Long Game 90: Undiluted Powers

[Araris Valerian he/him]

Edven Tyrian's ancestor had founded Tyrian Falls, back when the Lord Ruler was first establishing the Final Empire. But Edven would not be the one to see his forefather's work undone. Edven's body was laid out in the street, a sword-wound across his chest. The mountain of evidence pointing to his association with the Spiked was enough that he had been killed without even an entire day's deliberation, and the remaining townsfolk stood around the corpse in a circle. Tyrian Falls wasn't a large town to begin with, and even with the members of caravans that had been trapped by Lord Penrod's orders, there weren't many of them left. Just as the grim faces began to lighten a bit from the defeat of the Spiked, a mighty roar sounded from outside the walls. The Koloss were attacking.

Destroyer and Disaster stood ready upon the wall with Ora as the blue-grey forms of the Koloss charged their position. None of them had served in the army, and so all of their knowledge of the creatures came from stories. The stories didn't do justice to the massive beasts, some of which topped ten feet in height, with ripped skin and too-bright blood dripping from the tears. As the Koloss reached the base of the wall, some began to batter on the gate, while the larger ones simply leapt the wall and engaged the garrison directly.

Ora stabilized herself against a crenelation as she pulled against the massive blade swinging down at Destroyer, who was expertly slinging coins into eyes and chests, dropping her targets more often than not. Destroyer severed the arm holding the blade with her own weapon, then, burning pewter and steel, pushed the still-enraged monster from the walls. Disaster covered their backs, parrying a blow from a smaller beast that had approached from the opposite side.

The three fought as best they could, for what seemed like hours, with Simeon and Felix bringing water and metals to replenish their reserves as the town's soldiers defended other parts of the wall. But nobody, not even allomancers as talented as these, could defend against such an onslaught forever. Eventually one massive Koloss bowled through the two pewter-users and swung it's blade like a club, smashing Ora to the wall's walkway, then readying a killing blow.

And then the Koloss just stopped. All of them. Ora groaned, the noise standing out in the sudden absence of the ruckus of battle, as she felt at her ribs. From her back, she saw a dark speck in the sky slowly resolve into the figure of a man. He was tall, with dark hair and metal adornments on his hands, signs of the power he wielded. The Lord Ruler. He alighted on the wall, gazing at the destruction wrought both by the attack and the recent sabotage, and his eyes fell upon the five defenders that had stood to the last.

There was no verbal acknowledgment, but the Lord Ruler nodded his head toward them in respect, before taking to the sky again, using a fallen sword as his anchor. And without much of a sound, the remaining Koloss walked back out the shattered gate, leaving the survivors to pick up the pieces.

Far away, in a cavern that no person had visited for many years, a dark form raged in its prison, furious that ruin had not been fully listed on Tyrian Falls. Yet it had not been foiled completely, for Adam's research was hidden well, and future Spiked could gather when there was nobody to contest control of the Koloss. A reckoning would come, and on that day not one stone would stand upon another after the destruction he would visit there.

---

The Unknown Novel (Edven Tyrian) was a Spiked Vanilla! The Village has won!

Thank you everyone for playing, and to @Elandera for being my IM. I had a lot of fun running this game, and will give my thoughts sometime when life isn't quite as crazy.

Player List:

Spoiler

1. Matrim's Dice (Adam) Spiked Seeker
2. Ashbringer (AraRaash) Village Mistborn
3. The Wandering Wizard (Too Big Dancer) Spiked Rioter
4. Whysper/Conquestor (Simeon Venture) Village Smoker
5. The Unknown Novel (Edven Tyrian) Spiked Vanilla
6. Illwei (The Best Destroyer) Village Mistborn
7. Shining Silhouette (Terrific Birthday Disaster) Village Thug
8. Cinnamon (Evenlyn Royale) Village Coinshot
9. JNV (Atelos) Village Vanilla
10. shadow1 (Shadowblob) Village Tineye
11. The Aspiring Archivist (Thoughtful Book Dude) Spiked Smoker
12. Just a Silvereye (Felix) Village Seeker
13. dannnnnnex (Terrible Breath Dispensation) Spiked Mistborn
14. xinoehp512 (Tiny Bearded Dwarf) Village Tineye
15. Archer/Devotary (Ora) Village Lurcher
16. The Bookwyrm (Rylim Libran) Village Vanilla
17. Turtle (Tortoise By Day) Village Vanilla
18. _Stick_ (;eyes;) Village Soother
19. Kasimir (Koren) Village Smoker
20. Alvron (Riven) Village Vanilla

