Fuchsia Ostrich

That's not a Croc, that's a snake! [I saw Croc hanging around and typed this up just in case they hammered so that I could post it in time.] And this is it. Judgment hour has come.

@Quartz Zebra

[voice=Eraqus]Let the darkness die![/voice] Sage Edit: Wyrmimir did a great thing in helping us turn the tide of the game, and since I think I'm the last living player with an RP character I'll write an RP dedicated to him. Ostrich stood at the edge of the ashen heap that had once been Kharsis' house, axe slung over his shoulder and shovel at his side. Rain had begun to fall, beating down the fallen ash into a thick, black paste. Occasionally a hiss rose up when rain touched a part of the house that had not yet cooled, and even more rarely the blackened timbers groaned and readjusted. The rains had not come early enough to save the house, and even if they had Ostrich wasn't sure if they would have done any good. The flames had dashed from floor to floor, room to room, timber to timber as if possessed by some demonic patron that drove them to an infernal madness to burn and to kill. Ostrich had heard an account of everything from Kharsis' family. It had hurt him to talk to them so soon after the murder, but it was necessary in order for him to do what he intended in time. Decay waited for no man. According to the survivors, Kharsis had almost made it out of the dining room when he had disappeared in a roof collapse. Ostrich paced off a distance from the corner of the house and leaned his shovel up against the house at that distance. The thing about fire is that it's never like what the bards say. A burnt house is not reduced to ash. Fire wraps its blistering tendrils around the wood, burning it from the outside first until it collapses, either under its own weight or under the weight of something else. What remains is a charred log that retains some of its original shape, sometimes even retaining its original color in the middle. Kharsis' house, although it had fallen, remained as an unsteady jumble of scorched, unsteady logs cantilevered over one another and mixed with other debris. Ostrich, standing at the distance he had marked with the shovel, unslung his axe from his shoulder and began to swing. He might have had a quicker way of clearing a path through, but he could not use Stormlight. He could see it now: the others might have been able to shoot these blackened logs into the sky, or turn them to jelly, or do any other number of things to them. But Ostrich was not bitter about it this time: he would not have it any other way. Thunk. Thunk. Thunk. Slip and crash. Thunk. Thunk. Crash. Thunk. Thunk. Thunk. Creak, groan, and crash. Ostrich relished the labor of hacking down the burnt logs and tossing them aside. His arms burned every time he lifted the axe, and his legs twinged every time he shoved a dismembered log aside, but he smiled as he did so. The pain appealed to him, grounded him. He had sat in his room for so long, wondering what was real and what wasn't, leaving occasionally to head another killing that tormented him so. But with every swing, he felt grounded to his body, every chop made him feel mortal. That was not to say that the sounds and sights that plagued him had left him; that would never happen. From time to time he still saw the face of a dead man leering at him etched in the charred remains of something unrecognizable. He had tried to chop them away, but it had not helped. From time to time he could hear the cries of an infant carried on the wind from the house, but he knew that it was just his mind. Nothing had survived that was inside. Nothing. Ostrich finally hacked through the scorched picket that the fallen wall had made. He could see what had formerly been the dining room. A long table stood in the center of the room, blackened and bent into a V-shape. A fireplace occupied one corner of the room, ironically untouched. Much of the ceiling had come down, tracing a precarious diagonal from one side of the room to the top of the opposite wall. The floor tiles were blackened, and broken detritus from the roof collapse littered the ground. Ostrich double-checked his boots to make sure that they were well-tied, and exchanged his axe for his shovel. He entered the room slowly, crunching debris underfoot as he made a closer inspection of the ceiling. As he did so, Mouse's face leered at him from a monolithic pillar that now supported nothing. Ostrich cut it down, using the side of the shovel like a blunt axe, and it hit the ground and burst into charcoal. A puff of smoke rose and made his eyes burn. Something hit the ground in front of him, and he realized it was a tear. Why was he crying? He blamed the smoke. He pressed on, scooping debris out of the way with his shovel as he reached the spot where the fallen roof touched the ground. He slung piles of fallen ash into a corner as he searched for a body, but found none. Ostrich moved to the other side and took a smarter approach to the operation. He looked among the fallen timbers for something thick and laying near-horizontal but not flat on the ground. He eventually picked out a target, scooped away the worst of the ash, and heaved the beam to the side, but found nothing more than a broken cabinet and a half-cooked rat. He took a slight step back as the smell rose up, but he couldn't resist a slight chuckle. This poor rat would have made Kharsis very unhappy had it been alive. Ostrich chose another beam and repeated the procedure. This time, as he slung ash across the room to clear off the bottom of the beam, he saw the tips of a few fingers reaching out of the pile, towards the door to what had once been the guest room. He renewed his moving of the pile, but more gingerly. He did not want to damage the body more than it already was. Kharsis' body lay under a joist weighing at least seventy kilograms. It took Ostrich three attempts to move it, but finally he was able to get the right leverage and slide the joist to one side, freeing the body. It was not in the best of shape, and it lay facedown with the head pointing towards the guest room door, hand extended in front of him as he fell. Ostrich stepped forward to flip the body over, but stopped himself. Kharsis had died in a fire, and Ostrich did not want to see what it had done to him. Ostrich wanted to remember Kharsis' face as it had been, giving rising speeches to motivate the townsfolk and coordinate their efforts, not as it likely was now. Another tear hit the ground in front of Ostrich. That storming smoke. Ostrich left the shovel where he had tossed it aside and pulled out the tarp under his raincoat. He laid the tarp over the body and tucked the sides underneath, not caring for the muddy ash that the maneuver got on him. He had no mirror on him, but the axe-work had likely coated him in the stuff. Ostrich gingerly lifted the wrapped body, groaning as he did so, and carried it to the wheelbarrow Ostrich had brought his tools in on. He had not had the heart to ask Kharsis' family about funeral arrangements in case he was not able to get to the body. Leaving his tools behind, he reverently lifted the wheelbarrow and followed the muddy track he had cut through the yard on his way to the house. A third tear rolled down Ostrich's face, and this time, there was no smoke to blame.

