Battle for Olympus - Game Over!

[Gemini]

@Snow Bunny

You gonna make an actual vote or not?

Why do you ask this? It's not like the votes on players are that "actual" at this stage of the game. Not everyone likes to random vote at the beginning. I guess same question to Dekes.

And to spare you the time, I went and looked at three of Snow_Bunny's previous games and she did not start any of them with a random vote and one she started with a mod vote (she was town), so it is consistent with her character, and I also don't see anything particularly noteworthy in doing that at the beginning of the game - I see it happen often so I am curious why you two are making a point of it.

Since we are a hydra and some people care about this, this is the Katy half and I'll try to remember to sign my posts with "kt" Like so -

-kt

[Gemini]

I suck ... I didn't realize that the site had logged me in as me, rather than hydra. For purposes of ISO, those last posts from me were:

^ This.

"Why are you questioning her, dude? It's totally not called for."

But no vote, or followup. Just a very weak jab, serving no purpose really.

It does have a purpose, though. My question wasn't rhetorical, I actually want to know the answer - why is it relevant to those players that Snow_Bunny voted for a mod other than a player?

I would follow up or vote after the question was answered. I don't necessarily think questioning Snow_Bunny on its own was scummy or "not called for," but it does fit in with behavior I tend to look for at the start of the game from scum, so I thought I'd ask some questions about it. Only after I hear the answers would I be able to decide if I thought it was scummy or not.

Also, I'm probably going to be a bit slow to vote in general--since I'm playing in a hydra I'd like to make sure both of us are on the same page and have had a chance to give our thoughts before placing votes and unvotes willy-nilly and looking crazy.

I don't think Magna claiming hated townie confirms him as town, but it does make me lean that way. Given that this is a power-heavy game, I think there's still a possibility that he could be a scum or third-party who gets some advantage from this claim, depending on what his actual powers are. But if that is his actual role, his claim was a pro-town move. I would lean town on him, but I would say that calling him confirmed is really premature.

@LordChronos - Okay, I get that reasoning, but how much do you think a normal random vote "counts"? Do you think a scum player would be more likely to vote for the mod or to just make a totally random vote like everyone else to fit in? Also, one more thing and then I will probably leave you alone - do you have any prior experience that makes you think this is a scum tell?

[Gemini]

SD: Is anyone who votes for you (except for Magna) inevitably scum?
CMaR: Why do you think SD is town? I agree that the Norse thing is reaching, but what about his reaction to Chess and Ranger?

SD's response to Ranger in particular irks me:

Seems like you desperately need to graso at straws.

There's really no desperation of grasping going on; this reads like an overly-defensive comment.

I'm going to let Katy address answers to/comments on her questions.

FoS: SD

(Vote will be here if Katy agrees.)

-mjaye

[Gemini]

The “Wrong Pantheon” angle was simply a way to kick off pressure on you. Anyone who sited that (and I will mention one specific person later in this post) as a good reason for a vote is scummy also.

Why my vote is a good vote has everything to do with the Plum-tell which you completely avoided in this initial response. Also you've begun a series of nitpicky attacks (going after Ranger for being 'mysterious', attacking CMAR on what is cleary a typo) as opposed to honestly scum-hunting.

Yes. Shadowdancer's response totally avoided the meat of the accusation. He focused on the fact that MoI called it a Plumtell and why, rather than the very concise list of what the tell consisted of.

@SD

, MoI is basically saying that you are attempting to buddy someone you know is town by calling them confirmed town. It IS pretty common that scum will latch onto a strong and vocal town player and attempt to become their right hand man. This also happened in the second LoTR game when SpyreX tried to be Fate's bestest buddy. Often a sort of "cool kids" group will form around a strong townish leader and scum will try hard to get in on that as early as possible. The question is why you leaped to declare Magna confirmed, not whether it's a legit argument because of the origin of its name.

LC’s reaction to Gemini’s question and SnowBunny’s vote is Town.

Agreed on this as well. I think LC was a good sport about my questions, which were sparked because multiple players seemed interested in SnowBunny's vote and I get very suspicious when people try to get a bandwagon going on the first player they find that does something different from the norm. I am interested in Auravox, however, who was the first person to attack SnowBunny for her vote. I didn't address him directly, but he jumped in to volunteer himself anyway, which strikes me as nervous. His response to my question was:

I see the slight towntell to the modvote but I see no pro-town reason for it. SB, can you explain why you sometimes find it useful to vote for the mod and why you decided to do it in this game?

He sees the towntell for SnowBunny, but decides to continue to make it a thing. If he sees the towntell, then at worst it is a nulltell, since its been shown that SnowBunny does it as town and would probably also do it as scum for that reason, so the action in itself doesn't tell us anything and isn't worth pursuing. Continuing to harp on that particular point is useless and strikes me as just a way to keep SnowBunny in the ring of suspicion although there is as yet no other reason for it. And yet, he continues:

@Snow_Bunny; do you think RVS votes in general are useful? Why wouldn't you want to do something useful (read: protown) at the start of a game?

That's a question with loaded wording and a trap, implying that SnowBunny if SNowBunny answers yes to part one, but didn't do it, she is scummy - untrue. There are a lot of useful and pro-town things one can do at the start of a game. Making a random vote is only one choice. You can also think that RVS is useful, but choose to use a different tactic if other people are already pursuing that route.

FoS: Auravox

On MoI, I imagine he's telling the truth when he says he can get lynched at L-1 because, why would you lie about that

One reason I can think of is because you have a power that makes you revive and become stronger, so perhaps he WANTS to be killed at some point. That's total speculation, but I'm not putting anything past Charon with this game. And Magna is coming across fairly strongly as town right now so I'm not overly worried about that.

Your whle argument is based on the preassumption that I was in deed buddying scum - in case I am not the whole things falls apart to "I don't agree with Shadow -> Shadow is scum." And that should make you reconsider the whole thing twice.

No, that's not the whole argument. Plum pretty clearly explained that the argument is not just the buddying tactic, but also the way you responded to the accusation. You attempted to brush it off based on irrelevant factors, rather than addressing it directly in the first place.

I'm good with this lynch, pending a claim or response from SD. I'm also on board with looking more closely at BabySpice depending on what happens here. That vote really was awful. Sorry for the wall ... this will probably be my only chance to post until much later tonight and wanted to address everything I could.

ADD: Preliminary thoughts on claim - That's a pretty prominent god to claim. I'll have to think about this over the day.

-kt

[Gemini]

Poseidon is not just prominent - he's one of the top three gods. Zeus, Poseidon and Hades are basically brothers and in a sort of class above the rest of the gods - when the world was divided in three, they each got one part of it to rule (why Hades is so pissed - he got the shaft).

That's the equivalent of claiming Ron Weasley in a Harry Potter game, not Dumbledore. I'm wanting to go slow with this one.

That said, it bothers me that SD is insisting his life depend on his claim and nothing else. We need to find scum and clamming up isn't going to help us do it and it also lends credence to the idea that you are scum leaning on a fake claim to throw the claim out as your only defense.

I'd love to hear from BabySpice right about now as well.

[Gemini]

Hey BabySpice,

Since you're here and all, want to discuss why you thought SD's mere reference to Norse mythology egregious enough to lynch him? Or are you trying to slide past that and hope everyone will just forget about it, now that Agar's got us all backed off of SD?

FoS: BabySpice

This is where I would put my vote, pending agreement from mockingjaye.

Dear Gemini,

What are your reads?

-AGar

Our reads as specifically discussed in our hydra QT are:

Chesskid3 = town based on MJ's town/scum meta
SD = scummy (possible early lynch fodder, but also overdefensive and did not respond well to pressure)
Auravox=scummy (besides what I talked about in my post - seems like he's trying to avoid being overscrutinized)
Babyspice = scummy (terrible vote on SD)
LordChronos = Leaning town

Those were players we specifically discussed prior to Shadowdancer's claim (Mockingjaye hasn't been back since then)

Personal reads of mine aside from the above are:

Magna = Town
AGar = Likely town
Diddin = Scummy

Circumstantial evidence:

- Kind of wondering where Iecerint is, he's usually quite talkative.
- Gandalf seems townie to me right now and that actually makes me suspicious since he's seemed scummy to me in the games I played with him where he was town.

Most of the other people on the playerlist haven't caught my eye one way or the other yet. The other Gemini can give any reads she has additional to that.

[Gemini]

Chronos isn't leaning town >_>

Well, we've been reading him beyond is RVS.

Hey Gemini.

Would you care to explain how, in a game where we know the Greek gods are town and that other gods are the scum, raising up something from a different mythology, and nothing else mythologically related, is not a potential scumslip and worthy of pressure?

Sure … his post wasn't game speculation [ie - Hey I wonder if there will be a Gotterammerdung event in the game], it was a flippant off-hand comment. I don't see much significant in making a Ragnarok joke in a god related game even if it's not a Greek thing. It very much struck me as a sincere and simple joke and not a likely scumslip at all. In fact, I would imagine scum would be more careful - if they wee a Norse god they probably WOULDN'T be letting fly with casual Norse jokes.

BabySpice, sheeping Chesskid not even knowing who she is voting for. *facepalm*

BabySpice

, Do you even have reason for voting LordChronos besides that Chesskid said so? You said "nothing in whatever he has posted reads as town."

But does it read as SCUM? I have a lot of null reads, but I don't vote for null reads. So what about his posts reads as scum to you?