Doc Links:

Spoiler

Elim Doc

Dead Doc A
Dead Doc B

Master Spreadsheet

Edited November 10, 2022 by Araris Valerian

[---]

Archer i HATE YOU SJKAHFDKSJHFJDKSLFHLKDS

 

you don't understand how much that FREAKED ME OUT and CONFUSED ME lmfao

 

anyways ggs guys this was a fun game :P. and well played elims :P.

EDIT:

2 minutes ago, Araris Valerian said:

Dead Doc A
Dead Doc B

omg i haven't even clicked them yet but this is your doing kas, isn't it

Edited November 7, 2022 by Illwei

[Ashbringer he/him]

Is that two dead docs I see?

Huh. Wonder how that happened 

[+Whysper she/her]

 

16 minutes ago, Illwei said:

anyways ggs guys this was a fun game :P. and well played elims :P.

Nice, way to go!  Yeah, the Elims did really well but eventually got cornered with no way to really get out of that.

[Mat he/him]

Not much to say ig, I ranted in both docs enough xD But it was tough to go from virtually sure of a win to completely destroyed in literally five minutes :P.

Good job village :D. And I had a lot of fun with my awesome team <3

[The Unknown Order he/him]

23 minutes ago, Ashbringer said:

Is that two dead docs I see?

Huh. Wonder how that happened 

Technically, there are two elim docs too (my fault), but one got copy pasted into the second. 

[The Wandering Wizard he/him]

I don't have a clue how there got to be two

It was really fun to be evil, for what felt like the frist time truely, because now I have seen both sides...and I still don't understand everything.

Thank's for running it @Araris Valerian!

[Kasimir he/him]

1 hour ago, Illwei said:

omg i haven't even clicked them yet but this is your doing kas, isn't it

You're not gonna believe me when I say this but it was already like that when I got there... 

Died N1, got held up in the traffic, you know?

[The Unknown Order he/him]

Quote

*is tempted to post a VC with just TUN having 999 votes*

I see that Araris, trying to abuse your GM powers over here.

[The Bookwyrm he/him]

This was fun!

As this was my first SE game, I've learned that I have a lot to learn, and that no one yet knows what is suspicious for me and what isn't.

So, I will be playing a lot more SE in the future.

Thanks to everyone!

[JNV]

This was fun but you know what was more fun going into the dead doc to find out the legion of ghosts was convinced you were evil and built their whole case around a quokka thats really fun also yeah Kasimir I admire your verbosity butalso like a tiny bit of fear how do you have the words like I have a wobbly mess of words and I cant come close

[Archer he/him]

Cool, Shining was a Thug. That's less of a deus ex machina than the sudden appearance of an alignment scanner late in the game, but it would have been a good insurance asset

1 hour ago, Illwei said:

you don't understand how much that FREAKED ME OUT and CONFUSED ME lmfao

:D. I wouldn't hammer that far out from rollover. Also, hopefully you caught onto the fakeness of the anger from that earlier post - I was just seeding disinformation.

Quote

Like all common sense says to not do what the village just did and they’re benefiting from it and we’re screwed. That should not have happened.

 Found my quote of the game already. A close second is:

Quote

I’m not scared of archer anymore, he’s vil reading most of us lmao

Thanks for letting me sub in, Devo.

Quote

I hope Archer does something with my characters. They didn’t have arcs necessarily but there was more I could have done with them.

sorrrry

Quote

What is Sociology then

The study of society. :P. We aim to see the general in the particular, which means the social forces behind individual actions. Generally the goal is to critique the social forces that produce inequities. For example, in heteronormative single vehicle households, husbands often have dibs on use of the car. This act of male privilege allows men to travel further for work, which expands their job prospects and allows them to accrue more wealth. That's an unjust outcome we can link to systemic sexism, classism, and automobilism. 

