Long Game 96: KKC in the Modern Age

[Kasimir he/him]

[TAG: RP, 480 words]

7 hours ago, STINK said:

If only there were Americans around to pitch in smh where are these guys not everyone can be out having a barbecue surely there's bad weather somewhere and someones sat at their desk

[OOC: smh where are the NAs when u need them smhhhh]

4 hours ago, Araris Valerian said:

I’m not really sure how to talk about this in character, but I agree with Kas that the reduction in total DP available is a little rough in regards to getting people expelled. I think it’s reasonable, since we have around 60% of the players as previous KKC games have had, but it still means we need to probably use the complaints a bit more like a standard exe. However, the (non apology) effects of getting disciplined are still pretty rough for the skindancers, even if expulsion doesn’t happen.

[OOC: Don't disagree it's reasonable, do feel it's rough with current disciplinary thresholds. But reiterating I never played KKC and I notice past games started very low tempo.]

[OOC: Gonna be on conference for the next couple Turns so participation will be rough. Not sure if I need to talk to the GMs about my plans to idle out in the game. If I start ignoring you in PMs, that's why >> Guess who's on 20k words now though  ]

4 hours ago, Ashbringer said:

One of the Masters didn't elevate anyone. Unless two Masters can elevate the same player in one turn which I tried and failed to figure out if it was possible. If not, then there was no overlap in Mat/Araris/Drake/Wonko/TKN/Archer in one field, or perhaps among everybody.

[OOC: Two Masters cannot elevate the same player - the GMs RNG for which Master elevates the player. The thing is, due to a small quirk of EP filing, the results this cycle don't have anything to do with how EP was filed. That's for this Month (along with the remnants of EP anyone has based off M1 results.) M1's elevations were entirely based off submission. This entails that there's one field no one made any submissions for.]

xx. snapping

The loud sound, and the sudden jolt of pain startled Kevan out of the haze of scribbling in his notebook and then referencing the text he was reading. He opened his hand, and watched as a thin line of blood appeared. He’d applied too much pressure on the reed pen, and it’d snapped, cleanly, in the middle.

Annoyed with himself, he shook out his hand, and stared at the snapped halves of the reed pen. He couldn’t particularly say it was a favourite, and yet… It’d been the first pen he’d picked up when he came to the University and as much as he’d told himself it was purely sentimental, well…

Well, maybe it could be sentimental. Maybe he was allowed it. He picked up a rag and wiped clean the metal nib of the pen and re-examined the break. As far as he could tell, the break was a clean one. Maybe if he went to Soren or Percyl—one of the students doing Alchemy, at any rate—they could give him something to bond the halves of the pen back together.

The pen didn’t have an internal reservoir, which meant it didn’t work by capillary action, only by the ink that remained on the flexible metal nib. Still a step up from the charcoals he’d worked with, back in Tirnagh. But the University prided itself as a centre of learning and innovation, which meant that a scribe’s tools were easy enough to pick up here. There were shops here that sold all kinds of pens, all kinds of inks, and all kinds of papers, from a creamy off-white paper to less-absorbent, thin sheets that made for extremely light and easy to use notebooks.

The lack of an internal reservoir meant that technically, he might get away with bonding the snapped halves of the pen back together. Having cleaned off the nib, he placed both halves of the pen on the ink rag. He’d have to ask Soren later, or Percyl.

He looked down at his notes and then cursed. In his distraction, he hadn’t realised that a large blob of ink had splashed right over his notes, blurring the line. Hastily, he slid the ink rag out from under the pen halves and dabbed furiously at the page, trying to save it. He blew lightly on it and fanned it, trying to coax the ink to dry. The damage hadn’t been too bad: some words smeared, half the page was gone, but as far as he could tell, the ink hadn’t really soaked over to the other side of the page, meaning his work was safe. Probably.

Heaving a tired sigh, Kevan left the open notebook on the window sill to dry further, and set about to making sure he hadn’t left his own blood anywhere. Dangerous enough for an arcanist, and especially so in such a time as this.

[Wonko the Sane he/him]

Apologies for lack of activity. I’m demoing a game at GenCon next weekend, and I’m juggling this with the prep work for that. I’ll work to do better.

By the way, Kas, super respect the effort, but your breakneck pace is not making it easy to keep up with the thread.  I’m also more than a little worried about the way you’ve set this up like a shield, making it feel bad to kill or expel you before you hit your target. Not suspicious enough to warrant a vote, but I don’t love the way you repeatedly emphasize how anxious you are about finishing your NaNo.

As for actual votes, I have so little Wonko-friendly data to work with… I’ll go with Archer, for the phishing, but more importantly for not jumping on Mat; last game, he was steadfast about Mat having a certain tell, and was proven right. This game, Mat came out the gate with that tell, but Archer just made an offhand joke and let it slide.

Honestly, though, I don’t find the exe super useful for the Village at this stage. Crucially, it doesn’t flip, meaning it’s not an effective information gathering tool — it’s only good for acting on existing suspicions. I’d have to check, but in LG18, I don’t we expelled a single Skindancer, and we still won. This game is about role powers first and foremost. We have 7 of those in play now, so there should be information disseminating soon.

Edited July 31, 2023 by Wonko the Sane

[Araris Valerian he/him]

1 minute ago, Wonko the Sane said:

This game is about role powers first and foremost. We have 7 of those in play now, so there should be information disseminating soon.

Yes, but I do think that lends some weight to the complaints system that we should try to leverage, since the consequences of getting complained at include roleblocks. I like your point about Archer (assuming it's true), that's not something I would have picked up on.

[Kasimir he/him]

[TAG: RP, 523 words]

5 minutes ago, Wonko the Sane said:

By the way, Kas, super respect the effort, but your breakneck pace is not making it easy to keep up with the thread.  I’m also more than a little worried about the way you’ve set this up like a shield, making it feel bad to kill or expel you before you hit your target. Not suspicious enough to warrant a vote, but I don’t love the way you repeatedly emphasize how anxious you are about finishing your NaNo.

[OOC: Not really sorry, and sure, you do you  Certainly, E!me would have so much bandwidth to focus on hitting 50k words, let alone the amount of output I've been producing in raw, pure RP without analysis, which absolutely must be read to keep up with the thread. Talking about it feeling bad to kill me until I hit 50k sounds like a Skindancer complaining about kill targets to me, so: Wonko, Wonko - barring Assassins, most Village players won't have an access to a kill this early. Come back to me when you have an actual suspicion.]

xxi. iron

“Pay up,” Owyn said, grinning maniacally, and Kevan sighed and pushed the last counter towards the other student. Owyn yelped as the iron brushed his fingers, and there was a loud crash as three students all simultaneously flipped the table at once.

Kevan realised his clasp-knife was in his hand and he didn’t even bloody know how to use it, had never been in a knife-fight before, back in Yll, they taught you the sling, and if you fooled around with the shepherd’s lance a bit, you learned the staff, but he had neither here, and his blood was pounding in his ears, he felt simultaneously the terror of utter vulnerability and some emotion teetering precariously between a scarlet mist of rage and utter horror—

Owyn dropped the drab, and his fingers were unmarked. “Gotcha,” he smirked, and then Kevan really did want to stab that bastard, just for that crap.

“Tehlu’s bloody balls, Owyn!” Jarvik snapped, crossly.

Soren shook his head, and his knife disappeared back up into its sheath. He’d taken to carrying that long knife around ever since he and Owyn’d begun to attend the scriv classes in self-defense. Kevan’d thought about it, but it’d been so bloody hard trying to make the timetable juggling work out—not without costing him the class in medicine he’d already studied half the term for, so he’d shrugged and figured he’d do it the next term.

