Fifth Scholar

Elim!Aman benefits by killing the only village Lurcher, casting enormous amounts of suspicion on me for trusting your reads on Sart and Drake, wasting another two cycles of discussion needed to re-commit to lynching you, and getting the chance of swindling others out of his lynch with the silver tongue he’s always possessed. Devotary is a potential teammate—she’s shared information with you that I’d consider fairly confidential, though Drake is probably the closest we have to a cleared player right now. As for why you backed off them? Keeping your hands clean would be important to Elim!Aman, and if they really are villagers, being on the wrong wagon might bring suspicion down on you even sooner (considering what is now a clear WGG). You think I haven’t realised that about my instincts yet, after trusting you this cycle and going after Sart and Fura? Or after my numerous failures in past games? My title on the Shard has always been “Honourary Eliminator” for a reason. That said, as you yourself point out, two Lurchers for the village in a game this size would be simply absurd, unless the Elim have a team of full Mistborn or something (and one was vanilla, so there you go). I find it interesting that you’re convinced enough of your innocence that you argue that the village view you as such, and not lynch you in suspicion tomorrow, and then proceed to ask to be killed in a manner which you can clearly defend. Perhaps there’s a solution here—if your contact attacks you, and you survive or if the attack was hazekilled, we lynch you tomorrow? You would have actually no way of explaining that one, although how you’re trying to worm out of this lynch after expressing “100% confidence” in Sart’s alignment last turn is amazing to behold. And of course, we have nought but your word on whether your attack was a WGG, though you’ve also admitted that it was an Aman move and that Elim!Aman would do it eventually, so it still makes a lot of sense. Yeah, speaking of the Coinshot...Aman (and by extension the Eliminators) now know the identities of the Coinshot, the Seeker, the Tineye, probably the Thug and the Soother, and maybe a couple of Vanillas. I’m not sure if the Rioter has yet claimed. Aman, sheer confidence in another’s alignment and willingness to tie one’s alignment to another’s can be signs of a villager, but are also tactics used by Eliminators when trying to bus or to drive a mislynch at a perceived tipping point. Given that the village power roles have claimed and are now unguarded thanks to your efforts, this would count as a tipping-point, particularly as you have the chance of talkin your way out of the spot you’re in. You were the one who attempted to force the lynch into a conflict between two Lurchers so that if one died, and flipped village, the other would be lynched on suspicion. Now that it falls like this, you complain? And you fault me for pursuing Drake when you were stoking the flames of his lynch (and Fura’s as well, might I add) in PMs with me? And yes, as soon one Lurcher dies and flips village, the other Lurcher dies too. You set it up that way. And now that Sart has flipped village, you expect us to abandon this earlier position which you yourself held? I’ll entertain that possibility, but not seriously consider it. You’ve decided, in effect, to trade your Lurcher for the village Lurcher and a clear shot at village power roles. If both Lurchers are village, that would be not only trollish, but also imbalanced, and if we hadn’t made such a mess of things with the lynches we set up, the Elims would have no chance at all considering the other strong roles we were given (Mistborn, Coinshot, Seeker).

Well, Aman, you’ve led us on a merry chase. It’s a little amusing to me that my first instincts on you were correct, but I silenced my paranoia too much. Drake and Araris are probably cleared, but I’m not extending that to Rath. Meanwhile, if the Coinshot which Aman claimed to could kindly target me tonight so we don’t waste a lynch on me in the future, that would be excellent. I raise no hand to defend myself. Aman, I commend you. You really did pull off a convincing WGG. Now, I get to gloat about being right in the shadow of being so utterly wrong. Well played. As for Aman’s teammates? Lum springs to mind immediately, and Devotary and Stick are possibilities. Rath too, if there was distancing going on (I suspect one of Aman’s teammates possibly being on his lynch). This lynch probably was helpful, in a way—we are one Elim closer to victory after tomorrow’s lynch. However, we did lose our only protection role. Also, to close, let’s not let Aman double-talk us out of his lynch tomorrow. He’s done it before and will do it again if we let him.