9 minutes ago, JNV said:

This was fun but you know what was more fun going into the dead doc to find out the legion of ghosts was convinced you were evil and built their whole case around a quokka thats really fun also yeah Kasimir I admire your verbosity butalso like a tiny bit of fear how do you have the words like I have a wobbly mess of words and I cant come close

I need to make a game around the concept of Kas being a confirmed good player who can only talk in a publicly viewable doc. That's... a lot of pages!

Anyway, I really enjoyed this game. Everyone played well, especially the new people! Thanks for running this, Araris, Elandera. 

[Shining Silhouette he/him]

That was the best hour of my life.

Thank you everyone who contributed to the elim and dead docs, I had a blast :D.

First of all, @Araris Valerian, thank you for the wonderful game. That was definitely a highlight in my SE career so far.

 

This made me laugh:

Spoiler

Technically I think of neutral as mixed signals- like one thing gives me elim vibes and another vil but they balance out- and null is nothing at all.

 

@Kasimir, I love that when I was evil my "vil" tone kept throwing you off and now it appears my tone here was totally throwing you off again. 

If you hadn't been NK'd, you definitely would've gotten me exed :P. Heck reading that doc even I believed you!

So many of my plays just don't make sense, I realize. Gotta work on that I suppose.

Any tips?

 

@Matrim's Dice, thanks for being my meta buddy early game. I genuinely appreciated your thoughts, even though you were evil.

Got pocketed easily and I'll be more wary in the future :P.

 

 @Illwei, good job pointing us towards the Archivist kill- whatever your reason was, it helped

 

I'd also like to congratulate the new players on a good first game- here's to hoping for many more!

 

I also love my 'prophesy' from D1

Quote

If we think about it logically and use a little bit of ancient wisdom, we remember that:

"First is the best, second is the worst

Third is the one who is always cursed

Fourth is the one who dives headfirst"

 

Thus, using the order in which we posted:

Me (Shining): I'm going to have a fun game

TUN: Self-admitted murderer, nothing else to say about it

Mat: Probably going to get voted out for absolutely no reason

Archivist: The whole game will go all out on a read made D1

Kind of hilarious the way y'all were actually all elims

 

 

[Mat he/him]

11 minutes ago, Shining Silhouette said:

@Matrim's Dice, thanks for being my meta buddy early game. I genuinely appreciated your thoughts, even though you were evil.

Got pocketed easily and I'll be more wary in the future :P.

Of course! Those thoughts were all valid, independent of my alignment  Pocketing you was fun and yes, easy :P. I enjoyed seeing how you refused to elim read me till just about the very end.

[---]

Quote

Illwei’s TWW kill was clutch too. Illwei has won this game for the vil based on extreme luck and tbh i respect that.

I don’t, I’m just annoyed lol

Right, Luck, that's why i went to champs :P.

I already explained why the gamestate pointed the way it did, love seeing all the elim salt at me, it's nice :P.

Quote

Tbf we’ll never see the world in which Illwei was wrong because we live in the world where Illwei was right. I think this is what annoys me more than anything else lol It’s entirely possible that in that world, the Village does complain that Illwei made the wrong call and threw away the EoD on a sudden side-train. But I think it’s just as possible that in that world where Archivist is Village, Illwei…doesn’t bet the farm on Archivist. Just don’t feel like we know enough to say.

But yeah, I mean, it's happened before, but in a lobby of newer players where I think mat is an elim, I think my choice was perfectly fine. I trusted my clears for the most part, and it partly came down to who i thought could be partnered with eachother. I had a village read on both Shining and Silver and them wanting to go for Archivist made it possible. I wouldn't have tried if shining and silver had the same views on archivist but i had different reads on them. I also wouldn't have went if the wagons were over 2 people, but both wagons being at 2 for maj of the day? with very little discussion? thats an environment in which the elims (reminder, 4 of them) felt comfortable, for one reason or another. Regardless of whether it was because of villagers or thugs.

So I made a decision based on the gamestate (comfortable elims, leading wagons likely not hits), my reads (individually on archivist, silver, and shining), and the likely player comp on the team. 

Do other people want me to listen to their reads? probably. Do I want people to listen to my reads? Probably. But ignoring my reads for the sake of the collective PoE when it's comprised of a half dozen newer players and 4 Elims (possibly overlapping) is a silly decision to me when I should always trust myself over that.