If they were still around, by then. If the skindancers hadn’t thoroughly screwed them all over.

You took risks, all the time, in life. Big risks, like leaving your island home and travelling to a University you’d only ever heard about, never seen. Small risks, like playing corners with Owyn, Jarvik, and Soren. Risks like sending the Masters an appeal that was either borderline rude, utterly insane, extremely bold, or a combination of all three.

“Not the sort of thing to crack jokes about right now,” Soren said, slowly. “Everyone’s jumpy right now, Owyn.” Everyone’d been told about holly and iron, but Kevan would’ve bet his midterm grades that most of them were still going to struggle to recognise skindancers when they saw one. And this was on top of the looming threat of Admissions, with nearly half the term already gone, and midterms, and all the normal worries that a student at the University had.

No, he wasn’t sure skindancers were at the top of his list of worries right now. But damn Owyn to hell all the same.

“Right,” Owyn said. “Sorry, everyone. I won’t do it again.”

“And you need to stop playing with that,” Soren said, looking over at Kevan’s knife. “At least you know how to hold it, but a clasp-knife’s a liability in a fight.”

“It locks,” Kevan pointed out, unaccountably stung.

“A locking mechanism is a point of failure,” Soren pointed out. “No matter how good the engineering is. It’s not something you want your life depending on.”

Reluctantly, Kevan nodded. “I’ll get a sling,” he said. He shoved the clasp-knife back into his pocket. Probably see if he could get iron bullets made for it. If he had the time.

Edited July 31, 2023 by Kasimir

[Wonko the Sane he/him]

21 minutes ago, Kasimir said:

[OOC: Not really sorry, and sure, you do you  Certainly, E!me would have so much bandwidth to focus on hitting 50k words, let alone the amount of output I've been producing in raw, pure RP without analysis, which absolutely must be read to keep up with the thread. Talking about it feeling bad to kill me until I hit 50k sounds like a Skindancer complaining about kill targets to me, so: Wonko, Wonko - barring Assassins, most Village players won't have an access to a kill this early. Come back to me when you have an actual suspicion.]

I’m not actually complaining about you making the game difficult to play; I’m just trying to read your lovely novella and maybe RP back at you, but it’s not a serious problem, hence the smiley. Though you’re wrong that your RP is fully skippable; you’ve definitely done some analysis inside your RP along the way.

Also, Skindancers don’t kill, they sabotage; the only players with reliable kills are Namers — who can conceivably begin killing next month, unless JNV really was the Namer elevation.

[Kasimir he/him]

[TAG: RP, 1026 words, analysis 264 words.]

Just now, Wonko the Sane said:

I’m not actually complaining about you making the game difficult to play; I’m just trying to read your lovely novella and maybe RP back at you, but it’s not a serious problem, hence the smiley. Though you’re wrong that your RP is fully skippable; you’ve definitely done some analysis inside your RP along the way.

[OOC: Fair enough, and sorry - I did get fairly incredulous as it's a two page thread at the moment, and honestly two page is pretty sad given memories of how more active SE has been in its heyday. I have mixed analysis in, yes, but I've stopped because I can't keep up with the pre-writing, and after having been tasked with counting my own analysis (*cries*), I've tried to demarcate more clearly for the GMs's sake. Either way, you'll know if there's analysis - that's the point of the tags. Would definitely like to have a RP partner, though I'd rather defer planning to PMs  ]

Just now, Wonko the Sane said:

Also, Skindancers don’t kill, they sabotage; the only players with reliable kills are Namers — who can conceivably begin killing next month, unless JNV really was the Namer elevation.

[OOC: I'd argue it's functionally a potayto/potahto difference, seeing as Insanity also advances the Skindancer wincon, and Insanity locks you in the Crockery where no one can interact with you and you can't do anything unless someone insane enough blows up the Crockery (I've worked out how to do it while trying to preserve as many lives inside as possible) but I can't quite line up the skills I need to get it done, hence my asking for co-conspirators at the start of the game. (Yeah this was Operation Daybreak.) But also I'm not sure it should be done: doing so would benefit both the Village and the Skindancers and it would be a right mess. There are...considerations I don't wanna go into in detail in the thread, and I dunno if it's better to die with them since the SDs will probably ask the GMs about it. Sure, you can break out, but given it's a d20 roll and only a d10 if you know five names, it's de facto jail for most players and from a Village wargaming perspective, it's better to be conservative enough to regard it as a jail/de facto kill.

I'm assuming that using Wind to kill is minimally chancy, given the action types associated with Wind. Having wargamed a bit about Naming scenarios with the GMs for Operation Daybreak, the sense I get is that you're encouraged to use the appropriate Name for the appropriate task, otherwise it gets chancy. But I'll defer to players like you and @Araris Valerian, who do more with Naming than I have.]

xxii. drabs

“Have you ever wondered,” said Jahan, conversationally, “Why this damned University keeps getting targeted over and over again by skindancers?”

“To be honest,” Renlin said, “I’ve really just been trying not to get killed. Have you heard about Master Anders’s logic midterms?”

“We’ve heard about it at least eleven times already,” Owyn snarled.

“Well, you can hear it again,” said Renlin, mulishly. He set down his reed pen, and folded his arms across his chest. “So, my roommate in the Mews did logic under Master Anders, oh, two terms ago. And he tells me Master Anders sets this utterly insanely trollish midterm. You think, oh, well, it’s easy, it’s just ten bloody questions, right?”

“But it’s a trap,” Kevan finished, for him.

“Yeah, it’s a trap alright,” Renlin said. “Thing is, Master Anders sets really subtle questions. My roommate gets a group of E’lir specialising in Rhetoric and Logic. Figures that with the bunch of them, all elevated by Master Anders, they should be able to work together and get a great result on the exams, collective genius and all that.”

“Sounds more like collective stupidity, given how it turned out,” Melke said. He was an E’lir studying in the Medica. No one had quite figured what had possessed him to sign up for Master Anders’s class.

“That’s one way to put it,” Renlin said, sourly. “One of them didn’t want to do it, said it was too much work. So he sits there while everyone else tries to work out the correct answer to the question, and ends up rolling a die for the answers to the questions. And guess what?”

“He tops the class,” Jahan sighed. “What’d it be like, to have that kind of luck?”

“He tops the class,” Renlin echoed. “And he does it by scoring three points, one point higher than the collective minds of the rest of Master Anders’s E’lir, which is a pretty sad state of affairs, either way you look at it. The point is that we’re all probably going to die anyway, whether to the skindancers or in the midterms.”

“Well, but the skindancers,” said Jahan, doggedly. “Listen, I think I’ve figured it out.”

“Jahan, I don’t think anyone here particularly cares about skindancer psychology,” Owyn drawled. “They want to murder us or wear our skin like a cloak.”

“Or sabotage us, and drive us utterly insane,” Kevan muttered.

“Or that,” Owyn allowed. “I don’t really think any of us care to know more about the workings of utterly depraved minds.”

“You’d think so,” Melke spoke up. “But that’s why it’s interesting, isn’t it? The curiosity is in the deviance, in whether skindancer psychology maps well onto what we’d think of as normal human psychology.”

“And the Medica student speaks.”

“Well, maybe they’re vicious and they want to kill us all.”

Sathel sighed and closed her textbook with a definitive thump. “I think they’re here to destroy the Arcanum,” she said, simply. “That’s it. A fully-trained arcanist is powerful, and the Archive probably hoards Fae lore. They don’t want that out in the world.”

“Are we powerful enough?” Renlin wondered, quietly, giving voice to the question on everyone’s minds. Kvothe the Bloodless was the stuff of legend; lightning on a clear blue day. The sort of bright star that burned once every ten generations. The rest of them…they were nothing. They were ordinary. Maybe they knew some of the principles of sympathy, maybe they were one of the very few who could call a single Name. 

