Quick Fix Game 20: Summitmist Manor

[Doc12]

I'm going to shift my vote to Juq 

Kyne   

I will explain my reasons next cycle, but it's mostly that I'm less certainty that kyne or arinian are Elims and I might as well force a tie. 

Sorry Hael 

[Haelbarde]

Hmm? Vote tally as I see it at the moment is:

Arinian(4): Nyali, JUQ, Kynedath, Alv
JUQ(3): Kas, Elenion, Doc
Kynedath(2): Arraenae, Arinian
Cloudjumper(2): Sart, Joe
Rae(1): Stink

Any mistakes?

[Kynedath]

1 minute ago, Haelbarde said:

Hmm? Vote tally as I see it at the moment is:

Arinian(4): Nyali, JUQ, Kynedath, Alv
JUQ(3): Kas, Elenion, Doc
Kynedath(2): Arraenae, Arinian
Cloudjumper(2): Sart, Joe
Rae(1): Stink

Any mistakes?

Not that I can see. 

[Alvron]

Ari. Cloud.  I'm not liking the fact that there doesn't seem to be anyone defending Ari so instead I'll make it a three way tie and leave it in the hands of the Gods of Luck and Chance.

Sorry Hael.

Edited December 16, 2016 by Alvron

[Haelbarde]

Cycle is closed.

And I guess it's sorta just as well I got distracted with bookkeeping, and hadn't actually written the write up yet...

[Haelbarde]

QF20 C3 - Taking flight

Tu was a bit confused as to why he even decided to come here. What was the point of the place if there were no cows to smuggle out of it? He’d checked. Thoroughly. But no cows, unless you counted the stuff in the cold room. Meant he was now dreadfully bored. He’d have to wait for people to either find the gold, or a way out. He supposed he could help, but that seemed too much effort. Instead he decided to take nap, and leave everyone to it. He didn’t hear everyone come to a bit of a standoff, before finally deciding to kill him, because at least the others were talking. Being asleep, he didn’t notice his own swift execution either.
 

---

“Hah!”

*Bonk*.

“Hisssss”

“Hehehehe!”

*Bonk*

“Here kitty kitty!”

“MMMRRROOOAAWWW!”

Apparently the staff could cast spells, but it was more fun poking Adarjmei with it. It had gotten quite the reaction the first time he’d done it. So Helchon had the thought, why not do it again? He found out the reason why not promptly. “Do not poke this cat! Adarjmei will catch you and claw out your eyes!”

So Helchon found himself running frantically from an angry Khajiit. Running up and down stairs, through corridors, throwing out the occasional illusion spell when he had the concentration for it. His downfall, however, was not from being caught by said cat. Rather, because he was looking over his shoulder to see if Adarjmei had caught up yet, he didn’t see someone stick their foot out, causing him to stumble, and then push him while attaching something to his back, as he careened forward, smashing through the glass window in front of him, and falling from an upperstorey to entryway floor below, as the shattered glass rained down around him. As the floor rushed up to meet him, he wondered why he’d never gotten around to learning the levitation spell…
 

---

When people finally made it back to the entrance, by some coincidence, the earth around the interior tree in the centre of the room had had a body sized ditch dug into it, and Helchon had managed to land in it perfectly. There was a piece of paper with a black handprint stuck to his back.
 

---

Cloudjumper was lynched. He was a Guest. He had 250 gold, a Staff, a copy of ‘Guide to Skingrad’, and Huntsman Moccasins.
Doc was killed. He was a Guest. He had 700 gold, a Mage’s Staff of Silence, and White Mage’s Shoes.

@Assassin in Burgundy did not post and no longer has a free pass.
@Darkness Ascendant has lost their free pass for not contributing to game discussion (what posts have been made could maybe be seen as RP, but I’m going to require more than that to offset not contributing to game discussion)

Vote Tally
Arinian(3): Nyali, JUQ, Kynedath
JUQ(3): Kas, Elenion, Doc
Kynedath(2): Arraenae, Arinian
Cloudjumper(3): Sart, Joe, Alv
Rae(1): Stink

 

Stink(0): Alv{1}
Arinian(3): Kas{1}, Nyali{1}, JUQ{1}, Kynedath{1}, Alv{2}
Stick(0): Arinian{1}
Joe(0): Kas{2}
JUQ(3): Kas{3}, Elenion{1}, Doc{2}
Kynedath(2): Doc{1}, Magestar{1}, Arinian{2}, Arraenae{1}, Arinian{4}
Cloudjumper(3): Sart{1}, Joe{1}, Alv{3}
Rae(1): Stink{1}, Arinian{3}

Lootcrate

 

> 950 gold
> a copy of ‘The Five Tenets’
> Silver Mace
> Staff
> a copy of ‘Guide to Skingrad’
> Huntsman Moccasins
> Mage’s Staff of Silence
> White Mage’s Shoes

Burnt Spaghetti has taken the Glass Boots from the loot crate.

