A Not So Brief History of the League
Foreword and Instructions of Use
This file is an attempt to summarise and retell what happened within the network of aristocrats known as the League during “Von Rutskarn’s Magical Murder Tour”. In more than two months of gameplay, the inside communication of the League was much more lively than the rest of the game: we exchanged roughly 1,600 emails, containing everything from mindless paranoia, crackpot theories and intricate scheming, to uncontrollable meme epidemics, pun battles, runaway tangents, and Rutskarn worship. Because of that, what you now see before you can only be described as an impenetrable wall of text.
Do not be afraid, though! We tried our best to cover all of the most important events in the narrative sections, so if you are in hurry and only want to clear up some remaining mysteries of the game, you may regard quotes as optional reading material. But beware: your conscience may never forgive you for missing out on all the awful (or, less often, good) jokes and puns that defy summarising.
Since many people complained about the lifelessness of the game, we present this summary as an account of what the game was really like to quite a large number of players. To us at least, the game remained fun throughout, and we see no reason we shouldn’t share it with everyone.
So sit back, buckle your pun-belts, and enjoy.
Dramatis personae
BenD - “I'm a voice of reason? Wooo!”;
bucaneer - “I’ll need electroshock therapy after the game ends”;
Destrocus - “People don't really suspect anything when I make a move”;
The Freshmaker - “I tend to lurk unless I have something to add”;
Kevashim - “... and thus, the Puntangle was complete”;
KremlinLaptop - “Honestly, with all of us so worried about ourselves how can we possibly be anything but aristocrats?”;
Manny - “I would hate to be ordered who to vote for.”;
Sekundaari - “Occam's Razor doesn't really cut it in this game.”;
Someone - ”Oh, yeah, I'm Someone”;
Viktor - “This is all very, very messed up.”
Our story begins late in Day 2 of the game...
Having received positive commentary and communication info from each, Denubis decided to bring the ten of us together. He expressed hope that he had managed to pick an assassin-free group, but suggested we make an internal democratic decision of our actions, then demand that everyone follow it to restrict any possible assassins. As a first target, he proposed Dice, who had loudly disagreed with his plan and claimed he had had no contact with other players, which Denubis didn't believe.
After a few questions, it was time for business:
”[...] we still have nothing to lose. Except for the game [...]” -Destrocus
”I dont like the word "committee", it reminds me of the Soviet Union” -Someone
We talked about our prime suspects, and others were still arriving to the discussion. Some names popping up were Dice, Valaqil, Halfling and Odecey. In hindsight, this was not great. We did agree Eyda was unlikely to be an assassin. Denubis suggested we ”recruit” Abnaxis.
Then Denubis died, and we could at least stop suspecting a wolf plan.
”Now I came away from over yonder thinking to myself 'that Destrocus fellow must be an assassin' only to find out that he's part of our new Good Guys Club.” -KremlinLaptop
League members openly suspicious of Destrocus: 1
KremlinLaptop also had an idea of an anonymous post declaring our formation by Denubis to the rest of the players. And of saying our names to each other, because some weren't obvious based on addresses.
”Oh, yeah, I'm Someone.” -Someone
Kevashim suspected he would be the first to go, and repeated the previous suspect names. He preferred to think of us as Justice League, which was changed to the form ”The League” by Destrocus. Destrocus also wrote the original anonymous announcement after bucaneer suggested we make it in narrative-friendly language and provided the opening (and later the bit concerning chums, which appears to have sparked paranoia in them). Someone provided some additional humor. The letter set the style for future announcements and mails to recruits.
”I like the word "league" because it carries just the right amount of doubt that this all will turn out to be ineffective (cf. League of Nations) and the right amount of fictional over-the-top grandeur (cf. Justice League). ” -bucaneer
Viktor entered the discussion, pointing out Tuck calling people who have seen Denubis' data ”potential assassins”. Still, Dice was agreed to be the most suspicious of Denubis' opponents.
There was some concern of wolves posing as members in the thread, or even making a League announcement of their own. Sekundaari thought out loud of “an official seal”, some method of marking the announcement the assassins couldn't copy. Bucaneer got the idea of using the Gravatar ID for this purpose. And BenD offered to create a spreadsheet of the members and actions to keep track of, and delivered later. With Manny showing up, the League membership was complete. After much collective Chocolate Hammer page refreshing, Viktor managed to be the first to post the letter announcing the League’s existence to the rest of the game at the beginning of Day 3.
”If the wolves can guess who's a member of the league, we'll be decimated quickly.” -Viktor
And so we were decimated: KremlinLaptop had been assassinated in the night.
”We can get worried when another one of us dies the next night.”- Destrocus
Moments of accurate clairvoyance: 1
Viktor cast the first vote against Dice. We were new to this ”secret agenda” stuff, and probably talked too much in the thread. During the week two assassins voted Viktor, and two Eyda – meanwhile, 6 League members voted Dice.
”So, only 8 comments and 3 of them are from the league members. Smooth.” -Someone
BenD detailed the newest additions to the spreadsheet – a list of possible suspects so we could track potential lynch targets, and a device to track League actions in progress – and stated:
”I am also mildly concerned that there is a wolf among us. (*waves cheerily*)” –BenD
This immediately raised concern about how to handle the League’s most important members - if such members even existed. Denubis was under the (false) impression that he had included some or all chums as members of the League. This caused far more problems than it should have later on.
“If there's an assassin in our club, they already know everything they need to know, except the identity of the chums, so I don't think revealing them is wise.” –Sekundaari
To protect against wolf influence, and gain more voting power, BenD proposed recruiting new people, with each one being assigned a handler that would handle all the communication with them, safeguarding the rest from reveal. He suggested Scott as a recruit.
”Surely, 3 or 4 per day should be enough, no?” -bucaneer, on recruits
Sekundaari suggested sending an announcement post with a codephrase (included in the recruitment letters) afterwards, to prevent any infiltrator from pretending to recruit for the League. The strengthened paranoia led to this code being chosen at the last minute by the sender of the mails. (The code, covered as in character, ended up being ”Our sincerest thanks for your continued patience.”)
”Oh, snot, forgive me. Email FIRST, then codeword. Derp.” -BenD
The recruitment letter was written mainly by BenD and Kevashim. A common, anonymous e-mail account was set up to send the mails, and also forward all received messages to all members. Safety processes were discussed, with recruits sending copies of all communications to this address to prevent rogue handlers from snatching control of them. Handlers were to be selected by volunteer, but matched to their recruits by roll of dice, so that handlers would be chosen only from the willing - but unable to handpick recruits.
As BenD put it:
“1. Invitation-management email address created with autoforwards to League members.
2. BenD sends invitations using invitation-management email. Invitations include a code and request that the recipient return the full quoted text of the message with their answer by Thursday night. All emails to be BCC'd to League members.
3. BenD posts code on CH.
4. A League member who is neither BenD nor a handler volunteer uses a public random generator to make matches between the handlers and the recruits. Handlers may not be the same as a recruit's sponsor. The matches are reported to the League via group email.
5. Any recruit who responds positively (such responses will autoforward to the League) will receive (from BenD at the invitation-management email) contact info for their handler. Handlers will be notified by group email just to make sure everyone's on top of it.
6. Handlers and their recruits discuss things. Handlers must convey League voting intentions and, if their recruit dissents, that fact along with reasoning, in a timely fashion. Such communication should go to the whole League.”
Of course anyone objecting to this immediately seemed suspicious.
“Well, it sure is less motivating to be assigned to a recruit you don't trust or you don't sympathize with. But if it is really useful for league-internal trust issues I can comply.” –Manny
BenD was formally accepted as the sender of the mails and user of the new account. Bucaneer aired all possible doubts (just to be shot down by Sekundaari):
“Reminder for everyone - if BenD is a very clever assassin, we'll all remember this moment in our times of billtodamax nostalgia - this is where we'd hand the keys of victory to wolves.” -bucaneer
“If BenD is a very clever assassin, we're done for either way, I'd say. If someone's going to have billtodamax nostalgia, I'd say it's our late vigilante and busybody...” -Sekundaari
“If it turns out that the League never had assassins in it, we'll have quite some head-slapping about the intricate yet useless security systems we're implementing (at least I know I will)” -bucaneer
“Think of it as insurance: you pay what you pay to lessen the impact of potential bad things, not lessen actual certain bad things.” -Sekundaari
Moments of accurate clairvoyance: 2
Alternatives were discussed, such as announcing our official email address instead of a codephrase, but it was agreed that the plan was Good Enough as it was. After getting rid of the pesky serious business, a new meme was born.
“I think this'll have to do, lest we end up with something more complicated than your average nuclear launch procedure. [...] I have myself considered that one of the "surprises" might be Rutskarn being in the game with a fake(r) name. Is anyone of the players new enough to be his alter ego?” - Sekundaari
“Actually I have a confession to make: I am Rutskarn and you have successfully guessed my plan. Congratulations, you win! [...]” -Destrocus
“That's not possible, for I'm Rutskarn, and am simply having fun at your expense with the whole Rutskarn in the game -talk. ...only my German's too good, reportedly.” -Sekundaari. The single obstacle seemed to later vanish, as if it had never existed.
“Ruts is probably the trapper... XD” -The Freshmaker
“No, I am Rutskarn! (7 to go...)” -bucaneer
“(come on, people - someone say "I am Rutskarn, and so is my wife", please)” -bucaneer
“[...] Also, I am Rutskarn.” -Manny
Issues of different nationalities and languages the multi-incarnate Rutskarn would have to fake were soon discarded, and his true superhuman nature soon acknowledged.
“I am, after all, acting like I'm Finnish. You know what's the hardest part of being a secret Rutskarn? I have to be active according to the time in Finland. That is why I constantly post about how tired I am. It all adds up!” -Sekundaari
“Oh come on, we all learned a long time ago that Rutskarn, like the majority of videogame superheroes, never needs to sleep, eat or go to the toilet. It's easy for you to be active all the time :P” -Destrocus
“Do you not see, brothers - Rutskarn is in all of us, he has always been!” -bucaneer
Sir Broccoli was noticed by us after he jumped the Dice bandwagon. After confirming that he’s not, in fact, a member already, he was added to the list of possible recruits.
“None of us is Sir Broccoli, but I know what side dish I'm making with dinner tonight.” -BenD, not coming off as supportive
“Isn't it great how some of us don't even know the names of the other members? If that ain't the best security system ever then put me in a dress and call me Betty ^^” -Betty (Destrocus)
Sometime amidst all that, our collective Rutskarn-nature shone through in another prophecy:
“Surely [the assassins] can't be that numerous? I think Rutskarn would have had the brain for better balance than so many connected assassins that they can afford sacrifices, and a trapper to boot. Unless, of course, if he intends to introduce that balance afterwards.” -Sekundaari
“[...] the possibility that Ruts has devised an intentionally unbalanced game in order to create more interesting storytelling by rebalancing it in the third act has occurred to me, also.” -BenD
“"And the possibility that Ruts has devised" My ears are burning!” -Sekundaari
Moments of accurate clairvoyance: 3
In the end, the recruits chosen were Abnaxis, Scott and Sir Broccoli, though there was some fidgeting when it came to volunteering for their assignment to specific handlers (which, as our nuke-protocol required, had to be random):
“Destrocus, Sekundaari - why not? Surely, you're not against throwing some dice. (I'm sorry.)” -bucaneer, unaware of what horrors he was unleashing
“Bad pun. [...]” -Destrocus
“My vote for Dice has already been cast. It's a gamble, of course, but the odds are ok. On that note, what are the odds of Rutskarn doing some Alea iacta est -pun if Dice is lynched?” -Sekundaari, further lowering the bar, thinking it harmless
“Oh I hope he makes some Caesar reference in addition to the Alea iacta est. Maybe he makes Dice choke on a salad that was riddled with poisonous plants.” -Destrocus
“...a salad riddled with daggers.” -Sekundaari
“Also, don't be too worried about being spineless here. It's just the way you bend! xD Get it? Bend? BenD?” -Destrocus, suddenly forgetting his original disposition.
Even at this point, the clouds of the Pun Storm were starting to gather... Nevertheless, Destrocus, The Freshmaker and Kevashim were chosen as the respective handlers for each recruit.
“So I got Abnaxis, eh? Not too bad, I suppose.” -Destrocus. If only he knew.
The League sent invitation letters to its recruits, and posted a codephrase-containing letter to the public so that those recruits would have some security that the letters were truly coming from the League.
“Why didn't we get any reply yet? Don't they read their e-mails or what!?” -Manny, after 15 minutes
“I know, this is annoying.” -Sekundaari, after less than 1 minute.
“*laughter* I know, right? People who work, eat and sleep - who needs 'em!” -BenD
“Why aren't they obsessive like us???? Or why don't they have no life??? Also like us!!![...]” -Destrocus
“Well we did ask them to consider it carefully before they respond! XD” -BenD
“I get that they may be trying to figure out if we're actually assassins with an elaborate scheme, but 20 minutes??” -Sekundaari
“[...]Also, the last six minutes of this made me lose sanity at an extreme rate.” -Destrocus
“Well, the battlemusic is queuing, so we are probably supposed to do something else than just watch him dance like Michael Madsen in that one scene in Reservoir Dogs.” -Destrocus
“and thus, the Puntangle was complete, the gathered Lords of Wit could only stare in awe as the form of the mighty Bootlord was summoned before them. // (Or ‘puntagram’ if you prefer)” -Kevashim
“And he brought the one boot to boot them all.” -Destrocus
“I'm still hoping Cahmel can be infused with the power of the Bootlord in TES V.” -Sekundaari
“I think, after the League has successfully thwarted the assassin threat, we should go and conquer China. It's only sparsely populated anyway, right?” -Destrocus
“If we achieve anything, I think we'll be able to apply for jobs at our local intelligence and strategic planning agencies, citing this game as prior experience.” -bucaneer
“I'll try to add more stupid puns, paranoia and Chocolate Hammer in-jokes to your resume, then.” -Sekundaari, not realizing just how bad all of those would get.
