Azure Mouse

Tenth of the Dusk was having a seriously bad, no good day. [OOC: Weasel didn't get RBed. We were trying to scan Weasel to see who they targeted, so that RBer didn't target Weasel. But I'm a fool because I wasn't thinking and I was supposed to clear/scan Vulture, who RBed Octopus. But I screwed up really badly after discussing Elim suspects in the Roshar doc and just automatically entered Weasel. This is why I should never be entrusted with a kill role because I wouldn't even know how to begin to explain this if I had been a Village vig set to Vulture. tldr; 1. I'm a fool. 2. I hate myself. 3. Octopus was roleblocked. Also the Braize stuff. 4. I'm sorry. 5. I scanned Weasel instead and Weasel didn't take any action at all. 6. I will reflect on my wrongdoings.]

[OOC: Brief reminder to all Villagers: The game is not currently over! I've provided the suspect pool in my earlier post: <Octopus, Weasel, Vulture/Chameleon, Albatross, Swan>. Colour-coded to reflect the aggregate of reads on them: your ordering or reads may differ. Octopus remains prime suspect due to the N2 Braize; otherwise. Here is the suspected profile of the Elim team: While we have some contact with the Elim team, we do not (obviously) know about their makeup and have to go by our personal suspicions. We suspect the Elim team is 6 person. It may be 7, but we suspect that it it were 7 person, then the Elims would have been under less pressure to yeet Shards. In addition, as mentioned, the fact that the first four Elims we found were all connected suggests that the last, surviving Elims have been keeping a low profile, and/or have been disconnected from the others in activity. Octopus, with the painrial scan, is our current suspect for Elim #6, whereas Weasel is our suspect for Elim #4. Our conclusion is that due to Preservation roleblocking Alb, it is unlikely that Alb were an Elim, due to what this would mean for the number of kills live N4. Or rather: for him to be an Elim, both Preservation and Scorp would have to be compromised such that Alb was actually able to make the kill. (Preservation's investment doesn't work on Shards but we have no reason to believe Alb is a Shard, and if Preservation's investment had failed, then Scorp would have actually gotten a successful scan.) We feel that an Elim Preservation would not have called down a second UP day, and that a four-shard Elim team is not impossible but unlikely. Furthermore, Scorp has been involved in the Rhino scanning. I've mentioned my reasoning for Chameleon as well. Anyway, the point is that - you still have your reads, your scans, your protects, your roleblocks, and your votes. Please use them wisely. This list is provided for you so that you can act as you see fit. We could still be wrong, after all. It is best you do your own investigations as well. This is still your game. The Village does have access to some vigilantes such that we can afford to be a bit wrong, but of course it is better to not need to.]

[OOC: Alright. Honest talk, guys. Roshar thinks we've found a way to end the game with a Village victory tonight. But. This would massively screw over the neutrals, who have already taken enough crem from the past Turn. And we have already gotten into one bloody fight about what is acceptable and unacceptable player behaviour. As a result, we're bringing this to the thread for a consensus, or at least a majority consensus. We don't want to end the game tonight. The Elim team has requested we give the neutrals an additional cycle to fulfil their wincon. Roshar generally agrees with this. But Roshar shouldn't be making the decisions for everyone. We want you to decide as well. Neutrals, if the Village decides against you, I will understand if you do what you must. But as Scorp said - we're supposed to be gentleman killers. Honour may have been slain, but I hope he lives on in the hearts of the animals here. It's been a long and wearying game and we want to mercy-kill this as much as anyone else. But we want to do right by the neutrals, too. And we think we can do that without losing the game. By our calculations, there are 2-3 Elims left. Most likely 2. We believe we know who they are. We will shrek one of them tomorrow, and the other will be night-killed. The game will end N7. Survival has claimed to have completed their wincon. Autonomy is well on track to finishing N7 as New!Ruin plans to destroy Roshar. (I mean, Odium is already free, right?) And Invention will complete by D7. We can all win together. All it requires of you is agreement. Agreement, and the determination to tank the price the Elims exact of us this night. And then in the next cycle, we will end them. It will be swift. And we will do right by the neutrals as well. As I have said, the community has long had a reputation for being gentleman killers. We are not competitive. We do not punish players for being chaotic, for not playing directly to their wincon. We do not punish players for chilling. We do frown down on, and call out coercion, because it erodes the goodwill that is a foundation of and key to our community here. I may not have been in SE from the beginning - that honour belongs to others, such as Wilson and Alv, but I have watched as the community has grown and changed. We almost lost our souls, once. Became extremely competitive and like any other forum mafia. And then we found our way again. Is it winning, if we step on each other to do so? I hope we can win together. And I hope we can end the game on a good and friendly note - particularly in a game marred by such bitterness, anger, and acrimony. We will have much talking, when the dead rejoin us. And some scars may run deep. But let us do this one last thing right. Let us show that we do have what it takes to end such a tainted game in positive way. @Amber Vulture @Amethyst Scorpion @Azure Mouse @Charcoal Hyena @Coral Swan @Indigo Weasel @Ivory Dragonfly @Magenta Albatross @Onyx Flamingo @Opal Lion @Pearl Chameleon @Quartz Zebra @Sapphire Elephant @Scarlet Octopus @Turquoise Gorilla @Violet Axolotl ]