“The University has stood against the Fae before,” Kevan pointed out. All thoughts of the books were forgotten. But he knew, even as he said it, that the past was one thing. The present and the future were another thing altogether.

“That’s a fallacy of generalisation,” Renlin said. “You can’t induce the state of the future from the state of the past.”

“Maybe not,” Kevan countered, “But you certainly can formulate an inference based on the past. It might not meet the threshold of deductive logic, but that doesn’t mean the inference isn’t valuable.”

Renlin acknowledged the exchange with a nod. “Well, the point is…you know what the Masters say.”

He did. Always, always the comparison to the glory days, the golden days, the days when the arcanists striding the hallways were each legendary in their own right, the dilution of the University over time. But Kevan couldn’t bring himself to care, to feel sorry about it. He knew his own inadequacy intimately: he just didn’t believe that the University had become worse off. It had become more human. It had turned away from chasing at the wind to seeking answers to lived, human concerns. And he couldn’t fault that turn, couldn’t see anything wrong in it.

And if the Fae destroyed them? Asked that small voice in his head. What then?

“We all know,” Owyn snorted. “Tehlu’s sake, you’d think they were permanently attached to Kvothe, longing and dreading for the day they’ll find the next one.”

The name that had become both praise and curse at the University, even now, when they were so long removed from the days where Kvothe had once walked those halls.

“Honestly,” Jahan said, breaking the silence that had fallen, the silence that always seemed to fall the moment anyone at all uttered that name, “I was just thinking that maybe the problem is they don’t hand out drabs so often anymore. When was the last time any of you handled a drab?”

“Couple of days ago, playing corners,” Owyn said.

“Well, apart from that. We know the Fae can’t abide the touch of iron. Maybe if we put up holly and iron all over and paid for everything in drabs, they’d run off from how much iron we’re working with.”

“Or they’ll just call the wind and smite you,” Renlin scoffed. “Or use some sort of Fae grammerie to murder you, whatever that is. And then we fail the midterm and Master Anders kills us too. No thank you.” He turned back to his textbook. “Anyone got a solution for the fourth question on page 53? I can’t seem to close the tree.”

[Wonko the Sane he/him]

2 minutes ago, Kasimir said:

[[OOC: Fair enough, and sorry - I did get fairly incredulous as it's a two page thread at the moment, and honestly two page is pretty sad given memories of how more active SE has been in its heyday. I have mixed analysis in, yes, but I've stopped because I can't keep up with the pre-writing, and after having been tasked with counting my own analysis (*cries*), I've tried to demarcate more clearly for the GMs's sake. Either way, you'll know if there's analysis - that's the point of the tags. Would definitely like to have a RP partner, though I'd rather defer planning to PMs  ]

Yeah, putting it into perspective by pointing out it’s two pages. Sorry, probably just a symptom of being busy that it feels like a lot.

In all seriousness, though, how in Damnation are you keeping this up? Did you really write 1k more words of RP in the time since my last post? O.o

4 minutes ago, Kasimir said:

[OOC: I'd argue it's functionally a potayto/potahto difference, seeing as Insanity also advances the Skindancer wincon, and Insanity locks you in the Crockery where no one can interact with you and you can't do anything unless someone insane enough blows up the Crockery (I've worked out how to do it while trying to preserve as many lives inside as possible) but I can't quite line up the skills I need to get it done, hence my asking for co-conspirators at the start of the game. (Yeah this was Operation Daybreak.) But also I'm not sure it should be done: doing so would benefit both the Village and the Skindancers and it would be a right mess. There are...considerations I don't wanna go into in detail in the thread, and I dunno if it's better to die with them since the SDs will probably ask the GMs about it. Sure, you can break out, but given it's a d20 roll and only a d10 if you know five names, it's de facto jail for most players and from a Village wargaming perspective, it's better to be conservative enough to regard it as a jail/de facto kill.

I'm assuming that using Wind to kill is minimally chancy, given the action types associated with Wind. Having wargamed a bit about Naming scenarios with the GMs for Operation Daybreak, the sense I get is that you're encouraged to use the appropriate Name for the appropriate task, otherwise it gets chancy. But I'll defer to players like you and @Araris Valerian, who do more with Naming than I have.]

My point was that when I say kill or expel, I mean kill or expel; and it’s not evidence of an Elim mindset because the Elims don’t even have a kill.

Wind alone is capable of role blocking, not killing, yes. But it doesn’t take much to get another name, and I demonstrated somewhat infamously in LG18 that you can kill with Wind augmented by another name. (Look up something called “the Bonestorm”. El made me promise to never make her write another writeup like that. )

[Archer he/him]

1 hour ago, Wonko the Sane said:

Apologies for lack of activity. I’m demoing a game at GenCon next weekend, and I’m juggling this with the prep work for that. I’ll work to do better.

By the way, Kas, super respect the effort, but your breakneck pace is not making it easy to keep up with the thread.  I’m also more than a little worried about the way you’ve set this up like a shield, making it feel bad to kill or expel you before you hit your target. Not suspicious enough to warrant a vote, but I don’t love the way you repeatedly emphasize how anxious you are about finishing your NaNo.

As for actual votes, I have so little Wonko-friendly data to work with… I’ll go with Archer, for the phishing, but more importantly for not jumping on Mat; last game, he was steadfast about Mat having a certain tell, and was proven right. This game, Mat came out the gate with that tell, but Archer just made an offhand joke and let it slide.

Honestly, though, I don’t find the exe super useful for the Village at this stage. Crucially, it doesn’t flip, meaning it’s not an effective information gathering tool — it’s only good for acting on existing suspicions. I’d have to check, but in LG18, I don’t we expelled a single Skindancer, and we still won. This game is about role powers first and foremost. We have 7 of those in play now, so there should be information disseminating soon.

Mat's tell isn't mentioning how busy he'll be, it's that he repeatedly mentions it, often to try to deflect suspicion he feels is unwarranted. My rule is his first mention gets a pass, then after that its a red flag. 

As for the blatant phishing, would you like to join my actions planning club? You seem well versed in the rules and would be of great benefit. :3.

Why worry about Kas trying to shield himself when the consequence for exeing him is *checks notes* he might have to write more RP to apologize? Frankly it'd be a good plot opportunity for him

I'm definitely going to read the rules very soon, but in the meantime, I'm sensing the exe isn't as effective as roles? Which is honestly great because I don't have a rank and so y'all can handle the heavy lifting here. 

 

[DrakeMarshall he/him]

On 7/29/2023 at 7:15 PM, Archer said:

How come I got sent to horny jail even though Drake had more votes than me? 

I'm sleeping through 2/3rds of this round and busy on Saturday, so don't expect much. 

Drake Drake

sure ok Archer I'm game to throw down with u sir (yea I'm only single-voting you, not double-voting you back ¯\_(ツ)_/¯)

[quoted from last turn but y'know quoting things with locked threads is funk]

Quote

Kinda confused what you're claiming your motivations are here. And why you think just voting the top two wagons is especially accurate - unless you have two compelling cases for me and Mat, both of equal merit to warrant splitting your votes? It looks a lot like you didn't vote based on who they were but what position they were in. 

You have the votes to pull anyone else into a 2-2-2 tie with us, rather than solidify the existing options. If you had actual suspicions, I reckon you'd either double up on me, or double vote someone else. Instead you pull the I don't know anyone line which reads as you saying oh well, guess I'm stuck voting these two options because it's too late, when it's not completely too late, and if it was, that's on you for not bothering to develop suspicions and prod them before now. Arbitrary voting based on the VC hides your lack of villager legwork. 