Cycle ends in ~24 hours.

Quick Links

 

Rules
Cycle 1 – Whodunit?
Cycle 2 – Note a worry
Cycle 3 - Taking flight

Player List

 

1. Glathir (The Only Joe in the Bush) a paranoid, slightly homicidal Bosmer
2. Stormblessed (Mesa the Ookla / Darkness Ascendant) an illegitimate beggar
3. Sartinia (Sart) a high elf who has lost their way
4. Boris (Elenion) has a drinking problem
5. Thendir (Magestar) a Dunmer, and Magister of House Telvanhi
6. Arinian (Arinian)
7. Fjord (Assassin in Burgundy) is a Khajit escaped from a collector
8. Lyce Norvo (Kynedath) is an antisocial Dark Elf 
9. Helchon (Doc) an Altmer
10. Tu (cloudjumper) is a mysterious cow smuggler
11. Stub-Tail (Alvron) a Saxhleel
12. Stick (I am a Stick)
13. Kipper (Kipper) Kipper
14. Guilty (Elodin) until proven otherwise, but innocently harmless.
15. Innocent (Ecthelion) probably. Seems sus though.
16. Galerion (OrlokTsubodai) is a reserved Altmer.
17. Rhea (Nyali) is a Breton scholar obsessed with Dwemer technology.
18. Jayjay (Arraenae) is a little Paranoid.
19. Zelda (TheMightyLopen) is a wise Sagemer
20. Adarjmei (Burnt Spaghetti) is a kleptomaniac kitty khajiit.
21. Kjartan & Mus (Kasimir), the Boot(s?) of Stendarr
22. John (JUQ) general
23. Ladric (Stink) is a blank slate

Edited December 17, 2016 by Alvron

[Elenion]

I would like that money, please.

Analysis to come.

[Haelbarde]

I think I've said it would be a first come first serve thing, but I think it's fairer if everyone who wants stuff comes to an agreement of how it's shared.

[A Joe in the Bush]

I will claim the Mage's staff of Silence if this is how we're playing it.

[Kynedath]

Well, I mean, I'm currently broke, so I'd like to have the money if at all possible. I literally started the game off with 25 gold.

[Nyali]

So, last cycle, three people were tied. One of them would be lynched at random. I think all three were villagers, because if one was an elim, wouldn't at least one of the other elims have added a vote to one of the other two villagers, rather than leaving the loss of a teammate to chance? This gives me a slight trust toward JUQ and Arinian.

[Assassin in Burgundy]

8 minutes ago, Nyali said:

So, last cycle, three people were tied. One of them would be lynched at random. I think all three were villagers, because if one was an elim, wouldn't at least one of the other elims have added a vote to one of the other two villagers, rather than leaving the loss of a teammate to chance? This gives me a slight trust toward JUQ and Arinian.

How would they have added a vote without it being recorded? There is that one thing they can do, but isn't that only once per game? They probably wouldn't have used that up in the first lynch, especially if it's only a chance one of them would get lynched. 

[Nyali]

2 minutes ago, Assassin in Burgundy said:

How would they have added a vote without it being recorded? There is that one thing they can do, but isn't that only once per game? They probably wouldn't have used that up in the first lynch, especially if it's only a chance one of them would get lynched. 

That's not at all what I meant. I meant adding a vote by, you know, voting  Either one who hadn't voted yet voting for a villager, or one who had voted moving their vote to a villager, before the end of the cycle.

[A Joe in the Bush]

Or, they weren't online after the tie formed.