But yeah, there is the chance that I'm just wrong, that's how the game works. I've learned to trust myself when i get the courage to though, and this game didn't make me think I need to do otherwise yet.

Quote

In any case, going from a vote to “outside PoE” in just over 24 hours is something I’d look into quite strongly.

I'm gonna say this and it won't be the last time, progression cases are often innacurate. Villagers change reads way more randomly than Elims usually, with Elims wanting to maintain that theoretical good progression.

And even if you can't really see it, it's still there in what they show about what they reread and whatnot.

Quote

I would be interested if Mat won that thread war about claiming to have scanned Illwei as E!Mistborn. It…could be done, but my current read of the thread dynamics is that I don’t know he quite has enough trust for it. I also don’t think Mat’s response is tonally or emotionally right for a Village player who was supposedly scanned, but Stick and I have talked about this with regard to why Mat and Stick’s PM about Mat being a V!Seeker didn’t really make sense.

The path there for Mat would be to immediately question me instead of rolling over. I was waiting anxiously (as araris can probably attest to) for a PM from mat along the lines of "what's your play here" or whatnot, because there's no reason for him to turn on me when I'm confirmed in his eyes (and shining's). I also do agree that if he went full out he might have been able to get away with it, but he hedged, and not to mention shining was a confidant of his.

Quote

V!Mat would PM Illwei as well demanding to know what the hell is going on.

There we go, yeah :P.

Quote

 can’t remember how good Illwei is with that, but IIRC, she’s not half bad

While it's still in the back of my mind, at some point in the game interactions with other players become useless and potentially hurtful to read into. I mean, depends on skill level and gamestate but in general.

 

I also do think i would have been a better kill earlier on if the Elims wanted to win- even later on, because i think convincing Archer or Cin or Whysper to turn on eachother would have been easier than killing cin when I was never moving from my whysper clear and my archer clear, when they weren't technically mech cleared.

--

@Turtle sorry for not responding to ur pm :((( i didn't PM anyone until I reached out to archer and shadow when archer replaced in.

@Shining Silhouette I'm continually more impressed by your play each game I see you in :). Pleasure playing with you.

WRT the "subject to change" thing that kept pinging me too, but skill level has to be taken into account tbh.

Anyways that's plenty for me to post in an aftermath so if anyone has questions I can answer them but I have no real obligation to just like no one has any real obligation or pull to ask them. since, you know, the game is over :P.

Anyways, as i said:

Preface this by saying that the whole post i wrote at Rollover on the night i shot wiz was completely because I needed to figure out who to shoot, and that's why i never continued off of it fully. (not cohesively)

I'd basically submit a kill on someone, and then read through their posts and try to convince myself not to kill them, which is why despite submitting kill orders for xino and Silver, you don't (or shouldn't? idk did i push xino after this? I didn't believe my xino push none of them though so like lol idr them) I don't kill them and end up finding them as villagers- but you see me revisiting danex, archivist, and wizard more than once.

If this isn't legal let me know, but the game's over and I pretty much don't care about people trying to use this somehow to push me in another game sometime.

Spoiler

(it wasn't the last one)

 

[Shining Silhouette he/him]

12 minutes ago, Matrim's Dice said:

Of course! Those thoughts were all valid, independent of my alignment  Pocketing you was fun and yes, easy :P. I enjoyed seeing how you refused to elim read me till just about the very end.

I was thinking scanner was a V role until Illwei clarified (whoops!) and whenever E!Mat crossed my mind I just figured I'd deal with it later and keep getting info from you- but yeah I did get deep pocketed :P.

[Mat he/him]

19 minutes ago, Illwei said:

I already explained why the gamestate pointed the way it did, love seeing all the elim salt at me, it's nice :P.

I hope you mean that because now that it’s all over I regret being so salty in the first place. You won the game so whether I like it or not or would have done it or followed it or not it was the right move.

20 minutes ago, Illwei said:

The path there for Mat would be to immediately question me instead of rolling over. I was waiting anxiously (as araris can probably attest to) for a PM from mat along the lines of "what's your play here" or whatnot, because there's no reason for him to turn on me when I'm confirmed in his eyes (and shining's). I also do agree that if he went full out he might have been able to get away with it, but he hedged, and not to mention shining was a confidant of his.