My AA meetings look a lot like e!info phishing, so it can be used to justify a vote. It's enough putting myself out there to make people go hm anyway. If you don't really think through your suspicions, you might identify that as a potential wagon

Quote

Interesting. Why do you think Steel is worth defending? - Kas

Purely to rile you up :P. Your RP stream is fine, but I wanted to see how far you'd go to push that vote

Steel actually kinda fits my elim profile, which is mostly RP and staying out of sight. And maybe stalling initially while they strategize. Their opening Mat vote was very safe and justifiable, while helping get some votes down to add certainty. 

ok so first thing's first, the bit you've repeatedly quoted where I said I didn't know anyone

do u think I Drake do not know the other players in this game or do u think this is an RP bit because we're playing new students smh

it was surrounded in a bunch of other pure RP with zero game analysis idk man

Second of all:

Sure I could have done other things like create a 3-way tie or double up on one of you/mat but see I didn't want to.

As you've stated, everyone can cast 2 votes so a situation where the top wagons are all still only at 2 votes that late in the day isn't actually great? Why is that a thing I should want.

As for suspicions... Well yea Mat's self-vote paired with a clear lack of desire to actually be expelled seemed kinda performative, and yea you were doing things I didn't really know how to parse, but if I had some big fancy reasoning or confident suspicion I would've actually said it. I didn't. I could have honestly just as well voted for Ashbringer or Wonko for the kind of profile they currently fit except one of them is my RP bro and the other is a returning player and besides the fact that you and Mat already had votes is a feature not a bug!!

In such situations, I throw out votes to maximize pressure. If I doubled up on one of you guys then the other one would feel safe. When I voted for both of you that solidified both of you as being in danger, especially in this game where multiple people can go on the horns. So I vote to create pressure and then see if I have a compelling reason to remove my vote. It aint fair but SE lynching isn't exactly due process of law now is it And it's sound way of catching elims. You've been unusually defensive, both of yourself and Steel, and while I realize villagers can do this also I am still waiting on any reason to village read you and back off.

Third of all, if your behavior D1 was a big baity plan then I repeat my earlier question, what specifically did you set up to be baity?

13 hours ago, Kasimir said:

@ me if you dare, Drakebro, I do not fear u!!

@Kasimir

4 hours ago, |TJ| said:

drake a bit claim bait-y in PMs, something to look forward too.

yea the sad thing is though nobody bit

so it's time to evolve to being claim baity in the thread!

If you are Cealdish, message me, please

I have a grand and epic plan. I really need a business partner for it.

Apparently being more subtle about things just doesn't cover much ground! And I still believe the game will be solidly on the faster side of the pacing spectrum.

If you think about it a little and you've actually read the rules, you can probably figure it out. Yes it is very possible the elims will clue in to what I'm planning because I've been this outre about it but... Well they are free to try to stop me >:P

Quote

Jenali (JNV) went insane!

I find this an interesting choice but I'm aware it's also not that rare of a type of attack doctrine

Still Thinking About my second vote.

[Kasimir he/him]

[TAG: RP, 404 words.]

24 minutes ago, Wonko the Sane said:

Yeah, putting it into perspective by pointing out it’s two pages. Sorry, probably just a symptom of being busy that it feels like a lot.

[OOC: Np, will be me over the next couple of days due to conferences.]

24 minutes ago, Wonko the Sane said:

In all seriousness, though, how in Damnation are you keeping this up? Did you really write 1k more words of RP in the time since my last post? O.o

[OOC: I am really motivated? I'm aware it's chancy the longer the game drags as I'm a perennial Elim target and I certainly don't want to make the Elims feel bad about killing me either as this wouldn't be fair to them so I'm pushing as hard and fast about hitting my personal 50k goal as I can to get it and die peacefully. As for why the 50k target - it's a white whale and a fun/weird target to set myself in an SE game and there's been enough said about Village dependence on me playing hardcore from...LG94, LG95, and probably Ash writes a whole dissertation about that, Drake certainly did. I don't want to be forced to hardcore engage, optimise, and play my usual Village workhorse style so the 50k target is extravagant enough combined with the setting and RP incentive that I could see myself doing it rather than having to once again carry half the Village analysis and strategising on my own. Also a healthier way to engage with the game in some ways since being the Village workhorse is often very stressful at some point.

Even if the Elims kill me this Turn, I'll at least have beaten Hael's record for tuition reduction, which will be something I can at least say I did.

Anyway you can take or leave this bit as you like; I'm just contextualising my approach to the game and it's valid to say E!me would have to say the same thing, I'm just pointing out that crunching this sheet amount of words does take time and effort, and bandwidth.

I did say I was prewriting the RP, which is why the posting rate is high: I did not prewrite before the game, but I did spend last evening prewriting a decent chunk that I'm posting, and allowing myself to just write or expand on 200-word episodes allows me to have some wordier segments and less wordy ones. As I mentioned, and I wasn't fibbing, I'm on about 20.6k at the moment so I have a decent backlog to just keep posting.]

24 minutes ago, Wonko the Sane said:

My point was that when I say kill or expel, I mean kill or expel; and it’s not evidence of an Elim mindset because the Elims don’t even have a kill.

[OOC: I think my point is that Elims not having a kill is a potayto/potahto difference - given insanity is a softkill, arguing you feel badly about targeting a player feels like it comes from a mindset of kill hunting nevertheless. I would certainly not expect E!you to say insanity in the thread, given that targeted insanity is fundamentally an Elim ability!]

24 minutes ago, Wonko the Sane said:

Wind alone is capable of role blocking, not killing, yes. But it doesn’t take much to get another name, and I demonstrated somewhat infamously in LG18 that you can kill with Wind augmented by another name. (Look up something called “the Bonestorm”. El made me promise to never make her write another writeup like that. )

[OOC: Point taken. But that's after you get another Name, I would think. Probably why you said next Month, but Wilson has also just confirmed that she would require Wind and another Name in conjunction, if not a specialist Name, in order to allow a kill.]

xxiii. protection

Strange to find solace in half-remembered knots, in the middle of the midterms. But—with all the rumours flying of students who’d been crocked, students who seemed fine, and the knowledge that this was what the skindancers did to you, they sabotaged you, got inside your head somehow, drove you insane, got you crocked—well, you did what you could.

El’the made grams, and there was a small but healthy black market in those items. Master Artificer did what he could to clamp down on it, but that was the way of human fear.

Stressed by the exams, by whispers of crocked students, Kevan found himself stranding wire, rawhide, cord, and slowly shaping the knots his grandmother had taught him. Heard her whisper—no, not like this, guiding his fingers into the intricate patterns that spelled safety, protection, peace.

Peace he added, especially because it seemed appropriate, in the hustle and bustle of midterms, the time when all students were fretting their heads off.

That made three—the traditional number was six. Six balanced things, his grandmother’d said. He made the knot for shelter, which was distinct from safety, protection, because of a characteristic double-loop near the terminus of the knot, and it was left-slanting, to attract malfeasance and misfortune.

The luck knot came next, left-slanted as well, because it was meant to siphon misfortune, but with the v-shaped knot on the top and on the bottom, merged so it looked like a star or a budding flower. It wasn’t enough to siphon misfortune; you had to capture luck, encourage it.

Folk traditions and superstitions, Kevan’d told himself, even as he’d learned sympathy, and gotten a taste of sygaldry. And yet. Strange what things the mind turned to, for solace in troubled times. He wondered if that was what his grandmother had felt, stranding his cord. Story knot after story knot.

The final knot, to seal it all:

Happiness. Always happiness.

It was the knot he remembered the best, the one that took shape the easiest beneath his fingers. He set aside Soren’s cord, and began stranding the next one for Eithne.

