Emerald Falcon

@Amethyst Scorpion, how's that Octopus analysis going?

To reiterate my reads list from last cycle, with slight updates: Village: Weasel, Abatross, Crocodile, Iguana NAI: Toucan, Axolotl Elim by default of inactivity: Heron, Flamingo, Kangaroo Elim: Scorpion, Meerkat Rationale for changes: Weasel claimed they protected Albatross. Nobody has counterclaimed yet. Meerkat stated they trusted Octopus, and thus gets a placeholder vote until I can look more closely. For Scorpion, I've actually had a gut suspicion of them for a while (Toucan can confirm) and with only one or at most two Sympathizers left everyone I'm not sure of should be looked at more closely. What do you all think of Scorpion and Meerkat?Am I just tunneling or is there something there?

Does anybody here have a counterclaim to this?

Interesting. Our Dustbringer kills have had a much higher accuracy rate than our lynches. @Magenta Albatross, I'd like to know why, again, that you are suspicious of Iguana, and also why you are suspicious of me. I still think Crocodile is village, no matter how Octopus leaned into that narrative. Claiming a kill on an eliminator and having no counterclaims is a very solid chunk of evidence towards villageryness. I think that would've persuaded Octopus to not cast suspicion on a village Crocodile.

"My Guardian, of course. She's not the one. Maybe for another Ghost," Sein said. "You've mentioned your Radiants a lot. What are they like? Do spren look for Radiants to revive?" @Magenta Albatross @Amethyst Scorpion

Sein watched from behind as the mob carried out their grisly work, screaming in fury. Blood flew everywhere. A droplet of it hit his shell, and he winced. Finally, the mob left. "Be right back," he told Jesh and Jonan. He whizzed past them and back towards the poor woman's body. Sein furtively checked his radar. The area was clear. Then, he started scanning the woman's remains. As always, Sein wasn't sure what he was looking for. Streams of information detailing age, gender, cause of death, carbon-14 date and more popped up in his system. None of it mattered. None of it was what made a Guardian, what led a Ghost to resurrect someone. The other Ghosts had said that the choice had just felt right, that the person had felt special, but how was Sein supposed to know? The woman's body held the same unknown paracausal force that the spren and the sphere had held, but it was quickly slipping away. Sein's back half whirled as he thought. That was special, sure, but not special. The Warlock type of special, doing research in cramped, stuffy labs about intangible abstracts. Not Sein's type of special for sure. Sein's Guardian would deal with reality, ready to take on whatever challenges the universe could throw at them. They definitely wouldn't be a bookish Warlock, or a puny Hunter. Sein imagined a Titan, standing tall and strong in their large pauldrons, hefting a shotgun over their shoulder. Someone who would joyfully shoulder-charge into the enemy's den and leave as the only thing still alive. With a start, Sein realized that he had expanded his shell in preparation to raise someone. He hastily tucked it back in. He would raise someone when he found his Titan, and not a moment before. @Amethyst Scorpion @Magenta Albatross

@Saffron Iguana Uh...Gecko's dead. Not sure if they still count as someone who considers Lion a viable lynch candidate, at least not in the present tense, ya know?

We have six hours until rollover and no serious contenders for the lynch. That's worrying. I know that we're starting to enter the mid-game slump, but that's no excuse. We had less information on D2 but were still willing to lynch someone. In fact, we don't even have as much RP as we did on D2. It's even further away from Christmas than it was then, so we have no excuse. I've heard a lot of thoughts on Albatross, Weasel, and Crocodile. Nothing on the person I am proposing we lynch, Taupe Gecko. With only one to three elims left, I don't think it's safe to say this lack of a defense is a point in their favor. What do you all think of them? Between Lion and Gecko, who would you rather lynch? If neither, who else?

A scanner who claims that someone is a Sympathizer is almost guaranteed to be telling the truth, unless we are at LyLo, because we can easily check through kills or lynching. They themselves are not guaranteed to be village, but with the number of Sympathizers left, I don't think they would want to intentionally cut down on their numbers even more. Conversely, a scanner who claims that someone is village should not be relied on so much, because we don't want to kill the person they claim is village.