Ten kids sounds insane to me, but I feel like you are using that as an excuse for the fact that you are just following chesskid so he will keep yelling about voting for someone else besides you. I don't even get the impression you actually read Chronos's posts before making that vote.

@Diddin: I already said previously that in our hydra we are not voting unless both players are in agreement. Mockingjaye has had an unexpected guest so she hasn't had a lot of time to give input. The FoS's are to indicate who the hydra member would vote for and then if the other agrees we would vote. Mockingjaye is, however, in agreement on this one as of our last interchange so:

Vote: BabySpice

[Gemini]

I don't think SD is good lynch today. At WORST he is a "non-town aligned" Greek god, but he is not scum. Based on my past games here, I feel like, unless there is a cult, it's to the advantage of a third party player to play pro-town, at least at the beginning. A third party player is very motivated to kill scum and appear pro-town, and can actually be helpful to the town at the beginning of a game. As long as there are other lynch candidates I would prefer to try to lynch actual mafia now and keep an eye on a possible third party player. I also agree with the point that he's claimed his regular action and it's not a killing action so we can at least verify that he's not an SK.

I am coming around to the idea that BS could be just a very poorly playing town player, but I also notice that now that the focus has slid away from her, she's disappeared. If she's not going to contribute anything and her kids distract her so much she can't even get her vote right, then I question her ability to contribute and I think at best she's 50/50 town because she could still be scum who's genuinely distracted/apathetic as well. The thing about VIs, is that being a VI doesn't automatically make them town. It just makes them harder to get a good read on, particularly if they are low activity. I'll keep our vote on her pending conferral with my partner because I think she is a decent lynch choice, but I think she's probably an even better vig candidate and I would rather move my vote to Diddin.

Diddin:

(1)

]Chess has town and scum meta? Please, do share.

(2)

Vote: Chesskid. He's being scummier than usual

Does not compute. If you have no meta on Chess, Diddin, then what exactly do you mean by "scummier than usual?" What is he doing that's scummier than usual?

The bad point about Chess being scum because of claiming a similar power to SD has been discussed, and his claiming not to know the game was vanillaless sounds like scrambling for an excuse, especially because it's not actually relevant since Chesskid's claiming of similar powers isn't a scum move regardless of how many VTs are in the game or not.

Then attention is turned on him and his next several posts are flailing, throwing as many candidates against the wall as he can, hoping someone sticks, with several votes for different people in succession. Every since he came under fire he's been spreading out suspicion on as many different players as he can, which I feel is typical scum when they are trying desperately to turn attention elsewhere.

FoS: Diddin

I'd be happy to lynch this guy if my hydra partner agrees.

Mockingjaye has also expressed suspicion of Axelrod in our QT. I haven't had time to go back and read him. I have had a sort of gut uneasiness there, but nothing concrete enough for me to call him scum. I can't remember why MJ said Axelrod - it was in response to the thread, so I'd have to go back and read, but if she is around today she can explain.

-kt

[Gemini]

I agree with Katy that Diddin is a good wagon.

Vote: Diddin

Following up on the Axelrod comments:
I don't like that he has posted quite a bit of explanatory type information. I also don't like the amount of discussion he devotes to set-up spec. It's just filler.

His "scumhunting" also leaves a bit to be desired: for example, in his ISO 13, he states that he is "not following" the Diddin wagon and thinks that Dekes and BS are worse, yet at that point hadn't said anything about either one of those players and doesn't clarify those reads at all. Furthermore, in that same post, he unvotes his RVS vote but doesn't revote either of them, NOR does he actually pressure them in any way. Later, in his list of reads, he calls Diddin scummish, but a few posts before that he said he is "not following" the Diddin wagon, and there is nothing in between this to indicate why he has changed his view. He also votes BS and says it's

partly

because she calls Dekes and Diddin scummy but didn't vote for them, when in his ISO 13, he did the same thing.

It just seems to me that Axel is not actively scumhunting and is being inconsistent in his reads overall, which I think is indicative of scum.

-mjaye

[Gemini]

EBWODP:

UNVOTE: Baby Spice

Vote: Diddin

[Gemini]

I’m having a hard time getting an Iec read. His posts are stuffed full of laziness and not scum-hunting, as evidenced by his 498 as of late. It certainly doesn’t scream the Iec as Town I’ve come to expect. I’m going to have to look over my Iec as scum experiences to see what I can take from that.

This has been my thought exactly. I've been trying to get a better read on Iece, but I've been really uneasy has he is not playing like the Iec town I know. In particular, he always seems to draw attention early game and in this game he pretty much disappeared until RVS was over and some early targets had already been established. I also agree that his posts seem somewhat lazy as if he hasn't been paying attention to some of the main topics of the game, or maybe is deliberately avoiding talking about some players. Generally I have a tendency to want to defend Iece but in this game I am getting a very different vibe from his posting than usual. It's totally meta/gut at this point, so I have left it, aside from mentioning it to MJ, but I think it's interesting you have brought it up as well.

Why would I answer MoI's deliberate misrep of the situation?

So what you're saying is you don't actually have an answer to his legitimate question. Leave aside the misnomer - let's pretend it never happened. It seems to me like you are trying to focus on that so you can avoid the real question. Forget about the names - WHY DO YOU THINK LORDCHRONOS IS SCUMMY? Why did you vote for him? You have failed to give any reason whatsoever yet for your vote there and it looks a whole lot to me like you just voted for whoever Chesskid said and just faked an iso reading in order to look like you were putting some thought into it. The misnomer in your vote lends support to that, but it is not the entire issue. I'm interested to see you give a specific reason for your vote though, since LC wasn't ever a popular bandwagon you can't just crib someone else's case.

I'd happily switch our vote back over to BS.

-kt

[Gemini]

Iece, from your description of your abilities, I would say that since reliability of the namecop is questionable, and because of the likelihood of a busdrive, that there is enough of a chance that you got an incorrect name that I agree with your initial thought. Since it appears that AV was busdriven with AGM, and AV is mod-confirmed to be non-Greek, I would say AGM is not likely to be scum with AV (ie a non-Greek god as your result indicates). This looks more like a scum busdrive than a town one, as the only good town use I've been able to do with a busdrive is bus a likely town kill target with a scummy player and that is not what happened here. I don't see scum driving two of their own in this situation, I think it more likely to drive one of their team with someone not on their team.

The ability description you gave states that the sanity is unreliable, so the result is either going to be accurate, or there is some chance that you will get a wrong result. I think if it is a wrong result, it could either be a name chosen randomly by the mods, or another player's name, but I don't think that is very relevant. I think it's much more likely that the mods would choose that incorrect result for AGM as a joke than that they would go so far as to pull a replacement in the game out of order deliberately to give them a scum role as a joke. That seems going way too far as a joke and also not quite kosher.

As far as who I would vote second, AV was my top scum read after Diddin so I'll have to do some reading back in light of the night events. We had picked out Dekes and Axelrod as people to look at in our QT during our night discussion and I will take a look at Chronopie although I'm not sure if there's even a case on him other than Chesskid having something against people with "Chrono" in their names.

Initial thoughts on seeing the deaths:

Three deaths. SB is "slaughtered," Plum is "turned to sand" and Diddin is "castrated" (yipes!)

Diddin kill could be a vig kill, but castrated is pretty peculiar flavor.

I tried looking up "turned to sand" as relates to mythology, but couldn't find anything. I wanted to say this is a non-Greek kill but can't actually find any reference to a god turning someone into sand so I can't even say for sure if this is a Greek or non-Greek kill flavor.

[Gemini]

PS I know you basically just said the first part but I didn't want to delete after writing it all out so thoughtfully.

Also, this is Katy writing this.

[Gemini]

Chronopie is scummy as fuck
so is LC

Maybe they are, but since you don't present evidence I have to get off my ass and find out for myself. That takes time, my dear, but it's first on my "to do" list.

@Quadz:

Why in such a hurry to vote for the confirmed scum? It's a sure lynch and we have need for caution and to figure out a secondary vote. Are you hopping on the sure thing early so your vote is set and you don't have to figure out which townie to try to make a fake case on?

[Gemini]

So ...

I don't believe AV's fakeclaim for a second. But I'm happy to have him attempt to prove his super. If he kills a scum, I'm happy to reevaluate my position.

Gandalf is on crack, but actually his story about the redirect is consistent with his posting from yesterday where he did indeed have Iec as his #3 scum suspect. The only thing I can't figure out is how his power is a town power. Why do we need a dayvig who can only kill the person who's already on their way to being lynched? It's a force-lynch, which makes a lot more sense as a scum power. I kind of believe him about the redirect though and this type of thought process is consistent with what I expect from Gandalf town.

As far as AGM, the redirect doesn't change the speculation about the sanity of the result. It's in the ability description that the result is unreliable so it doesn't matter what happened to affect it, there's still a chance it's not accurate. I won't lynch on the result alone, but it definitely makes AGM's alignment an open question because we don't know how reliable that result is.

Chronopie I have read and I want to check something with Mockingjaye before I say any more about him because I had an idea about something.

My candidates for Lynch 2:

Axelrod

: This guy is very much flying under the radar. Posts don't have much content and most are commentary on stuff without much in the way of reads, accusations, cases, votes and other typical scumhunting tools. He didn't take any strong stances against anyone yesterday or seem to have any strong opinions and besides RVS, his only vote was on BabySpice at a time when she was rolling towards a lynch. His overall game play reads classic scum actively lurking to me and he's my next strongest lynch choice after AV.