You did what you could, in these troubled times. Perhaps he was better off studying. Perhaps it wasn’t a gram. But you did what you could, and you hoped, and if Tehlu was merciful, if God was kind, well. Perhaps you and those you cared for would live to see the dawn.

And pass your midterms.

Edited to add:

10 minutes ago, Archer said:

Why worry about Kas trying to shield himself when the consequence for exeing him is *checks notes* he might have to write more RP to apologize? Frankly it'd be a good plot opportunity for him

[OOC: Ngl I loled.]

Edited July 31, 2023 by Kasimir

[Wonko the Sane he/him]

Dearest Father,

I am settling in at the University, and can say with certainty that I will be enjoying my time here. Hardly more than two span in, and already another student has been driven mad by the Mahael-uret. Everyone else is scrambling around, afraid, weaving holly wreathes as though they have any sort of power without the proper grammerie. It’s quite funny, really. I admit I had my reservations about this place, when you suggested I attend, but I’m quite happy to have been proven wrong.

My studies go well; I was passed over for elevation into the Arcanum, which is irritating, but I will soldier on. Doubtless the Masters are still afraid of me, and watching to see if I’m “safe” to be learning such things. They keep an armed guard on me at all times; there are two of them outside my door right now, as I write this. It’s all rather silly; if I wanted to hurt a fellow student, it’s not like a pair of crossbows would stop me.

I’m afraid my social life is rather lackluster at the moment. Part of that can be blamed on my escorts; it’s hard for the other students to relax around them. And around me, I suppose. But I also struggle to find anything to connect with them about. Their lives seem terribly dull; the Dancers stalk their streets, and still they seem to worry more about their grades. I suppose I should try and reach out all the same; it’s meant to be part of the experience, yes? I’ll give it some thought.

 The religion is absolutely oppressive out here. It’s always “Tehlu this, Tehlu that”, never mind oppressed minorities like Aunt Fiffy and the other Chandrian that Tehlu would kill if he got the chance. Really, I’d like to bring some of these people to meet their precious Tehlu, and see how they feel about him after a conversation with the insufferable man. I’d wager even odds that we’d see a “Church of the Chandrian” pop up in a matter of weeks. Though I suppose that would be its own sort of bother, as Aunt Fiffy really doesn’t like people fussing over her that much — and knowing Tehlu, if he caught wind of it, he’d probably step in and “righteously smite” anyone who’d ever heard of this church.

Ah, well. Give the family my love, and let Mother know that I’m planning on striking down a Mahael in her name!

your loving daughter,

Elena Resterford

Edited July 31, 2023 by Wonko the Sane

[Sart he/him]

In a blatant attempt to lower tuition, here's some RP mixed with analysis.

Sarenrae was focused on her work. As a student of this illustrious university, it was imperative that she continued to hone her craft, elevating it to a new standard of excellence. However, it appeared that everyone else had taken the same approach. No one was actually talking with another. It was as if they were all in their own little worlds. They couldn't even agree on what year it was, much less what to do about the skindancers. For that reason, she submitted a complaint against Kevan (Kasimir). It felt as though that man was in his own little world of fun and camaraderie, ignoring the plight of the other students. It certainly wasn't because she was jealous of his tight knit circle of friends. She sighed. It wasn't like she was much better at this. She hadn't given much thought to the problem, and didn't truly suspect anyone of being a creature from myth. Perhaps it was time to start investigating.

TL;DR: Kasimir's RP is great, but it's a little disconnected from all other RP. In general, we should try to come up with a cohesive setting, in order to better facilitate thread activity. Haven't put much thought into alignment yet, but that will come soon.

[Mat he/him]

Sart

Sart

[Kasimir he/him]

[TAG: RP, 484 words, DISCUSSION, 622 words]

1 hour ago, Sart said:

TL;DR: Kasimir's RP is great, but it's a little disconnected from all other RP. In general, we should try to come up with a cohesive setting, in order to better facilitate thread activity. Haven't put much thought into alignment yet, but that will come soon.

[OOC: I'm not going to say 'respectfully' because that would be insincere - why is this my problem? My RP makes thread offers. If people aren't interested in PMing me to arrange to RP together, or aren't interested in building off the classes, that's not my problem. I patently created offers at the very start during M1 which were ignored - Drake at least had Ash pick up on his. If people aren't interested in engaging, that's also not my problem, as I get on just fine on my own, and it's not my job to hold up your RP. The first rule of improvisation is 'yes, and' and if all of you need schooling in RP etiquette, it's frankly also not my job. I don't really give a damn about your financially-motivated vote. I do object to the fact this reason is blatantly wrong-headed and insists I take responsibility for what should be collective responsibility. Not for the first time, I've had it up to here with this game expecting me to hold things down for everyone in terms of analysis and now, apparently, RP as well just because I happened to rand Village. And no, nobody tell me that is bloody unfair to y'all - take a look at the blatant inactivity across LG94 and later LG95 and tell me I wasn't holding things down. If you don't want to post and RP, I'm certainly not going to stick around and hold my 50k goal hostage to your collective lack of desire to show up and RP. (No condemnation to players who don't want to RP - I get that it's not everyone's schtick but I strenuously object to the claim it should somehow matter to me that I'm here to collectively build some cohesive RP atmosphere. No. No, I'm not here to do that, and it's legitimate that I don't care for it.)

If I came here to RP and then started complaining no one wanted to RP with me or to help me build on my RP, people would say I'm being unfair to them. Well, I came here to RP and I'm holding it up on my own so I don't need to be indebted to or dependent on anyone to do it for me. In fact, it would be unreasonable of me to hold my personal wincon hostage to everyone else's schedule and desire to RP. Not really sure what you have to object to that.]

xxiv. mending

Soren took a sceptical look at the broken halves of his reed pen. Kevan read the answer in his hesitation, in the slow cadence of his voice, the moment Soren started speaking. “I don’t know,” he said. “I guess I could inscribe both ends of the pen, but with sygaldry, you always need a full set of runes in order to attach anything to each other, while making sure that the forces are dampened so that the two halves don’t destroy each other, which takes more runes. And that doesn’t include compositional worries, at which point you need to be sure of the composition, and then potentially add even more runes. Which your pen might not have room for. Where possible, you’re better off using glue. Which I could do, but you might want to talk to someone who specialises in Alchemy or Chemistry first, see if they have any sealant that we aren’t using in the Fishery.”

At least Soren hadn’t told him to get another pen, Kevan thought, and he’d appreciated that greatly. 

So he went looking for Percyl. He’d talked to the other E’lir a little, between classes. Their schedules hadn’t really overlapped very much, but Kevan’d seen him around, and he knew Percyl was taking Alchemy classes, which more or less qualified him, in Kevan’s book.

Finding Percyl though, proved to be a challenge. He asked around in several classes in Mains and in the Mews, and even poked his head into the Archives. But it was midterms season, which meant no one knew where anyone was, and he wasn’t able to get hold of anyone who seemed to know where Percyl was, much less Percyl himself.

Eventually, Kevan gave up and went back to Soren, who dragged him off to go see Sathel, from Master Anders’s class. As it turned out, she worked in the Fishery but knew of a transparent alchemical glue that dried transparent but hard as steel, and applied the tenaculum to both ends of the broken pen, dipped it in some metallic dust, and then let both halves dry, so the middle of the pen appeared to be a resin with glittering flecks all over.

“There you go,” Sathel said, matter-of-factly. “You can’t hide the fact the pen is broken, but you can make the breaks beautiful.”

“You’re poetic today,” Soren noted.