“This is more like herding cats than leading a committee” -BenD, renouncing all hope for better organization in the League.
Infused with the spirit of the mighty Bootlord, and feeling that we’d done something this turn, we thought ourselves invincible. The realization that the code-bearing message made no sense to anyone outside our members and new recruits might have woken us up.
““Remain calm and rational”? Wow, The League, that sure is some amazingly helpful advice you’re dispensing there. I’d have thought you’d advise us to go insane with paranoiac terror, but clearly your proposed course of action is much better.” - Inyssius, public comment
“Tsk. We're the League! Everyone should love us. We post wonderful letters on the wall, and also, silly notes.” - BenD, private rant
“We encourage everyone to remain calm and rational, so that our comic relief carries more punch. Brilliant.” -bucaneer
...or maybe not.
After Kevashim’s suspicious activity (using arguments) had made the now-fully-League bandwagon against Dice a bit too visible, we thought there was a need to throw some decoy votes, lest we all get picked off one by one based on the list of voters alone. Destrocus volunteered to vote against somebody who voted for him earlier...
“Under the assumption we are infiltrated already then it makes no odds really if we vote Dice now, the only downside is if he turns out to be an aristocrat. But hey, that's really only the worst for myself as I am next on the lynching block in that case as things seem to stand :(“ -Kevashim
“I don't remember who it was but he pointed at me because I asked how many assassins there are in the game and he thought I only did that so it looks like I'm not one of them.” –Destrocus
“That [...] was me.” –Sekundaari (in retrospect, this paranoia may have been justified: Tuck had also asked about the number of assassins as a part of his intricate web of lies)
League Members openly suspicious of Destrocus: 2
“[...] maybe now's the good time to vote against me [...]” -Someone
“Let me do that. Haven't voted yet. You are Someone, right? [...]” -Destrocus
“I'm willing to bet he is Someone.” -Sekundaari, making this pun for the first time. It would not be the last.
“I'm pretty inconsistant in my behaviour [...] People don't seem to mind, though.” -Destrocus
Sir Broccoli was the first to contact us, cautiously accepting the offer. Then Abnaxis responded, accepting it “wholeheartedly”. We probably now know why... in our defense, his e-mail address was rather convincing. Bucaneer posted a draft of an acceptance letter, and Manny and BenD gave some modifications. Then Abnaxis proved himself worthy (in our very, very mistaken mindset at the time) by voting for Dice.
“Huh. Did Abnaxis just vote for Dice without being being given any info by the League? His recruitment just became an even better idea, I suppose.” -bucaneer
“You know what that means? That we rock! At least when it comes to picking our allies.” -Destrocus, in reference to Abnaxis the Assassin
Some nagging questions about the relationship between handlers and recruits were cleared up: no ordering other people around, and no conversations about pet cheetahs.
“But yeah, forward any text or summary, as you see most fit. (If you spend 7 emails talking about cheetahs and how it would be great to have a pet cheetah, y'know, I think you could give us a one-sentence summary about that.)” -BenD
”I know that I would hate to be ordered who to vote for - it's like not playing the game anymore.” -Manny
Moments of accurate clairvoyance: 4
The idea to make something like this summary was also first proposed in this day. It already looked like a big task back then, but for some reason, we never learn.
Well alright, the reason is memes.
“Ya know, I wonder if Ruts (or the community as a whole) would appreciate a copy of all these emails when the game is eventually concluded...” -Kevashim
“I have been thinking the same thing. Especially all the jokes.” -Sekundaari
“ALL of them? Are you nuts? Those are several days of reading material. And the game isn't over yet.” -Destrocus
“I'm thinking just the highest moments of fun, paranoia and pun. A montage if you like. On that note, has everyone already announced they're Rutskarn at least once?” -Sekundaari
“Oh sorry, that was terribly remiss of me. I am of course Rutskarn, as my punnery clearly shows.” -Kevashim
“I'm clearly Rutskarn. You can tell by my references to things like the days before email.” -BenD
“[...] I already said that I am Rutskarn, but I assure you that only I am the real one.” -Destrocus
“Wow, I'm the only real Rutskarn too!” -Sekundaari, not making any sense
“Being Rutskarn is so yesterday. I'm the alter ego of Phase/Jarenth/Aulayan/Denubis/ KremlinLaptop. In fact, I'm also the alter ego of you. Yes, you.” -bucaneer
“You can't be my alter ego because I'm just an imaginary person imagined by Sekundaari.” -Destrocus
“I’m definitely not Rutskarn. Oh no. I’m totally just an aristocrat, like the rest of you.” -Someone
“I'd say, given where we're coming from, anything we're not paying enough attention to may unexpectedly turn into an awful pun (the phenomenon is called puntergeist, if I'm not mistaken).” -bucaneer, talking about typos
“I apologize. I should not have resorted to pointless punditry without pundering the consequences of such puny punches.” -Someone
“No big deal; anyway, our common membership grants us impunity.” -bucaneer
Dice’s suspiciousness of League members started a spark of doubt, which quickly grew into an all-out identity crisis: we came to a shocking realization that what we’re doing can be best described as wolf-like behaviour. And then we returned to joking.
“[...] either by accident or by revealing the League is mostly assassins (and I'm one of them, dammit).” -bucaneer
“"assassins (and I'm one of them, dammit)" Really now? Let me just take that out of context to the blog... By which I mean my post will say nothing but that quote, no quotation marks. I would so be lynched.” -Sekundaari
“Wonderful tactic: "[...]He's assassin, and I should know - I'm one of them!" ;D” -bucaneer
“We have a bunch of players in the active sector, and a few backup players (like me) staying low, and we operate a lot like wolves would.” -Someone
“Someone’s point is excellent. We operate like wolves would: we are playing their own game on them. [...] We vote in a bloc but the bloc is planned; decoy votes can be changed at the last instant... we're wolves. And we're made for hunting assassins. But that means that we smell wolfy[...]” -BenD.
“[...]we are certainly trying to beat the assassins in their own game. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'd like to take these out of context: "wolves: we are [...] them." "we're wolves. And we're made for hunting" "we smell wolfy" I like that last one, it's subtle.” -Sekundaari
“I can see where Sekundaari's going: tomorrow, we're changing "I am Rutskarn" to "I am a wolf", right?” -bucaneer
We had a good group going... the missing thing were proper targets.
Manny expressed his doubt that Dice would actually turn out to be an assassin. Others generally thought he was the best target we had, or at least that it was too late to turn the bandwagon around. BenD argued that even if Dice was an aristocrat, this would provide us with valuable information.
Viktor had a marvellous idea of actually using the subject line on emails to divide conversations according to their content. This practise was immediately adopted.
Night 3
“Well, shite. [...]” -Someone
Dice died like the aristocrat he was, lynched by our mass madness. This made us very sad.
“I suggest the Result of "Attempt to lynch Dice" be noted as "Technically, a success"” -Sekundaari, speaking of the League’s spreadsheet of notes
“Not taking credit for Dice's lynching seems like a good PR tactic to me. In my opinion, anonymous communications correspond not really to the spirit of the game anyway. [...] we should not post anything concerning a particular player (e.g. Dice).” -Manny
Moments of accurate clairvoyance later to sound like chutzpah: 1
Sir Broccoli turned out to be the most talkative of the three recruits - presumably because he was the only one unburdened by previous role obligations. (Scott hadn’t responded yet.) And one of the first things he did was announce his suspicion of Abnaxis, another recruit of ours. The League took the matter seriously.
“Hey, lookit one of our recruits pointing a finger at another of our recruits.” -BenD
“Teehee, let's pit them against each other! Dance, puppets, dance!” -bucaneer, whose ideas were thankfully ignored.
The actual non-response by Kevashim to this particular inquiry was:
“Abnaxis is an interesting fellow indeed, though I cannot divulge his identity either as a member of The League or not.” –Kevashim
In retrospect, the suspicion was perhaps the best one we had at the time, but it was quickly forgotten.
Weird message by X2-Eliah, a non-player, in the game thread provoked a response within the League, making us wonder whether his casual statement about how obvious assassins are had any ground. Another round of “we are wolves” discussion ensued.
“By the structure of the game, we have become wolflike. Again, we are hunters... we just don't have the advantage of knowing our prey in advance. That doesn't stop us from having to use their mannerisms to be effective. “ -BenD
“"also, feel free to ignore my post here as I’m not Ruts" // or am I....” -Kevashim hints that he lied to X2-Eliah in the thread.
“I'm not a fan of expanding further. We probably ought to confirm that we're not doing more damage than the assassins before we try to get more power.” -Viktor
“Also, I am Rutskarn. You can't disprove that.” -Destrocus. Indeed we couldn’t, and still haven’t.
Scott finally responded to our invitation, apologizing for his lateness. Having passed the obligatory paranoia check, he was accepted as a recruit, The Freshmaker acting as his contact.
“[...]maybe he hasn't been constantly checking his e-mail, being an aristocrat. Of course, maybe that's what he wants us to think. Or maybe he didn't check it during the day but now in the darkness of the night is his violent time to shine, as an assassin or a vigilante - and we're all out of vigilantes.” -Sekundaari
“we say something like, 'The League is a fairly active entity, and discussion can be lively even between cycles. Your feedback and thoughts are valued at any time,' or something?” -BenD
“Fairly active, yeah. We're at what, 500-ish emails now?” -bucaneer
BenD came down with a serious case of paranoia, or rather, his existing case of paranoia (see: certainty of assassin membership in the League) became much, much worse. Certain that the sheer volume of his contribution to League discussion had already sealed his doom, he wrote a letter and arranged for it to become available to two members of the League he found trustworthy - but only after his death. Neither bucaneer nor Sekundaari acknowledged the keys pressed into their hands, so the letter and notes detailing BenD’s distrust of Destrocus (supposedly an assassin infiltrator) and certainty that Manny was a Chum went unappreciated until the game was over.
League Members openly suspicious of Destrocus: 3
BenD’s paranoia also showed in his suggestion that the early closing of the day’s voting was significant and that Rutskarn was working against our plans. The idea turned out to be surprisingly infectious (though dormant), and would spring out later on. The rest of the night cycle was spent on idle musings.
“Mafia drinking game: A group of people drink together, but the wolves secretly only drink water. The aristocrats must discover those who aren't actually drunk before they're too intoxicated to lynch vote by pointing at people.” -Sekundaari (doesn’t actually drink)
“[...]we will do our best to keep you informed and confident in the League.” -end of the recruit acceptance letter
"Gratuitous application of bullshit can resolve all immediate life's problems." -Someone
Viktor’s choice of the word “decimated” began to feel prophetic: Kevashim was assassinated in the night. This had an expected effect on the group’s paranoia.
“We have a problem. Kevashim was assassinated [...] May his inbox rest in peace.
This may mean we have an assassin within the League. It is also possible that the assassins merely targeted a Dice-voter. Another possibility is that Sir Broccoli is an assassin and they murdered the one League member they know for sure.” -Sekundaari, overloaded with paranoia
“Well, you could all be wolves pulling an intricate con on me to control my votes for all I know. To avoid madness, utilize Occam's Razor principle.” –Someone
“Occam's Razor doesn't really cut it in this game. [...]” –Sekundaari
“Unless you mean we should take our razors and go on murdering rampage, which sounds rather appealing at this point.” –bucaneer
“Hokay. I've been saying since, I don't know, I started keeping records that there's a wolf among us. Hi, wolf! Nice to see you. Can I pet your soft and shiny fur??” -BenD
“You're doing it wrong. Unrelatedly: It looks like the assassins targeted one of our handlers. Would the infiltrator please confirm that he pointed at Kevashim?” -bucaneer, taking a leaf out of Cd4’s book
“If we were infiltrated, they'd kill Ben. It hurts us more to lose the voice of reason than to lose a handler.” -Viktor
“It could just be that there are no assassins, but Rutskarn is undercover and part of the League, and targeted the handler to create unmatched paranoia. Could just be...” -Sekundaari
Well, everyone’s, except Destrocus, which was becoming a trend:
“What I want to say is that we shouldn't be too worried about this. Its probably just a coincidence. Just one of us die the next night cycle I'll take everything back and we start panicking.” -Destrocus
“Oh by the way, I haven't heard from Abnaxis yet. You think he's busy?” -Destrocus, not being paranoid the one time paranoia was the right idea.
Manny made a sound argument of why the assassins had chosen Kevashim:
“I was thinking that if we are not infiltrated their best lead to killing League members is Denubis' list: [Denubis’ count of positive/negative/neutral comments] See how Kevashim sticks out like a Christmas tree? Just by following this list, they will get Sekundaari, BenD, Destrocus and Abnaxis next [...]”
“Great... thanks for telling me that I'm on the deathlist.” -Destrocus
The choice was made to not assign Sir Broccoli a new handler, but rather to keep in contact with him through the common e-mail address, so that in case our paranoid scenarios happened to be correct, we would not lose any more members.
It had been decided even during the previous day phase that Eyda would have to go. Feeling of helplessness after the failed attempt to find tattoos under Dice’s mask and desire to stay low for a while contributed to the decision. It was generally believed the League probably could not save her even if we tried. Without any pressing action at the time, the topics of conversation turned to more distant matters.
A new suspect was proposed by Destrocus. For some reason or another, the Trapper managed to go through this little trial without raising much attention yet.