Quadz:

I was at first thinking it was unlikely that he and AV could be on the same team, but in looking at his voting record, Quadz was all over the place yesterday voting and unvoting so that there's nothing to connect or rule out a connection between him and anyone. He posts fairly often and some of it looks like scumhunting, but he never pressures anyone too hard or sticks on one person too long. I don't have a strong scum read here, but MJ and I both agree he is suspect

One more observation I had is that if AV is scum, Dekes looks like a possible buddy based on his big wall post where he voted multiple people. His treatment of Dekes there looks like a possible weak bus and distancing, especially given all of AV's other targets D1 were either confirmed or probable town. Reading Dekes in ISO, however, he doesn't read all that scummy to me, so I'm not putting him as a lynch candidate, just keeping an eye for now.

[Gemini]

Both Katy and I are fine with a Quadz OR Axel lynch for Lynch 2, but I'll let her make the official call when she checks back in.

My opinion on Axel hasn't changed since yesterday, but Quadz is my preferred choice for today. His early vote (Katy discussed this already) followed by his immediate unvote when questioned are both bad, and furthermore, his posts today are basically "so what you're saying is...." kind of regurgitations.

mjaye

[Gemini]

Poop. I should just never sign onto that account while I'm in this game.

Just to make it official then, our lynch choices are:

Lynch1: AV
Lynch2: Quadz

Boy am I on pins and needles to discover if Ooba dies.

[Gemini]

Meanwhile, I (Katy) will be

V/LA

for the weekend. Going to Palm Springs for a family thing but hopefully will still have some time to check in and follow the game.

[Gemini]

Boy am I on pins and needles to discover if Ooba dies.

This makes little sense to me. Clearly by not outright attacking Iec AV had claimed the Iec Cop action was accurate and thus he was scum.

Scum will not have a Super Vig that only kills Non-Greeks ….

Sarcasm.

Gandalf, making cryptic pronouncements isn't all that helpful. If you have some sort of knowledge that you can't reveal, then good for you, we're all duly impressed with your cool role or whatever, but at the moment it seems to serve no point for you to just say things all secretively. And if you really do have some sort of power that gives you all that info then why are you broadcasting it before you are able to actually use it to really help town? It's just confusing, since the rest of us don't know what you're talking about and these little hints aren't going to help us if you die before explaining them so there's no point really. Either say what you have to say if it's useful for town, or keep it to yourself until it is useful.

I'm down with the voting plan and will lynch either AV or Quadz. Our take on Quadz is available in our ISO. It particularly has to do with his voting which was all over the place, as well as his refusal to take strong stances on anything. I also think that if Quadz does flip scum, Dekes seems like the next place to look, there are potential buddy connections with both AV and Quadz and Dekes.

[Gemini]

Gemini input

Ask and ye shall receive. I am back and off V/LA now.

I'm still for lynching Quadz. The case on AGM seemed based not on him being scummy but on him almost willfully not trying to be pro-town, combined with Iec's result. I think that the events of the past few pages have kept me solidly on the Quadz lynch side of things. I found it interesting that once Quadz voted for AGM, LC immediately voted as well and then suddenly the momentum changed. I might be willing to explore Chesskid's theory tomorrow.

Quadz reaction to everything reads to me as scum trying to hurry another target into the lynch position and gloss over the fact that he is the next main lynch target, something he didn't ever seem to confront head on. His insistence that Jesus is a third-party role I also found really odd, he really does seem to state it as a fact:

In case you haven't noticed, the cop result on AGM gave us a 3rd party result. They aren't scumbuddies.

This seems to me a VERY odd thing to say. We have been specifically told that mafia are non-Greek gods so I can't think why anyone would leap immediately to the idea that Jesus IS a third party role unless they knew more about how the mafia is composed than the average townie.

Add to that his fixation on SD far beyond it being reasonable to keep going after him, his justification for that (and for lynching BS) being that he was always for a VI lynch day one (coupled with his not being able to strongly back that up) and his hurry to jump on AV wagon as soon as he was "confirmed" scum, I think there are more than enough reasons to put our vote there or AV as needed. I'll be online working until late tonight so I can monitor the thread for voting plans, but tomorrow I may not be around as it is my day off.

[Gemini]

I am pretty wary of this claim. It really is a whole "one of these things is not like the other" situation and it looks an awful lot like you tacked the power you have actually used onto an existing fake claim. After all ... Spring, Summer, Winter, Autumn and ... Hellfire? That is really weird. It's like ... all of the claim makes sense, except for the part that we can actually verify exists.

However, your claim seems to come with multiple ways you could potentially verify it. I'd really like to know what the other seasons do, especially as I am feeling a little hopeful about Spring if this is a real claim. If it's something good for town then that is a way you could prove yourself without having to stump yourself. Will Charon not give you any info at all? If the season would be announced by the mod just as Hellfire was, well I'd find your claim pretty believable if we woke up tomorrow to an announcement that it was Spring. At the very least you could use your super to confirm yourself and you should do that if it will mod confirm you and you are going to be lynched. I would rather you not have to use that if you can be confirmed by your normal, but I think that between a mislynch and a tree stump if it came down to that, I would rather have the latter.

I'm not sure what to do now - this claim is giving me second thoughts. I also agree with the above that the idea that Persephone died by Hellfire is merely speculation and not confirmed. I see nothing to indicate that Hellfire caused Plum's death and her kill flavor is "turned to a pile of sand" which is not only an odd flavor, but also I would expect to see "ash" rather than "sand" if the Hellfire caused her death.

I am REALLY sorry I keep doing that. I usually sign straight into the Gemini account to read this thread, but when I get a PM on my normal account I keep forgetting to sign out and then back in.

[Gemini]

Out of all the players left, Moth and Axel are both scumreads for us. I prefer Axel, who's been pinging my scumdar for a while, and MJ (who has been sick with flu, poor thing, so I am mostly on posting duty for now) is good with that vote.

Lynch2: Axelrod

[Gemini]

@LC: Chess claimed jailkeeper on D1. That means he can block kills by either protection or roleblock. That's why nightkills are clearly among the things he should be concerned about.

That's grasping at straws. It was pretty clearly a joke about how he isn't scum preoccupied with who to kill at night, not a general statement about how he is approaching the game.

We need to make sure we are ready to start voting soon. With AV having placed a vote on Iecerint we need to make sure to get some votes on a secondary target. I would suggest that we give Axel and Mothrax (the top two votegetters) another day to make their cases and then solidify which one out of them has the most support for a lynch and get going on it.

@Axelrod:

Concerning your read on MoI - how does his Day 1 claim to be a hated townie affect your read on him?

If Mothrax continues to lurk through this and let Axelrod face up to all the heat I'm willing to switch my preferred vote.

[Gemini]

Sorry I've been the silent head for a while--I've had the stomach flu this week and not felt like doing much of anything.

I'm happy with our vote on Axel. The last post read more like an attempt to divert votes to the nearest likely candidate than an earnest case to me.

Also, this comment comes across to me as being made by scum who is afraid of looking scummy. (The "they" in question here are MOthrax and LC.)

I'm a little worried they are kind of soft targets though. A bit too easy to switch to if you know what I mean.

-mjaye

[Gemini]

I think everyone should give their current Lynch 2 in their next post. I'm worried that now that MoI has done it, everyone is going to start just placing votes on AV, but we need to get at least a couple of votes on a Lynch 2 before the lynch on AV goes through.

We are:

Lynch2: Axelrod

But would go with Mothrax if more people are leaning that way.

[Gemini]

Yep, timing of the Mothrax replacement is horrible and seems very scummy. I feel reluctant to vote Axelrod over him, now, although I am not yet sure how MJ feels. We asked Andy if we could vote No Lynch for a second lynch if we couldn't work it out and his answer indicated that there would have to be no second wagon at all in order to not lynch a second person, so AV's vote on Iecerint combined with the riskiness of trying to make sure no one else votes for anyone but AV means we have to come up with some sort of second lynch before the deadline.

For now I am going to

Vote: Mothrax

. I will change that if we get an extension or a decent other plan or if MJ sees it and tells me she is against it, but I foresee a lame ending to this day if we don't start the ball rolling on something.

[Gemini]

Unvote

Two day extension is fine as long as this replacement gets here quick.

/ignore AuroraVox

[Gemini]

@Magna

: Why AGM on that list?

We think Mothrax's failure to bat an eye when two roleblocks were claimed is pretty damning. We have some stuff we're discussing amongst ourselves right now, but if we had to vote now, our second vote would be there.

[Gemini]

Vote: ConSpiracy

On the color topic, If I were picking a color for hearth and home, I would pick something warm like orange, red or yellow rather than blue. However, I am not entirely sure why we are the color we are, so ... I dunno.

@Magna

I get the reasoning on AGM. I don't think it's worth discounting the possibility of night actions that can deal with him if AV happens to flip scum, but I agree with your logic that the likelihood of that is so small that it's probably worth making sure a doc is protected. I would just prefer that IF that power is something real, that Iece would be in there.

I believe that makes 3 votes AV, 2 Cons - trying to keep it even (and make sure the second vote isn't messed up).

[Gemini]

PS Hestia is the goddess of hearth and "right ordering of domesticity and the family." according to Wikipedia, for whatever that's worth.