“As if you aren’t, always,” Sathel retorted. “And well, there’s function, but there’s also beauty. What’s the point in making solutions that aren’t particularly pleasing to the eye? The aesthetics should matter too. Well, if that’s it, I have a project to work on…”

He knew a dismissal when he heard one. He thanked her, offered help with Master Anders’s midterms, even though truth to be told, Kevan was feeling less than confident in it himself. She agreed, which made him feel better about the lengths she’d gone through to fix his pen.

Edited to add: 

[OOC: Final rejoinder. I live and work in a timezone that gels very badly with most NA players. This has been the subject of consternation previously, such as in MR56, where Aman and I didn't have a PM but had enough timezone overlap to actively solve in thread together. One way or another, this game's playerbase is predominantly NA. Given the tempo in recent games, if I wait for any NA player to get on and work with me here, I'm more likely to die of old age.  Add more time if we stipulate PM coordination for RP, whether IG or OOG, since that especially requires the other player to log back in and have time to read and then compose a response. That works so good in a 36 hour Turn! (Note: bluetext in PMs is allowed for strictly RP coordination only.) Maybe you'd like to consider that for those of us who want to do things, live our lives, also RP, and play in a RP-centric game, cannot afford to have our RP held hostage to the vicissitudes of NA players, much less their schedules, and the fundamental timezone incompatibility. I'm fairly confident an NA player would feel the same about being held hostage to my timezone and scheduling. I'm done here.]

Edited July 31, 2023 by Kasimir

[Kasimir he/him]

[TAG: RP, 413 words, ANALYSIS, 625 words]

[OOC: Double-posting because El yells at me if I edit votes in. Rough thoughts because I need to put them somewhere, I'm lazy to use my GM PM, and let's not delude ourselves pretending that I wouldn't have been thinking or trying to solve the game even if I'd put 20% effort in and I am going to actually put votes on someone ig. And I'm too tired to think of how to RP phrase this, so w00t here we go I guess.

• V lean on Drake. Maybe bro goggles. IDK. I've caught E!Drake before but I've also caught him quite a while back under different circumstances so I don't feel it is as applicable anymore. Interest feels a bit more organic/authentic than murderpuppy.
• V lean on TKN. Ht Drake for this, can't remember if he explicitly pointed it out or if I'm hearing Aman's voice from BT1 cf. Xino. Blatant mercenary voting ironically feels Village because he'd be forced to follow through if on teammate. Weighted with caution because TKN has some counterintuitive E!plays, but gotta start somewhere ig.
• Mat - nfc want to think casualness in thread a good look but also got argued nonstop by Drake about this so I guess he goes into the pool of IDK.
• Sart - not making sense to me therefore probably Village, have been @ about this before, quite sure he'll abuse this against me one game, what do I know, I don't have the bandwidth/mental energy to think Sart through nor the desire to hardKas this game. Hesitation here from Sart's non-engagement/low engagement with alignment but what do I know.
• Wonko - Point on perspective aside, feel analysis currently emerges from a Village place. Ok with V read for now.
• TJ - Feeling lack of WiM, not really sure tbh, some aspects of V play coming through but expecting exploit at some point, probably deserves to be chunked into IDKwthbbQ.
• Archer - Tough one. Feel the AA play skews V!Archer by a tad, never wanna underestimate E!Archer's playbook, but also feel the issue is that Archer's sort of got a promissary note here he's never cashed. IDKwthBbQ it is.
• Steel - Opening skews closer to E!Steel meta, zero presence in this Turn is making me consider if I've made a misevaluation, but reluctant to V read this early. IDKwthbBq expands again!
• Szeth - Sort of gut good off malfeasance weirdness but tbh I don't have a reason to lean one way or another. 
• Man I am so tired rn who am I forgetting
• STINK - Good taste in games and thread PMs, shift in play, DK how to read rn. Let's just go with IDKwthbbq.
• Araris - Tbh I don't know & don't have a particular read.
• Man am I so tempted to chunk these last two players in 'IDKwthbbq' because if I have to look at the player list to figure out who you are, something's wrong.
• JNV - Ok nvm hope u break out soon Holy Ruin, Destroyer of Worlds  And return in triumph.
• Ash - Promissary notes not cashed. IDKwthbbq feels right.

Tentatively ok with votes on Ash, feel eh about Drake push, don't disagree about the Archer point and TWTBAW tends to be a bad call of mine when it comes to Archer so I will go Archer, TJ and call it a day.

Having sort of semi-broken my "I will just uni sim life and not care loooool" schtick by actually trying to work out who I can vote on with some conscience, I will now proceed to peace out, having considered myself to have done my democratic duty for the Turn and probably all Turns for the rest of this week. Thank u RL. Someone send thoughts and prayers for the conference.]

xxiv. breaking

Students always got crocked. The subjects taught at the Arcanum, they were reminded regularly, were not for the weak-minded. Still, the news that Jenali had been elevated to E’lir with Master Herkimer as sponsor, only to have subsequently been crocked felt ominous, as though it was a reminder that no one was immune to snapping under the pressure of their studies.

Kevan hadn’t known Jenali. A few words exchanged between classes, but they’d never really talked, and since Jenali was working in Naming, they’d barely been contemporaries. He’d made no secret of his distaste for the esoteric arts of the Arcanum. Freed from his struggles in the Fishery, his Sympathy grades had improved, but Kevan just didn’t find Sympathy as fascinating. Nor did he care much for Alchemy, or Naming, and Master Artificer had all but solicited his word he would stay out of the Fishery from then on.

Some of the students whispered that there was something strange about Jenali’s crocking. Kevan wasn’t so sure. On the one hand, Naming was easily the most volatile and fickle of crafts taught at the Arcanum: the body count of the subject was the stuff of University legend. On the other hand…well, the skindancers were among them, weren’t they? Nevermind that no one had seen one, and that students were filing spurious complaints against each other, and… you had to wonder, really. Absence of evidence wasn’t evidence of absence but at some point, you either started to construct increasingly wild theories to account for absence, or you made the best inference you could, which was…

Which was what? That the Masters were conspiring to send students on a wild goose chase? That the skindancers were a lie?

Kevan didn’t know. Something about the news of Jenali’s crocking had lodged under his skin though, and he wasn’t really sure why.

His mind returned to the paper boat, sinking in the current, dragged under by the Omethi, and he shivered.

Went back to his books, determined to work on fending off the one set of troubles that he could. The midterms stopped for no E’lir or skindancer, and Kevan would be damned if he didn’t do his best.

He’d given his word, after all. They’d given him a second chance, all of the Masters; well, enough of them, no thanks to Master Alchemist. He’d give up his good right arm and swim across the Omethi weighed down with a sack of rocks before he disappointed Master Anders.

Edited July 31, 2023 by Kasimir

[Ashbringer he/him]

Well here I am, again. My most free day in the last week and probably the next one too is tomorrow which is right over the 12 hour rollover! Great. But I won’t have work so I’ll have the evening, hopefully.

I don’t feel great about either Szeth or Araris right now. Szeth feels… not entirely sure. More impulsive, especially compared to Frost, but also seems a bit of a flip on style from M1. Araris mostly because a double vote on one of two people keeping the thread running at that point doesn’t sit well with me. And while this isn’t Threnody it’s enough for me.

 

Also apparently I don’t understand how the Elevations work for there to have been only 8, but… I guess that makes sense? Almost a distro question at that point. And may not happen again for a while.

[Kasimir he/him]

[TAG: RP, 441 words]

8 minutes ago, Ashbringer said:

Araris mostly because a double vote on one of two people keeping the thread running at that point doesn’t sit well with me. And while this isn’t Threnody it’s enough for me.

[OOC: You consider STINK to be one of two people keeping the thread running?]

xxv. splint

Kevan said, “I don’t think that’s how you’re supposed to be doing it.”