In light of what you all have said, I am bumping Weasel down to NAI on my list. Additionally, I have reconsidered Axolotl, and if they are who I think they are, then their lack of posts is more NAI than suspicious.

The part about Albatross and Iguana both being elims is a typo. Or is it? When players haven't posted much, I give them a lot of leeway if they have stated IRL reasons for their lack of activity. If not, I see if their posts have anything that engages with the alignment of other players, such as trusts, suspicions, defenses, and votes. I've noticed that sometimes eliminators will post material related to other things, such as role distribution or banter, but state very little on whether they believe other players are village or eliminator. Thus, players like Swan who have a medium level of posts but comparatively low amount of information read as more suspicious to me. I don't intend to disparage Kangaroo for their RP. However, the problem is that they haven't engaged with the game in any other way that I know of, even voting on Rhino, who was an obvious place to put a vote if they had no other idea of what to do. If they are attempting to give that information through their RP or some other gimmick, then it's not working. I'm not opposed to players filtering all their posts through something like RP, code, or High Imperial, but I believe that if it's not obvious that they are filtering their thoughts this way, then there should at least be a warning or other statement of intent. If @Sage Kangaroo said that this lack of content is because they are too busy IRL to do much else, or a byproduct of trying to make all their thoughts fit through narration of someone slowly going mad, then I would be much more forgiving. However, since they haven't stated anything of the sort, I assume that the lack of content is an end in itself, which is inherently suspicious.