Hera is goddess of marriage and women.

[Gemini]

Hrm ... LC was blocked. Chess had already claimed roleblocker though so I suppose it's possible that if scum had some sort of roleblock they could have used it on Chess, but that makes three roleblocking powers in one game. On the other hand, scum often have a roleblocker

One thing that bothers me is that Thanatos is not technically part of the Pantheon. He is a daemon, which is something in between a mortal and a god. Then again, Iris is not part of the Pantheon either, so I don't know.

I think we have to take a look at everyone again, leaving aside the night results for now. Will talk to MJ and get her thoughts.

[Gemini]

Thanatos is as much a Greek god as Iris or Asclepius.

I was just going by the wikipedia entry on him which said he was a Daemon, which was something between mortal and god. In looking at the page on the Greek Pantheon, however, Thanatos is listed as equal with Iris and Asclepius, so you are right.

I had just got hung up on the daemon thing because MJ and I were speculating about the castration kill flavor and wondering if that could be the Furies, which are spirits of revenge and were born from the castrated genitals of a titan. We were wondering if maybe there were some third party players who were associated with the Greek pantheon but not quite gods, so that daemon thing caught my eye. It was also confusing to look on the wiki because I honestly can't tell who is officially a god and who is not and some entities are referred to as gods in one place and not gods in another, so I've basically given up on thinking about it as it relates to the game, it's way too speculative.

Would have eliminated Gemini too due to my town read on her but "We asked Andy if we could vote No Lynch for a second lynch" looks suspicious to me.

We asked about that because nearing to the deadline there was not a lot of coordination and with AV's vote on Iecerint and with everyone split to where lynch 2 could have been determined by as little as two votes, we were worried about scum manipulating the second vote near the deadline, especially with one of the main candidates replacing out so near the end. We thought it might be a last ditch solution by town to control the outcome if we weren't able to agree on a lynch 2. It turned out not to be necessary, however. As far as our votes, MJ and I were split on who to vote for, with myself leaning toward Axelrod and MJ leaning toward Mothrax. We initially went with Axel but were always willing to go with a Mothrax/Cons vote if that's what the consensus indicated. You can look at our iso to see that we were pretty ambivalent about whether the vote went to Axel or Mothrax as we found them both pretty scummy. That changed when Axel started posting content and Mothrax disappeared utterly at a critical time.

I think it's clear that Egyptians turn people to sand and then we have something else that castrates people. We have two killing parties left that we are dealing with but since we have an indication that there can be third parties in the game it's not necessarily two scum teams but could be Egyptian scum/third party killer. Hence our speculation that the castration was coming from Furies who would be technically aligned with Greek pantheon but could be some kind of third party serial killer do to their nature.

[Gemini]

I don't think AGM revealing his protect is a good idea, because presumably they're someone scum would want to kill that scum would then know isn't being superprotected.

This. Let's let scum try to pick their kill by trial and error rather than telling them who's a bad shot.

Meh. You should read my ISO to see I can't possibly be an egyptian.

That reads pretty self-aware. You know, like someone who's purposely been distancing so that in ISO they don't look like a buddy.

So we haven't contributed to the thread much today because we've been discussing back and forth about whether/how much we should claim right now. We have decided to claim our superpower because we think that it will be the most useful thing to claim right now. We've decided to hold off on the rest of our claim unless it becomes necessary.

Our superpower is a rolecop, which we haven't used yet, and with so many conflicting claims/actions we think that what we want to do is use it today. We can either use it on an unknown target of our choice, or we can use it on a target that town chooses. We thought it might be interesting to see what targets players chose if we put the choice up to the town.

[Gemini]

We get the role PM without any buddy names or QT links.

Our normal does have a very limited investigative function, but based on what's happened so far it's not been useful. To reveal more would require a full role claim which, after discussion today we decided to hold off on. We will give it if we have to in order to avoid death, but we have some reasons for wanting to keep it to ourselves for longer if we can.

[Gemini]

We will choose since most seem to be fine with that, but still think it's useful to see who other players WOULD choose if we left it up to town.

Gemini Should go with their own choice, and take full responsibility.

What do you mean by that? Simply by revealing our power in the first place, we are taking full responsibility for what happens with it. We would take responsibility even if town chose a target and then our result got messed up, or if town chose a target and we chose someone else. Just as we get to take full responsibility if we catch scum. We are taking full responsibility no matter what happens and I don't know, when you say this, if you are setting us up if we don't happen to reveal scum or if you are just parroting what someone townier than you said.

We're discussing targets now, will send it in as soon as it's set and reveal as soon as we get results.

[Gemini]

Sorry to put a dark cloud on over your brightness, Egyptian Sun God RA, but the jig is up.

Vote: Dekes

[Gemini]

L
O
L

There's no way that we would volunteer to do this as a gambit knowing that Iec has a day vig. All he has to do is vig you and town could still lynch us if we were lying, or vig me and then lynch your lying ass. It would be horribly poor timing for this particular gambit if that's what we were doing.

We've got your entire role PM, including a HI-larious picture of your tiny birdie head on your big buff bod. I know your flavor (you hate the Greek for offering sacrifices to Helios rather than you) and I know your powers, which you are telling the truth about although I certainly don't see anything about Snow_Bunny in here, and you are not Apollo. Oh and I know your kill flavor so if you somehow manage to convince people and survive past this day, you better not ever make a kill because if anyone turns up BURNED TO DEATH, how will you explain that one away?

[Gemini]

Hera is goddess of marriage and women.

That's our rolename. Breadcrumbed there with the two things we were given as being goddess of in our PM. I am willing to full claim now, but am waiting for MJ before I go ahead and do it.

I am weary about quoting Dekes' role PM too much but will try to paraphrase.

Dekes has no passive.

Normal is Sunbeam - he watches people through a sunbeam. Supers are not subject to this.

Super is Imbue - he watches one target permanently (they are permanently illuminated) until one of them is dead. Supers are not subject to it.

Factional power is a nightkill with flavor of burned to death.

[Gemini]

@Iece: The copy of the pm we received had nothing about masonry in it at all. In our version of Dekes' pm, between the faction kill and the wincon, we see "[REDACTED]," so there is information missing.

@SD: We chose Dekes because he kept pinging our radar and then sliding off again and that his flip either way would be the most informative.


Regarding the kill flavor "burned to death," the way the PM is set up makes it look like the flavor is specific to Dekes' character. It says that one Egyptian can kill per night and that whoever does it can act and kill on the same night.

[Gemini]

Wow ... a double vote? That is actually kind of cool because we can cast them separately so it's kind of like each hydra has their own vote. So I missed most of yesterday because I spent way too much time on the game on Thurs. when I was supposed to be working and had to focus yesterday. Sorry to see AGar go but welcome to Nacho.

We are not a motivator, just to confirm that. Will claim the rest when it's our turn, I guess.

BTW, we accept full responsibility for our choice of role cop! Our instincts are telling us Gandalf next but am trying not to fall into an "OMGUS" trap. But obviously once revealed, from the scum side of the equation taking us down first would be the only way to salvage something out of the situation. Am going to read back tonight and see what else there is there besides his hardcore defense of scummy scummerson.

[Gemini]

OKay, I super suck today. I just posted on my hydra in my other game and on my main account in this one. Great going.

True ... it would have to be Gandalf as an Egyptian not another type of scum, but Dekes last post combined with having no indication Egyptians are dead leads me to believe there's probably another Egyptian. I think Dekes posted that try to imply to us that he was the last of the Egyptians, which makes me think there's gotta be another one out there.

But I will be looking at others as well. I don't think the castrator is Egyptian so there's at least one other scum team or SK out there, IMO and that puts ooba's insistence on looking at his ISO to prove he's not scumbuddies with Egyptians into an interesting light.

[Gemini]

Katy and I have both been on V/LA. I'm just getting in and about to crash, but I can catch up tomorrow, probably in the afternoon. -mjaye

[Gemini]

I am back from an unexpected V/LA over the holiday weekend. I am talking over some things with MJ and trying to catch up with what's going on. We would like to hear from Nacho.

The Gandalf claim-mistake combined with his pushing to kill me first before Dekes is bad, but I admit I'm starting to get a little wary of Magna. For a hated townie who has to die he suddenly seems to be working out ways to not have to die and it's making me nervous. He seemed like a really strong town read for me so I haven't been reading into his posts too closely, but Magna-scum can be very convincing.

I think assuming that there's a Norse pantheon and creating scenarios based on speculation about what speculative roles the speculative pantheon might have is not extremely useful. If there is another pantheon and it is Norse, the chances of us being able to guess exact roles and find scum based off of that is pretty slim. I think something like botching the gender of your claim (when we have pictures with the claim) is far more relevant than if someone might be Baldur or Loki or whatever. I think we're more likely to catch scum based on behavior that's objectively scummy rather than scummy depending on if someone is a particular role. Might have more to say on this - am waiting to hear from MJ so we can coordinate our thoughts.

[Gemini]

Which leads me to a simple question, gem: Who is scum? And how has gand's behaviour not been scummy?

Still think Gandalf is the best bet for scum. He has been scummy in several ways, with the most damning being messing up his claim and also his constant pushing of himself as confirmed town for things that don't actually confirm him, to his pushing hard on the idea that Dekes was obvtown based on his claim.

