employs extends across both alignments. That said, I’m also reading him mostly as village, if only off gut. This is an interesting shortlist; I liked your point on Lum, but am generally uncertain where the suspicion on Hael is coming from; was it his posts last cycle in defence of Aman? I’ve been getting a villager read, if anything, off them. As for Burnt I have a PM with her but haven’t seen much one way or the other, and feel generally worse about Rand than I usually do, though it’s partly from lack of content, and he’s already clarified that he’ll be busy, so I’m not minding it as much as I usually would. I do need to reread the thread before giving any further opinions, though. Any reason this is blue, out of curiosity?

To Aman; my apologies, obviously, for the unwarranted suspicion, but I was acting on the information I thought best at the time, and your stances on allowing the Inquisitor to convert didn’t sit well with me. In the end, though, I suppose you did get what you wanted One more helpful aspect of Aman’s death is that we can broaden our focus slightly; we were all a little guilty, myself included, of too exclusive a focus on him. In particular, those who I feel hedged a bit much on yesterday’s lynch, as well as the ones who seemed content to remain on the fringes of discussion, merit a closer look. We’ll see what the Night brings, though.

Kinda-responding to this, as I’ve got only a moment right now, but I would not put it past you to actually be the Inquisitor right now. It’s unlikely, perhaps, but frankly you’ve done weirder things as an Elim to gain time or what have you. However, if this is actually going to be a problem, then Fifth Scholar Amanuensis and let’s allow the game to move on from our feud with the full knowledge of both our alignments. Side note: would not be surprised if the Inquisitor had a spike giving him extra actions, just saying.