Sein turned around to face them. "Thanks," he said quietly. "I...I don't have to go back immediately. I haven't found my Guardian in centuries, so a few decades give and take won't hurt. I'll help you find your axehounds first." He updated his projection of his map, but turned off the radar display. They wouldn't need that anymore here. "Where do we need to go?" Come on everyone, only one page so far? We can do better than that. In the interest of promoting discussion, I am posting my impressions on every player left in the game. I hope that you will do the same. Villagers @Amber Vulture: Jashi, Stormwarden Hasn't posted today. Shame! On D2, they defended Iguana and voted on Rhino as an alternative to lynching Albatross, but at the last minute switched to Lion to solidify their lynch. They also did some analysis on Rhino's posts. Slight village read. @Amethyst Scorpion: Jesh, Lost Axehound Most of their posts are RP. I will note, I really don't want to kill my RP partners, so that may color my reads of them. D2, they voted on Iguana. D3, they defend Lion. Their content appears to be on a relatively good level considering their sickness. Slight village read. @Indigo Weasel : Adhom Inem, Ardent Shaaaame! On N2, they conclude that Chameleon, Penguin, and Iguana are all probably village for lynching Zebra, but then hedge on that statement. From then, they continue to post, but not very many things relevant to the game, until D3, when they state that they scanned Albatross. It removed doubt that Albatross was lying and sped up Rhino's lynch. Maybe an elim, knowing that Rhino had an extra life, could've decided it was worth to speed up the Rhino lynch to get some trust, but I don't think it's likely. Strong village read. @Magenta Albatross : Jonan Wikim, Lost Axehound (Gren) Again, an RP partner, but my read on them is much stronger. Their actions paint a picture of villageryness. The msot important part is this (I've already typed the other stuff before and don't feel like tying it again): with their early losses, I don't think a rational elim team would've chosen to bus another member. Strong villager read. @Mauve Crocodile : Sernes, Paranoid Scout Their defense has convinced me that they actually are village. Now that we know they were a Dustbringer last cycle, their suggestion to lynch someone else and wait for a vigilante to kill Rhino looks much better. Village read.@Opal Lion : Tnaidar, Scout Shaaaaaaaaame! To be honest, on D2, I didn't think they were very suspicious, I just thought that both Albatross and Iguana were elim so I went for the first alternative lynch target that I think of. Now, because of how Rhino tried to push their lynch right before they were revealed, I think Lion is village. They still should post more. @Saffron Iguana : Merinira, Scout They flipped a lynch onto an Elim D1 and have been active since. Strong village read. @Salmon Meerkat : Cadamum, Ghostblood Recruit More shame! On N2, they say that they are suspicious of Vulture and trust Octopus, Falcon, and me. They also say that they wanted to look more at Rhino later, who we now know is an elim. Slight villager read for that. NAI @Scarlet Octopus : Max Mercury, Past Lives Less shame, because they may have been waylaid by IRL issues. On D2, they post a massive analysis post. They want to lynch Iguana for information and state suspicion of me, which is quickly retracted. Interestingly, at the end of D2 they state that between Lion and Rhino, they would rather lynch Lion. NAI. @Sunburst Toucan : Tafud, Slightly Crazy They were busy with IRL stuff and came back at a time that wasn't conducive to analysis. NAI for now, waiting for more posts from them. Elim @Coral Swan: Germaine, ScholarHasn't posted today. Again, shame! Out of 4 Cycles, they only of 4 posts. In my PM with them, I found out that their posts are structured off of an old work of writing, which is giving them some trouble. It's a cool cosmetic role but pads out their posts so it looks like they're saying more than they actually are. On D3, they voted on Albatross for manipulating their vote and for no other given reason. Their lack of content makes them NAI, which at this point of the game I will be labeling as slightly elim by default. Overall slight elim read unless they post more. @Mint Heron : Sam, Once a Darkeyes Shaaaaaaaame! On D2, they said that their relatives were gone, so they should have more time to post, but they haven't done much since. On D3, they defended Lion on the basis that Rhino had just tried to re-lynch them. Slight elim by default. @Onyx Flamingo : Kir, Kleptomaniac Scout More Shaaaaaaame! On N3, they defend Lion. They questioned Crocodile about their Dustbringer claim. That's it. Slight elim by default. @Sage Kangaroo : Gilglin, Ardent (Devotary of the Mind) All the shame! In three posts, they have said nothing that is related to the game at all. The only thing that might be related is on D2, when they post something that could be interpreted as a claim that they were a Dustbringer, or had that power. I'm not even labeling them slight elim -- Kangaroo gets to go straight to elim for the sheer uselessness of their posts. @Taupe Gecko : Brana, Scholar Their RP is great, their lack of posts less so. They actually have several posts, but hedge on their reads or state them as dependent on the alignment of other, still alive players. On D3, they state that they want to lynch Lion next, despite the fact that Rhino was pushing for that lynch before reveal. Elim read. Taupe Gecko. @Violet Axolotl : Adi, Anxious Shaaame! On D2, they vote on Albatross, with pretty good reasoning. They do a lot of summaries, which might be useful to an individual but aren't as much for others if the summary doesn't come with reads. Slight elim by default.

Crocodile has a point here. Unless someone else claims that they submitted a Dustbringer kill on Rhino, then we can assume that Crocodile actually did kill Rhino. For now, we should move on to discussing something else.

Mine didn't! @Elbereth, @Fifth Scholar, can we take the writeup as confirmation that Purrl killed Rhino?

Maybe my sarcasm detector needs recalibration, but your earlier statement doesn't sound like snark. It sounds like you're backing off from your previous statement. It's not helping your case here. As for why I want Rhino dead so badly: I have seen what an outed elim can do if left alive. They troll, obfuscate, and bog up the thread. They can still send in orders. They can discuss plans with the rest of their team. And if their tongue is silver, their words honeyed, and their presence slippery, they can continually give the village reasons to avoid killing them this cycle until they reach the end of the game and win. Call me paranoid, but I have seen it happen multiple times before. I don't want to see it happen again.

@Mauve Crocodile, now that we know Rhino has an extra life, what do you have to say about your suggestion to only Dustbringer them, which would've let him survive? It looks really bad now.