[Colour=blue]on mobile for the next 4 hours, so expect only very short posts like this.[/colour]

[Elenion]

Boris sauntered into the room, walking just slightly off-kilter. "I smell a rodent. Right now, we're milling around in packs like wild dogs, and we're getting nowhere. We need a new approach. We've rehashed the same names over and over again: JUQ, Kynedath, Arinian. And while I'm fairly sure that one of those three is an Assassin, we have little proof to tell the safe from the sinister, although I do lean towards JUQ being the Assassin. I suggest that we find new suspects: players who have acted suspiciously but about whom discussion has died. These, in my experience, tend to be eliminators."

He stopped for long enough to take a sip of wine.

"Whatever happened to that suspicion on STINK? That whole business about Alv feeling that this game was like Hael's previous? And STINK contributing to the chatter a lot more than some of us would expect?"

[Sart]

Then again, it was also a fairly late vote switch on to Cloudjumper. I'm disappointed that he was a villager, as he was my best lead. I was beginning to worry since he wasn't posting, but I suspected that he was lying low to avoid suspicion.

Surprisingly, this actually makes me trust Alvron more. If Alvron was an eliminator, his actions make no sense. Suppose Arinian and Alvron are both evil. Then Alvron placing a fourth vote on Arinian endangers his own teammate for no reason. Sure he retracted it, but there wasn't a guarantee that someone else would jump on the Arinian train. On the other hand, suppose Arinian is innocent, and Alvron is evil. Then he had no incentive to switch the vote to Cloud. A last-minute change is generally suspicious, and I don't see eliminator Alvron wanting to draw attention to himself. Therefore, I trust Alvron. This could be totally wrong, obviously, but I'm confident in that assessment.

In regards to the lynch, several people have expressed suspicion of Stick, so I'd like to hear her thoughts. I know she's claimed to be playing differently than last game, but she's reading as evil to me this game. On Cycle 1, he didn't do anything other than RP, which isn't bad, but it's a little to easy to hide in the shadows doing that. Then on Cycle 2, she said this:

Quote

Looks like Kynedath's getting lynched, I'm fine with that. Tho last minute votes always exist. I've decided not to vote this cycle unless my vote's needed. And I don't wanna be one of the people held responsible if Kynedath's a villager.

Voting is the only way the village can actually win, so it concerns me when someone says that they won't vote. Voting patterns are key to understanding motivations and lead to finding eliminators when they are inconsistent. In addition, she was extremely defensive when only one vote and a question were directed at her. Sure, she may be posting more, but I don't think her posts have any substance to them. So Stick, please cast a vote on someone. I want to see who you think is suspicious.

[Alvron]

Hmm, there seems to be a few items missing from the Lootcrate.  If possible, I'll take the hidden Grand Soul Gem.  If not possible, the Silver Mace will do.

What do people think of having another tie vote this round?  We pick three people that haven't been up for the lynch lately and see which one the Gods of Luck and Chance frown on.  I'm even willing to be one of the three.

[Haelbarde]

I think the only thing missing is the Soul Gem. I'll add it when I'm next on PC

[Kasimir]

I'm currently still doing a bit of reading, so I'll come back to this in a bit, but Joe's comment earlier struck me as being a bit odd, and I wanted to say something about it:

I'm guessing 4-5 Eliminators for this game, going either by the 1/5th rule, or Meta's square-root rule. I'm going to work with the assumption there are 5, because it's better to overestimate when figuring out how much breathing room we have, as compared to underestimating. To make it clear, this therefore assumes we began this game with 18 Villagers (23-5). At this point, we've lost 4 Villagers, putting us 14 : 5.

I want to say we have a decent amount of breathing room, because we have a buffer of about 8* people between us and the Eliminators. (I say 8 because I kind of disagree with Joe dismissing the ability of the Eliminators to put a quick hammer as a completely end-game strategy. It's all going to depend on the end-game dynamics. So. Here's a scenario that assumes we're 6 to the Eliminator 5. But the Village is not voting unanimously - our votes are scattered. The Eliminators put in a hammer, and now we're 5-5. They can effectively just tie us the next cycle, and go for the kill. Of course, this requires perfect activity from Eliminators and Villagers, which is unlikely. That could complicate things. Here's an example of how this could be complicated - say we're actually 6 - 5 or 7 - 5. But it's nearing the end of the cycle, and one or two inactives are likely to get killed by the filter. Cue quick hammer. So I really want to make two points about this: I think Joe is being too dismissive (by design?) - I think that as the game drags on, whichever of us is still around to see the late mid-game or the endgame has to be wary because the Village can't afford to be blindsided that way, if it should pass. We especially need to keep an eye on inactivity, and especially the sort that means someone is going to be filter-killed.)