“Does anyone else find it odd that Bjorn is always trying to get the League to somehow throw out an announcement? In most of the recent posts he is addressing us and I find that pretty weird since most seemed to have decided it would be better to ignore us and never even mention us. Any thoughts on that?” –Destrocus
Moments of accurate clairvoyance: 5
“Well, I wrote up Bjorn as a suspect in the documents early on, due to his snarky comments about the SNA and Denubis. [...] I guess what I'm trying to say is that if he's an aristocrat trying to act strategically, the strategy is borked. [...] So, personally, I think he's just one of those people who likes poking things with sticks.” –BenD
“Yeah, that’s true. He wasn't really related to Phase in any way either and he just created his weird norse servant barbarian character to have an alibi to be protective of someone and have someone who makes the votes for him.” -Destrocus, with added emphasis. Later we would notice Inyssius did the italicised part after the roles had been assigned, and it would be recognized as a likely assassin trick.
“I mean, the guy was an aristocrat, but there's only one way Inyssius could have known it for sure, because Phase wasn't a chum. Maybe he just liked the servant-idea character-wise, or was suspicious of the bandwagon, but it could be an alibi too.” -Sekundaari
“My personal hunch is that Inyssius is an aristocrat itching for more action in the game...” –bucaneer
After concluding that Inyssius is mostly harmless, we moved on to discussing more priority targets:
“I dreamed that I posted a lynching vote and it was for Rutskarn.” -BenD
...and ranting about the shortcomings of the game:
“[...] I consider 8 assassins a maximum amount. [...] Even 8 wolves (trapper included) would be a "What were you thinking, Rutskarn?" amount for me” -Sekundaari, before the surprise
“[...]I've looked at a few games at mafiascum.net [...]They have a smaller amount of players in a game and they are very knowledgeable about the rules and tactics so reading the threads feels almost like watching a game of poker, or even (10-player?) chess. We on Chocolate Hammer, on the other hand... what we've got here is failure to communicate. Dodgeball, at best.” -Sekundaari, ranting
“[...] efficient at a game [...] purpose [...] power gaming [...] MMOs [...] Also, robots [...] Which is bad because robots can't make good (bad) puns.” -bucaneer, going off on some tangents
“Agreed [...] Though [...] I do somewhat admire skill in games which are more than reflexes and muscle memory, be they strategy or tactical shooters.
Nevertheless I think the contrast is funny: There they lynch mafia because their behavior seems irrational and suspicious for a townie, while here we lynch aristocrats because their behavior seems irrational and suspicious for an aristocrat.” -Sekundaari
Manny expressed what was an issue for many members - motivation to act in public threads:
“I noticed already that being a part of the League has diminished my motivation of justifying my votes on CH. The discussions here give me somehow the impression that everything has been said already, and that i don't need to repeat them on CH” -Manny
...while Destrocus remained suspicious:
“I mean you may not live long enough to face lynching. A job risk, evidently.” -bucaneer
“I forgot about assasins... Oh well, i think they'll leave me alone until they run out of better targets.” -Destrocus
“People don't really suspect anything when I make a move. They seem to prefer to ignore me somehow.” -Destrocus
After a while, Tuck’s intricate treachery first came into view. He contacted Freshmaker and Sir Broccoli, stating suspicion of Halfling and Valaqil, respectively.
“And Tuck too could be an assassin who noticed a common wolf phrase used by an aristocrat and goes for profit, maybe not even knowing that Sir Broccoli will forward it to us.” -Sekundaari
“Is it just me who finds Tuck's networking activity suspicious? He contacted Broccoli and the Freshmaker for different reasons in a short period of time. Coincidence?” - Someone [ed note: No.]
Not wanting to stay behind, a wolfy plan for the next day was born. We would allow a bandwagon against Valaqil to form, started by Broccoli and Tuck, while at the same time, we’d attempt to start private communication with him. Since opinions about Valaqil were divided within the League, we’d only decide whether to lynch him or to recruit him halfway into the round.
“I know the plan is very hairy; grey fur kind of hairy...” -bucaneer
“OK, so looks like the general feeling is that lynching Valaqil >> recruiting him. “ -BenD
“The general feeling is to do both and forsake your sanity once and for all. // I’ll need electroshock treatment after the game ends.” -bucaneer
Small and feeble voices of reason nevertheless clutched the idea of fairness and honesty, but were put down by sheer pragmatism:
“Ethical challenges? Seriously? This is werewolves! You're supposed to leave your ethics at the door, in the same pocket you left your change, honor, pride and dignity!” -Someone
“Also, ALL THE BETTER TO BITE YOU WITH MY DEAR” -BenD
In this spirit, discussions about respect and equal treatment of recruits concluded swiftly:
"Why should we tell them anything? They are just puppets." -Destrocus
"We're not telling the recruits much anyway, they won't notice." -bucaneer
Having prepared the plan, the only thing left was to wait for Eyda to get lynched and to make sure the relevant emails go from us at the right times. Easy, right?
And then, amidst all scheming, clouds of the Pun Storm covered the sky, a critical mass was reached, and none remained the same ever again.
“[...] Also: Dear infiltrator, please don't tell him, k?” - Manny
“Okay, I won't tell nothing.” - Destrocus, not making it easy for himself
“You'd better not, I've got my eye on you Rutskarn you. I've got my eye on all you Rutskarns! Everyone's secretly Rutskarn but me... Unless... unless I'm Rutskarn too. Is that really true Mr. Stibbs?” - Sekundaari, opening a Pandora’s box
“At least it's easy to remember everyone's names at the annual meetings.” - Destrocus
“Just stop parroting that name. (apuncalypse: it's the end of the world as we know it, and I feel pun.)” - bucaneer
“This must be the beak of puns, we'll see feather it'll pass soon.” - Sekundaari
“More puns? Wing it on, I say. We shall find who bill be first to chicken out.” - bucaneer
[The following 50 messages were removed from this summary in accordance to the Geneva convention articles on Pun Storms and human rights violations.]
“Did anyone else watch Spoiler Warning? After the bit where Rutskarn was like "What have I done?" because Shamus and Mumbles started punning, I'm even more tempted to present yesterday's conversation to him.” -Sekundaari
Night 4
“...well, at least that's out of the way now.” -Destrocus
Eyda was innocent, as expected. Of more interest was Rutskarn promising to “shake things up a bit”, hopefully motivated by the eight (8) aristocrats & aristocrat-minded dead so far.
“given how the game has been progressing so far, I wouldnt be surprised if one of the aristocrats will find a BFG-9000 that only works on wolves under his pillow this night.” -Someone
“I'm not really sure I wanna find out what he's planning. Chances are that he's going to completely screw us over...” - Destrocus
Moments of accurate clairvoyance: 6
“Maybe we get a new Vigilante or Busybody. Or maybe the more official vigilante, who gets to (try to) kill one guy per night trying to kill bad guys, which could be hilarious.” -Sekundaari
“That would be awesome. He should give the league night killing powers!” -Manny
“...so that we could kill aristocrats with double efficiency! That might lead assassins to just stop trying and give up.” -bucaneer
“At this point, I'm okay with anything. The plan is approved.” -Destrocus
At this point the League took a somewhat fatalistic turn, assuming that Rutskarn was unconsciously favoring the wolves due to his history and we were all going to die. This was wrong, but given the amount of aristocrat blood in the punch bowl, not unjustified. In any case, we would soon stop making up these silly paranoid theories and start believing Ruts was acting against us intentionally.
“Abnaxis is as inacitve as always. I thought I was going to be a bad handler, but it looks like he is a bad recruit.” -Destrocus, right in sort of a roundabout way.
The fallout of the big surprise - the killing of an assassin by an unknown force - gripped the attention of the League right from the start. Sekundaari was the first to bring this to the hivemind, and wild theorising followed. The two victims of the night, Burke and bbot, turned out to be too inactive for us to learn anything useful, but the fuel of new power roles was enough to get the collective paranoia machine run full force.
“Bad news: One of the school chums was killed. If this happens again, I fear the last chum is useless.
Good news concerning the bad news: It was Burke, who is not part of the League.
Good news: One of the assassins was assassinated.
Bad news concerning the good news: It was bbot who [...] had made one single comment. [...] two people capable of assassinating assassins, perhaps [...] as the Vigilante would have protected people, or perhaps they [...] just kill people of their choosing. Maybe they are the remaining chums [...] About Burke: [...] somewhat active, but I don't see anything special about him... It may be the assassins are killing random people, but it may even mean that a League infiltrator wants us to think that the previous League deaths were a coincidence. [...] the first bad guy is down! [...] Rutskarn has begun to change the odds in our favour. I hope he won't reverse that at some point.” - Sekundaari
“two distinguishing characteristics: a) It can kill assassins. and 2. The two assigned people probably know each other. [...] is it possible that one of them is a League member? [...] should he reveal himself to us [...] should the new power role among us (we really need a name for it) reveal his colleague to us” -Destrocus
“I hope it was not some auto-kill [...] Maybe they just went for an almost inactive player and stumbled upon an assassin?” -Manny
“we might as well call it Pyro” -Someone
Manny mailed Dice’s comment count list, having marked known roles.
“You forgot to add that Eyda was an aristocrat, too. And I say you could add an "Aristocrat" tag for me too, but of course you don't have to believe me.” -Destrocus plays a dangerous game
“I suggest changing our name from "League" to "Fanclub of Those Two Guys" [...] one positive aspect of removing less active players is that everything until the endgame will continue to be interesting.” -bucaneer, twice wrong.
“this is a big and ridiculous assumption, Ruts gave them some sort of list with hints as to the identity of some (or all?) of the assassins.” -Destrocus
“"His pockets had been turned inside out as if they had been searched." sort of suggests the Pyros(?) have some aspect of gathering info, too.” -bucaneer
“They know each other, they night kill and they can identify assassins” -Destrocus, correct.
“Hm, Tuck looks annoyed about the assassin killers. This might be an interesting point of data. Though, would an assassin be so obvious?” -bucaneer
“What do you guys think about the theory that the Pyros (or counter-assassins) might be part of the assassin cell as some sort of traitors?” -Destrocus, getting really close
“That would explain how they knew (OOC) who to target. [...] Do you think there is any significance to the colour of the tattoos around the eyes of "Jean" (black)? [...] apparently the exact wording was "black and purple ones". Maybe [...]these guys [...] are the ones with purple tattoos.” -Sekundaari
“That might have just been flavor.” -The Freshmaker. Surely, you are joking!
After covering all ground from auto-kill for inactivity, through new aristocrat power roles, to colour-coded assassin factions, we remembered we had stuff to do this day - our intricate wolfy double-play. However, a crucial link failed unexpectedly...
“Also about "If we were infiltrated, they'd kill Ben." Maybe, but I don't want to take that for granted. Any one of us could be an infiltrator, including him. (No offense, Ben.) Or the assassin might fear he'd have to do the record keeping. ;)” -Sekundaari
BenD’s term as recordkeeper - and indeed, as League voice of reason (as dubbed by Viktor) - was coming to an end. For no good reason, BenD did not show up in Day 5, and went nearly silent until the endgame. Since his responsibility for sending letters from our official email address was crucial for our grand plan, it was reduced simply attempting to bandwagon Valaqil and/or Halfling.
Though BenD did pop in later to drop this insight:
“What if an assassin assassinated the assassin. That is, the assassins themselves have been given reason to begin narrowing their own number. [...] kill their own if they suspect any of their members of being non-useful [...] or traitorous. Which brings up another possibility: traitorous assassins who have turned coat and are working for the aristocrats…” –BenD
Moments of accurate clairvoyance: 7
Scott revealed his chumness at this point, fearing the League was infiltrated by assassins posing as chums.This would have been bad, and the chums did make a noble sacrifice, as only one remaining chum would mean their power was useless. But there were no such impostors.
“Man, is this ever awkward... it feels like someone is trying hard to persuade me when I already agree.” -Sekundaari
It was quickly agreed that the assassin-killers couldn’t be the chums, in light of the new info. There was some doubt of Scott’s story, but also the hypothesis that Scott was baiting the assassins to a similar chum-trap that probably had killed bbot. Manny had the idea of asking him (privately) who was the remaining chum, then after Scott’s presumable death by knife, adding the confirmed third chum to the League. Scott shouldn’t have anything against this:
“you know, if he's really a chum, he'd know the assassins would know that if he's a chum the chums can't be the killers of bbot because Scott would be too large a sacrifice to warn the League of fake chums and that the assassins would know that the remaining chum would be useless without him so he'd know he can just tell us who's the remaining chum even if we'd turn out to be infiltrated by assassins. You know.” -Sekundaari
“Too complicated. I say he bluffs.” -Destrocus
“We could also increase our wolfiness by declaring that Halfling told us he was a chum. Hehe.” -Manny
“Should we start eating babies in public afterwards?[...]” -bucaneer
“For the record: My proposition [...] was meant as a joke. -Manny
Nevertheless, Scott’s claim demanded some form of response from us. With both BenD and Freshmaker absent at this crucial time, we could not attempt to contact him privately. Therefore, going out and responding in a public announcement was suggested.
“But for the record, I don't like the idea of posting more anonymous comments than absolutely necessary” -bucaneer
“anonymous postings go against the rules/game spirit. But right now it seems that they are needing one, and so far we haven't had a warning from Ruts or something. “ -Manny
We did post the announcement, telling everyone that the League had no chum-claimers, and that Scott had not lied when he claimed to have had contact with us.
At this moment, of three one-vote “bandwagons”, the leading one was Tuck voting for Rutskarn. The idea of reinforcing it was entertained for amusement.
“To be more reasonable IC, we should rather redirect it to the pilot and hope assassins will be at the front of the airship when it crashes, so that we can enjoy victory for a fraction of a second. “ -bucaneer
Halfling and Valaqil ended up tied in votes, and the day was already in overtime.
“Halfling just voted. He didn't vote for Valaquil. That's ballsy. I hadn't been that suspicious of him until just now [...]” -Viktor
Completing the circle of delays and failed plans, the latest episode of Spoiler Warning was teasingly set as private for slightly too long...
“Here we can safely suffer psychological breakdowns due to the delay of the new episode [...]