Yeah. But at that point we elims were checked out of the game, almost entirely, so I didn’t bother devoting enough energy to realize that. I don’t even regret not challenging you, I woulda died quickly after and those last few hours of hedging around being self outing were fun ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 

[Cinnamon]

That was a good game! I am definitely playing more SE in the future!!!

Mat, congratulations on catching my hint in my RP  

[Mat he/him]

7 minutes ago, Cinnamon said:

Mat, congratulations on catching my hint in my RP  

Yesssss  Got a Stick kill outta that

I’m glad it actually ended up being something lol

[Kasimir he/him]

So, reading @Matrim's Dice lobbying heavily for my death is kind of loltastic because most of this game was fifty shades of "lol I have no idea what I'm doing." I take the fact he popped me early and then his team got blindsided by V!Illwei as a validation of my NK baiting strategy  

As I said in the dead doc, the moment I opened my GM PM and saw 'Village Smoker', I went full AG2 PTSD Chihuahua and figured that you either die honourably to the Spiked kill, or you live long enough to get MLed by the Village for Smoking  So, might as well die well! My aim was to draw the Spiked kill and aggro away from someone the Village actually needed alive. Which is usually how I play anyway, especially in early SE. You're welcome, Eiwlil :eyes:

Spoiler

I am sorry I could not protect you from Wiz, Cin  I will be less hasty to charge the Spiked kill in future when V!Smoker.

Anyway the dead doc length/engagement was still kind of anomalous for me, but as mentioned when signing up, my dad has been having health issues, and other RL stuff, and rubbish theorising was still giving me some way of dealing with the stress and not thinking about things other than slaughtering enemy villagers with Wyrm. So there was that. Probably for the best I died early as I might've continued to overinvest in analysis for the game anyway.

20 minutes ago, Illwei said:

Preface this by saying that the whole post i wrote at Rollover on the night i shot wiz was completely because I needed to figure out who to shoot, and that's why i never continued off of it fully. (not cohesively)

ngl I saw the fact Araris said the villager kept changing orders and was like "illwei confirmed 100%"

It's regrettable the only time I get a clear V!Illwei read I didn't retract was in the dead doc, but I guess that's how it is.

13 minutes ago, Shining Silhouette said:

I was thinking scanner was a V role until Illwei clarified (whoops!) and whenever E!Mat crossed my mind I just figured I'd deal with it later and keep getting info from you- but yeah I did get deep pocketed :P.

It's a Tyrian tradition  Better you than me. As a V!Smoker, I would have been insanely paranoid of a supposed Seeker claiming to have scanned me, especially since I ran a Tyrian game with two E!Seekers and zero V!Seekers and watched Fifth use a similar ploy to murder the sole V!Lurcher. We all live and learn

23 minutes ago, Illwei said:

I also do agree that if he went full out he might have been able to get away with it, but he hedged, and not to mention shining was a confidant of his.

You have to hard commit to such things, IMO. And while I highly respect Mat, I feel that's bordering Aman level thread control territory. Happy to be proven wrong in a future game but didn't feel he was quite there yet - to do that, he'd need to have seeded groundwork and probably invested in good relations with more than just Silho (from what the dead doc could see.) Sorta could see it maybe but it didn't feel achievable at this point in the game.

Like hard commit being the E!Illwei path - I think the better play is not to push that and to double down on confused Villager because that just locks him as E in your head and commits him to a thread brawl versus you to try to get you MLed and die to Cin after that, but it is what it is.

25 minutes ago, Illwei said:

I also do think i would have been a better kill earlier on if the Elims wanted to win- even later on, because i think convincing Archer or Cin or Whysper to turn on eachother would have been easier than killing cin when I was never moving from my whysper clear and my archer clear, when they weren't technically mech cleared.

Tfw you agree with Illwei...

1 hour ago, JNV said:

This was fun but you know what was more fun going into the dead doc to find out the legion of ghosts was convinced you were evil and built their whole case around a quokka thats really fun also yeah Kasimir I admire your verbosity butalso like a tiny bit of fear how do you have the words like I have a wobbly mess of words and I cant come close

I am going to call this quokkagate. And I feel like this is just starting a tradition of Elims sending me all kinds of red herrings to watch me plunge into a paranoia rabbithole in the dead doc >:( We really should not have bet the farm on the quokka and this was a case of my putting the quokka before the read as you actually read like V!JNV to me without the quokka. 