So essentially, I think two things affect our buffer: inactives getting filter-killed, and how close we are to the critical point when the Eliminators could, in theory, force-vote their way to victory. Still, it's fair to say that we have a bit of breathing room, at this point. (Proper analysis later, I promise.)

---

More deaths. One of them was the nasty Altmer. Kjartan did not care. The Altmer was fond of talking. Why, Kjartan did not know. But you could never trust Altmer, they relied on magery, and surely that was a bare step away from necromancy and Daedra-worship! His hand was reaching to the hilt of his claymore, to give that stuck-up high elf a boot to the rear in Stendarr's name, when Mus squeaked urgently.

"You are not saying--"

Another squeak. Kjartan sighed heavily, squeezed the hilt of his sword, and let go. "Kjartan understands," he said, reluctantly, The Altmer would have to be given the Boot of Stendarr another time. There was more, urgent evil to be found and vanquished in this Manor! "We will go then, Mus." With surprising gentleness, he scooped up the well-fed mouse, and stalked away from the gathering, back into the corridors of the Manor.

Let the others gabber on about the stabby stabby assassins in their midst. Kjartan and Mus stood ready to vanquish the forces of evil!

[Stick.]

I just discovered that Lopen wanted to have a white text conversation . Te he. 

6 hours ago, Sart said:

In regards to the lynch, several people have expressed suspicion of Stick, so I'd like to hear her thoughts. I know she's claimed to be playing differently than last game, but she's reading as evil to me this game. On Cycle 1, he didn't do anything other than RP, which isn't bad, but it's a little to easy to hide in the shadows doing that.

I never RP'ed lol

6 hours ago, Sart said:

Voting is the only way the village can actually win, so it concerns me when someone says that they won't vote. Voting patterns are key to understanding motivations and lead to finding eliminators when they are inconsistent. In addition, she was extremely defensive when only one vote and a question were directed at her. Sure, she may be posting more, but I don't think her posts have any substance to them. So Stick, please cast a vote on someone. I want to see who you think is suspicious.

I...this was my reaction to Arinian's vote:

Quote

also, @Arinian I almost didn't notice that vote you put on me XD Why do you suspect me?

Arinian voted on me last as well, to which I expressed no reaction at all :-P I'd say you're confused, Sart. That kinda makes me want to trust you, since an elim's posts are always well thought through...

So. I guess I agree with Nyali: I think it's safe to say that JUQ and Arinian aren't elims, because the elims wouldn't put one of their own in a risk of getting lynched like that. Now if Doc hadn't been killed, I would've placed my vote on either Kynedath or Doc right away, since last cycle doc unexpectedly changed his vote without any explanation, which seemed as if he were trying to save Kynedath from the coin flip. But since Doc's now a confirmed villager, I don't see why he removed his vote from Kynedath and on to JUQ, but it does tell me that if he hadn't, Kynedath would've been part of the coin flip too, and I didn't see anyone defending him either. That makes me a little less suspicious of Kynedath.

My current suspicions are Joe, Alv, Len, and kinda Rae and Stink too. Though I don't have solid reasons for suspecting any of them. They're all gut reads and guesses. Sue me.

Edited December 16, 2016 by I_am_a_Stick
Sorry Doc :-P

[Kasimir]

1 minute ago, I_am_a_Stick said:

So. I guess I agree with Nyali: I think it's safe to say that JUQ and Arinian aren't elims, because the elims wouldn't put one of their own in a risk of getting lynched like that. Now of Doc hadn't been killed, I would've placed my vote on either Kynedath or Doc right away, since last cycle doc unexpectedly changed his vote without any explanation, which seemed as if he were trying to save Kynedath from the coin flip. But since Doc's now a confirmed elim, I don't see why he removed his vote from Kynedath and on to JUQ, but it does tell me that if he hadn't, Kynedath would've been part of the coin flip too, and I didn't see anyone defending him either. That makes me a little less suspicious of Kynedath.

My current suspicions are Joe, Alv, Len, and kinda Rae and Stink too. Though I don't have solid reasons for suspecting any of them. They're all gut reads and guesses. Sue me.