Ahem...Woe is me for Im undone! Each moment spent without the blessed spoiler warning feels like an eternity spent inside a thousand suns! Aaaargh!” -Someone
“I'm running out of procrastination material here” -bucaneer
“After too many addicted refreshes the whole Twenty Sided seems to be down... What have I done?” -Sekundaari
“This was a test of patience from The Bootlord, and we have failed it.” -Someone
“No, it's because Twenty Sided is self aware [...]” -bucaneer
“Rejoice, for the video is here!” -Sekundaari
"I wonder how many of you are going to burn me like a witch when I declare that I'm not following the series." -Destrocus
"Nah, relax, it's all right. Unrelatedly: I propose a vote to throw Destrocus out of the League and lynch him this turn." -bucaneer
League Members openly suspicious of Destrocus: 4
Somewhat too late for perfect control of Day 5, BenD handed off the official email account’s information to bucaneer, who was quickly confirmed as new keeper of anonymous communications on behalf of the League.
Night 5
In a referee error, Halfling was originally the lynched one of the day. The idea could not go unnoticed, but in the end we decided not to attach much significance to it.
“[...]some roles on the mafia wiki that secretly have two votes, or no votes or something, but I doubt Rutskarn would have included something like that without telling us.” -Sekundaari
“posted in a hurry and screwed up the count” -Someone
“Rutskarn isn't exactly best at keeping the game running in an orderly fashion, so it could just be a result of rushed posting” -bucaneer
The night was otherwise uneventful. We may have forgotten something...
Day 6: A murderer is announced
Something like contacting Scott before the assassins got the chance and him in the lung (the whole lung), thus leaving the remaining chum no more useful than a regular aristocrat. Additionally, Halfling was resurrected and Valaqil took over the popular “dead aristocrat” role.
“Halfling [...] is now "a (redacted)". I decide this means he's a) a Chum or b) a Pyro/Flamethrower/whatsit because he can't be an Aristocrat, an Assassin or the Trapper.” -Sekundaari, being pedantic
“Short version: I think/guess/believe that nothing actually changed, but the move obfuscated a lot of potentially useful info, which is bad. ” -bucaneer
“So we have no clues, no real targets and no idea what to do next.” -Someone. This would change soon.
“Targeting inactives is about the best thing we can do now. king.com has been previously named suspicious - anybody remember why?” -bucaneer
“I did mention king.com once, but it was really just because he was inactive [...]” -Manny
Then Destrocus showed up, bringing some peculiar messages with him. In the first one, Rutskarn (apparently) told Destrocus that Abnaxis wished to inform him of KBF being an assassin, and also told him not to “attempt to contact him at all” (though we were not quite sure whether “him” referred to Abnaxis or KBF for a while). Viktor later confirmed he had received an identical message from Rutskarn as well, probably because Abnaxis didn’t know he would get it anyway.
In the other message, Abnaxis told us to accuse KBF “with no given justification. After last night, it should be apparent why.”, and asked us not to expose him, because “as you have seen night before last, the assassins have methods of dealing with those they believe to be traitors”.
“"those they believe to be traitors"? So, was bbot a traitor? And Abnaxis? Are the Pyros assassin insiders after all? And that can't be Rutskarn, I'm- I mean- We should ask for proof. Also, "After last night, it should be apparent why." What? And now we can't contact Abnaxis?” -Sekundaari, bewildered
“Pretty clearly something to do with Pyros [...] what address did the supposed Rutskarn use?” -bucaneer. Assassins posing as Rutskarn wasn’t the most paranoid of our theories.
After clarifying that the message indeed came from Rutskarn, and realizing that we have nothing better go on, it was decided to do as we were told. Anonymous letter was suggested for that purpose and quickly gathered approval, since no other approach was as reliable and safe enough - and anyway, Rutskarn knew that we got involved from Abnaxis’ letter and did not complain.
“[...] I say we bite.” -bucaneer
“We barely have anything else to go on and we can always take down Abnaxis later on, if KBF isnt an assassin, or just to be sure. [...] how to sell this bandwagon to the other passengers without partially giving away group activity, that might be the problem.” -Someone
“Oh yeah, League Announcement sounds good. We have been inactive for a bit too long. [...] something like "Our mystic sources revealed to us that KBF is with the assassins."” -Destrocus
“Mystic sources, frog intestines, alchemy, and the forbidden power of hunchism.[...] the other part could mean "assassins have a hidden traitor-subfaction, they killed bbot because they thought he was one of them, but he wasn't" [...] he could be trying to confuse the other assassins to think the traitors formed the League or something. The League would just think he has scrying powers. Still, gift horse...” -Sekundaari
Then again, no action of the League could be passed without exhausting all sources of paranoia first:
“[...] Lets not make the announcement too definitive, given Rutskarn's sense of humor.” -Viktor
“Hell, point out that it came from Von Rutskarn. Lets involve him in the mess he created.” -Viktor
“How about we just imply ridiculously heavily that the info is from Ruts? "This info comes via the highest authorities, wink wink, nudge nudge." [...]“ -Sekundaari
“[...]the message can have a somewhat different meaning for the particularly religious [...]” -bucaneer
“He's probably gonna try to punish us for involving him like that and screw us over...” -Destrocus. Everyone was out to get us.
“I'm not entirely sure this isn't an attempt to screw us over already. [...]we are talking about Rutskarn here. [...] I sort of doubt his [Abnaxis’] involvement in the letter.” -Viktor.
Everyone. Especially Rutskarn.
“[...] This whole KBF thing may be a move to discredit us, or at least our anonymous postings [...] Right now he also might be trying to find out who is in the League, no doubt for another nefarious plan. So yeah, now we have to play against the narrator too.” -Someone
“[... ] was it Viktor who posted the first League announcement? Ruts could use his admin-fu to match the poster's IP to other comments. Though this is an enormous paranoid stretch [...]. If he really wanted to know who's in the League he could, you know, ask Denubis [...]” -bucaneer
The phrasing of the letter was debated upon, from being very cautious to claiming divine authority. In the end, implying a connection with Rutskarn was deemed convincing enough.
“I think it is better if it doesn't appear we're leaving a margin of error for explaining another lynch of an aristocrat - though I'm probably 2 layers deep in guessing the mob's thoughts by now [...] just a moment ago I thought we should leave some margin” -Sekundaari
“the "authority" is the opposite extreme, it looks like we have a direct line to God. Eh, whatever, seeing how little we can offer to support this accusation, we might as well roll with divine guidance.” -Someone
Among other pressing matters there was the issue of unfair distribution of Rutskarn’s attention:
“[...] Also, why does everybody get mail from Ruts except me? I feel left out.” -bucaneer
“[...] And I don't get mail from Ruts either, for obvious reasons.” -Sekundaari
“[...] Seriously though, we've had one recruit who was a chum (= role email from Ruts), one recruit who is a Pyro (= role email and communication with Ruts), two core members who have been relayed info from Abnaxis via Ruts, an unspecified number of infiltrators (= role email from Ruts), and someone who, with delusional insistence, claims to be Ruts. I think the Ruts-less are the minority here.” -bucaneer
The announcement was posted. Odecey and Nova were the two first to vote for KBF. Sekundaari was suspicious of Nova’s involvement, and suspected alibi-seeking. There was nagging doubt of KBF being innocent.
“I would be a bit mad at Rutskarn if he conveys false information through his mod-voice and doesn't mention that in the rules.” -Sekundaari
“I just realised that Abnaxis might have chosen to inform Viktor because of his infamous supposed bandwagon starting powers.” -bucaneer
“One way or the other, I'm hanging on to the theory of the Blacks and Purples trying to kill each other...” -Sekundaari
Destrocus posted this in the thread: “Rutskarn giving them pointers? It’s very unlikely he’s going to be THAT direct about this whole affair. I’m sceptic, to say the least.” with no discussion with the rest of the League, still not making it easy for himself.
Later on, he brought another message from Abnaxis. Abnaxis said he needed “a plausible concoction” considering what we said to our recruits about his info. We only could be certain that Abnaxis needed that to trick other assassins after the game.
“Nothing? I mean, answer "nothing".” -Sekundaari
“Huh, that's a weird question to ask, assuming it is Rutskarn who requested explanation from Abnaxis.” -bucaneer
Destrocus replied to Abnaxis and noted that the mail was also copied to Rutskarn, presumably to monitor Abnaxis’ limited communication.
“I have a bad feeling about all of this. The [...] thing does go against the spirit of the game and if we win the assassins will say that we cheated (although we can say that Trapper is overpowered and it kind of evens out). Worse, knowing Rutskarn he probably wouldnt just publicly prohibit anonymous postings [...]” -Someone
Moments of accurate clairvoyance: 8
“[...] Anonymous letters delivered in secret and marked with an elaborate seal make perfect sense IC. [...] what would Rutskarn do? I'm fairly sure the correct answer isn't [...] plotting our demise while laughing maniacally...” -Sekundaari
“[...] A simple "stop doing that" in any of the incident/assassination posts would've worked much better.” -bucaneer
A “League Snitch” posted in the thread, apparently supporting Dyrian Ryans in his doubt of the League. We didn’t find out whose attempt it was, and what they were trying to accomplish, until well after the game was over.
“"Don’t trust the league. Morton is on the right track." So sayeth League Snitch. Well guys, our cover is blown, time to disband. Alternatively: ...what?” -bucaneer
“It encourages you to play Operation Flashpoint.” -Sekundaari
“Yeah, that doesn't even worry me. I can't see anyone actually believing it. More likely, it's an attempt to see who responds defending the League.” -Viktor
“Agreed. It's the following comment by Tuck is that I'm worried about...” -Sekundaari, on Tuck’s nightmares
“it's so heavy handed I can't imagine anyone to expect it to work. The only sort of plausible explanation I can come up with is that it's a spontaneous response by assassins hoping to discredit further action by us” -bucaneer
“[...] he his still quite civil about it [...] it would get really nasty if he used the image of the seal as his avatar and posted as the League - who is actually going to check the gravatar ID? Someone would need to point it out and would be detected as a League member.” -Manny
“Simple solution: point it out in a League message. Though now I imagine the League-impostor would chat up people like some American store-Santa, asking how much oil the nice Aristocrats want as a present and warning Assassins of lumps of coal. Being everything we cannot be. I'm not sure if I had the heart to put a stop to that...” -Sekundaari
Destrocus brought the third message from Abnaxis of the day. Apparently, Abnaxis had already said too much when telling us what should we do with KBF, and would no longer communicate with the League, directly.
“My guess is that Abnaxis is a spy inside the assassins, working for the Aristocrats.” -Viktor
“By quieting down Abnaxis he [Ruts] may want to nerf him, since Abnaxis + League =dead assassin. [...] really sounds like an assassin. Maybe a subgroup has been bribed by von Rutskarn to put an end to the assassinations. [...]” -Manny
“The key word there is "believe", I think. bbot need not be one of the traitors. And even if he was one, they may still need to kill the aristocrats like the others...” -Sekundaari
“He is starting to sound like G-Man.” -Someone
“Abnaxis is in peril if we have an infiltrator [...]On the other hand he doesn't seem to be bothered by being known to the league[...] Maybe he knows our infiltrator, and they are assassins in the same subgroup?” -Manny
“Abnaxis sure seems to be washing his hands of this wagon while voting for Halfling.” -Sekundaari
“Other people openly not following the league recommendation: Tuck; king.com; Destrocus [...] I find king.com quite suspicious now” -Manny
“Well, ain’t this a novelty. The League doing something useful? Colour me tickled pink…” -Tainted in the public comments
Night 6
Some of the paranoid theories were proved wrong, or not complex enough, when KBF was confirmed as an assassin.
“I tossed a vote in Flammarion's direction to see what happens.” -Manny
“Im actually kinda disappointed now that my "Insane conspiracy [...]" didnt confirm. Ah well, joke's on me. Flammarion looks like a nice target, he was one of the KBF lynch detractors[...]” -Someone
“Manny, you may need to repeat your vote when the day starts. ;) It is confusing that the day-night cycle is now a bit longer than a week, apparently, but at least Abnaxis' info was correct and another bad guy bites the dust.” -Sekundaari
“And oh dear, it's still night time. I hope I didn't attract too much unwanted attention by my misplaced vote. [...]” -Manny
The lack of assassin resistance to the bandwagon started to seem particularly significant: maybe the assassins were not as all-knowing as we thought they were?
“[...] the infiltrator could have used the [Gravatar] address to post a "valid" announcement a la "disregard that" [...] Why didn't they do that?
1. there aren't any infiltrators -- far too optimistic;
2. Abnaxis is an assassin who wanted to gain our trust before puppeteering us to our doom -- possible [...];
3. assassins think the League is worth keeping around intact for some purpose -- tad hard to believe [...];
4. they didn't think of that -- again, hard to believe: someone did post as "League Snitch" after all." -bucaneer
“[...]I'm starting to suspect we don't have any infiltrators. There's a lot that's happened that wouldn't have if the assassins were in here with us.” -Viktor
Moments of accurate clairvoyance: 9
Destrocus posted another message by Rutskarn, telling us Abnaxis wanted to inform us that Tuck was an assassin.
“My only fear is that this is becoming too easy, and there has to be a catch to this information flow. The first information might have been bait to make us blindly follow Abnaxis' recommendations. [...] I'm afraid the outsiders won't like to keep following anonymous messages, and I'm also worried about the correctness of this information, therefore I'm against an anonymous message for this lynch.” -Manny
“Maybe it wasn't supposed to be so easy. We, as the League, have changed the way the game is played. We are some sort of instantaneous bandwagon, given the information.” -Destrocus
“Guys, I have just earned my title as Most Valuable Leaguemember [...]” -Destrocus, bringing the second message from Rutskarn
“Nice! I grant you that title wholeheartedly. May you not be night-killed right away.” -Manny
He wasn’t; Manny was. He was the third League member to die. This caused considerable bewilderment, because he was one of the most likely to get lynched during the day out of all members (mostly due to the questionable application of “Rutskarn’s Corollary”), and because there were much higher priority targets, which an infiltrator would have known about. The paranoid alternative, of course, was that the infiltrator is in the same group of traitors as Abnaxis - there was just no way we could all be optimistic for once.