[OOC: My current order of suspicions is something like this: Octopus -> Weasel/Vulture (yes, I know, it's not good they're inseparable in my head) -> Chameleon -> Albatross -> Swan. In descending order from most to least suspicious. Whether Octopus remains on top depends on their conversation with Prudence. For Weasel, still have nothing much to go on. I take Zebra's point on Vulture - in fact, in my view, all the Elims we've found generally failed to distance/were active, so this points to low-activity/croucher Elims and/or Elims who successfully distanced. In that regard, Vulture's vote isn't especially exculpatory to me especially since Gecko showed up to tie the votes anyway. In my view, Chameleon likely took the kill on N3, and has been too low-activity for me to feel confident it's a WGG. (If it's a WGG, you'd think they'd be bursting at the seams to claim!) Swan has articulated my reasoning on Albatross, and Swan still reads Village to me, although their reluctance to vote does make them a bit difficult to read.]

Tenth of the Dusk stood up. Mindful of where the others must be watching, now. It was time to leave Nalthis, and the distasteful work behind. He exchanged a long, measuring glance with the two Shards who stood watch: one of them Locke Tekiel he knew now to be the Shard Invention, and the other he did not recognise but supposed to be an aspect of Autonomy. One of many. "It is done, then," he said, with finality. There was nothing to celebrate. Nothing of the rift that had opened up within the game or the players was worth celebrating. He suspected that the scars would run deep. Tenth stood by his choice, and he suspected the rest did so as well. It had to be done, and so it was done. Now it was time to turn his mind back to the task of hunting down and stopping the last of Odium and his ilk. He made his choice. He cast his vote. He damned a man he knew was innocent. (But guilty of other charges.) Father forgive him.

[OOC: I'm with Scorp on this. My vote is a 'this is not okay, and I have some principles that override my usual wincon commitments' vote. But Scorp isn't wrong to point out that whether in this game or outside of it, a community conversation is called for. And my vote may be raising the temperature unnecessarily. I'm not going to say 'Paradox of Tolerance' because quite frankly Karl Popper was a good philosopher of science but he took off his philosopher hat in that book and wrote a polemic and I get exasperated everytime someone cites it. It's like taking medical advice from an English major. I'm just going to point out several things: A. There is a fundamental difference between communal norms and player norms. If I started vigkilling players who didn't play the way I thought they should be playing, that's one thing. I could be rightfully accused of powertripping in that scenario. This is one battle we've historically fought hard to win. Communal norms - as I have always said - need to be negotiated. They need to secure broad buy-in. And they need to be enforced. Should they be enforced in this way? That's a fair conversation to be had. But at some level, communal norms also need to be maintained. Norms that are agreed upon but not maintained are toothless and do not remain norms for very long. We do this by complying with the norms. We do this by condemning, verbally, norm-flouters. We do this by persuading, or trying to talk players into changing their ways. And yes, in the most extreme cases, we have historically vigkilled or otherwise ostracised/ignored players with norm-flouting tactics. We do this as a community, because the mods can't force on us their vision of what SE should be. B. I've asked Gorilla this, and El and Wilson, and Scorp in the Roshar doc. Do we have the right? I'm just going to come out and say that the vote as it stands is very much along the lines of player age. I'm not going to out others (despite Mr Oops Award joining in) but I see faces who more or less started playing maybe a year later from when I started joining in on this vote. Mr Oops Award started two games after me, I believe. Axl and Lion are vehemently against this and I can understand why. They are perfectly reasonable to disagree. I feel that as a player who occasionally returns to the games, such a returning player-heavy vote...do we still have the right? Or is this a sign that communal norms are going to shift again? I don't know. But I do wonder. Maybe we're holding the community back by saying "This is not the SE we remember." Maybe the community is different now and that's all there is to it. I know some would disagree with me but as a player who plays in maybe 2-3 SE games max in a year and who could leave the community behind without any loss to myself or SE, it feels like I have substantially less skin in the game than many of the others. C. To me, the common thread between communal rejection of blackmailing and of mayoring is the element of coercion. My bro Wyrm has been on the receiving end of this: give up your life or we will shrek you. Do this or else. Mayoring also locks out players who aren't compliant. I understand there's a whole Festschrift in the dead doc right now about a lot of things in this game. D. I've written whole manifestos in the past about why I like to be a regular Villager. About how your vote is your voice and your power. How anyone can say anything but votes speak louder than words because they are a concrete manifestation of where your priorities lie. I think the one thing I'm just going to say, which is rather blunt and undiplomatic is: why does Dingo deserve the benefit of the doubt over Elephant? Yes, we could wait after the game to have this conversation. (In fact, I do think we need to have this conversation. Or as I keep saying: Mouse (2015-2021) "y'all need to have a community conversation.") But I also see that as saying that it's perfectly okay for Elephant to put up with this until the end of the game, or until Elephant finishes their wincon. Perhaps Elephant doesn't deserve the benefit of the doubt over Dingo, either, but if this is a 'listen here' conversation/vote, then I'd just say that my vote/opinion goes in the direction most likely to immediately address the problem. I don't regard this as being exclusive of an eventual conversation which this game has evidenced is long overdue.]