His behavior HAS been scummy, that's why I find all this insistence on fitting him into a Norse pantheon to the point of predicting what role he has to be odd. It's unnecessary and I'm wondering what Ooba's insistence on pushing the idea that there's also a Norse pantheon means. We know that there is at least one other killing party besides Egyptian, but we don't know who they are and we certainly have no reason in particular to to believe they are Norse. There could also be Roman gods or Hindu, it's weird that Ooba is pushing such a specific idea.

I haven't gotten the sense that MoI is attempting to come up with ways not to die. Certainly he should not be the lynch for today. What gave you that sense?

I do not think he should be the lynch for today either, and to be honest, I can't, in reviewing his history come up with much enthusiasm for thinking he is scum. I just can't work out how his posting from the early role reveal and beyond makes sense as anything but town. It just raised my hackles in this post when he suddenly got so worried about our double vote. He seemed to be implying that now that we have a double vote, we need to die so he can live longer. I would sacrifice myself for the town to get a real advantage, but I'm not so pleased to do it just so a hated townie can live one day longer.

[Gemini]

Actually, in looking at Dekes role message that we received, the win condition suggests that there is only one mafia faction. My guess, based on that plus some role-related info is that we are dealing with a larger Egyptian mafia + third parties - my guess would be 5 scum plus SK.

The win condition for the Egyptians specifically mentions that they must outnumber the Greek pantheon and does not say anything about other pantheons. The Egyptians surely have read their win conditions, which makes Ooba's pushing of a Norse faction and then sudden assertion that LC is the last Egyptian look super scummy. Pushing another mafia, then a last ditch bus of his partner to try to look town?

My first choice would be to vote for Ooba, but MJ wants Gandalf. Charon said he would grant an extension so I think we have until Monday or Tuesday.

VOTE: Ooba

MJ has our second vote and will place it where she wants. If it looks like deadline is going to come up I will move my vote.

Also in older business,

Oh, so suggesting you (who I have as possible lurking scum and a good fit for a Gandalf partner) would be a better lynch than myself (who I know is 100% Town) when I’m not a MYLO liability (as said post discussed) is scummy? I want to be clear on your thought process.

Well, it struck me as weird ... why are you worried about who is a better lynch than you when no one was suggesting lynching you? I was just wondering why the minute we got a double vote you suddenly started pushing us for scum and saying we had to be lynched before you, when you hadn't had anything to say about us before. I'd been getting a really strong town vibe from you up to that point and suddenly after the Dekes vig your posting has changed not only with you suddenly turning onto us but pushing a Gandalf lynch to the point of all caps-locking about it, which isn't consistent with your style up until now. Not only were you insinuating we are scum, but she sudden change in your posting made it worth looking into.

[Gemini]

Ooba, we already claimed that we are Hera, Greek Goddess of Women and Marriage a while ago. We haven't full claimed as of yet because it wasn't our turn on your list. To answer your question about why we didn't use our super on D2, we talked about it and decided that it would be more useful later in the game.

MoI, your response and questions were for Katy, but I will just say this. In our QT, she mentioned something about how you completely buggered the town in the LOTR-mini theme and that made her paranoid when all of a sudden you seemed worried about being killed when earlier you said it might be necessary.

I can also answer for our playstyle. We discuss more in the QT and I think we just haven't wanted to go out in the thread and say something the other disagrees with. Getting another vote has actually helped that; now we can play more like masons rather than a hydra. And of course this is the week from hell for me so I'm JUST NOW getting to where I feel caught up.

*****

I would prefer a Gandalf lynch, but since I think he and ooba are the last Egyptians, I'd be okay with an ooba lynch, too.

Of everyone's claims, Gandalf's is the one that stands out to me most because when I think of gods of chaos and discord, I don't think of Eris. I think of Loki, and Set, and a dozen others. It seems very plausible to me that Gandalf could have replaced one of their names with "Eris" and made his fake claim; as for the gender discrepancy that LC said Axel pointed out, I think so far that's been coincidence. I don't think Eris has a female counterpart in other mythologies and vice versa.

My thoughts on ooba:
The effort he put into making suggestions for our RC today and his insistence (up until this afternoon) that there is a second team all seem to be scum-motivated, as does his call for a mass full claim and subsequent refusal to full claim himself even though he has "ooba full claims" on his list. He has only just full-claimed (sans flavor), and he did so with only two real votes (not counting Nacho's because that was technically AGar's vote) and a quasi-Quadz endorsement. This tells me he is nervous about his wagon taking off. Even with Iece questioning the case and MoI saying he isn't today's lynch, he felt pressured enough to claim when he previously wouldn't. Add to all of this his "I support Gandalf's lynch but I think he's town but he's also probably scum with these other people" fence-sitting and I think we've got tap-dancing scum. His flip-flop on Gandalf this morning just looks like he's caved to pressure.

ooba

: could we get some sort of flavor from your claim?

[Gemini]

--mjaye

[Gemini]

We didn't withhold anything. Katy reread the pm yesterday and pointed it out to me in the QT at the time she brought it up in the thread. We've been debating the set-up for a couple of days, with me being pretty adamant there are two teams. I was convinced Gandalf was actually Loki and that he was the key to cracking the second team. Katy was arguing there wasn't enough information to prove there was more than one and that most of the Norse stuff was speculation. She was worried about ooba, and when he suddenly switched gears mid-stream and "discovered" that there was only one team, it occurred to her to look at the pm again to see if there was more information there.

______

Gandalf, what do you think of ooba? On D2 you mentioned him as a good lynch candidate a couple of times, but haven't said anything about him today. Did something happen to change your assessment of him?

[Gemini]

We didn't withhold it. If we were were withholding it, we never would have said anything at all. When we got Dekes PM we were so excited about catching scum, we didn't look at the win condition that closely. We immediately got caught up in a claim war with him and so we were responding to that. It was only afterward when the we started thinking about scum teams in the context of who to lynch and when Ooba starting talking so much about Norse that we looked again at the win condition and noticed that it only required Egyptians to beat Greeks.

I'm unfortunately short on time these days ... work has gone a little crazy on me and I've not been able to do any re-reading, just keeping up with the thread. My thoughts on players:

TOWN:
Shadow Dancer
Iecerint
MagnaofIllusion
Chronopie

These are my strongest town reads and I am positive that SD and Iec are town. Magna I still think it town, just his posting style has seemed a bit more urgent or stressed or something today, which is the one thing that's shaken my confidence in that read, but I still think odds are on his being town. Chronopie has played a very low key game but his powers are confirmed and I can't see a mod being so mean as to give those powers to scum. A double vote is no use to them if it's so readily apparent and a scum player would be pretty much forced to give it to town players, so I can't see Chronopie being scum, given his powers.

NOT SURE:

AlmasterGM
chesskid3

Nachomamma
Ooba

I actually believe AGM and chesskid's claims and lean town on them. Chess is a possible partner with LC, so if LC turns out to be scum that puts him on shakier ground. AGM is in the not sure category just because he hasn't done anything to put him in the solid town category for me, but overall I have never gotten much of a scummy vibe from him.

Nachomamma is the most questionable in this section. AGar came out strong in the first day and then seemed to just coast for the rest of the game on having confirmed SD, doing nothing but dropping things he "knew" into the thread. The slot hasn't claimed anything and quickly reading ISO, I see a whole lot of noise from AGar but not so much substantial content.

Ooba: Okay, I'm coming around on you. I looked back over the sequence of events, and I think I was overly focused on your earlier posts, but it's true that reading back over where you reverse yourself it reads pretty genuine and you probably wouldn't be contriving that as scum. Also, I reviewed the game you quoted and it's true that you do seem to like to delve into speculation about set-up and mechanics.

UNVOTE: Ooba

SCUM

gandalf5166
LordChronos

I think these are both likely possibilities for Egyptians. I am thinking that LC could very well be Osiris posing as Thanatos. The Egyptians were huge into death worship and Osiris makes perfect sense with those powers. If he is part of the Egyptian scum team however, I don't think he could be the castrator, unless they had the ability to make two kills on night one. Osiris was also murdered by Set and then put back together with the exception of his man-parts, so maybe the castration is some kind of angry revenge? Maybe he is an SK because he wants to kill everyone?

I'm probably going to vote Gandalf now. I'll give it the weekend and then I'll place a vote on Sun. if not before.

-kt

[Gemini]

Finally have some free time today so I'm going over everything from the beginning. Will post and vote sometime tonight as soon as I'm done.

-kt

[Gemini]

I'm about halfway through my reread and ran out of steam, but some stuff I've pulled out so far.

AGar

On reread, I do not think AGar is mafia. Aside from the stuff with SD, he was one of the first to go after Mothrax and stayed on him. Especially given that AV was a goner, and AGar kept on Mothrax for second lynch that day, he is definitely not Egyptian. SK is not ruled out, especially since this slot is still a complete unknown claimwise. It's possible he's a Greek SK who had role related info on Poseidon and used it to get town cred. He was not as active after that happened.

AGM

:

- On Ranger/AGM slot, I actually noticed a lot of strange stuff. First, Ranger really tried to stir the pot on SD as that wagon was building and his posts then tend to inflate the situation, for example saying "I'm done arguing with you ..." after an exchange that lasted all of two posts. When the lynch was derailed by AGar, Ranger immediately went fishing to try to get more details on what exactly AGar knew.

- Also, a strange thing in his role claim is that he claimed a male god, and yet his super is called "sorority of health." Sorority is a sisterhood, so why does a male god have that name for his power?