“[...] if they're working on info from infiltrators, they're still trying to be sneaky about it. Why they'd do it is really beyond me. [...]” -bucaneer
“I also think that his little "slip of the tongue" got him killed. The assassins [...] want to go for a double whammy and implicate Flammarion.” -Someone
The fact that the “Pyros” - people responsible for killing assassins at night - actively refused to kill another one solidified the belief that they are, in fact, assassins themselves. The theory that it is a way for regular assassins to counteract traitors followed naturally.
“[...] pyros had the chance to off one more assassin this night, but decided against it. Also, they look like they're really a subgroup of assassins [...] sounds like they were alright with being together.” -bucaneer
“[...] This pretty much convinces me they're assassins, because I can't see an aristocrat not taking his chance to kill an assassin. [...] They could be plain assassins, too, who get to decide killing or not killing the third assassin, who may be a traitor (who may be on the aristocrats' side, or not).” -Sekundaari
“[...] Maybe the killing/ not killing of the third assassin is somehow chosen by all the other assassins? They could have a, as I like to call it, "lynch vote" of sorts.” -Sekundaari
“The thought crossed my mind too [...] Maybe Abnaxis, being an assassin, is required [...] to rat out one of his associates to aristocrats every turn. Assassins know there's a traitor among them and can conspire to night-lynch one of their own. [...] Perhaps they didn't kill anyone this night because their numbers are getting too thin [...]?” -bucaneer
It was not clear what to do with the accusation of Tuck received from Abnaxis - for one, we weren’t sure it was accurate, for another, we were not entirely comfortable doing another anonymous letter. However, the Day phase was supposed to be short, and nobody wanted to make the first vote in the thread...
“Does anyone else find it odd that the great Bootlord in the skies has decided to play the role of a mere delivery boy? [...]” -Destrocus
“I wouldn't go with an anonymous post for this. Rather, we still have 7 votes. Use them, form a bandwagon.” -Viktor
“So, should we start this band wagon right now? Day ends really soon.. Damn Von Rutskarn and his mastery over space-time!” -The Freshmaker
“I'm not quite convinced that a "spontaneous" bandwagon is a better option than a League message. [...] Do we have enough reasoning that Tuck is an assassin to convince people (and "convince" us)?” -Sekundaari
“[...] I think we should go the least-effort-required way of posting another anonymous announcement despite the risks and hope for the best.” -bucaneer
“This is too good to be true. It smells like a trap. [...] Even Rutskarn doesnt know who we are, so we are at an advantage. Lets keep it that way. // [...] I can try to start a bandwagon on Tuck. [...] we have some past beef between us so I can cover it up with roleplaying fluff.” -Someone
“But is it strong enough to gain votes? The crowd has seen assassin blood, they might not like returning to "he feels suspicious, kill him".” -Sekundaari
“For the record: I also think that anonymous "go kill 'em" posts are against the spirit of the game [...] and that Abnaxis is not to be trusted completely. However, starting a "natural" bandwagon is too uncertain for our purposes now.” -bucaneer
Time went on, but the game thread remained as lifeless as ever.
“All right, one day gone and not a single vote cast, how's that for novelty. I imagine people are waiting for us to say something. // [...] we definitely need to decide on our actions [...], or else Rutskarn will have all the fun of doing the writeup on a turn where Nothing Happens (we can't let him have it).” -bucaneer
“If there are no votes on Saturday evening (or knowing Rutskarn, Sunday) someone goes and votes for Rutskarn. Plan?” -Sekundaari
“"Ship falls, everybody dies." Sure, it's a plan.” -bucaneer
“[...] I’m not even sure if there is room enough to start an ordinary bandwagon at this point.” -Someone
The announcement was posted. The votes started coming in, with Dyrian Ryans voting for Flammarion and Tuck voting for Halfling (Ex-Valaqil).
“Sprockets seems to be very vocal in his distrust in the League, I think, unless we get another letter from upstairs, he is ripe for taking out next round” -Someone
After Tuck’s bandwagon had 7 votes, he switched his vote to Abnaxis with no explanation. This caused some underground discussion.
“My Spidey Sense is tingling! Tuck hasn't mentioned Abnaxis in that thread at least, Abnaxis hasn't posted and Tuck gave no explanation for his vote change.[...] Something private has happened here [...]” -Sekundaari
“If it is the scenario where assassins can night-lynch traitors, perhaps they have somehow figured out Abnaxis is the one leaking information [...]” -bucaneer
“It's also possible that Tuck wanted to give some credibility to another assassin by voting for him, and Abnaxis was chosen. (I just read again how Kopaka pointed at Rutskarn just before his lynching.)” -Sekundaari
Then Tuck told he was voting for Abnaxis because it was the best lead he had of the League, based on Abnaxis’ recruitment e-mails. Tuck would provide these letters, which demanded complete secrecy from Abnaxis, on request.
“How nice. Now anybody can see League recruitment / confirmation letters upon request, including goodeveningleague address (harmless) and that Destrocus is a member (worrisome). Abnaxis [...] broke the agreement not to disclose identities of any League members including himself - weird thing to do without notifying us unless his other contact was more binding” -bucaneer
“Hold on, Abnaxis told Tuck he was a League member [...], and showed examples of communication? What the... this gift horse needs a dentist, stat! [...] Should we ask for those e-mails from Tuck though?” -Sekundaari
“I've contacted him privately with a naive face.” -bucaneer is way ahead of us
The next message from Tuck contained a neat little file with a table of the players, votes and dead people so far. It also included a list of suspicious people, of which only Inyssius proved to be an assassin later (not surprisingly, since it was written by his fake aristocrat persona).
“Oh wow. If he is an assassin, he's sure investing time and effort to his cover story. I tried to keep a similar spreadsheet (though with chronological order included) going for reference, but gave up after a couple of days, going through the blog-comments is hard.” -Sekundaari is impressed
“I'll continue communicating with Tuck as long as I can. In for a penny, in for a pound; if this is putting me at risk then I'm as good as dead already.” -bucaneer
“[...]Though this "interrogation" and the theories you present to Tuck are one of those tactics that makes us seem to grow gray fur all over[...]” -Sekundaari
“Meh, I've started howling at the moon long time ago, what with the bluffy anonymous announcements and all that.” -bucaneer
The conversation continued. Abnaxis was considered all but confirmed as an assassin at this point, but Tuck’s role and motive for this conversation was more unclear.
“[...]overdose of New Vegas makes by brain automatically attach "[SPEECH] <Lie> ..." in front of every message I send. And "You've lost karma!" afterwards.” -bucaneer
“Maybe it's time for you to crash, then.” -Sekundaari
“I think I should "crash", but this is potentially more worthwhile than an hour or two of sleep.” -bucaneer
“You should try [Terrifying Presence]. Or [Confirmed Bachelor]. Also, if you lose karma Tuck is probably a legitimate aristocrat.” -Someone
“[Terrifying Presence] would not yield much useful information, and [Confirmed Bachelor]... I'm offended! I lie for (more or less) personal gain, so karma is negative no matter who I'm talking to.” -bucaneer
“[...] I'm ready for a hats off if he's an assassin: this is much more entertaining if seen as a double act. [...] I'm probably at the second tier sleep deprivation with an INT penalty, so I won't even attempt to make sense of all this now.” -bucaneer
At this point Tuck was presumed asleep. The break in messages gave time for gratuitous speculation. Attempts to explain Tuck’s choice to involve Abnaxis did not lead to any conclusions - it could’ve just as easily been random as it was deliberately accusational. As a result, it was not clear how we would handle him after dealing with Tuck.
“My read, given that Tuck claimed to be certain that Bbot's death was intentional, is that Tuck is an assassin. [...] Abnaxis would of course reveal his contact with us to the assassins if he wasn't yet given the role of traitor. Tuck then revealing what he can about the league is reasonable for an assassin, and they may have developed this strategy after we took out KBF. Abnaxis is just being involved because they can't use any other assassins, and it may have the effect of making Abnaxis safer. Or I could be completely wrong. This is all very, very messed up.” -Viktor has it right
“[...]But should Destrocus ask explanations from Abnaxis? I mean, he probably knows we're not going to take this breach lightly. My vote is on exposing & accusing Abnaxis next day, unless something crazy happens, like he dies in the night or something. But maybe he would try to claw his way out of this, and drag someone else in with him.” -Sekundaari
“I suppose it falls into place best if we assume that both Abnaxis and Tuck are assassins: Abnaxis would have immediately reported his recruitment to other assassins on D3 and have more or less ignored his League membership until he was made a traitor by Ruts. [...] if assassins know that the new special role is among them and we say it was "an individual associated with the League", they'd put the two and two together and accuse the one League recruit they have. Tuck then proceeds with his act, hoping to turn today's bandwagon from himself over to Abnaxis so that the assassins wouldn't have to spend a night-lynch on him. For this theory to make sense, we have to assume that Abnaxis was the closest we ever had to an infiltrator [...]Also, this theory strongly predicts that Tuck will be revealed to be an assassin after day-lynch, and Abnaxis - the same after night-lynch.” -bucaneer.
In the morning, as the conversation continued, we discussed contacting Sir Broccoli for any news, and generally reminding him of our existence. Bucaneer sent this letter later on, asking for his reasoning for Tuck’s innocence, but not demanding him to vote for Tuck. (Sir Broccoli had posted a non-voting comment in the thread.) Tuck told bucaneer he considered waiting for some time before further public defense, apparently hoping Rutskarn meant to end the day Saturday, next week. The day was a short one, however.
“[...]those are the only scenarios I can come up with so far. I need to eat some more wheat...” -Sekundaari, theorizing on Halloween
Tuck soon claimed to have a power role, hinting that he was responsible for the mysterious death of bbot, and that a new assassin would be killed if he survived the lynch vote. He told us he was puzzled about the second person mentioned in the description, who appeared to be in contact with him. Bucaneer withdrew his vote for Tuck hoping to get more info.
Sir Broccoli replied to us, having received the same table and e-mails from Tuck. (And found out Destrocus being a member, as well as Abnaxis breaking the rule of silence.) He thought Tuck was innocent because he offered to help lynch Valaqil, though he acknowledged that Tuck could be an assassin looking for support. Bucaneer spotted Tuck referring to “us” killing assassins in tone of the included mails, instead of no knowledge of the other one. He replied to Sir Broccoli, mentioning that bbot’s killers might be assassins and that Abnaxis’ “blatant disregard for the agreement with the League will not be ignored.” The complicated gameplay seemed to have no adverse effect on him.
“fourth message by me in a row, all the while managing a three-way split personality in parallel threads. I'm completely sane and mentally stable, yes siree!” -bucaneer
“I understand the title for Most Valuable Leaguemember is taken, so can I be Most Wolflike Dirty Liar, then?” -bucaneer
“I nominate myself as "Rutskarn, who of all people should have absolutely no reason for paranoia in this game"” -Sekundaari
“I'm strangely happy that more players will get to appreciate the wordings of our recruitment letters.” -Sekundaari
The matter of Abnaxis’ breach of the rules was, indeed, not ignored, but rather handled with extreme care so as to maximize hilarity.
“we should discuss what to say to Abnaxis - we certainly have to do it. Something to the effect of "you broke the agreement of secrecy, please list your reasons why we shouldn't get you lynched tomorrow"” -bucaneer
“[...]mention of revealing not just himself, but also Destrocus, who "had taken the leap of faith of acting as your handler" and that "we placed our trust in you, and this is how you repay us?" then "Why?" and "Do you have a reason for your behavior? Because as it is, things are looking gravely against you." Maybe add "Spit it out or hit the road" [...]” -Sekundaari
“I half expected you to follow up with something like "You're a failure and you know it."” -bucaneer
“[...] the accusations and threats should [...] allow him to indulge in maniacal cackling. Tell him: "give us one good reason not to destroy you", "prepare for unforeseen consequences", "we will bury you".” -Someone
“Let's threaten, but quite frankly, I don't want to push him too much. [...] let's not ruin him as an intel source.” -Viktor
“So... "Stop right there criminal scum!" is out of the question? How about just "Scum." ?” -Sekundaari
“Pay the...court a...fine or...serve...your...sentence! Stolen goods...stolen goods... [...] "This is your first, and last, warning" "Dare crossing the League again and it will be the last mistake you'll ever make"” -Someone
Needless to say, the letter did not take any usable form until later, during the night phase.
Rutskarn eventually ended the voting, but didn’t post the next thread for a while, which left plenty of time for complaints and final theories.
“Tuck did not post any of his arguments in time, so if he's an assassin, my vote change looks like a big neon sign, "I work with assassins, please lynch me".” -bucaneer
“I bet with all this halloween partying going on he'll mess something up and lynch the wrong person again.” -Someone
“I think he hoped for a longer day, tried to slowly turn the wagon and invested in some heavy bluffing [...] I like that interpretation because it would mean there probably was very, very little truth involved in the conversation between bucaneer and Tuck.” -Sekundaari
“He even kept in contact with Sir Broccoli, who didnt actually vote against him. And he sounded so sure he would get out of it too.” -Someone
“Broccoli and Freshmaker were his earlier contacts, so he could just have been investing in a decoy aristocrat network [...] Theoretically, his plan might have been to cause enough public doubt to allow other assassins to start a counter-bandwagon [...] Rutskarn's laziness caused me to actually get some work done today, which is outrageous. “ -bucaneer
Night 7
Then Rutskarn posted Assassination... Six? The post declared Tuck dead and an assassin.