But. The. Quokka >:(

But also, yeah, need to work off RL stress accounted for a metric tonne of it, it's that simple. Sorta like the V!opposite of Shiv in LG6 in every way. He cracked a Village code as an Elim because he was waiting for someone at the hospital and needed an outlet. I built lots of beautiful tunnels in the dead doc because RL and I needed an outlet

55 minutes ago, Shining Silhouette said:

If you hadn't been NK'd, you definitely would've gotten me exed :P. Heck reading that doc even I believed you!

To be honest, I doubt it. Or at least I'd like to believe I would have called you out in thread or in a PM, and then we talk it over. Perhaps I do still ML you. But perhaps not. The thing about being dead is you can't voice your suspicions, you can't interact with players. And I'm a strong believer in the idea that interacting with a player gives you the ability to form a better read on them. Even voting them and watching their reactions and what happens in the thread is helpful.

Would I have doubled down if we hashed it out in a PM or a thread? Maybe. Maybe not.

But we'll never know, quite simply because we live in a world in which I died N1, and I don't trust myself enough to call it one way or another.

It took time but you were readable in LG89, so I have some faith we could've worked it out eventually.

And thanks @Araris Valerian for the trolling, for the fun game, for your GMing, and for the quokka >> 

It's sad for me to say this, but this game was the most fun I had in SE in quite a while and I died N1. I think it says a lot about how stressful playing all out has become, or how I interact with the game now, IDK. Either way, I'm just glad. I enjoyed the RP and the dead doc speculation.

[Mat he/him]

2 minutes ago, Kasimir said:

So, reading @Matrim's Dice lobbying heavily for my death is kind of loltastic because most of this game was fifty shades of "lol I have no idea what I'm doing." I take the fact he popped me early and then his team got blindsided by V!Illwei as a validation of my NK baiting strategy  

It’s loltastic from my PoV at this point too since like wow I did not need to write a whole essay about that xD

That validation is fair :P. We had no time in between Illwei-as-possible-ML and Illwei-as-confirmed-who-killed-three-elims-and-will-likely-be-protected sooooo

4 minutes ago, Kasimir said:

I am going to call this quokkagate. And I feel like this is just starting a tradition of Elims sending me all kinds of red herrings to watch me plunge into a paranoia rabbithole in the dead doc >:( We really should not have bet the farm on the quokka and this was a case of my putting the quokka before the read as you actually read like V!JNV to me without the quokka. 

But. The. Quokka >:(

And this is so perfect and hilarious to me because there was no intent of red herring, just the hope that sending a quokka pic would cheer a hypothetical sad dead doc-er up :3

[Kasimir he/him]

2 minutes ago, Matrim's Dice said:

And this is so perfect and hilarious to me because there was no intent of red herring, just the hope that sending a quokka pic would cheer a hypothetical sad dead doc-er up :3

I'll give you this: it was so adorable that something almost happened in the dead doc that has now been censored for fear of reputational damage.

Araris is a good GM  

Edited to add:

1 hour ago, Archer said:

I need to make a game around the concept of Kas being a confirmed good player who can only talk in a publicly viewable doc. That's... a lot of pages!

Kas after Day 0.5:

Spoiler

 

Edited November 8, 2022 by Kasimir

[---]

53 minutes ago, Kasimir said:

Tfw you agree with Illwei...

You're saying that like it's a bad thing :P.

[Kasimir he/him]

26 minutes ago, Illwei said:

You're saying that like it's a bad thing :P.

Spoiler

 

[Alvron he/him]

Sorry Mat but if I had a kill role you would've been my target N1.   As I told Stick in our PM

On 10/29/2022 at 8:41 AM, Alvron said:

Fair enough.  It's always good to roleblock those you suspect.  Though personally, I would've roleblocked Mat N1.  Can't really say why but the Gods of Luck and Chance told me to watch him carefully.

Although that would've resulted in my own death as Wandering Wizard was Rioting me to myself but still....

@The Unknown Novel welcome to my kill list. Odds are I'll never get the chance to avenge myself but you will always have that target on your back until I do.