- He also claimed to have targeted Magna, the claimed hated townie, for protection on night one - a role that mafia has no interest in killing since he becomes a liability to town if he lives too long.

- After Quadz claimed he put pressure on him to treestump himself, leading to him doing just that

-When people start voting Mothrax:

"This mothrax lynch has scumdriven written ALL over it."

- Also pushed the multiscum game idea early this day:

"I'd bet cash money the game is multiscum."

- Refused to claim night 2 target or Super target. Super target makes sense - it's best not known, but why not night two target? It's in the past.

Chesskid

- I believe is town. Chesskid is very hard to read for me, but I trust Mjaye's meta and also I see a method at the core of his madness. I don't believe he would reveal (or lie about) his roleblock on LC in the particular situation and also, I think the castrator is an SK, not part of a team.

Chronopie

: My read hasn't really changed. He's a proven doublevoter and he broadcast his role early. I don't really see that as implemented here as a scum power and I also don't see a scum double vote granter being so unsecretive about it.

If I were voting right now, I would vote AGM based on my read, but with two days until deadline and no votes on him, I'll read through all the choices tomorrow and choose one.

-kt

[Gemini]

I'm gonna vote Gandalf ... I've done my other reads, but had to start working before I could post all my thoughts. There wasn't really much new, but my reread brought back up a whole lot of stuff about Gandalf that I forgot.

I plan to post all my thoughts about the last part of my reread tonight and then vote at that time, but I won't be able to do it until about 11pm PT because Mon. I work until then.

Will be thinking about Hades claim and talking to MJ about it.

Thing that immediately pops to mind - if Hades needs Poseidon dead, why did AGar stop SD lynch on Day one?

[Gemini]

Yeah.

All right, I've got a bunch of stuff to do in this post. Sorry in advance for the wall. First, on AGar/Nacho. We were trying to hold off on full claiming until the next day if we could, but after his claim and talking with MJ, we agreed it's better if we do it now.

As we said before, our role is Hera, goddess of marriage and women.

We started out the game aligned with ... no one. Our win condition required that our not so beloved husband, Zeus be lynched. We were a little power hungry, you see. Upon his lynch we would leave the game victorious and no longer caring what happened to the rest of y'all. If we died before Zeus, we would lose. When Zeus was NKed, we received a PM that upon the death of our husband, we were appeased and relenquished our previous win condition and were able to re-join the Pantheon. In other words, we became town when he died. After we used our super, we decided to try not to claim in the hopes that scum would think we had a cop power and try to NK us, because our normal was actually only to tell us if our target was Zeus, meaning we are essentially VTs at this point.

Given our role, I believe the Hades claim for the most part. I think it makes sense that instead of another mafia, there were third party players working to get town targets and also working at cross-purposes with each other to create chaos. The only question I have is whether he is the SK or there is another third party player that is castrating people. The fact that AGar stopped the lynch of one of his targets on the first day nags at me and I wonder whether he has the requirement that his targets be nightkilled rather than lynched and has some limited power to kill them, but was holding off until the end hoping scum would do it for him. It would make an interesting setup if we were trying to get Zeus lynched and he was trying to get him nightkilled. The only thing that doesn't make sense about that is the castration kill flavor. As someone pointed out before, that makes sense for daddy dearest Kronos, not for Hades.

Next ....

Gandalf.

I'm placing my vote on Gandalf because the deadline is looming so close. In my reread I recalled a lot of things about Gandalf I had forgotten.

- First there was his move on Day 1 killing Baby Spice and claiming it confirmed him as town because he didn't save it for LYLO. I still see that power as a scum power rather than a pro-town power, especially since it ends the day. Just because he used the power in a way to try to give himself town cred, it doesn't make the power itself seem anything less like a tool for scum more than town. Just by its nature it's anti-town because it allows a person to end the day (and discussion) early, and I don't see the benefit of that to town ever.

- Then there is his choice of actions. Magna did a good job of explaining why his claimed actions make no sense, but to reiterate, he "forgot" that he thought SD was a serial killer when he had leisure to consider his action, and then suddenly remembered when he had to make a quick decision for a second action. His choice of action does mean that Gandalf and AGM are not both Egyptians together. If Gandalf flips Egyptian then AGM is not likely to be Egyptian given that redirect.

- He said he was a god, despite mentioning in his claim that he had gone back and reviewed his PM to get the details right on his color/powers.

- Night two action also questionable. He redirected LC to Axelrod. During Day 2 he wanted Axel lynched. Why wouldn't Axel be the one he redirected?

- Heavy defense of Dekes, tried to pressure to get us vigged before Dekes.

All of that =

Vote: Gandalf

[Gemini]

Gemini, what is your normal and super called? Why didn't you come clean at the start of D3 itself?
Nacho, what were your actions N1 and N2

Our normal is called "Woman's Intuition" and our super is called "Eyes of Argus"

Like I said, we didn't say anything before because once we used our super, we are essentially VTs. Our normal power was only for finding Zeus. But we thought if scum believed our normal was some kind of real investigation and didn't know our full claim we might draw a night kill tonight, so we tried to hold off on having to claim our normal today if possible.

Also, Gemini, who did you target with your normal on N1 and N2?

N1 we targeted Iecerint. I felt his posting style D1 was different than what I was used to and he wasn't as active, so thought maybe he was an important role trying to lay low.

On day 2 we had decided to go after more lurky players for voting on the theory that Zeus would be trying not to draw too much attention to himself. We picked out Axelrod and Mothrax as likely candidates. Mothrax obviously wasn't Zeus so we targeted Axel night 2. So close!

[Gemini]

We targeted Quadz last night.

Guess what?! He's not Zeus, guys.

[Gemini]

Why target the treestump?

It was just a random pick. Our action doesn't really have a real use anymore.

[Gemini]

I suck at this hydra thing.

Boo. We thought SD was out of the picture last night.

Yeah, okay, we might have been castrating people a little bit here and there, but hear us out before you get all lynchy on us. We are your queen, after all. It's just ... we're a little bit tired of all the raping up in here, and think Olympus would be much better served by a sisterhood in charge. It would be a kinder, gentler place with far fewer little bastard demi-gods running around and not quite so many trees that used to be women.

We really are Hera, we did not lie about that, and we are aligned with ourselves. Our win condition is to eliminate all males in the game. As soon as only females remain in the game we win. Our normal is that we target a player at night and if he is male we castrate him, if female they join a neighborhood with us. We have not targeted any females. We targeted no one last night in the hopes that someone else would be roleblocked and take the fall for us.

Now, because of our win condition, unless the mafia is all female which seems unlikely given latest kill flavor, they CANNOT win if we are still alive. And guess what? We are bulletproof so they can't kill us at night. We have to be lynched in order for mafia to win. So this is our desperation plea to stay alive. We are most likely not going to win. We've known that since four females died in the first two days. But mafia cannot win either while we are still alive and they can't get rid of us on their own. If you allow us to stay alive, we will no longer kill at night, we'll basically just hope for a crazy miracle that kills all the dudes somehow and we will help to lynch scum. We can target a female role tonight to put them in a neighborhood with us and show that they don't get killed.

We think a good place to start is the person who suddenly shifted the game focus heavily toward SK hunting. Ooba did an amazing job working up a plan to suss us out. Almost as if he was desperately trying to save his own ass and working overtime to do it.

From our PoE, Ooba is very likely Egyptian.
--Quadz is confirmed town.
--Iece is pretty much confirmed town; his results have been legitimate so far.
--Iece’s results mean AGM is also town, as we believe he is paranoid. (Despite AGM's decidedly scummy play.)
--Nacho and SD are also town.
--LC was an iffy read until today; his comment about Gandalf being wrong about how we should have been killed before Dekes is super-town.
--MoI is town; his claim doesn’t make sense any other way. Some of his comments have pinged us the wrong way, but it doesn’t make sense for him to be scum.
--Chess has been playing erratically, but he’s not our top scum read today. Yes, he blocked a doc, but Iece also investigated AGM last night, and others have seen AGM as scummy, including us. Also he's a womenz, so we're not inclined to see him die.

That leaves us and ooba, and we know what we are.

Vote: Ooba

[Gemini]

Keeping us alive when you can control our night actions (by blocking us; or directing our kill as a vig; or having us neighborize Quadz, a proven goddess; or verifying that Chess is a goddess) wouldn't be the worst thing for town right now. You know who we are, and you know what we do, so we're no longer a threat. Killing us when there is still an unknown number of scum in play will, for one thing, lower that vote threshold, again making MoI's hated townie status a threat.

Anyway, we can't win as of the dawn of this morning anyway (not because we got caught, but last night was sort of a MYLO for us; even if we had killed successfully, the death of Chrono pretty much ended any already veerrrry slim chance we had of getting to an all-female endgame), but we can try to help town win (for Demeter's sake!).

[Gemini]

Yeah, Andy keeps telling us not to castrate him in the QT, but it was his idea in the first place!! Guys reaaaally don't like being castrated, even metaphorically. Geez. They're imaginary in this case!

I guess you

can't

really trust us. However, if you gave us directions for the night, we would be lynched for deviations, so we would pretty much have to follow orders. And since we know the one confirmed goddess still in game is town, we're on her side. (Go Quadz, go!)

Some set-up speculation of our own:

We figure there are an even number of gods to goddesses.