Thank you, Heron. Now, for a look into Mauve Crocodile. In Crocodile's first post, they poke vote Flamingo. This vote is so unmemorable that in a vote tally, they have to ask for it to be added. In C2, they defend Iguana and Toucan, and vote on Albatross. In C3, they ask if we can use a Dustbringer kill on Rhino and use the lynch on someone else instead. In a standard game with a consistent vigilante kill (AKA one with less worldhoppers that make things unpredictable), this wouldn't be such a bad idea. Still, in this case, that plan might've kept Rhino alive a little longer. Possible Sympathizer motive Nothing strikes me as particularly suspicious here, but I dislike the lack of content as a whole. Unless that changes, I wouldn't mind Crocodile being picked off by a Dustbringer kill. Even if they were village, I don't think we'd feel the lack. @Mauve Crocodile, you mentioned that you were going to RP, what happened to that? What do you think of Sage Kangaroo? While we're here -- @Sage Kangaroo, what do you think of Opal Lion? "Of course even your dogs are weird," Sein said. He shook in the air agitatedly. "I'm definitely not in the past. Too many things don't line up. You don't recognize the Traveler, so you'd have to be pre-Golden Age or in the middle of the Dark Age. There's no wireless transmissions of any point, which rules out the Golden Age, because they definitely had the internet during then. And none of this stuff fits the Dark Age either. Humanity lost a lot of knowledge during that, but not enough to forget the solar system, develop hundreds of new languages, and rename everything. Plus," and here he looked at Jonan and Jesh, "you don't look like the humans I know. None of them have such brightly colored eyes while still having pink to brown skin color." Sein flew off to the next room before they could answer. For the first time, he realized the gravity of his situation. He couldn't just pretend he was in the Dark Age of humanity anymore. He was lost, alone, and in some bizarro world where the Traveler didn't exist and the dogs were crustaceans. He checked his Light reserves, the thing that powered him, gave him sapience, made him live. Since entering this place, his Light had drained 0.3%. A small amount, but eventually, he would run out. Without the Traveler, he had no way to replenish it. Eventually, he would run out. Shut down. Become a lifeless lump of metal and glass impossibly far from home. He stopped in front of a large window, blue eye dim. It opened to a large mountain range going as far as he could see, with the western horizon darkened with angry clouds. Large snake things with fins circled in the sky, despite the fact that they should be too heavy to fly. Another reminder that this wasn't Sein's world. Still, there was a strange grace to these snake things. They danced through the sky, swooping and soaring joyfully through the clouds. Sein watched as one dove for the ground, far, far away. Its tucked its fins in and streaked downwards. A trail of colorful lights followed its path. Bioluminescence? No, these lights emanated paracausal power, the same type that Sein had felt when he scanned the spren earlier. A human man flew in the sky towards the snakes, carrying a ridiculously oversized sword. A moment later, the sword morphed into a spear. He jabbed and changed direction, suddenly flying sideways. No, flying was the wrong word -- he was accelerating sideways at a constant just slightly off of 9.8 meters per second squared. A smokey light leaked out of his eyes and ears, similar to the spheres Sein had seen earlier. Joy filled his face, a joy that Sein recognized. Though the exact movements were different, he looked like so many Guardians that Sein had seen before, bounding through the air, pushing movement beyond where the body could normally go. Sein blinked, slowly. This world was strange and different. Still, he had seen literal aliens before. He had skimmed the waves of a liquid methane ocean on Titan. He had visited a kennel of rehabilitated warbeast, which were another alien version of dogs tamed to be friendly to Humanity. If he could accept all of that, then he could accept Roshar. Axehounds and all. If he was doomed to die here without the Light, he might as well find out as much about it as he could. @Amethyst Scorpion @Magenta Albatross