My current theory is Devotary’s patented Wounded Buffalo Gambit (TM), in which a villager is attacked and protected by the Eliminators to arouse suspicions of a WGG or to get an Eliminator Lurcher trusted by the village. This tactic was used by Araris’ very own Eliminator team back in LG44 and serves as a perfect explanation as to why Sart would claim this attack.

On the contrary, it’s not that far out of the question; given that the Kandra’s mission is to be the last player standing, and that active players are more likely to be suspected, lynched, or killed, a kill on an inactive who could get in the way towards the end of the game makes a certain amount of sense—particularly if the SK is trusted enough that they don’t need to remove those suspecting them.

Also, Sart or Amanuensis is probably evil, as two village Lurchers...mmm. Not likely. As I find Drake’s survival more immediately suspicious than Aman’s, my vote will go here for now. Aman, even though you kind of twisted my arm when it comes to forcing this lynch as a decision between the two of you, I guess I’m glad of it; I’d worried that Sart and Drake were collaborating for some time. Though I’d be willing to hear Sart’s case, as my read has soured on Aman from where it was previously, after his initial Lurcher claim, and I do share Stick’s feelings that claiming this protection is a big risk for you and Drake to take if you’re both evil. Lastly, I will second Aman’s assertion that this whole bloody mess has been making my head hurt the past few days

As part of protecting him. If he chooses to expose himself and not let me cover for him, that’s at his discretion. It’s likely best I stop running interference for him, though.

Right. I’ve been very responsive in PMs and have generally been keeping up with things, but it’s high time I make my case against Drake public. ...and the Shard just ate an hour of my work, leaving only this first paragraph, because I checked a PM in the same tab. OK, TL;DR form because I really don’t feel like typing that all out again. 1) Two attacks on Drake and Aman by the Elims, both survived. Two village Lurchers=incredibly unlikely. So one village Lurcher saved Drake and Aman is a Thug (doubtful), one village Lurcher saved Aman and Drake is a Thug (Drake has denied this), one villager Lurcher saved both (incredibly unlikely, would need insane luck), Aman’s survival was legit and Drake was WGGed (most likely), Drake’s survival was legit and Aman was WGGed (next most likely), both were WGGed (would be a heck of a gambit, but not really feeling it), Drake was WGGed and Aman was framed by an Elim Lurcher (highly unlikely), Aman was WGGed and Drake was framed by an Elim Lurcher (not impossible but not terribly probable either), or secret roles/Kandra (not considering because we should kill these people anyway). Why is WGG!Drake most likely? It’s interesting that Drake was basically mostly cleared from the D1 lynch by literally everyone except me, so his attack makes a lot of sense from an Eliminator perspective if he is one, and though Aman says he has to deal with being attacked eventually, I think Drake after D1 would have to face this issue more than even Aman. His attack and survival makes a lot of sense from Elim!Drake’s perspective; he’ll need to do it eventually with his basically cleared status, so might as well get rid of the initial suspicion surrounding WGGs early. There’s a possibility the Eliminator team framed him for this exact reason, and in that case I would pursue Aman, but going with Occam’s Razor, Drake is the more likely candidate for a WGG. I’ll note that I think Drake is either an Eliminator Thug or was protected by an Eliminator Lurcher, probably a Thug, as that would explain why his near-lynch D1 wasn’t really contested. 2) Drake’s push for seeing yesterday as indisputably not V-V rings enormous alarm bells when Eliminator!Xinoehp apparently didn’t feel the need to defend Devotary, her teammate in Drake’s worldview. While I can understand greater suspicion of Devotary, accusing her based on the binary lynch yesterday when, as she pointed out, there were no other or better choices, and when a known Eliminator was around but still sat on the sidelines, is suspicious. The rest of my case is based on PMs, which I don’t want to get into as that’d probably reveal the roles of some people who’d prefer remaining below the Elim kill radar.