[OOC: I apologise to the Village and to the GMs. Elims, y'all probably breaking out the popcorn, and I don't blame you and I probably should not be doing this given the shellacking we took the night before UP. I've put up with a decent amount of crap across games. I started out in LG5, as the people who've heard me rambling in docs can attest to. I've dealt rather unhappily with the extensive mess of mayoring that early SE was. With players who drifted over from other forums and thought to bring toxicity and aggro play. With competitiveness sharpening at various points of SE. What I'm saying is, I don't do chaotic. And the gods above knows I can't bring myself to play against wincon. I don't do this lightly but I do have one frickin line in the sand. Octopus. Melon Dingo. I don't ask the Village to stand with me and I will fully understand if y'all wish to get me killed this night. I've made sure Valor will go to a trusted Villager because it's not worth losing a daily Lurch. I'll post what analysis I can before the night is up. I do have some principles. We just hit one of them ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ]

[OOC: Not saying it's your fault, but I'm being cautious until the final set of GM clarifications come through. I don't want to mention this in the thread just yet as if it's something minor or a misunderstanding, going Urbain Inquisition on other players isn't great - can confirm, happened to me in LG7 and it was unwarranted friendly fire so it sucked. I'm sitting on it until it's clarified out ]

[OOC: Survival, I know you don't got to worry about the Elims, but people following me makes me nervous I make me nervous, as I'm flying blind until I have the chance to sit down and do some analysis, which is probably gonna be around now. Just sayin' Edited to add: Oh, and if a Village placed the Iguana kill - please let us know, privately or otherwise, because it would change the analysis. I'm of the opinion the Iguana kill was an Elim using a kill item but I get that not everyone agrees. Lion for instance theorises that Iguana was vigkilled.]

OOC: Current Status of My Reads: Not in any particular order within each tier: VILLAGE - HIGH CONFIDENCE VILLAGE - MODERATE CONFIDENCE VILLAGE - MILD CONFIDENCE NULL - NO READ AT ALL ELIM - MILD CONFIDENCE I was knocked out all day thanks to painkillers and an awful work week. I'll see what I can do. Some thoughts that were raised in the Roshar doc: 1. Elims knew to go for Iguana and Kangaroo. They also knew Kangaroo was a Shard, though I tried to obscure the matter by putting Kangaroo in my non-Shards list. They even knew to place the item/role kill on Iguana (as Honour is already shattered) and to use the Shardic kill on Valor, which splintered the Shard. This suggests to me that they had worked out Kangaroo was Valor. There are two possibilities here: there was either a leak among those who knew Kangaroo was Valor, or the Elims had worked it out. This leads to my second point: 2. I'm still bothered by the lack of a N2 Shardic kill. Octopus was on Braize at that time - if Octopus was an Elim Shard, this would explain why the Elims did not use the Shardic kill. Otherwise they have nothing to lose by just trying. (Note that I've used Ambition's rolescan and found Octopus has a painrial which is consistent with being a Shard with an item.) But there's one other alternative: we know there was a N1 attempted investee kill. No one has come forward to claim it. (P.S. If anyone survived the N1 kill, please claim it.) Otherwise, my suspicion is they hit a Shard. And who else would they hit but Kanga, who comes off looking good from the D1 execution votes? So the Elims minimally knew Kanga was a Shard. My other theory is the lack of a N2 Shardic kill can be explained by the fact that Axl or I were targeted by Elims (likely a scan or vote manip) between N1 to N2. We were both invested in by Valor in that period, meaning anyone targeting us would have been roleblocked and we know of at least two players who were affected by the roleblock. Suppose for whatever reason, one of them tried targeting us and got roleblocked. (It would have to be Odium which is admittedly where this theory flounders.) Suppose also that their target scanner (Gecko, an Elantrian) scanned Kangaroo and found Kangaroo targeting us. It would be an easy inference that Kangaroo was Valor. I'm saying all the Elims would need were really two pieces of information: first, that someone who targeted Axl/Mouse between N1 to N2 got roleblocked for two turns, and second, that Kangaroo targeted Axl N1 and Mouse D2. That's all it takes. What I'm also saying is: if you targeted me and got roleblocked, or targeted Axl and got roleblocked, and it was the distinctive Valor roleblock, please let us know, publicly or via PM, who you contacted about it. It may be possible to see if we can find Elims that way. I ascribe a leak low probability at this point - it is never safe to ignore a leak or to fail to revise confidence, but at some point, you have to be able to work out how an Elim benefits from bussing. Too many busses and the calculus becomes illogical.