Master Bob—looking increasingly harried as the term wore on, which suggested something else perhaps, wheels within wheels, forces they knew nothing about, and again, the mind went to Jenali, Jenali who had broken, and gotten crocked, and really, you expected that of Namers, but even so, you wondered, or the University rumour mill did that for you—was stalking down the row of students, snapping out corrections as he went.

Deon himself was looking utterly frazzled. Midterms did that to everyone. He muttered a curse as the bandages snarled, and he tried to redo them all over again. Patiently, Kevan held still. They had only two more practicals before the midterm, and Deon was having a hard time keeping up with the class. He would’ve paired with Eithne, but Master Bob had yanked him aside.

“You pair with Deon, E’lir,” he said, and pushed another woman towards Eithne.

Deon wasn’t really cut out for the Medica. Making decisions under pressure got to him, and the more Master Bob or one of his gillers breathed down his neck, the more Deon made hasty judgements and careless mistakes. Right now, he was managing to get the drape of the sling pretty wrong, and although he hadn’t actually gotten Kevan to clench his fist about the end of the splint, Kevan’d surreptitiously done so, hoping not to get Deon into further trouble with Master Bob.

“The first knot has to be against my elbow, then tucked it so it doesn’t trail,” he murmured quietly, figuring Master Bob wouldn’t hear him. “And the other end of the sling goes under my armpit so the second knot meets behind my neck, and you have to secure it properly.”

“Tehlu have mercy,” Deon muttered, running fingers through his hair and messing it up further. “Alright, alright, I guess I’ll have to start again from the beginning…”

Kevan quickly checked if Master Bob was near. Fortunately, he was not.

“Yeah, I think you have to. The splint should be fine, it’s the sling that needs to be done again.”

“Thanks,” Deon said, softly. “Tehlu, I really regret signing up for classes at the Medica, but Master Linguist says I need an extra class this term if I want to graduate on time, and Master Bob’s class was the only one that still had vacancies…”

Kevan knew all about the pains of timetable jigsaw. There were only so many classes you could take, and a whole world of things to learn. Only so much time, in all the world. Slipping away, the more you chased after it.

Edited July 31, 2023 by Kasimir

[Ashbringer he/him]

At that point in time, yeah kinda 

I’ve been in the position of being in thread mostly for someone to ping-pong off of before (MR56, although that wasn’t just s few people), and that’s still pretty helpful.

[STINK he/him]

1 hour ago, Kasimir said:

[OOC: You consider STINK to be one of two people keeping the thread running?]

Look not just anyone can come up with a genius money making scheme somewhat pyramid shaped

[Kasimir he/him]

[TAG: RP, 443 words, ANALYSIS, 618 words]

2 hours ago, Ashbringer said:

Also apparently I don’t understand how the Elevations work for there to have been only 8, but… I guess that makes sense? Almost a distro question at that point. And may not happen again for a while.

[OOC: Elevations depend on the EP filed the previous Turn. In the case of M1 Elevations, they're based on your pre-game EP, i.e. submissions EP. Either:

A. Everyone didn't submit for one particular field (includes a variety of sub-scenarios including a mixture of art, music, and essay submissions, and the GMs RNGing EP for those who had gone art or music or didn't submit at all, but that one field didn't get any love according to RNGesus), or:

B. One of the non-elevated players who was voted on: <Archer, Drake, Mat, Szeth, Steel> had to have lost EP to a total of zero EP while offsetting the DP they had. The thing is, we know there are several constraints here:

• Crossing out Szeth and Steel as they both elevated, thus not our problem
• EP in a Master's field can only cancel out DP from that particular Master.
• Each Master has a total of 3 DP, but may assign fewer to a student since it's purely RNG. 
• For Archer, Drake, Mat to be brought on the Horns, they had to have accumulated a net minimum of 5 DP [=15 DP]
• For Szeth and Steel to not be brought on the Horns, they had to have accumulated a net maximum of 4 DP or less. [=8 DP] They also cannot be at 0 EP as they can't have elevated if so. 
• The total DP assignable is 27. All DP will be assigned while Masters are NPC.
• Note that 15 DP (minimum for Archer, Drake, and Mat to have had) + 8 DP (maximum for Szeth and Steel to have had) gets us a total of 23 DP. We still have 4 missing DP! If we presume that Szeth and Steel (in particular) accumulated less than 4 DP, then Archer, Drake, and Mat especially have to account for the missing DP.
• Based off the rules, we can surmise an upper ceiling of 7 DP for Archer, Drake, and Mat. This is because:

  Quote

  5-7 DP: 60% charges dropped, 30% Undignified Mischief (apology), 10% Reckless Use of Sympathy (lashings)

  8-10 DP: 20% charges dropped, 30% Undignified Mischief (apology), 30% Reckless Use of Sympathy (lashings), 20% Conduct Unbecoming a Member of the Arcanum (lashings)

  There's a very big gap between 7 DP and 8 DP in terms of the likelihood that all charges would be dropped. So at maximum, it's likely we can assume an average of 7 DP. That's more than enough for EP, depending on luck, from a Master to be burned away, resulting in zero elevation.

• Tbh also none of this matters to Village, so curious why that's a hole you're catching your brain on, but then, my fault too since I think this was interesting to game out
• All of this could easily be wrong because probability is whack sometimes. 
• Cr: @DrakeMarshall for basic formulation, expansion/suppositions my own.]

1 hour ago, STINK said:

Look not just anyone can come up with a genius money making scheme somewhat pyramid shaped

[OOC: oh ok smhhhh everyone wants credit for ponzi schemes these days]

[OOC: Reread bits of MR64 and actually I'm not sure I want to vote TJ anymore.

It is time to offer my very SE blessing to Archer, Ash right now.]

[Less OOC: I am lodging a complaint against Jincs for scandalous offenses against any decent sense of chronology! Tehlu only knows one day lighting as in the tales of Tarbolin the Great will smite them from the hallways of Mains and their classmates will no longer have to deal with the daily assault on anachronistic integrity!]

[OOC: Ngl the Ash vote is a gut vote - I don't feel as confident of Steel anymore, having forced my tired brain to go through LG94 and LG86 all over again. I would probably be willing to be talked into Sart as well as I'm not very happy with a V!read of Sart being predicated on a TWTBAW sort of line. IDK. Kind of too tired to revise him and unfortunately tiredness will be my default state this week.]

[OOC: ...I'm going to keep agonising about this even when I shouldn't, aren't I >>]

xxvi. sunlight

It had been a long, tiring day of classes: Master Bob’s practical at the Medica, the Siaru class he was taking because Kevan’s Siaru wasn’t very good and while Aturan was the lingua franca in all the remnants of the Empire, the Cealdish tongue was the runner-up, and then Master Anders’s class, and he still had an evening tutorial with El’the Aksel, though Kevan was so tired it felt like a heavy fog had descended on his brain and nothing else was really making sense anymore.

Mains, if you thought about it, was haunted by the weight of the immense history it carried. Rooms were bricked off, and it was easy enough to run into dead ends here and there. But some of the passageways had open windows that could be navigated, and Kevan slipped through one, carefully, and landed quietly in a small, open courtyard with an old oak tree.

There was a bench there, ancient, wood worn smooth, roughened in places where generations of students had carved their initials into it. Kevan hadn’t bothered, so Soren had done it for him. It felt…pointless. Pretentious, maybe. Why did you need to scream your existence against the amnesia of history?

They were here, once. Living, breathing. The rest was history.