Holy Batman, are we even playing the same game?  (Emphases mine)

I do think it's well worth going back to the Ecthelion lynch, and what people have said about it. Earlier, I disagreed with the claim there is likely an Eliminator on the Ecthelion lynch. I do think we can't tell that immediately, because just as it is plausible that at least one Eliminator voted for Ecthelion, it is also plausible that no Eliminator did, and they just watched us and loled at the mess. So, five people: A. Elenion, B. myself, C. Kynedath, D. Alvron, and E. Nyali.

Let's accept JUQ's claim for now as a working assumption, and see where that gets us. (This, of course, will be flagged as an assumption.) Alvron put down a vote with a blatant "no real reason, just hopping the bandwagon." At the risk of being overcharitable and reading too much into this, I have a guess as to what Alvron's reason was: probably something to do about seeing if anyone made a last-minute fuss about bandwagoning, or if a counter-wagon sprang up to try to save Ecthelion. Except that he claimed to agree with Elenion, so a bit of both? (I'm having difficulty making full sense of this.)

Nyali's an interesting case, because her vote went down quickly [0751 hrs for me] and went off just as quickly [Lopen's post came through at 0754; Nyali removed her vote at 0810hrs.] It could be either case, IMO: a show-vote to indicate engagement in the game, or responsiveness to countervailing evidence (i.e. being a good Villager.) I'm not really sure which it is at the moment, but I do want to highlight that, because what's striking is that no one else removed their vote, given Lopen's clarification.

So. On to myself. What I can say for myself is that my reasoning relied on the critical - but ultimately false - assumption that flavour items were allocated according to our character, including what we were in the game. Hence, for someone to have an item closely associated with the Dark Brotherhood seemed to indicate they were actually an in-game Assassin. What's key is that people who call this silly reasoning or illogical don't seem to dispute the inference - they seem to dispute the initial assumption in the first place. But enough of that. As I've explained, I really dropped the ball hard on this one in reading the M'Hael's clarification thoroughly. Whether or not that is convincing is not for me to decide. What I do claim though is that I went to bed after a late LG28 rollover, and so missed most of the late shenanigans here. Had I in fact caught wind of Lopen's post, I would have dropped my vote, since my initial assumption was false. (Again, whether you think that is a convincing claim is up to you. But I think it's a pertinent point for me, because we want to look at whose vote was responsive to countervailing evidence, and whose wasn't.)

Kynedath has been heavily discussed, for issues with the reasoning behind her opening vote on Lopen, as well as switching quickly to Ecthelion. (Same link.) I'm going to assume that what Arraenae is really trying to accuse Kynedath of, since she never quite came out and said it, is of matching an Eliminator eager to get someone - just anyone, really - lynched. My issue with that line of reasoning is more or less the same as my reply to Elodin, which is that if and unless a fellow Eliminator was on the line, I don't really see why an Eliminator would need to be so specious in placing votes. Perhaps there's something to be said for hiding one's self on a bandwagon, but it seems to me that an Eliminator would not need to go so aggressively after Lopen (note: this is my read/framework, you are welcome to dispute it, and I would encourage disputation because you shouldn't be buying what someone else is selling without reason, and even then) because there were many other good candidates to go after! Kipper, for instance. Or Magestar. As I said, a cheap way to rack up 'Village participation points' is to just place a vote on an inactive and come back once in a while to swap to another inactive, without ever having contributed much to discussion. There's really no reason or need to go after Lopen so aggressively. This doesn't mean Kynedath can't be an Eliminator, but this does mean that this line of inference doesn't quite offer as much evidential support to the conclusion that Kynedath is an Eliminator as has been suggested.

What's telling, though, is that Kynedath's reason for not shifting her vote from Ecthelion is information. And I'm not quite sure I agree with that. Simply put: not all lynches are equal. Let's say we all agreed to sit down and lynch DA at the end of this cycle. Would we gain information from that? Certainly. As much information as lynching Arinian? No. Not all lynches bring the same amount of information. For no other reason than the fact that he has been so thoroughly discussed, a lynch of Arinian would offer more information than a lynch of DA. (As I've previously mentioned, I would not be opposed to an Arinian lynch just to resolve the issue for once and for all, but that's strictly on an informational basis, rather than with where my suspicions are.) Would a lynch of Ecthelion have been extremely information-rich? Maybe. I'm not really sure about that one. Kynedath certainly thinks the Ecthelion lynch was the most information-rich of all possible lynches that day. I'd like to hear why.