The spreadsheet is here. I suppose I’ll also use this opportunity to give my somewhat-belated thoughts on balance and how the game worked out. Secrets: should run over these fairly quickly. The most important secret was actually OreSeur. A lot of people were dismissing Vin as mostly unimportant to the Mistborn actually winning, seeing Zane as the larger threat, and I wanted to combat this. My original idea was to have Zane start as a doubled Mistborn+Elim so he’d need to die, and Vin had to survive to win, but I dismissed the idea as broken and came up with OreSeur instead, which gave a powerful tracking tool to the Mistborn. The village and Elims certainly paid for letting Maill stick around too long. Joe’s role and the Carpet were meant to be fairly minor, confusing people but not having the huge impact which other secrets created. They both worked for this purpose, though the Carpet did end up winning the village the game. And without the spike the third cycle would have been a lot more interesting, with the Elims needing to sacrifice Fura’s redirects to keep them both safe; it could have resulted in a Mistborn win, in fact. So the secrets really were helpful to all three teams. Joe, meanwhile, was basically there to be a huge troll because he knew too much. He succeeded. And helped me with writeups. Balance was fairly good, and all three factions had a clear shot at winning, I think. Were I to run this again, I’d add more Smoking and Seeking, and perhaps fewer Tineyes and Thugs. Lum’s role was a bit of a problem, though that was really because both factions obstinately refused to deal with her when they could and should have. Meanwhile, I’m disappointed that the two Thug 1s I included as a way of having Lurchers for the village without really giving them one never worked; both died pretty early. If we’d gotten just one more player there would have been three The only imbalance I’d correct this game is giving Zane Rioter 1 instead of Soother 1, as the former would allow them the voting power they actually should have had (and which I thought they did), and not allowing Tineye 2s to scan non-Allomantic roles. I originally thought they couldn’t before looking at the actual text of my ruleset, and even if I went by the letter of my law this game I likely would change it if I did this again. (Which I might. It was a lot of fun watching every faction suffer with incomplete information ) Other than the things I mentioned above, I think the game went very well, perhaps the most smoothly of any I’ve yet GMed, and I’d like to thank everyone who played for making it that way.

I’m lumping that under option (2). It’s a Thug-esque role, and would still make Drake evil.

Did you mention me? Hi! In short, I see three possibilities for Drake’s survival: 1) Village Lurcher. This is easy; if the Lurcher steps forward, Drake is clear presuming we trust the person making the claim. 2) Thug. Drake has denied this, so I’m counting it out; if he did lie to us we should probably be suspicious of that anyways. 3) Eliminator Lurcher. This means Drake was WGGed. At this point, with both Aman and Drake surviving their kills, I’m starting to look at one of these existing with increasing certainty, regardless if it was one or both of the attacks that were WGGs. Yeah, sorry; was asleep when the cycle closed, then didn’t have enough time between church and helping my family with yard work to actually make a post. I’ve been in PMs, though, and hope to have at least a few suspicions with my reasoning, if not a vote, by the time I next check in.

1. I had a reason for bringing up a WGG immediately because Fura had brought it up and dismissed it in such a fashion that I felt compelled to reply and correct her assumption. If that set the probability of a WGG higher than it actually was (and I don’t think it did), so be it. I still think it’s an option which hasn’t gotten nearly the attention and traction it deserves. And I didn’t give specific evidence, because as I stated in that post, I’d just gotten back onto the Shard and wanted to post a quick reply before checking up on PMs and the like. As for why Aman would do it, that’s just general awareness of his playstyle, which he reaffirmed. 2. Would I want focus to remain on me, regardless of alignment? It was more an address of the (legitimate) concerns people may have had following the lynch result, and then a statement on where my analysis was leading me. Obviously the second isn’t going to focus on me, as exclusively defensive posts typically don’t help the village as much as a brief (or thorough) address of suspicions and then showing where your own logic is taking you. The first isn’t much help without the second, and I included both. I find it interesting that you bring up, about both of my posts, that they’re village on first reflection but also make sense coming from an Eliminator. Wouldn’t that make them NAI, and not immediately suspicious? Nevertheless, I’m glad you’ve rejoined with the thread. Given that you failed to vote yesterday, where are your suspicions lying? @xinoehp512, same goes for you; you’ve been dodging the need to give your opinion for several turns now. If I’m NKed, I have a lot of suspicions and don’t know which should be acted upon. I’d encourage greater perusal of Drake, Aman and Lum than is perhaps occurring now, and would not immediately lynch Devotary tomorrow simply for her status as the opposing wagon to Fura.