Chess claimed a goddess. (And Aphrodite makes sense as a version of the prostitute/roleblocker role.) Also, Isis/Mothrax was apparently the scum version of that as well as Nacho nabbed his roleblock/Seduction; his official title was Egyptian Goddess of Magic and Womanhood. (Ours is Women and Marriage.)

Has Chess full-claimed all his titles?

It doesn't seem likely that the prostitute role is repeated, so if Chess is scum who actually claimed Moth's powers to be his own, then someone else probably lying about their gender as well, but based on claims we don't see that as likely. (I hope this makes sense?) No one but us seemed to be aware of the necessary gender issues in the game; Axel via LC noted that the fakeclaims were matching genders, however. Gandalf was the one possible exception to this as Eris had no female counterparts in other mythologies, but he actually WAS Eris.

The only other discrepancy we have found with genders/claims is AGM's "sorority of health"; since sorority normally refers to a sisterhood, it made us question his claimed gender (and that's a nitpicky stretch, and we tried to fish for it a bit yesterday). However, it's unlikely the scum had two protective roles (unless there really are two teams, one of which has been supremely terrible at NKs, but I did actually play in a mini where the scum forgot to send in kills two or maybe three nights in a row, so I know it can happen--and that same mini actually had two town JKs, too) so that combined with Iece's investigation pretty much cleared him for us.

Gender Claims (to sort of show a visual of what I was saying about Chess)

Hera

-

Zeus

Demeter

-Poseidon

Persephone

-Hades

Artemis

-

Ra (Apollo)

Aphrodite-Hephaestus

Iris

-Hermes

Eris

-Dionysus

Bastet (Athena)

-Asclepius

Isis (Hestia)

-Thanatos

Hebe

-

Ares

Pairs are loosely based on claim similarities when applicable (and mythos when not). Confirmed in colors. Chess is the only unconfirmed female; if he's lying about his gender, so is someone else.


@Ooba: This was one of the things that pinged our scumdar yesterday though obviously we couldn't discuss it. There has been lots of talk in our QT about that.

- Where the hell did that "Mafia hit SK bulletproof" comment come from?

However, you did turn yesterday's discussion into an SK hunt rather than a scum hunt, almost single-handedly. Again, it was something we noticed but was not something we were able to discuss with the pressure on us at the time, and diverting the hunt like that has likely Egyptian-motivation.

I also think Hermes or Thanatos could be a fakeclaim for Thoth, as in mythology, Thoth was often thought to be one and the same with Hermes, but based on his ability claim, shares the scribe ability with LC's Thanatos. http://www.pantheon.org/articles/t/thoth.html


-mjaye

[Gemini]

In fact: Thoth: "Thoth was also present at the judgement of the dead. He would question the deceased before recording the result of the weighing of the deceased's heart. If the result was favorable Thoth would declare the deceased as a righteous individual who was worthy of a blessed afterlife."

[Gemini]

Oops.

No, we're Hera. Not Kronos. We only kill males, hence the castration flavor. Females can't be castrated, so a universal SK wouldn't have a gender-specific kill flavor. If we target females, they become our neighbors. This can be verified by leaving us alive and allowing us to neighborize Quadz tonight. He could be given a Doc protect, or MoI's protect, or hey, even yours, right? That wouldn't affect our ability to neighborize him, and he could confirm it in the morning.

[Gemini]

I don't think anyone's alignment changes if we neighborize them. They would still win with town. We would have left the game if we had managed to outlive all males and only females remained.

It is a cool role. I think we got it because of my answer to the question about Chuck Norris and Batman. (It involved the words "sexist" and "Wonder Woman.") I just wish five goddesses hadn't died by the end of D2.

Ooba, I understand your Kronos speculation up to the point where we claimed. However, persisting in it after that is kind of moot. We were caught in a lie and we cannot win based on sheer numbers, so we have no reason to fake claim anything today.

There ARE good and valid reasons we should not be lynched. After all, better the devil you know...

So it is said that if you know your enemies and know yourself, you can win a hundred battles without a single loss.
If you only know yourself, but not your opponent, you may win or may lose.
If you know neither yourself nor your enemy, you will always endanger yourself. ~Sun Tzu

[Gemini]

Our normal is the castrate/neighborize (called "Wrath/Unity") ability. We lied about the Zeus/Not Zeus part. It's investigative only in that it tells us if we targeted a god or goddess; i.e., if our target becomes our neighbor or is castrated. We totally invented the names of our powers and the normal ability. The super was true, but it's actually titled "Maternal Love." We were hoping to get by on a lyncher claim for a while, even if it meant not killing. We were really hoping for a second scum flip last night in hopes that the castrated flavor would be attributed to them. Anyone speculating otherwise would have been our first pick for scum.

Chess, you would win with town if you are town and town wins. We only win if all the males are gone (and then we would leave the game if that happened before endgame). You would only win if all scum is gone. If you were scum, you would still have to get scum majority over town to win. Our wincon is strictly that no males are alive and we are. We could have won with living female scum. You could not have. Get it?

SD: You don't have to use a block on us. You can direct our kill. The only people we can't kill are goddesses, and everyone but Chess and Quadz has claimed god. You could direct us to neighborize Chess or Quadz to verify our claim or Chess's gender (and supposedly there will be three protects and three roleblocks in play tonight anyway, so...). We can't kill and get away with it. Our kill flavor won't change, so we can't hide going against orders. Think about it. You still need to find scum, of which there are probably two left, and there are strong cases on a couple of people, cases advocated by strong players, and there is a chance you're going to get it wrong. There is also only one town nightkill power left, and that's Nacho's stolen Slaughter, which is reserved for you. Also, while you see our DV as a potential liability, remember that it is equalizing a vote threshold for MoI's condition. We are offering our kill as a vig for town.

Mercenary, yes, but also very helpful if considered carefully and used appropriately.

-mjaye

[Gemini]

I think I mainly just really like Katy.

I liek you too :'( I can't help the role the mods give me to play.

When we flip Hera, take a look back at the people who redoubled the effort on our lynch. Mafia cannot kill us and I bet they know it's true -- there are two nights without a mafia kill. They need us lynched. I'm sure they'd like to get rid of the double vote as well.

Yes, you can take the easy way out and lynch us first. But mafia is the greater threat, and with us alive it takes scum longer to win. If town doesn't lynch us then mafia would have to get to a position where they could lynch us on their own in order to win. An SK is as much a threat to mafia as to town -- just ask the last mafia to play with me as SK. We do not win together, they have to get rid of our slot first. By town doing it for them, you are doing them a nice favor. You have the opportunity to use our kill as a vig with the vig dead. We want to kill males anyway - just tell us who and we'll do it.

This is pretty much all I can say. I don't expect it to work. It's the easy way out to just lynch us and mafia will be trying to push it however they can.

I don't even know what to say to Chess with his junior high schoolyard politics. Hera is way above all that and is wise enough to know when to put aside petty rivalries for the greater good. It's no wonder we are the queen of heaven and you are just a common whore.

[Gemini]

We are guaranteed to kill if everyone is telling the truth about their gender. If we target them and they don't die but instead join our neighborhood, they'll have some explaining to do, will they not? Anyway, we've made our offer to give you a vig power. And since you, quadz, are confirmed town, and confirmed female, we're on town's side. The only people who should worry about us right now are scum, who, as Katy pointed out, need to have us lynched because they can't NK us.

[Gemini]

Our wincon would be that we leave the game if/when all males are dead. This means the game would continue without our presence. I see that as meaning the town can still win as long as scum are dead. Again, it would be preferable for you to lynch an Egyptian today anyway. With MoI's hated townie status, we have a double vote that's keeping the threshold higher. With unknown scums left, and a lowered threshold like that, and a NK looming over the head of your JK, there are far riskier factors than us. We can neighborize you tonight if that would be preferable, so you could at least verify that we don't kill female targets. (And you can't be killed anyway, so we don't waste a protect.)

[Gemini]

You're missing the point in our "cute" argument: we won't be killing unless directed by town. A vig kill voted on by the town before the end of day. It's playing to our wincon to cooperate with town because the ONE confirmed townie is also confirmed female. If we were to go against the mandate of the town at night, we would be lynched the next day, hands down. Again, our kill flavor is rather obvious. You should lynch someone who is likely scum today and have us kill some other likely scum tonight. Our kill is helpful to town, and detrimental to scum. Our presence is also helpful to town, and detrimental to scum. (And if it's truly our extra VOTE you're worried about, we could proxy one of them to someone we all agree is town.) And again, like Katy pointed out, scum HAVE to lynch us to get us killed, and they definitely don't want town to have a NK in their possession.

[Gemini]

Olympians, you have heard our case. We stand before you as your queen, charged with the sacred duty of protecting women, and you must see the righteousness of our cause. For too long the gods have savaged women to sate their beastly lusts with no regard for what shall become of those women. WE have tried, for generations, to protect women by hiding their true forms and setting holy guardians to protect them only to be thwarted by the forgotten sons of human rapes who long to appease their godly fathers and buy their love with deeds of valor and glory. They have searched out the hidden victims and delivered them to their fathers unconcerned with what will happen next, unconcerned that another misbegotten child will be delivered and unloved as they are.

Our only recourse was to put an end to the gods' ability to rape and savage these women. Our cause is just, and we are ever loyal to our sacred duty and to Olympus. If you would punish your queen for fulfilling her calling, then you must never again call yourselves gods of anything other than your base lusts and animal urges.