I've had Zebra ruled out for tone read and helping lynch Mouse, so we're both in agreement on that. Chamelion too, for the reasons you asked me about last cycle. You and I are both pretty obviously village I think, so that leaves Croc as the last elim if lynching Sage doesn't end the game. I've got points both for and against Croc, but I don't want to lynch them if we don't have to.

If Sage is telling the truth, then I can see why Mouse and Sage have been laughing so hard at us. If he's telling the truth, then we've been overly paranoid that it's impossible for us to win at the same time the tide has been turning, and that Zebra and I just happened to decide to start killing confirmed elims just as the last non-confirmed elim was killed. I'm against letting the elims win this game; we established a few cycles ago that we were not going to lay down and die. Between good analysis to find Albatross, good sense to take the confirmed lynch when we needed to, and good luck to keep the Worldhopper(s?) from murdering us all, we've fought this game back from the breaking point. We've surprised the elims in both activity and analysis, and fought on when we feared that all was lost. I know that I at least have put in hours of SE time during these last few cycles. I cannot speak for anyone else, but I will be placing my vote on Sage tomorrow if I survive the night. It's time to break the curse of the AGs.

Ostrich sat on his bed, head in his hands. In front of the others he had tried to keep a straight face, to not let on to what the killings were doing to him. He hadn't been able to watch as they executed Mouse, but he had heard the snap of his neck as the rope tightened. Depriving himself of imagery from the death had made it easier when the flashbacks came: for every other murder he saw the accused die, but for Mouse he saw only blackness and heard the snap. Again and again his mind forced him to hear that sound, like the toll of a hempen bell for the dead, but it was not as maddening as seeing their faces laughing at him as they expired. Ostrich removed his hands from his face and looked down at the note in his hands. "We found items in Mouse's pockets that suggest he was a Worldhopper," it read. It meant that their slim hope had grown slightly brighter.

Ostrich waited, locked up in his room, listening to the non-existent thrumming of rain on the roof. In just a few minutes, he was going to do what he had to do, no matter how hard it pushed his sanity to kill. But something made him uneasy: how had that mob against Mouse been quieted? Ostrich had a bad feeling about this, but he had a bad feeling about everything nowadays.

@Mint Heron @Mauve Crocodile @Pearl Chameleon There's 4 and a half hours left in the cycle and we only have 2 votes down on Mouse, and the elims have 2 votes down on Heron. But what if I feel like being Roo-d?