As usual, Leon seemed to have most of the military sense which seemed to be sorely lacking in this country. “Indeed, a melee combat would likely be most effective in dealing with these undead,” Friedrich chipped in. “I will volunteer to do my next proposal, if others will do the actual killing of the zombies; though the smell of burning flesh is truly wretched, lighting a torch and setting fire to the corpses may be the most efficient way of permanently dealing with the undead. It does come at the cost of revealing our relative location, but I can take the corpses further away to burn, and then run back to catch up with you if we have a rendezvous. I’ve been running for fifteen years, and putting a few miles on an undead horde shouldn’t present much difficulty. It would decoy them, and involve little danger to my person.”

Well, so much for a German immigrant. Maybe all the dead in the Catacombs of Paris rose first, beginning the zombie hordes.

(@Alvron is this set in America for RP purposes? I’ll assume it is unless you contradict me) Friedrich winced internally, and hoped it hadn’t carried over to his physical features. He’d forgotten the forwardness of the citizenry here, and the often overly familiar natures they employed. Still, he couldn’t fault their bravery, as evidenced by “Tanky Boi”’s offer of aid. He smiled tersely at the exuberant fellow. “Thank you for your offer of assistance, sir. I’m sure you’ll be a valuable asset in combating these undead hordes. However, do you have a plan for dealing with these two? They’re getting awfully close...”

Friedrich could not believe what his senses were telling him. Not only had the government failed to handle the uprising, but it would be his duty to assume partial responsibility for the removal of these undead? The Zombies looked to be mindless and beaten back easily, but if these two would cause droves more to descend upon them, their deaths may not be the best outcome; who knew what sort of network connected these gruesome beasts. He sighed again. With little practical knowledge of combating undead hordes, he was left with what the vague outline of popular culture in these states presented. The description was not encouraging. Fire and decapication were likely beyond their abilities at the moment. He turned to Leon, who was clearly a better military strategist than the rest of the government put together. “Do you reckon these things could stand up to or cross running water?” he asked as the two drew closer.

I just reread/re-skimmed the thread, and it’s incredibly painful seeing my tunnel on Fura. I still don’t think I was entirely unjustified—the reasons I had for suspecting her were legitimate, while the arguments against Devotary were more grounded in her playstyle, so I won’t apologise for my lynch vote. I will apologise for shutting Fura out once I started tunnelling. That was a mistake, as we could have probably had a profitable discussion in PMs had I not begun viewing her as a certain Elim. @Furamirionind, you again have my apologies. Upon rereading the thread with fresher eyes than I’ve had in days, I’m coming to a few tentative hypotheses: 1) Aman and Drake look the most suspicious out of yesterday’s lynch, followed closely by Lumgol. (At least if I’m not getting counted.) My idea here is simply that it seems as though both of them “knew too much,” in a way—despite several attempts by Devotary to respond to Drake’s analysis, for instance, Drake seemingly largely ignored her and persisted with his vote. While he was correct on Fura and I wasn’t, his vote on Devotary still looks off, as it was grounded in her playstyle which was NAI; further, his portrayal of the lynch as “probably not V-V” stood out to me as a way of possibly driving a train of mislynches, particularly given my tentative trust of Devotary. Aman, meanwhile, simply has a very odd-looking vote; it’s on Devotary, but all of his analysis incriminates Fura and not her. Upon asking Aman to switch in PMs, he replied that he would if he couldn’t find anything incriminating on Devotary; despite never presenting evidence of Devotary’s guilt in-thread, his vote did not move. Meanwhile, Lum placed a quick vote on Fura which didn’t have too much in the way of analysis, and then mostly backed out of lynch discussion for the cycle despite being around for most of it. 2) Fura guessed Aman/Stick/Lum as an Elim team, which is actually pretty close to my current thoughts; Aman/Drake/Lum may be closer to what I’m considering, or Devotary and one or two of the people on Fura’s wagon if that wasn’t a V-V lynch. Either way, while confirmed good is not confirmed right has been an eternal chorus sung for years, I think some of Fura’s ideas are worth considering, given the unique position she was in knowing she was a villager as the votes against her began rolling in; her commentary on Lum, for instance, is something I might agree with. 3) A lot of my suspicion of Fura, looking back at what I was actually seeing in my analysis, was a reflection of my distrust of Aman. Presupposing an Aman/Fura team likely didn’t help my analysis last cycle, but I’m wondering if my underlying suspicion was correct even if Fura wasn’t actually evil.