And they weren’t anybody in particular. None of them was the next Kvothe, Tehlu be thanked. Sometimes,  Kevan wondered if what had gotten to Kvothe was the weight of his own expectations, the weight of his own legend. Devan Lochees’s work was immortal, and Kvothe had wanted his story told, but the original text was all but lost, and all they had left was Rothfuss’s serialisation of the ur-text, the popular books known as the Kingkiller Chronicles.

You could allow yourself to wonder about the ur-text that was lost, about what had been said, mistranslated, retranslated.

Names in the wood, carved there, sinking deep. Spreading roots.

The sunlight was a soft, regretful yellow, and warm against his skin. Kevan drew one long breath, breathing deep, feeling the wind reach into the core of him. One breath, and then another. And then the next, and the one after that.

You had to take those moments, to sit there, to drink in beauty. Even if it was the particular gold of sunlight, the regretful shade of metheglin in the tavern light, the hour before a long walk back to the University in the dark of a moonless night, time enough to address the ages, history, all of creation.

Kevan sat on the bench, and let the sunlight into the tired, empty spaces in his being. Allowed it to move through him, and felt refreshed, renewed.

[The Unknown Medallion he/him]

VC?

Suppose I'll vote Kas. I'll almost certainly change it in a bit but rollover might be coming up so I want to get the Tuition Reduction in.

[Devotary of Spontaneity]

The turn is over!

[Devotary of Spontaneity]

Turn 3 will begin at 10 pm Mountain. Thereafter, all turns will be 45+3 hours, starting at 10 pm Mountain and ending at 7 pm Mountain. 

[little wilson she/her]

Term 1 Month 3 - Introducing Project Simulacra

Percyl (Drake) went insane!

Archer, Drake, and Stink were brought on the Horns. Archer was charged with Reckless Use of Sympathy and lashed. Drake and Stink had their charges dropped.

Archer (4) TJ, Wonko, Drake, Kas
Drake (2): Archer, Archer
Sart (2): Mat, Mat
Stink (2): Araris, Araris
Araris (1):  Ash
Steel (1): TJ
Ash (0): Kas
Szeth (1): Ash
Kas (0): Sart,  TKN

Mat, Araris, Archer, Kas, Ashbringer, and Wonko were all elevated.

Everyone should have received a PM by now.

We will be adjusting the DP Punishment threshold this turn, adding in a tier for 3-4 DP and shifting the percentages up a tier. This will make expulsions a little easier. 

Month 3 has begun and will end in 45 hours, at 7PM Mountain Time. Good luck!

[Kasimir he/him]

[TAG: RP, 1044 words]

[OOC: Drakebro! D: D: Ok tbh I will fix all formatting later. Mostly grey, justification,  font, italics. At conference so mobile only. 23k ftw >>]

xxvii. fracture

Kevan half-shouldered, half-shoved the door open, and staggered out into the washroom. He made it just in time before he fell to his knees and was violently sick. 

There went breakfast, he found himself thinking inanely, even though he couldn’t seem to stop himself. There went breakfast, and then he was just bone dry, heaving convulsively over the waste receptacle that Re’lar Talin had pointed out to them, even before they’d begun the clinical observation session.

You saw things, on Yll. He wasn’t so sheltered from the reality of death as that. There were eagles and wolves that hunted sheep, and you had to kill them, and he knew that, had made the kill and the dressing himself, but to see mangled flesh exposed this way—compound fracture, Re’lar Talin had said, clinically, and probed, and now Kevan was about to be sick all over again.

He heard the sound of the door creaking open. “You alright, E’lir?” and Kevan’s blood ran cold as he recognised the voice. Oh merciful Tehlu, he’d done it now, if Master Bob himself had come to find him.

He was about to croak, “I’m fine,” but his stomach churned again and he was gagging back the taste of bile that flooded his mouth.

Next came the regular cadence of footsteps; he knew those by now, was attuned to Master Bob surveying the rows of students during practical, as they demonstrated bandaging, and stitching wounds on the carcasses (usually pig) commissioned for those sessions. 

“Focus on your breathing, E’lir,” Master Bob instructed, calmly. “Breathe as I count. Can you do that?”

“Yes, sir,” Kevan croaked.

He breathed in to the slow count, and out to the same count, trying to stop himself from gagging, trying to think of anything but the mess he’d made. His mind settled on the flow of the Omethi River as it rushed on beneath the Stonebridge, washing away all things: leaves, stones, boats, powerfully cleansing. It was a little like some of the mental exercises they’d had to do to master Sympathy, to develop the strength of conviction required for Alar, except at the same time, he was fighting against his own physical reflexes, and he knew there was only so much you could do (the case study here was binder’s chills, you were limited by what your body let you do, and right now his body only seemed to want to hurl, and he forced himself to steady his breathing, to try to hold it back, to breathe only as Master Bob counted, until he’d achieved some semblance of control again.)

The Master Physicker must’ve known the moment Kevan was feeling better, because he pressed a canteen into Kevan’s hands. “Swill it about your mouth, and spit,” he instructed. “Then drink the rest of it.”

Numbly, Kevan did so. His mouth flooded, thankfully, with the taste of mint. Obediently, he threw out the first mouthful, and then the second, and then, once he could no longer taste his own bile, he sipped at the mint-infused water.

“Feeling better?” Master Bob wanted to know.

Mutely, Kevan nodded. He did not know what to say. He couldn’t bring himself to meet Master Bob’s eyes. He felt ashamed, having fled the observation room so quickly. He didn’t think the rest of the student group had left at all. That only seemed to make things worse.

“Re’lar Talin mentioned that one of the E’lir was having difficulties,” Master Bob said, conversationally. “This, of course, was after some of the other E’lir were trying to tough it out, and then threw up in the observation room.”

Startled, Kevan looked up, and into the Master Physicker’s dark eyes. Master Bob, it was said, could project calm and reassurance, or utter irritation, depending on which side of him you got. Most of this term’s class had seen the irritated side of Master Bob, with things getting worse as the term wore on and there was no sign of the skindancers in their midst. (Except Jenali, Kevan’s mind reminded him—Jenali, if rumours were correct, driven mad either by Naming or by a skindancer and you never did know, did you?)

At the moment, Master Bob seemed as calm as the courtyard pond on a still day.

“There is nothing wrong with knowing your limits, E’lir Kevan,” Master Bob went on. He held out one hand. “There is a reason why Re’lar Talin told all of you where the washroom was. I expect students in my Medica to know their limits; to know when they cannot perform a surgery, or a procedure, to know when they cannot carry on.” He held out the other, a gesture of balance. “I also expect students in my Medica to be willing to work past their revulsion, or their own squeamishness. Like sympathy, physicking is not for the weak. This is your first time in my Medica, doing observation, am I correct?”

Kevan nodded quietly.

“Well, you won’t be the first E’lir to throw up while doing observations, and you’ll be far from the last E’lir to be doing so,” Master Bob stated. “What you have to decide is if this is something you can handle, or learn to deal with. And if you cannot…” He shrugged. “There are worse things in the world than walking away with a class or two in my Medica.”

He gestured. After a moment of blank confusion, Kevan handed him back the canteen.

“Think about it, E’lir Kevan. And now, I believe Re’lar Talin should have finished handling the rest of the E’lir batch and will be looking for you.”

Kevan knew a dismissal when he heard one. “I’ll get back to the observation room, sir.” He ran his hands under cold water from the tap, and then splashed some of it on his face. 

Water, running like the Omethi. Unperturbed, unchanging, except in the way that water changed, from moment to moment. One of the interpretations of the Lethani argued that past was an illusion, and the future was an illusion as well. The only thing that was real was the present. The only thing the water knew, Kevan thought, was the here and now. He held on to that in his mind, and kept his composure. “Thank you, sir.”

Edited August 1, 2023 by Kasimir