“So, he was an assassin! =D” -The Freshmaker
“Both an assassin and a brilliant performer. Hats off indeed.” -bucaneer
“[...] hardworking too. The whole voting spreadsheet thing, complete with a list of "suspicious" people? I'm not only impressed, but thankful! [...] Also, thanks to bucaneer, we've got a lot more text from Tuck than KBF or bbot. [...] I'd settle for a stern warning to Abnaxis.” -Sekundaari
“[...] one thing we can believe in Tuck's story: he would've scored a night kill of an assassin if he managed to survive [...] Clearly, he can't be a traitor, so it would imply that it's indeed a counter-traitor thing” -bucaneer
This helped us consider case Abnaxis more clearly. While his role as a traitor among the assassins was clear, and his chances of surviving the assumed night-lynch thought to be slim, we did not know how to confront him about it. On the one hand, bucaneer proposed to state our suspicions directly, while on the other, Sekundaari and Viktor favoured a more gentle approach, stating that Abnaxis may not be entirely on our side. A rather intense discussion followed.
“[...] So, what do we say? He broke the rules, but has since become our best ally [...]” -bucaneer
“I'd ask about the reveal of his contact with the League, but don't complain overmuch [...]” -Viktor
“I'd prefer he think we think his offense is relatively innocent, while we think it's more like sporting grey fur, a poisoned knife and a Sicilian accent all at the same time.” -Sekundaari
“[...] there's no making him think we think he's innocent unless we really play dumb.” -bucaneer
“I don't think he will give us any information, if he thinks we know he's a traitor. [...] It's not in his interest to kill the normal assassins, then die. [...] I think he's going for thinning the number of normal assassins [...], then stopping communication [...] Then he would lay low, hoping to lynch both aristocrats and normal assassins.” -Sekundaari
“[...] If I knew I was about to die and had some information that could help other aristocrats (i.e. players whose goals are the same as mine in the game) I would make sure to share it.” -bucaneer
“[...] if Abnaxis survives the night and we let him believe we think he is probably innocent, he might give us another assassin to kill [...] Whereas if he thinks we know and we'll kill him sooner or later, [...] he might think it's in the traitors' interest to not betray more assassins [...] Now, there's the chance that a traitor actually is on the aristocrats' side, and wins when all the assassins are dead, unless I'm forgetting something. In this case, he would not stop working with us, revealed or not.” -Sekundaari
In the end, a letter was penned, subtly reminding Abnaxis of his impending doom and nicely asking to hand over more information before his bloodstains ruin it, rephrased to sound more official. Later it turned out that his doom was not really impending, and that he would not have been able to respond either way.
“if he reveals another assassin, we might be better served not going after him as the League. We can form a bandwagon instead and see who jumps to his defense. Plus, I'd rather this not turn into the League making all the decisions.” -Viktor
Bucaneer also had a backup plan, in case Abnaxis died, which seemed likely.
“they'll think the League is harmless again, so what if we scare them shitless by continuing with the anonymous accusations as if nothing happened? [...] the act would be more wolflike than anything actual wolves have done so far in this game [...] but it would be a beautiful sight to behold. [ding! You've lost Karma!] ” -bucaneer, whose ideas were still thankfully ignored
Destrocus himself had computer problems at the time of day seven and early in the following night, and remained unaware of the behavior of Abnaxis, and of his League membership being known to assassins. For some reason, nobody explained the situation, which led to some confusion later on.
“I'm not quite sure about the situation here, as I have been missing a lot of discussion and am too lazy to read everything that has happened since my internet went down.” -Destrocus
As night went into overtime, peculiarities of the comments posted in the game thread came to our attention.
“[...] Entropy appears to find out there's only one mason left, Dyrian Ryans cowers in fear before our power [...] And Tuck is the only one to mention the card game.” -Sekundaari
“People are running out of witty banter, and we've taken the most popular topic (complaining about aristocrat lynchings) away from them. But Phase did make a Half Life: Full Life Consequences reference, so all is good. [...]” -bucaneer
However, the most significant discovery was made when Inyssius’ comment prompted Sekundaari to go on a detective investigation, providing evidence that his in-game connection with Phase was probably a clever assassin trick. Inyssius was quickly agreed to be the best target, in case nothing came from Abnaxis.
“[...] I remembered Inyssius made himself a background connected to the background of Phase. Phase made his character [...] on September 6th. On Sep 8th, [...] the role selections have been made. On Sep 11th, Inyssius posts the weirdest character background [...], connecting his character (Björn) to Phase's. Game begins on the 12th, Inyssius defends Phase actively [...] Inyssius could very well be an assassin, who tried to make an aristocrat friend using IC reasons. As Phase ended up the first target, the assassin got to defend this innocent person [...] Alternatively, he could be innocent and just enjoy making more complex character interactions.” -Sekundaari
“[...] There's also his constant dislike for Halfling [...] I'm willing to file him under possible Tuck-like tactic using assassins (current population: 1)” -bucaneer
“I have no news from our reliable source yet. But it would be fun if he told us that Inyssius is indeed an assassin.” -Destrocus
The night went on. And on...
“[...] time to speculate about the happy ending that has obviously happened but Ruts is clearly very reluctant to reveal:
- assassins commit collective ritual suicide;
- lights come back up unexpectedly, leaving begoggled assassins to the mercy of aristocrats;
- assassins accidentally poison the part of food they'd left for their own consumption and are found dead;
- the voyage ends in the middle of the night, leading to much awkwardness;
- League is given special privileges (in form of flame throwers and machine guns) effective immediately, leading to mass murder and joy;
- airship hits a particularly tall iceberg, making everyone on board relieved that no romances have sprung up, or else this would become a three-hour-long excruciating experience;
- captain orders everyone to stay in their individual quarters for the rest of the voyage, and everyone lives happily ever after.” -bucaneer
“Perhaps a "Happy Ending" concluded the Halloween night for Rutskarn himself (you know how those college kids are), abolishing him of his nerdiness.” -Someone
“Maybe the weight of his overstuffed schedule finally squashed him into a puddle of hunan remains.” -Destrocus
“Maybe Chocolate Hammer squashed him. Into a puddle of nonhuman remains.
Or maybe Rutskarn has decided that he might as well restore the starting cycle rhythm. (Most probable...)
Maybe he has spent this entire time recording Bootlord episodes. (... but I'm hoping for this one.)
Or maybe Escapist has accepted the offer of the Spoiler Warning crew and Rutskarn has begun the life of a (Internet) rockstar.” -Sekundaari
“If one doesnt play Fallout one is obviously assassin scum that should be immidiately lynched.” -Someone
Lord von Rutskarn posted another Incident Seven. Halfling, who had been viewed with suspicion by many players, was assassinated in the night, leading to further bewilderment in the League. Destrocus, who usually brought messages from Rutskarn bearing information from Abnaxis, did not show up immediately, making us speculate whether he’d stopped contacting us.
“What. Halfling, out of all people? They have leads on two League members, one of which is implied to be a traitor [...]” -bucaneer
“I guess we should go ahead and start making up crazy theories. 3 Assassin factions? Obscene disinformation gambit by Abnaxis? Alien space monkeys?” -Someone
“A half-reasonable explanation would be that there are two assassin factions after all, and we cleared out one of them with the help of Abnaxis, so he cut off contact with us. [...] Other than that, alien space monkeys sounds like the safest assumption at this point.” -bucaneer
“First they kill Manny, viewed with [...] suspicion because of the "Rutskarn corollary" (Seriously, who made that up?) [...] and now Halfling [...] announced with all the "may or may not" fluff. Why are they priority targets?” -Sekundaari
By this time, both Abnaxis and Inyssius were on our shortlist of possible targets - we had at least that much right.
“If Abnaxis doesn't contact us, he's one possible target to take down. [...] Inyssius is another option [...]” -Sekundaari
“If [Abnaxis] didn't relay any info this time [...], and since he didn't reply to the League letter at all, I think he should be our primary target this turn.” -bucaneer
Abnaxis did eventually contact us, however. Destrocus brought in another message from Rutskarn, which accused Rune. Viktor got the same message, and pointed out for the first time that it was sent to Odecey as well.
“Okay, I really don't like where this is all going. The game just turned into a complete cakewalk, so there has to be a huge catch waiting for us in the end.” -Someone
“Literally, the only reasons I can find to vote for Rune are that he doesn't post much and his posts are annoyingly enthusiastic about killing assassins.” -Viktor
Destrocus offered to start a traditional bandwagon against Rune.
“I need some action again. Give me some good reasons and I will point at Rune personally.” -Destrocus
“Actually, if you start the bandwagon, Destrocus, those who have seen the Abnaxis-Tuck messages know that it's by the League anyway, right?” -Sekundaari
Odecey was first, though. He stated his vote was random, which was not enough to get a bandwagon going.
“Odecey dresses up his vote as a random one. So much for my hopes that we'd be able to start a bandwagon based on his stated reasoning. We could work on the fact that he voted surprisingly early and without waiting for any news from us (considering last round in particular) and thus probably knows more than he appears to, though I don't know if it'll get anybody else to join in.” -bucaneer
“That might just act as a reason to vote for something else. Some player voting early and "randomly", instead of waiting (at least for a while) for the League's patented ready-to-vote 100% assassin lynch targets, is a suspicious player.” -Sekundaari
“Maybe we should make an anonymous post vaguely hinting that "we don't have anything, so you people might as well roll with Odecey's plan".” -Someone
“"That random vote you see over there? We didn't have anything to do with it, and we know nothing, honest, but it's compelling, isn't it? Oh, and Odecey is totally not our informant." [...] making a completely neutral announcement is still an option, though it would require careful planning to get the bandwagon rolling with votes alone.” -bucaneer
“Maybe Odecey is another traitor and this is an effort by Abnaxis to reveal another member of the League, by goading us to recruit Odecey. Anyway, maybe we should recruit Odecey.” -Sekundaari
“[...]Maybe we should imply that he is our ally, even post something like "The League hereby declares this individual trustworthy!". I'd much rather the assassins wasted a nightkill on some random aristocrat instead of one of our dwindling number.” -Someone
“I'm so bored right now and have been so inactive that I shortly considered posting a reply to Odecey. Something like "Damnit, Ods! Keep to the plan!"” -Destrocus
Once again, bucaneer’s true calling showed itself.
“Another plan! *howls* Anonymously present a list of 3-4 names (Rune, Inyssius, etc) and say that one of them is guaranteed to be an assassin, just to see how everybody reacts. *sheds fur all over the floor* Reason that we want to bring more action into the game, and that we trust a good decision will be made.” -bucaneer
“My oh my what a sadistic plan. I would almost call it... wolfish.” -Destrocus
With that out of the way, we still had to decide between posting another accusation or doing something else for a change, which was either not doing anything or going back to simple banwagoneering.
“[...] We can just wait and see. With no answer from the League people will have to join the existing bandwagon. After all, they cant just all abstain.” -Someone
“The current bandwagon is for random votes, not for Rune. That's an invitation to indulge in pre-existing grudges and suspicions, possibly leading to a lynching of an aristocrat. [...]” -bucaneer
“I'm afraid waiting and seeing will result in the pre-informant situation: With assassin nudging or without, we end up lynching an aristocrat. [...] my vote for another anonymous announcement.” -Sekundaari
“Idea for an argument: "Huh. The assassins killed off someone else who was suspicious. They must not care who we go after, which means most of their side is under the radar. I'm going to point at Rune, because he seems to have put a lot of effort into making no posts of note and to cheer loudly at every assassin death."” -Viktor
“[...] you might add that his votes for assassins have come quite late, as if he waits for the lynch to become inevitable. Also some mention of Odecey's random vote above would probably be good. [...] And Rune voting Eyda three times in a row with little to no justification, that one's interesting too. I'd say it's actually a good idea that you would vote, even if we make an announcement afterwards. [...] doing this would distance you from [...] the League. But I still think we should make the announcement accusing Rune after that.” -Sekundaari
Another alternative - using a public spokesman for the accusation - did not get much support, being dangerous and uncertain. But since there was still a lot of time left in the day phase, the debate about the best course of action could continue.
“These arguments are actually quite good, but I think others may not appreciate them. Nobody has dared to vote in almost a full day since Odecey's post. [...] An alternative to the pure anonymity of League posts that maintains their effectiveness could be for one of us to post in character (and with the usual username) but using [Gravatar address] as a proof of League membership [...] That's suicide, most probably, though I'm puzzled at how assassins regard League members - after all, they've known Destrocus is one for several rounds [...]” -bucaneer
“[...] The "Public spokesman" certainly is one option. Although I believe that if Rutskarn really frowned upon our anonymous posts, he'd have said it already. Something like Von Rutskarn’s Note: Please, do not ruin the beautiful walls of my airship with waxy paper. Any further "messengers" shall be shot on sight. As for assassins not killing Destrocus, maybe they don't really think their assassinations through [...] Or maybe we have an infiltrator [...] the infiltrator would have to be a traitor or Abnaxis would be dead [...] There are probably more possibilities, some of them more unfortunate [...]” -Sekundaari
“[...] Viktor or somebody else could post a reasoned vote in the meantime. If something goes wrong, official post should put everything in the right place. [...] Posting anonymous announcement now is still the easiest approach IMO [...]” -bucaneer
As the regular voting remained in near stagnation, it was time to discuss our newly found colleague - Odecey. Once again, writing a letter was found to be too big a task for one day phase.
“[...] there's a nice little bandwagon forming. And only two thirds have been contacted by Abnaxis!” -Sekundaari
“[...] What about contacting Odecey, though? Recruiting may not be necessary [...] but establishing contact [...] is probably a good idea. A working draft for the message looks like this:
"Good evening, Alexander.
High five!
Sincerely,
The League"
It might need a bit of editing.” -bucaneer
“[...]something about why we are not voting for Rune at this point. Or why Destrocus isn't, if Odecey doesn't know the connection yet. [...] how about "good day" instead of evening? It's not even Thursday yet. Other than that, I feel your draft is completely fitting for the League's style.” -Sekundaari
“Wonder which we will need first - letter to Odecey or anonymous announcement? If counterbandwagon on Odecey continues, he may not appreciate the reasoning "you're doing good, so we won't post anything".” -bucaneer
The fact that Destrocus was unaware of last day’s happenings became apparent, though others did not seem to pay attention to it, instead thinking he’s just acting suspiciously, as always.