Last person: Elenion. And this is where things get really interesting. When I was reading today's posts, Elenion's stood out the most to me. Now, it's hard to quite articulate why: on the one hand, he does have a point. One piece of Meta's advice I always try to follow is keeping suspicions fluid. So, if you're in a hole, stop digging. If you've been talking about the same three suspects all cycle, maybe think about other suspects too. But that doesn't seem to be the same as completely sweeping past suspicions under the carpet, and there's a hint of that to Elenion's talk - if you genuinely think one of <JUQ, Arinian, Kynedath> is an Eliminator, then why on earth would you just completely ignore them and open an entirely new discussion on STINK?

This strikes me especially odd in light of Elenion's words on Ecth, after the Lopen post (recall, Elenion was one of those who didn't switch.) "I'll keep my vote on, however, because even without the tenets, Ecth's tone still has me reading him as an elim, and I don't want to run the risk of letting him go." (Emphases mine.) Why the sudden change of attitude, then? That's just strange. It would have been nice to have heard more about what of Ecth's tone set Elenion off, but even so, his insistence on not letting a potential Eliminator go just seems weird in light of his attitude towards <JUQ, Arinian, Kynedath> this cycle.
 

5 hours ago, Elenion said:

Boris sauntered into the room, walking just slightly off-kilter. "I smell a rodent. Right now, we're milling around in packs like wild dogs, and we're getting nowhere. We need a new approach. We've rehashed the same names over and over again: JUQ, Kynedath, Arinian. And while I'm fairly sure that one of those three is an Assassin, we have little proof to tell the safe from the sinister, although I do lean towards JUQ being the Assassin. I suggest that we find new suspects: players who have acted suspiciously but about whom discussion has died. These, in my experience, tend to be eliminators."

He stopped for long enough to take a sip of wine.

"Whatever happened to that suspicion on STINK? That whole business about Alv feeling that this game was like Hael's previous? And STINK contributing to the chatter a lot more than some of us would expect?"

What actually surprises me most of everything thus far is your flagging STINK's contribution/analysis as weird/suspicious. I would think that of all people playing this game, you would know better than to be astonished that STINK is capable of doing so. But this goes a bit too far into LG28 territory, and so I'm going to step back from here, lest I break the information embargo and get Wyrm really annoyed at me >> But I do want some kind of answer to my questions, and so: Elenion.
 

[Stick.]

48 minutes ago, Kasimir said:

Holy Batman, are we even playing the same game?  (Emphases mine)

Oops. Let me just edit that... XD

[Darkness Ascendant]

Umm.. Free pass?

[Assassin in Burgundy]

8 hours ago, Nyali said:

That's not at all what I meant. I meant adding a vote by, you know, voting  Either one who hadn't voted yet voting for a villager, or one who had voted moving their vote to a villager, before the end of the cycle.

But wouldn't it have still shown up in the vote count?

[Nyali]

2 hours ago, Kasimir said:

Nyali's an interesting case, because her vote went down quickly [0751 hrs for me] and went off just as quickly [Lopen's post came through at 0754; Nyali removed her vote at 0810hrs.] It could be either case, IMO: a show-vote to indicate engagement in the game, or responsiveness to countervailing evidence (i.e. being a good Villager.) I'm not really sure which it is at the moment, but I do want to highlight that, because what's striking is that no one else removed their vote, given Lopen's clarification.

If you need to know my exact reasons for posting the way I did, well, my time for SE is sporadic between work and baby. I had literally just gotten home from work and had a second to check the forums and make a quick post before the baby needed a diaper change. I checked the forums afterward again, saw Lopen's post, and responded to it. But, I only had a moment to do so before dinner was ready, and I needed to go feed the baby. I get home really late some nights, and this happened to be one of them.

I'm also surprised that no one else removed their votes in light of Lopen's post.

 

EDIT:

1 minute ago, Assassin in Burgundy said:

But wouldn't it have still shown up in the vote count?

Umm, yes. My entire point is that they didn't vote to save any of the three.

Edited December 16, 2016 by Nyali