A queen does not beg. We would rather go to our grave knowing that we alone stood for a just and righteous cause than ask for mercy from those who have never shown a woman mercy before. Though it be in the best interest of Olympus to spare us, if you will not have it, then make our execution swift or give us the means to end it ourselves.

May Olympus triumph in this war, and may those of you who stand with us know you have our favor. Sister Demeter, you alone are left to protect for the women of this world--you whose own child fell victim to the lusts of our brother Hades--it is our fervent wish that you will somehow prevail in the end, and when the war with Egypt is over, pick up our righteous cause and move forward in cleansing Olympus of these hedonistic gods, if not for your sister, then for your daughter, she who has again been taken into the Underworld against her will.

So mote it be.

[Gemini]

Just want to put this out there.

We were caught in a lie, so we claimed. What GOOD would it have done for us to continue to lie? At that point, we could have lied, said, "um, well, our action went through, so SD is either lying or Chess blocked him." Which would have made a slam dunk case on Chess today. Had Chess flipped town at that point, we would have most likely been the next lynch for lying about our action going through when it didn't. Also guessing SD would have been handily NK in the interim night.

I can't think of why anyone would be pissed about our claim as our claim should actually clarify quite a bit in this game, not muck it up. It eliminates confusion and forces a scumhunt, not an SK hunt. OOOOOOH right, though...there are at least two people who are definitely NOT interested in hunting scum.

(And perhaps we should have tried to claim vig, but as Ares was the god of vengeance, well...now that just doesn't make much sense for us, and targeting a female would have mucked it up anyway. Honesty was our only real option when we were caught.)

[Gemini]

Gemini if they lynch me

can you go against their plan and fuck them because you'll have already lost?

Nah, we're a little pissed at scum for killing off so many of our ladies right off the bat, and then putting us basically out of business last night so we'd prefer to screw them if we had the opportunity (and not in a nice way).

If it makes you feel any better, we're not gonna vote for the last claimed, non-stump female besides us in the game on the off chance that you're telling the truth. We will happily target whoever tonight, though as there's no way that can go wrong for us.

And I just have to say something here, because Iec and I go way back to our very first games here <3:

Because I love her.

Grrr. Iec this is basically playing against your Wincon (if you are Town) if that’s the reason you don’t want to lynch the claimed Non-Town Serial Killer.

He's not playing against his wincon. He's more willing to hear us out than you are but you can't know until the game is over if that is actually a bad thing. Yes we have a different win condition than you, but so do at least two and probably three other players (Nacho's win condition is not the same as town's as it requires him to kill a townie before he can win). It is possible that leaving us alive and killing mafia instead would be better ultimately for town - it's getting fairly close to a LYLO situation if you don't lynch a mafia member today. Lynching us is certainly better than lynching a town player, but it's not as good for you as lynching scum because while lynching us gets rid of a sure third party player, you will not be able to afford a misstep going forward, particularly given that you MUST find the scum before the hated townie status rears its head (if that's even a real thing). We are a known equation that is controllable and is a sure lynch going forward as correctly lynching becomes more and more critical.

If you all are so sure that Chess is scum, you should lynch him first and follow the night action plan that Ooba laid out. I don't say this to save my own butt because I truly would rather see town win this game than mafia. You already know my status, so you should follow the plan that most eliminates doubt in the next day phase.

Iec is more willing to hear us out, not just for love (although we both love you too, Iecy!) but also because logically he knows we are not as much of a threat to him. If he turns up castrated then he knows we will be lynched immediately. We are not going to kill him or any solid townie because it would be the end of us and our only chance is survival. The fact that you are not at all willing to consider that there might be a better lynch than us, even though you are acting 100% sure that Chess is scum is pretty intriguing. You act as if you are shackled to voting us just because we claimed but you still have free will and can weigh the relative threats. If you still think we are the greater threat than fair enough, but then you can't be as sure as you say you are that Chess is scum.

[Gemini]

Oh wait, but also!



Happy Birthday Chess

[Gemini]

Just a note about ooba's speculation to set-up/power:

That "strategic assault" speculation can't work. Hera is an Olympian.

Also, we're not unblockable. And if you insist SKs are bad for town, go reread LOTR-large theme.

[Gemini]

We're also specialized...meaning we want men to die. Since the remaining scum have all claimed gods, then we're perfectly happy helping to kill them. Why is that a problem? Like we've said before, Quadz is confirmed female and confirmed town. If there were any miniscule chance we could win, it would hinge on him. It is therefore in our best interest to support the town cause. We can proxy a vote to alleviate that threat, and town can direct our kills, which, since scum are claimed males, then we have NO REASON not to cooperate. This is reasonable.

Also, isn't asking Nacho to use his stolen kill on someone other than SD basically asking him to go against his claimed wincon since SD seems to be solidly considered town and there is no way he's going to be lynched?


For the sake of SD's chart: our color is fiery orange-red; and we took no action last night. We couldn't risk hitting a female, and we were hoping others were blocked and would take the hit that would come from that. If we HAD acted, we would have known we were blocked and thus would not have lied about not being blocked. We also misunderstood Nacho's abduction of SD and believed that he would not be able to act or be acted upon.

[Gemini]

Except that our lynch would be inevitable after that?

[Gemini]

Our passive is "Lady of the Heavens" and it's our NK immunity (BP).

And LC, inevitable or not, there's no reason not to point out the obvious advantages that keeping us alive would give to town.

It's interesting to me that with all of ooba's flavor speculation that he does not consider the likelihood that Thoth is in the game. I pointed this out a while back, but maybe saying it again is needed. Thoth was the Egyptian equivalent of Hermes (flavor wise), but his ability was primarily that of scribe of the dead. Given that Hermes is in the game as a graverobber, and Thanatos is claimed scribe of the dead, I would surmise Thoth's presence before that of Horus. >.>

[Gemini]

Thoth was the patron of scribes and of the written word.

He was scribe of the underworld who recorded the verdict on the deceased in the hall of Ma´at

and was given the epithets "He who Balances", "God of the Equilibrium" and "Master of the Balance".

Not really a stretch at all. I was wondering which of you and ooba would respond first, though.

[Gemini]

He was, nevertheless, a scribe of the dead. What about the connection he might have to Hermes, who is considered to be one and the same as Thoth? Did you not have any comment on that, or was it only the association with your role that piqued your interest?

[Gemini]

The idea that Horus is in the game is from ooba's painstaking set-up speculation.

Here's the thing. If Iece is accepted as insane (drunken) town cop, then his result on LC should clear LC, because he gets false results for people. (And I forgot he investigated LC and just reread the claims to make sure.) If Thoth is in the game, it would have to be ooba, who has gone above and beyond in speculating set-up, flavor, roles, etc. That's MY speculation. Ooba's play is very hyperdefensive--too much trying to head everyone off at the pass.

Town need to get their heads out of the set-up spec going on, out of the war of walls and plans and blah, blah, blah, and look at how people are actually playing.
Fake claims are going to break a lot of this set-up spec in the long run, and if town follows that kind of play, it's not guaranteed to make them win. If ANYONE doubts this, go look at the LOTR MINI where all the set-up spec in the world failed miserably.

1. Who is saying what and WHY are they saying it?
2. What AREN'T people saying?

[Gemini]

You may know you're town, but you had been keeping LC on your potential scum list during all of this. Did the idea that he could be Thoth never occur to you? You've done extensive research on possible roles and flavor and abilities in your speculations, and the description of LC's abilities are a bit closer to Thoth than Thanatos. There's just that pesky little incriminating fact that the Thoth/Hermes are often considered one and the same. The fact that you DIDN'T consider that he might be a role makes me wonder if you didn't want people to look him up and see that parallel, which makes me wonder WHY you wouldn't want people to see that. I'm basing this on the sheer amount of effort you've demonstrated already; the omission is rather glaring to me.

In regards to the fake claims/swapping: WHY would they have swapped fake claims? If that happened, MoI pointed out that it would have happened on D1. That doesn't make sense. They really had no motivation to swap claims, and again, all of that is conjecture. We pointed out the list of genders to make a point that if Chess was lying someone else had to be, but we didn't say he was definitely lying. I've been wondering if some of the fear of having us target a specified target at night was not just blanket castration anxiety but fear that we would uncover said lie, but that is also conjecture. You, though, have taken that theory and worked it into fact, basing a massive amount of posting and speculation on it, which is distracting. Again, the question is why?

[Gemini]

I hate this plan.

Just sayin'.

[Gemini]

I would not lynch Nacho just if his kill fails though. You'll need to lynch an Egyptian tomorrow and I'm pretty sure he's not one.

[Gemini]

We go to our grave knowing we serve a just and righteous cause.

Remember our words, but more, remember our

deeds

, for if the raping and other abuses against womankind do not cease, then our daughters will also take up their holy daggers and return force with force in the depths and darkness of night when man lies in sloth, sated by his gluttonies and lusts. Warn your sons, and turn from your ways, Olympians, else there will be another like us, and she will beget daughters of like mind, and her name will be Justice, and theirs will be Wrath and Rage, and their passions will be spent on your sons before they turn their eyes upon you. This is the legacy that we would leave with you as a warning. Look to your fallen god of war and the fallen king, those bravest and most powerful among you, and know that they were powerless under our knife, as you shall be when our daughters rise up and say NO MORE!

[Gemini]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4z88U915uq8