@Mint Heron If we go for the undercover elims, the outed elims can attempt to deflect the vote away from them without fear. But if we go for Mouse, then the undercover elim is forced to go along with it or risk detection. Today we can either take a basically-guaranteed lynch on Mouse, or attempt to assemble a vote pile on a suspect for being undercover that is large enough to deter the elims from attempting to counter it. The logistics make killing Mouse sound pretty good to me right now, and they can kill only one of us tonight (if they even decide to go for us), so that leaves one of us alive until tomorrow. I'll be on and off throughout the time period until turnover, and so if Mouse doesn't end up being our lynch target then I'll move my vote to where it's needed.

Ostrich looked around his room as the voice spoke to him. Was it just another hallucination of a frenzied mind? But he couldn't chance it; there was too high of a chance that this one was real. He pulled out a scrap of paper from a notebook and started scribbling: I did it in this post here last cycle. 1. Chamelion claims Edgedancer. (Wait, aren't all of the Edgedancers dead? Will look into this. Maybe it was a transcription error.) 2. Chamelion pushes Dragonfly to get votes off of village!Scorp. Alternate lynch is elim!Mouse, so that's an indirect move against Mouse. Will edit in the results of the Edgedancer inspection. Edit: OK, found my problem. They claimed Elsecaller, not Edgedancer. We've already got a claim of Elsecaller from Roo, and 2 Edgedancers on the elim team doesn't seem likely, so that's why I was trusting of that claim. But as a corollary to that, I just realized that the elims have to leave Chamelion alive until the last as well, or else they start losing their advantage and we can gang up on Roo twice instead of once. So it's a very interesting battle we're locked in.

The newcomer reached out and touched Ostrich's hand, and Ostrich suddenly found himself on the gallows as they hung Albatross. He turned his head away from the horrible sight. "Why did you show me this? It was horrible enough to be a part of this killing once, without having to relive it." But when Ostrich turned, his companion was gone. "Hello? Where--?" Something caused Ostrich's legs to stagger, and as he lurched the scenery changed slightly. This time, he was not at Albatross's execution, but Elephant's. Disgust and guilt coursed through his veins yet again. It happened again, but this time he was in his room at night. The window was open, and on the night air rose a chilling scream from a different part of the town. Then he was in the town square, arguing for the killing of Scorpion, an innocent. Then he was witnessing an execution of an innocent, brought about by an angry mob. Death. Fear. Disgust. Murder. Guilt. Terror. Suspicion. In waves they came upon him. He came to his senses flat on his back on the familiar floor of his room. Standing over him was the other Ostrich. "It does strange things to a man when he has to kill another man," said the newcomer. Ostrich hauled his torso upright and reached out to touch his double, but his hand passed right through it. "I could touch you before, but now I can't." "You never touched me before, Ostrich. You can't, because I don't exist." "But I'm talking to you right now!" "A lot of people talk to things that don't exist. It's not uncommon, for someone who's gone through the kind of stress you have." "I'm not crazy!" "And as a part of you I say that you are. What kind of man spends his days shut up in his room, talking to himself, hearing sounds that aren't there, and thinking that he is in other places?" The second Ostrich disappeared, and Ostrich collapsed back onto the floor. "But don't worry," a disembodied voice said, "a lot of the best people are a bit mad."