[OOC: When you appear to be one of the players currently more interested in who the Elims might be than Autonomy: ]

[OOC: Ruin says you were on Ashyn C3. Did you get hit by the kill? And why Ashyn on C3?]

Tenth of the Dusk was slightly surprised as the new day dawned. But he was also intensely grateful to Preservation, for giving them the extra time they needed. He did not know what to do with the shattered Shard. It seemed that those he had offered the Shard to did not want it, which placed Tenth in an awkward position. [OOC: Seriously guys I feel like a used car salesman here, which to be fair, is kinda true...] The Shard Dominion, however, did not have a Shardic action, which meant that Konion had at one point been Odium but was no longer. Tenth personally suspected that the vessel had traded Shards with the vessel of Dominion: that would be the most economical manner of making the swap. [OOC: They can trade with one action - Ostrich yeets Odium at the Elim with Domi, Domi takes Odium and yeets Domi back to Ostrich. Latter is a free action, and they don't have to worry about a floating Shard on their team, which indicates to me that their biggest resource/problem at this point is non-Shards, due to the nature of their investee kill.] Soren, the poet, had also helpfully commented that he had finished his task, which Tenth took to be a good sign - if Survival, of course, was truthful. But then, by this point, Tenth thought to himself that the allegiances of the Shard, Ruin, had left little to doubt. He continued to be surprised that Scarlet Octopus had remained on Braize early on, however, with no sign of an attack survived.

[OOC: Bye Elephant! Enjoy Raaaaaandland!!!! Send us a postcard! ]

[OOC: Gotchu covered there friend birb: ]

[OOC: The Wheel weaves as it wills, Master Elephant, and many are the worlds woven into warp and weft of the Pattern. I daresay the most recent world is fast tiring you out — you haven't been as... Energetic in recent days Pfft, enough with the public flirting already, Autonomy. It's starting to get awkward when we're the tenth wheels here ]

[OOC: Hey there, Mr Autonomy. I see you're lookin' very grey and haggard lately. Sounds like you've got some chaotic extracurricular activities runnin' you ragged. Need some stamina boosters? I can hook you up with a quick fix.]

[OOC: I'm da King in da Gutter, you get out of my gutter >:( ]

[OOC: Get. A. Planet. ]

[OOC: Me at that Obi-Wan meme: ]

[OOC: Now screening in a cinema in a Cosmere far, far away: ]

[OOC: I was there when the first PAFO card was handed out in a SE game, at the behest of a cunning player by the name of Awesomeness Summoned. I'm not very impressed Still not getting Valor from me. At this rate I'll give it to Wyrm'alor.]

[OOC: Shall we invoke them, your Autonomousness? Shall we invoke @Elbereth Starkindler, @Elbereth Queen of the Starry Heavens, @Elbereth Lightcrowned, Nightveiled, Lady Everwhite? ]

[OOC: I've got a used Shard to sell you. I started the game with it, it's called the Shard of Gullibility. Kinda like used underwear tbh. You can't do anything with it as its investiture has been entirely tapped out and you have no invest or Shardic actions but if you survive to the end of the game you get a super special prize: A bridge. You haven't entertained me enough to get Valor, but I am amused enough to consider selling you the SoG. You up for it? ]