Soothing, I’d assume.

Gah. Now to re-evaluate...basically everything. I just had my entire view of this game turned completely on its head. Fura, I will apologise for your death. If it helps, I was completely honest in my suspicion of you. The only positive in this situation is that we did just get a very valuable flip for analysing people. I do understand that the majority of suspicion for this mislynch will (rightly) fall on my head, but I will be looking into this more closely, particularly at voters on both sides who were unwilling to condemn Fura or Devotary in definitive terms. If Devotary is an Elim, I suspect any Elim voters on Fura to have not voiced full-throated suspicion of her, especially with this outcome in mind.

Elandera is spectating. What is your personal reasoning for trusting Fura? The post you quoted from Drake contains mostly personal evidence about reads he acquired from PMs which he compared to a previous game. That’s unlikely to apply to your decision to trust her.

I choose to willingly give my flesh to the hordes of attacking zombies sign up for this crazy mess of a game. Should be nice to actually join a QF for once My character will be Friedrich, a horrified immigrant with a healthy contempt for whatever governmental system could possibly allow an undead uprising to fester uncontested by the military.

I’m willing to believe Fura is telling the truth about their role as well, but their role has no bearing on their alignment; indeed, as was pointed out earlier by both Drake and Aman, it almost makes more sense for the Elims to have a Hazekiller than the village. I’m a little curious why they’re seemingly abandoning their earlier stances on this matter. Also, which points against Devotary do you agree with?

I assume you mean Fura and Fifth. Yes. Hardly. Ventyl has expressed a desire that Fura not be lynched, as have you, and until recently opinion was more evenly divided. I think what we might be seeing is Eliminator teammates (thinking Aman and perhaps Straw) pushing heavily on the distancing angle to avoid tying themselves too closely to a perhaps doomed teammate, or staying off any lynch entirely—even if this lynch was swung to Devotary, assuming elim!Fura and notelim!Devotary, Fura and her defenders would only look worse next cycle. In particular, Aman has shifted his focus considerably this cycle, and Straw has been focusing totally and completely on Fura after the lynch tipped in her favour. If Fura is village, I’ve been so wrong that...I don’t even know. Perhaps I deserve to be lynched at that point, but my immediate thought would be a Drake/Devotary/third player team. I’ll acknowledge I’m likely very deep into a tunnel on Fura, but as I believe I’m in the right tunnel, I’m willing to risk it.

Thanks, Araris. Another thing I did notice is that Fura has jumped from Aman at the beginning of the cycle “Sure, he isnt hard cleared but I think he is as cleared as anyone can be after C1” to now claiming that “I think Lum-Stick-Aman elim team.” It’s either last-second distancing, or last-second grasping at straws by either village! or elim!Fura. Because of my prior views I’m suspecting the former.

Sure? Also, my request that anyone who doesn’t have a better target to PM to please PM me still stands. @Snipexe @Araris Valerian @Young Bard I’d be interested to hear your thoughts on Fura and Aman, if you would.

It was an “honest trade,” but not really, because you apparently already knew who I was in touch with. Yes, it was unequal. I’ve already stated that I’m comfortable with unequal trades if they’re skewed against me as long as I’m getting some information. I thought your role would be as valuable as my role and my contacts, and was therefore willing to exchange both. And given that you essentially eventually did, I can only answer that question with a yes. Before, but the plan was contingent on only one other person knowing about it to be effective. Once I wasted that on your false claim, it can no longer be executed.