I've been thinking: why do the elims seem so assured of victory? It might be because they have an Elsecaller. We know that Roo claimed to be an Elsecaller earlier, and if he is then it would take two lynches to kill him. If that's the case, and we decide to go for him last: D11: 3 elims 4 village. 1 elim lynched N11: 2 elims 4 village. 1 village dies D12: 2 elims 3 village. 1 elim lynched N12: 1 elim 3 village. 1 village dies D13 1 elim Elsecaller, 2 village. Elsecaller loses life N13 1 elim Elsecaller, 2 village. 1 village dies D14: 1 elim Elsecaller, 1 village. No lynch because of the 2-vote minimum. Ah, storm it. So it looks to me like if the elims have an Elsecaller, we're dead. But to make the game as close as possible, we want to lynch the Elsecaller last. For this I suggest that we lynch Mouse today, because the elims went to a great effort to save him, and that makes me think that they don't want to lose him as much as those they let us lynch. Ostrich sat on the floor of his room cross-legged, meditating. He closed his eyes and relaxed, gently nudging his mind to let go of the past and present. After what felt like an eternity, he felt his soreness and pain slip away. It was still there, somewhere, but he did not feel it. Until he ended his meditation, it would not trouble him. He remained aware of the position of his limbs and the soft support of the floor beneath him, and he heard the slight rustle as he raised his hands from the carpet and placed his middle fingers on his temples. Nothing. Where was it? Where was the inspiration he had received, the voice he had heard? A knock came at the door. Ostrich groaned slightly as the sound broke his meditative focus and the soreness in his chest and legs rushed back into his consciousness. He raised himself to his feet, as his knees shook. He looked around his room quickly, to make sure it was presentable, and then opened the door. The hallway was empty. Candle flames burned steady in their lamps, and there was no sound of footsteps. Ostrich shut the door, but as he did so he felt a hand on his shoulder. He spun around to face the intruder, but came face to face with an exact copy of himself. The same scar on the chin, the same straight hair pushed slightly to one side, the same blue-green eyes that betrayed a lack of sleep. "Who are you?" The newcomer ignored the question, "Sorry I missed you, I was dwelling on your past." "Dwelling on my past?" "Rather hard to dwell on anyone else's." The real Ostrich was taken aback. "Exactly how were you dwelling on my past?" "You really don't get it, do you?" "You haven't necessarily done a very good job of explaining." "Then I'll be clear. I'm you. Not physically, or anything like that. If anyone else were to walk in here right now they'd see you talking to nothing and would probably think you're mad. But to you I'm real." Ostrich raised an eyebrow. The newcomer chuckled. "It's a long explanation, too long for here. But I have something to show you, if you allow me."

And then there were seven. Three elims, four villagers. Two elims had been accounted for, but the third remained. The Scorpion kill just gave me a thought: if we lynch one of the known elims today, tonight they'll have to kill another one of us and therefore narrow the field. It would basically guarantee that the game goes long, but I think it might give us the greatest chance of victory. We also would give up our chance at finding the Worldhopper, if they have one, but it might be worth it if it means we can win the game. If we do go with this thought, we should probably lynch Mouse. The elims went to great lengths to keep them alive. If not, then we have to figure out who the last hidden elim is. I know it's not me and I doubt that it's Heron, and my analysis last cycle told me it probably wasn't Chamelion, so that leaves Croc and Zebra.

How did you ever guess, Heron? Who could guarantee that you knew Croc's role at that time? (And don't answer "I could" ).

Surprise! I'm on early. There are currently 8 people alive. However, we can rule out Roo and Rodent (R&R to shorten things) because we already know they're elims. I'll also not analyze myself (obvious reasons), and I think it's safe to say that lynching Heron would be a stupid idea, so that narrows the field to 4: Zebra, Croc, Scorpion, Chamelion. Last cycle, Scorpion, Chamelion, and Zebra all voted for Albatross. Croc voted on Kangaroo in order to not divide the lynch, but incidentally they ended up being the person dividing the lynch at the end of the cycle. @Mauve Crocodile, why didn't you move your vote over? I know in past cycles you weren't on near turnover, so did you just miss it because of that? Crocodile has also claimed to have a protection role. If they're telling the truth, it gives us a chance to get a lead on the elims if they can block the elim kill. Scorpion says this right after the elephant lynch: While I don't think it's likely that the elims revealed themselves too early--they must have had good reason to want to reveal--I think this post sounds village. It sounds like a villager who's been staring down the barrel of a gun too long and has finally been given a chance. Here's a post of Kangaroo's that had white text in it. Kangaroo is really going in with the IKYK at this point. But something we do have is that Toucan was attacked not long after this (the Night after the next), so that could have been to take the pressure off of Croc. However, note how the elims never seem to doubt Croc's claim as a Windrunner. Albatross, right after the lynch on Axolotl: Albatross was obviously trying to distance themself from Elephant and Kangaroo, and they attempt to throw suspicion on village!Toucan and on Croc. The real question here: was Albatross planning on being caught (and so was trying to distance themself from Croc), or planning on surviving (and so trying to get Croc mislynched)? In the aftermath of the Axolotl lynch, Chamelion claims Edgedancer. The elims apparently knew we had one, and so did Dragonfly, so I'm thinking Chamelion is village. Dragonfly: We've only got one elim not accounted for, so Scorpion/Chamelion is not an elim team. Village read on Chamelion for attempting to get votes away from Scorpion (and therefore likely onto Mouse). Toucan: Toucan is confirmed village, and by this logic they identified Mouse as an elim. That tells me that this analysis is on the right track, so it increases my trust of Scorpion. By this point I think we've got enough evidence to call Chamelion and Scorpion village. That leaves only Croc and Zebra. Dragonfly: I have no reads on Zebra, so @Mint Heron you might have to help me there. Is Zebra likely evil to you, or is it more likely Croc? And I'm off to a lecture. I might or might not be on before turnover.