“That I haven't been killed so far can mean a couple of things: The assassins don't know about my contact with Abnaxis and thus have no way to know who is the link to The League.
The assassins do know about my contact with Abnaxis and are counting on our growing influence and/or dependancy on Abnaxis instructions. [...]” -Destrocus
“The first one isn't likely, unless Tuck has been terrible in communicating with the rest of them. Or they have had some reason to not trust each other [...] The second one is otherwise more probable, though I can't see how the assassins would expect to "cash in". [...]” -Sekundaari
“Yeah, there is the problem that there were too many sacrifices on the assassins' side. [...]” -Destrocus
“Well, either assassins choose bad targets while ignoring good ones available because they are incompetent/ignorant/bored, or because they're so amazingly good that their plans are beyond our understanding. [...]” -bucaneer
A single comment in the game thread caught some attention, yielding one more good suspect - Dyrian Ryans.
“[...] Dyrian Ryans wants to "race" two bandwagons because one would be "boring" (whut) [...]” -Sekundaari
“Dyrian's post is odd enough to add him to our list of suspects IMO. I'd wait and see [...] Either Rune is innocent or the assassins are going to try and overcome that lead. They can't have enough left to let one die without a fight.” -Viktor
In the end, the wait proved to be mostly fruitless, so, again, an announcement was chosen.
“Awww, just when I went all out and wrote a revolutionary post to undermine the people's dependancy on us...” -Destrocus, after voting for Viktor with no previous discussion.
“The letter is fine. I hope it will also help distance Viktor from the League. Destrocus, on the other hand, now looks like assassin scum.” -Someone
League members openly suspicious of Destrocus: 5
“Looking at the track records of "independent" and "dependent" voting, I doubt a revolution is called for. [...]” -bucaneer
“I just wanted to have some action after my inactivity. I don't think I'm in too much danger (except for night kills). [...] Looking like an assassin won't kill me as long as we keep posting our announcements. They will always choose the surefire kill instead of going after a "may be a hit" target.” -Destrocus
“[...] "We beg your pardon for not delivering this letter for your eyes sooner, as our hands were tied by other matters." Other matters [...] include important things like lurking on the thread and writing the letter.” -Sekundaari
Night 8
Assassination Seven appeared three days after the announcement. Rune was indeed an assassin, but most importantly, Rutskarn mentioned the League in the story post, and said they “knew full well why their fortunes were improving”, hinting that the assassins were figuring out the same. A cryptic description of the remaining assassins raised concern about their number: no detail was left unscrutinized, and no deduction left free of paranoia.
“[...] Ruts finally acknowledged League's existence and did that without complaining about our activities (yay?) [...]Rather worrisome is this bit: "in pairs and small shifty-eyed groups" - implying that there are more than 4 assassins left. This time we should really be prepared for having no more info come from up above any more. We have some decent suspects (Inyssius, Dyrian Ryans), so they should be our targets in the upcoming day. I can't decide whether the idea of bluffly posting anonymous accusation despite not having an informant is brilliant or horribly bad [...]” -bucaneer
“Wait, pairs and small shifty-eyed groups? To me that sounds like there could be, like, 10 assassins/traitors left... I think this post confirms that our informant is a traitor, "leak" doesn't sound like the work of a scrier. The traitor(s) could still be on our side, so we shouldn't lynch him [...] has someone revealed us and our conversations to Rutskarn? I mean, he seems very confident that we have a clear picture of the situation [...] he also happens to confirm that the League knows something the assassins don't, which is nice for our public relations. I'm not sure if that means that we're not infiltrated, but if Rutskarn knows who we are, that seems to be the only explanation[...] As for our next target, [...] I'd say Inyssius [...]” -Sekundaari
“it would be "at least 10" if taken in a strictly literal sense, though I see it simply as a way of saying "you're not quite there yet" while purposefully obfuscating the actual number [...] referring to, say, 5 as "pairs and small groups" could be reasonably well justified by saying that individuals come and go between them [...] Abnaxis probably was required to forward the last letter we sent him to Rutskarn. [...] the original (we know you're an assassin, but it's ok) shines through between the lines. (for the record: I haven't contacted Ruts in any way) [...] I like the idea of us not being infiltrated more and more. The warm fuzzy feeling of all the nuke-launch-sequence security being completely unnecessary and a waste of time. It was kinda fun, though.” -bucaneer
“[...] At this point, we can pretty much confirm that we don't have an infiltrator...from the assassins. We may have a mole planted by Rutskarn [...] Seeing how the game has turned into a cakewalk, Rutskarn may have prepared another "surprise" for us. [...] he will probably throw our informant to the wolves, whereupon they might discover League members he had correspondence with. Maybe upon nightkilling those, they will find out about others still. Or maybe it's just my paranoia. [...]” -Someone
“I'm worried about the balance rebound too. Rutskarn may think he has gone too far with his help for the aristocrats. [...]I hope he'll settle with throwing Abnaxis to the wolves[...] I believe [...] it's all but confirmed that there were more than 8 connected assassins to begin with, so... What were you thinking, Rutskarn? This feeling is softened by the fact that some of those turned out to be traitors[...]” -Sekundaari
In case the preceding wall of quotes is too dense (and it is): Ruts was still out to get us, we still had an army of assassins to deal with, and Abnaxis was about to die any moment now.
The letter to Odecey was finished after some further discussion. In its final form, it was a formal invitation to work together, unfortunately overwriting the content of original draft. Anyway, Odecey never responded.
“[...] what is supposed to be his status (recruit/member, ally, just some outsider), how much to reveal re: Destrocus' and Viktor's membership, and what we expect him to do (share info? follow our plans?) [...]” -bucaneer
“I'd say: 1) recruit/ally, anon handling, or perhaps handling by Destrocus because 2) reveal Destrocus if he agrees, don't reveal Viktor (the assassins really should know Destrocus is a member, based on the Tuck-Abnaxis thing) [...]” -Sekundaari
“I agree, but only if it absolutely has to be. I'm not fond of stabwounds.” -Destrocus
“[...] Perhaps just "One of the other contacts is a member".[...]” -Sekundaari
“It somehow got rather wordy after editing, and much of the original content is lost. Ah well. [...]” -bucaneer
All pressing matters of the night were concluded, but it just wouldn’t end. We could only lurk the comment threads and ruminate on paranoid theories.
“[...] it seems the late assassins are a bit bitter of our League's existence... [...]” -Sekundaari
“If necessary, one of us can come out and claim to be part of the League. That'll eliminate the 'anonymous' nature of the posts, which should prevent any more objections. [...]” -Viktor
“[...] if there really are lots of assassins left, we might run out of members before we eliminate them by going the suicidal route.” -bucaneer
Several days passed…
“Alright, this goes beyond busy college schedules and weird time zones, we must call it the way it is: Rutskarn is an alien space gibbon, who's struggling to keep up with the puny short 24-hour Earth days. There is no other way to explain the delays. Also, everybody seems to be ignoring our emails. [...]” -bucaneer
“I imagine people are bored with the game, so they don't check their mail as often.” -Someone
“I think Rutskarn works with Valve time. [...]” -Sekundaari
“I would agree that the slow timeline of the game contributes to lack of interest from players: it's sure what killed me!” -BenD
…and then several more…
“So.. Night has become never ending apparently.” -The Freshmaker
“What? Night? ..oh you are talking about werewolves? I forgot we were playing that.” -Someone
“Maybe whoever's dead has such an epic backstory that Rutskarn thinks he needs at least five pages of death scene, or preferably a movie. At least it wouldn't be me.” -Sekundaari
“[...] It doesn't quite follow, you being Rutskarn and all. Perhaps covering your death is proving difficult for your alter ego. And this time, the schedule reset is gonna work just perfectly, honest.” -bucaneer
“Totally perfectly. And maybe I just need to think of a semi-plausible plot twist that prevents my character from dying, even though the assassins agreed on the mark... It would be rather legendary trolling for Rutskarn to come and complain here about the awful schedule he has. Just saying.” -Sekundaari
…and more yet. An interesting (and, of course, paranoid) idea for the end-game was born in the meantime:
“[...] has anyone here read "And Then There Were None"? [...] it could make an awesome story for a mafia game. And if this game's story ends the same way the book does, I called it.” -Sekundaari
“[...] I got tempted to know the story now that you mentioned it. No time to read it at the moment, but apparently there's a Russian film adaptation of it that preserves the original ending [...] both the story and the movie are quite good. And if it is indeed the planned ending of the game, then Sekundaari/Rutskarn's death now wouldn't be too implausible, methinks.” -bucaneer
“That's what they want us to think!” -Someone
Finally, Destrocus brought us a message from Abnaxis with another assassin’s identity: this time it was Dyrian Ryans.
“[...] Weird thin is, this time I was the mails only recipient. No word of Odecey or Viktor.” -Destrocus
“I got this, too. Maybe he realized his mistake after last time. Or he really is Sekundaari.” -Viktor
“Would make sense after we pointed out that we always had three recipients. Only Sekundaari knew that. Rutts corrected his mistake, so Sekundaari=Rutts” -Destrocus
“Hey, guys! What's in the news? ...why all the weird looks?” -Sekundaari
Rutskarn finally posted Incident Eight, apologizing for the delay. An aristocrat, Flammarion, was assassinated. The assassin king.com was killed too. Furthermore, a new majority rule was introduced: the day would not end before a majority (presumably absolute) was reached. This was discussed calmly and rationally (no, really!).
“Ruts changed the format. I'm worried something is up. We need a letter soon.“ -Viktor
“Forgetting to put it up? Yeah, that makes sense... I guess we can at least take some comfort in the fact that an assassin bit the dust, too.” -Destrocus
“[...] they didn't kill somebody lynchable this time [...]. I'm still puzzled how Abnaxis has managed to survive this long. I imagine he's doing some heavy self defence on the assassin front, and he'll have his own story to tell once the game is finished. [...] As for dealing with Dyrian, I don't think we need to change our approach. Late announcement worked pretty well last time [...]” -bucaneer
“[...] we did apologize for the lateness last time, and I'd prefer we'd do the letter sooner. [...] assassins seem to have chosen... poorly again, when killing one of their own (presumably) [...] And Dyrian Ryans? [...] Sounds like a good target to me.” -Sekundaari
“I want to delay the announcement as much as is reasonable if only because it signifies the de facto end of round - nothing interesting ever happens after we accuse somebody. [...]” -bucaneer
“Well, nothing interesting except the death of assassin scum. [...]” -Sekundaari
Sekundaari volunteered to make a review of comments made by known assasains, and delivered. Unfortunately, knowledge collected by wading through the game threads and picking out significant quotes did not see much application in practice because the end-game was closer than any of us expected.
“Okay, I just took a look at the remarkable comments from Tuck and it seems like I've missed something somehwere: When the heck did Abnaxis tell him about being in the League and even forwarding him some of our mails? Grah! This was probabloy being discussed when I was too lazy to dig through all the posts that were made in my absence!” -Destrocus
Sekundaari created a rather unnecessarily long summary of the events of Day 7 for Destrocus. Bucaneer was first, though. Nevertheless, this summary and the work on the assassin spreadsheet made Sekundaari the prime candidate for compiling this history of the League (which he did on his own free will and without further pressure, honest).
“Good work on the spreadsheet. Seems that assassins manage to blend in with the crowd pretty well. Except Tuck, who's been a big mouthed filthy liar from the start. @Destrocus: [succinct summary]” -bucaneer
“Oh boy, are you in for a treat! [long summary] // You should read the whole thing, the conversation of lies between bucaneer and Tuck is very entertaining. And we are still rather puzzled of Tuck's motives in revealing Abnaxis [...] I'm so ninja'd, but I hope this is still useful. [...] // [To bucaneer] Thanks! I too think that Tuck had really invested in lies in this game [...] Incidentally, in his response to Halfling questioning his voting motive, I think this retcon bit is a pretty good one-liner: "I wanted to lynch Valaqil. You are now him."” -Sekundaari, ninja’d
“You're so doing the inevitable after-game writeup on what's been happening behind the scenes. Reading this summary was about as much fun as actually participating in the real deal, sans the brain melting (which is only fun retroactively) [...]” -bucaneer
“Now, now, do not be hasty! That's assuming I live until the end of this game [...] Still, sounds like a fun idea. I only hope it won't have to resemble "And Then There Were None"...” -Sekundaari
An interlude of math followed, confirming that pretty much everyone alive was probably an assassin.
“17 players left, 7 of which are League. 16 aristocrats, 5 assassins dead so far. Not sure why, but I'm feeling nervous. The number of assassins bugs me still. [...]“ -Viktor
“[...] The good news: They would have already won if there was 10 of them left. The bad news: There are at least 5-8 of them left...” -Destrocus
“[...] After night 5, [...] 24 players alive. Assuming the assassins win if assassins+traitors equal aristocrats(+chums), at most 12 assassins in the beginning, and 7 now. [...] I think it's possible that Tuck was a traitor and the whole Tuck-Abnaxis thing would have been staged for the assassins [...]” -Sekundaari
Someone brought a game called “Infinite Ocean” to our attention, and paranoid estimates were momentarily put aside to discuss this and other point-and-click games. It didn’t take long for the conversation to turn back to our werewolves game, though.