Sein bobbed in the air as he turned the information over in his mind. The Cognitive Realm, where these spren lived, was easy enough to understand. These things had their own pocket dimension and could manifest outside of it in lesser ways, but didn't have full control over it. The beads and reverse seas sounded weird, but not beyond normal pocket dimension weirdness. Sein scrutinized the tiny dark cloud that had appeared around the man, the one which was apparently a spren. He flew around it curiously, surveying it from all angles with a blue line emanating from his eye. Even though it didn't have eyes or any other obvious sensory organs, he got the feeling that it was watching him too. The spren was made entirely of paracausal power. Not dazzling in the entire electromagnetic spectrum like the Light, not casting static on its own existence like the Darkness, not even slippery power waiting to be molded like an Ahamkara's. All Sein could sense of the paracausal power was that it existed. The rest of it actively resisted analysis, like an ivy-covered stone wall that refused to budge no matter how he bashed against it. It gave off no signs of life. No gas exchange, no metabolism, no release of heat from breaking down glucose for energy. It didn't even have a shadow on the ground. The spren vanished. Back into its Cognitive Realm, probably. "Now I know how the Vex feel about us," Sein muttered. He rebooted all his sensors, as if that would make the data he had collected make more sense. "Enough with this metaphysical stuff," Sein said. "What do your axehounds look like?" He hoped that doing something as mundane as finding their two dogs would force this world to make more sense. @Mauve Crocodile, no it won't. None of the Dustbringer or Skybreaker votes are binding. People could just as easily decide to take the person with the second-highest votes, or someone not mentioned at all. It's just a fancier way of stating trusts and suspicions.

Unless at least two players publically volunteer to do the deed, I don't think we can rely on that. However, we may want to discuss people who we think the next worldhopper with a kill should attack. (I assume that someone has it this cycle.) We could have a separate system of votes in orange. Obviously, it won't be binding, but it would be a useful way to aggregate public opinion in case the worldhopper with the kill isn't sure what to do. This isn't intended to order them around, but to instead continue the discussion while still lynching Rhino. Right now, I think Heron is worth a poke, if only because of their lack of activity. @Mint Heron, what you do think of Opal Lion? Village or eliminator?

Why are you suspicious of Octopus?

My dear Weasel, whyever would you say that? Do you truly believe me so incapable of going a single turn without a Destiny reference? Truly?

To all of you villagers out there, thank you for your trust. It means a lot to me. Sympathizers, I know that I'm one of those players that you must hate. Active, analyzing and trusted! You must be so done with me now. Just like you were with poor Penguin. Sadly for you, I have an announcement to make: I'm a worldhopper! And guess just what power I drew tonight? Elsecalling! See you on the other side, Sympathizers!

Sein's blue eye shut in exasperation. "Assume I don't know anything about your world. Treat me like a little kid. I don't know anything about the three realms." He flew to the spot that the man had disappeared from. "If you can explain his disappearance too, that would be great." @Amethyst Scorpion @Magenta Albatross

Annoyed sigh. Would you mind explaining your reasoning for voting on me again? I didn't understand it much the first time around, and now that you say you didn't understand it much either, I'd rather not die to that. After all, dead players can't RP. If you must know, when I wrote that roles post D1 I had no idea that so many players were worldhoppers. There are many, many ways for distributions to be trollish, and when I wrote it I was thinking of AG2, where the elims had vote manipulation and the villagers had smokers, but the villagers thought that smoking was only useful to the elims. They made the brilliant choice of trying to lynch every single smoker until they hit an elim. I also don't see how expressing trust of Penguin shortly before their death must have been an elim ploy. Would you have preferred that I do no analysis at all? Is every player who accurately predicts that someone is a villager considered suspicious? Quite honestly, between this an the Iguana thing, I'm starting to wonder if the meta has shifted to punish players who get things right. I know I'm village, but I don't like the options of who I'd have to vote on to keep myself alive if you do decide to come after me. At least I suppose I'd get an "I told you" from the dead doc if you lynched me.

"You mean Ascendant Realms?" Sein asked. He shivered, a mid-air wobble. "Pocket universes that the Hive use to stay alive? Are these spheres filled with the power of the Darkness?" @Emerald Falcon @Amethyst Scorpion