Dang, Albatross had me scared a bit there at the end. But with this we can definitively clear Heron. The game basically has to be 5:3 at this point, and we know 2 elims are Roo and Rodent (R&R). Why does it have to be 5:3? Because if it was 4:4 the game would be over, and if it was 6:2 the elims wouldn't be so cocky. With R&R accounted for, we just need one more. Probably the elims' worldhopper, if they have one. Had you claimed Len I would have been very suspicious of you. I'm Len. And since you helped us lynch Albatross, I've now got a bit of a village read on you. I'm feeling 75% today (up from 50%), and I just gave my life in the MR, so this is now my only game. I also had to call in sick to work this evening with a hacking cough (I work foodservice), so I'll have time to do analysis if I survive this turnover.

Cycle's over anyways. We'll just have to see. Ostrich, signing off. I have homework to do.

Albatross, why do you think Heron is evil instead of just misguided village?

This is interesting: either Albatross is an elim who really doesn't want to die, or they're village. @Mint Heron I can stick around to keep vigil.

I was unwell before and during last turnover. Around turnover, I didn't feel like posting much if anything. I saw turnover go down, I logged in with this account, and put my vote on the easy lynch. I felt a bit paranoid once I got a little better because I didn't think of myself as the most qualified to lead a lynch (I don't even have any active PMs), but my vote was down and I didn't want to get lumped in with the elims by switching it away from the bandwagon. Then you posted, offering an alternative lynch on Albatross, and I figured you were more qualified than me to choose a lynch target. However, when I read your conjecture that the elims want us to vote on the easy targets first, I remembered someone saying that the elims likely have a Worldhopper. I figured, "hey, we need to take that dude out before he (or she I guess) draws a vig-kill and evens the game". Your reasoning for going for a different elim was based on ending the game early, but mine was different so I posted it. But for that I needed a person to vote on, and your logic on Albatross seemed sound, so down my vote went. Later, I finally started feeling up to looking back into the thread, so I went back and checked the votes the day Mouse was saved. Sure enough, Albatross was there as I had remembered with the funky vote retraction. Also assisting in that were Scorpion and Croc, both of them putting their votes down at the beginning, and suspiciously enough that I had called them on it. They became my suspicions for the third and fourth elims, which I posted into the thread. Unfortunately, I'm still not at 100%, or even at 75%. I'm running a solid 50-or-so right now. @Amethyst Scorpion I'm getting the vibe from you that you might be Elenion. Are you willing to comment on that?

Just because we haven't posted doesn't mean we are disengaging from the game. While I'm on, I'll throw this out there: If there were more than 4 elims right now, the game would be over. Confirmed elims: Mouse, Roo Suspected: Albatross Mystery: 1 other. I've narrowed it down to Scorpion or Croc.

I think that the elims might want us voting on Kangaroo. They're being so obvious, enough so that they might be an extra life role trying to soak the lynch for an elim win. Also, I think I remember someone saying that Kangaroo even claimed Elsecaller? We need to hit the elims in their more important roles, to deprive them of any vote manip they might have and especially take out their Worldhopper if they have one. Kangaroo is just to obvious of an elim to be one of their power roles. Heron has good reasoning for the Albatross lynch; they're helping the elims while trying to appear village. Kangaroo Albatross.

"If we can make it to the ground, we'll take the next chance. And the next. On and on until we win... or the chances are spent." -Jyn Erso Sage Kangaroo

I'm busy, but not too busy to chip in a vote. Sapphire Elephant Edit: oh cool, if we lose it looks like I get to raise my lynched village percentage even higher than it is currently. Nice.

Mouse Scorpion Edit: Darn, countdown over. I made a dash for my computer but I forgot the dadgum password!