“[...] Like the messages from the walls, that seemed to suppress the imagination within us and kept us very limited, just like we limit ourselves. [...]” -Destrocus
“For a moment, I thought you were talking about our Magical Murder Tour here. Speaking of which, [...] I don't think this game is going to move at all, before we make it move with our announcement.” -Sekundaari
“I think it's okay to say that we broke the game. We are a bug, something the programmer didn't intend to be in the game that ends up spoiling the fun in one way or another. [...]” -Destrocus
“I feel that the awful starting balance called for desperate measures, especially when we lost our power roles. [...] the balance seems to have shifted to our side. [...] But this has come with a great cost, with the interest in the game dwindling... only Abnaxis' death could change it [...] Maybe some other tips: [...] Trapper is OP! // At least unless our power roles start connected. // The assassins should not be connected, or maybe // Traitors should exist and operate from the start. They could still be a surprise. // Some more moderators, to keep to the schedule.“ -Sekundaari
“To hell with it. If efficiently killing assassins has made us bad guys in the game, we stop killing assassins efficiently. Post an announcement that we're going to keep low from now on, and that victory is close [...] If all else fails, we should have enough numbers to brute force Dyrian-wagon to the end.” -bucaneer
“Problem is, that would probably reveal us [...] Of course, Dyrian has done some very silly moves lately (he seems to be very active and restless in the thread now, like an animal that knows an earthquake is about to happen). But would they be enough to get a majority behind him [...]?” -Sekundaari
Bucaneer posted an announcement draft once again. Initially, it did not mention Dyrian Ryans, but provided some basis to accuse him, and Inyssius too, and others we thought would belong to the remaining 5 or so assassins.
“The entire first paragraph is a very verbose phrasing of "wink wink, nudge nudge" [...] As for danger towards us, yeah, that's probably inevitable. However, sniping assassins from safety has gotten quite boring [...]” -bucaneer
“[...] the first paragraph suggests we are aware of the assassins' methods, but looking at the spreadsheet, I see very different personalities. [...] If the League didn't exist [...] Abnaxis could have just contacted single aristocrats [...] and the lynchings would have been the same. Possibly the contacts would have started dying in the night [...] but other aristocrats have died now instead. I can see the contacts would have been more cautious about starting the first wagon, but as a whole, I don't think our anonymous accusations have been the big equalizer here [...] It's possible the current slowness of this game is more because of Rutskarn's schedule and normal, expected loss of interest [...] We have 17 players, of which 7 discuss the game in their hidden League and maybe five in their secret assassin club. (Hoping for mutually exclusive, here.) That does not leave many to be active in the thread. [...]” -Sekundaari and his wall of text
“[...] Discussions in private don't really count as part of game because they feed on the public content. As of now, that has been reduced to "everybody does what League says", which isn't particularly interesting to anyone but the seven of us [...] I don't regret putting up the previous accusations in the slightest, but right now we have a decent chance to make the rest of the game more interesting [...]” -bucaneer
Dyrian Ryans voted for BenD at this point.This was considered a good chance to countervote with better arguments, but it would be far better if this was done by BenD himself. Unfortunately, he had been inactive for a long time already.
“[...] By the way, we number seven and have two recruits. Combined, we have a majority of votes [...]” -Sekundaari
“[...] I like the idea of posting the anonymous message withdrawing the League Account from the game. [...] Alternatively, we could include the name of our target in the anon message, while saying that this will be the last message we send. [...]” -Viktor
“So, it's me and Viktor for posting, Freshmaker and Sekundaari for not posting, Destrocus and Someone silent, and BenD out of contact in the worst possible time. [...]” -bucaneer
Bucaneer voted for Inyssius while we discussed what to do, hoping a sudden arrival by BenD would make the decision simple. He also wrote a draft of a letter to Sir Broccoli, explaining our silence in case we didn’t post Dyrian Ryans’ name in the thread. However, Destrocus and Someone supported posting a last accusation, which only required slight changes from the original draft, and the last letter was posted.
“Alright then. Letter seems fine - though imagine if Abnaxis has decided to turn against us with this target. Awkward. [...] this seems very much not in character with our aristocrats [...] Though of course, most of the IC talk&reasoning has already disappeared. And even our League was founded on the work of a selfless (gasp!) aristocrat. [...]” -Sekundaari
“We're gentlemen, and as such don't enjoy acting unfairly, even if we have assassin scum as our opponents. Or something. Right, fire in the hole! [...]” -bucaneer
All that was followed by complaints about schedule, tangents on Let’s Play series, and comic relief, as usual:
“[...] We probably do have about a week left in the current cycle. JaRheads are making money and Rutskarn has completely sold out. His schedule is even more screwed, now that the poor bastard has to work his way through all those hookers and crack every morning and still remember to throw a tv out the window.” -Someone
“He told Jibar they made like 5 bucks from the test episode, but I bet it was actually more like 5000. Spent the rest on tacos, obviously.” -Sekundaari
“Naah, he is probably saving up money to hire a hitman to assassinate Sid the Science Kid and everyone he ever loved.” -Someone
“I didn't like the last episode much. Jibar overdid it a little with those awefull impressions. There were some funny moments though.” -Destrocus
“None of the americans I know gave me a reason to doubt the truthfulness of his impressions.” -Someone
“I already mentioned my favorite moment in the thread, but I wish it had been a trap. Though Jibar did die before Rutskarn... and of course, every time Jibar explodes things, it's hard for it not to be funny.” -Sekundaari
“I cracked up when Rutskarn finished the mission with Jibar dead, his leg shot and Jibar having only killed 4 terrorists before he died. I guess we all know who is the MVP there.” -Destrocus
Many of us ended up voting for Dyrian Ryans rather quickly, without coordination, leading to another League-only bandwagon.
“Oh hey, today is Dice-lynching reunion day! How nice to have a bandwagon all for ourselves again.” -bucaneer
“Oh great, I didn't even notice. The bandwagon stars four of our prestigious members of the League, and the house band "Odecey and the Remaining Recruits"! [...] let's hope the remaining (2?) votes won't take a week to appear... [...] I also hope the traitor(s) don't win when all other assassins die. It would be ridiculously unbalanced, and makes no sense IC, but that's a thing that could really ruin things for us... [...]” -Sekundaari
“That didn't even make it into my worrying. You want scary, I've been tossing a thought around in my head recently. Power Role: Henna Artist. This Assassin can, each night, disguise any one person as an assassin for one day. [...] that's the sort of paranoia I get when things go well.” -Viktor
Night 9
Being a good sport, Dyrian didn’t want to delay the inevitable and wrote his speech, admitting he was an assassin. Rutskarn posted the story post, which hinted at the game’s end being around the corner. Needless to say, everybody had a theory or half-dozen about the details of that.
“[...] His letter is pretty stylistic and disturbing though. He really was an assassin who liked his job. // I actually feel bad for Dyrian after he wrote that... It's like we shattered that poor guy's mind and soul [...]” -Destrocus
“A twist! The Aristocrats were the bad guys all along! Dun Dun DUNN! Seriously though, good speech, if a little disturbing. [...] Will Abnaxis continue to send us lynch targets now that we are officially "out of business"? And should we lynch him if he will not? Would our little bandwagon finally tip off the assassins? Will Apocalypse come in 2012 or a bit later? Can Fluffy the Wonder Cat survive?” -Someone
“[...] Rutskarn says the game might end soon. I see a few options: 1.The traitor(s) are actually on the good guys' side. [...] 2. The "several more" in Dyrian's speech is just a lie. There's maybe one or two traitors left, or one traitor and one assassin [...] 3. The traitors win when assassins die, aristocrats lose. The end is nigh [...]” -Sekundaari
“"Assassins die, traitors win" could be justified IC by making traitors be undercover police agents [...] you know, collectively premeditatedly executing others of our own without a proper trial [...] the police are helping us get rid of the most dangerous types before sacking the rest. Would be a jerk move from Ruts [...]” -bucaneer
“I doubt undercover police agents would be any less lynchable than the members of a secret assassin cult. And we're over international waters... [...] the last assassin killing took place in the (only?) bathroom of the airship. And in Dyrian's lynch description,[...] he wrote his speech "in the bathroom". This seems to hint at that Dyrian killed king.” -Sekundaari
“Were there bathroom stalls in late XIX - early XX century?” -Someone
“I just know they didn't have any before the french revolution [...]” -Destrocus
“Nah, I think there weren't. It's a bummer, too, because ever since Rutskarn mentioned them I can't take the game seriously: it breaks the established realism of inter-continental, half-hundred-passenger, luxury-class flying palaces.” -bucaneer
“The flushing must look hilarious, too.” -Someone
The supposed deadline of night phase came and went without any effect, again.
“Alright, since we have nothing better to do, let's bet how many weeks this night is going to last. [...] I'll be foolishly idealistic and say that this time, for once, the night will have ended by this time tomorrow.” -bucaneer
“I will take you up on that. [...]” -Someone
“I'll say it'll take him at least until thursday.” -Destrocus
Later.
“[...] I wonder if someone should poke Rutskarn. There's a risk that he would thank whoever did this in the thread, which might mean swift death. [...] I don't suppose there's any news of our informant?” -Sekundaari
“Nope, nothing yet. [...] I wouldn't be surprised if we got nothing this time.” -Destrocus
Later.
“Looks like I'm gonan win tha bet. [...]” -Destrocus
“"There'll be a seriously long update very soon." Ooh, how about that - Abnaxis dies, 50 ghost-bucks?” -bucaneer
“Game ends? Could be that one too, if there's an assassin assassinated.” -Sekundaari
“Eh, what's the worst thing that could happen?” -Someone
“"Last assassin dies; traitors win."” -Sekundaari
Later.
“Okay guys, hand me my ghost bucks. [...]” -Destrocus
“Very soon indeed. One more piece of evidence that Rutskarn is operating at a completely different concept of time than us lowly mortals.” -bucaneer
“It has now been 22 hours since his "very soon" comment. I suspect the game is over(however it ended), and he's just trying to make the last post memorable [...]” -Viktor
“Lets all break out into a huge "It's over! We are freeeeeeeeeeeee!" tantrum once he's posted.” -Destrocus
The final story post detailed the killing of the Trapper, Inyssius, by the Traitor, Abnaxis. The game was over.
“The end is nigh! And we won, apparently. Abnaxis was on our side.” -Sekundaari
“That was... anti-climactic. Technically, we won and are monsters; though actually, Rutskarn won the game for himself through Abnaxis. I kinda expected more twists before the end. I was thinking to do a nice last reveal letter from us [...]” -bucaneer
Bucaneer already had the letter ready, and it was approved. Scott was considered an honorary full member, as he was the only dead recruit.
“[...] Rutskarn wouldn't appreciate you mentioning Abnaxis was a recruit though, if he wants to do a big reveal post. After that it's rather self-explanatory.” -Sekundaari
“I'd say post it.” -Viktor
“I think Ruts will have a story to tell no matter what, so I don't think mentioning Abnaxis will do any harm.” -bucaneer
“[...] Oh well, maybe the assassin side had something interesting going on.” -Someone
The conversation quickly became a meandering mess about any and all impressions the game had left on us. It is provided here with little editing and summarising, because otherwise this summary would not be done until everybody had forgotten about it.
Among the topics covered were: game balance, suspicions, the upcoming summary…
“The first two weeks of this were rather funny, but after that I kinda had the feeling the whole thing was rather overhyped...” -Destrocus
“I say it was better to be in this game than not. Though I was kind of hoping that bucaneer would have been an assassin, because the conversation with Tuck would have been a masterpiece. Oh well... [...]“ -Sekundaari
“I'd say it was better to be in the League than in any other position. The beginning of the game (pre-bbot) must have been quite boring for the assassins, and the change of direction [...] probably wasn't much fun either. Though I imagine Abnaxis might have had a good time evading suspicions of others. I kinda feel sorry for the rest [...] As far as I know, patients aren't allowed internet access in mental hospitals, so no, successfully pulling off being an assassin, disguised as League member, disguised as clueless aristocrat (parallel to: assassin disguised as League member; assassin disguised as spokesperson for the League; and presumably simply assassin acting like an assassin) is a rather unlikely scenario. [...]” -bucaneer
“[...] Throw in assassin traitor on top of everything else for good measure, no problem at all. Then if you also happened to be Rutskarn... well, then I'd know you could have pulled everything off. [...] I'll see whether I'll try writing some brief summary of the behind-the-scenes things from our viewpoint. [...]” -Sekundaari
“Wow, thank you all for handling everything the way you have. [...] I'd love to see a written summary from the League's perspective, and I bet some of the other players would, too. Might be a good follow-up comment to Ruts' 'what the hell happened' post he's promising for the future. And hey look, I wasn't an assassin after all. ;)” -BenD
… hidden puns in character names, more suspicions …
“[...] In case I won't remember to ask this in the thread, and hoping I haven't asked it before, does anyone know where my character's name is from? It's not quite "Stopen Van Hamertijd", but it's a reference all the same.” -Sekundaari
“[...] Didn't know about the reference until you mentioned it, but google did not disappoint.” -bucaneer
“Bingo! They have a habit of showing that on TV here every New Year's Eve. Skål! (Owww....) [...]” -Sekundaari
“And here I thought I was being original, putting a stealth pun into a name. I wonder how many others we have missed. I too, would love to read a post game summary of League shenanigans. I would, however, hate to write it. I actually suspected Viktor for quite a while, I just can't remember why.” -Someone
“You and just about everyone else. I 'started' the first bandwagon, which in retrospect wasn't my best move. Until the traitor portion started, I was sure I was going to die soon.” -Viktor
… reintroduction of dead members to our spam mailing list discussion …
“[...] I guess we could include the honourable dead in our conversation again?” -Sekundaari
“(summoning the ghost department of the League back from the poker table) // Hello dead people, we missed you, and the standard procedure in such cases is to start spamming your inboxes again. I'm pretty sure the communication embargo doesn't apply any more, so everybody's free to comment on the end-game, or anything else, really. // I wonder how the game would've went if there were actually infiltrators in the League. Abnaxis surely wouldn't have survived this long [...] though probably League itself would've become useless quickly [...]” -bucaneer
“I was thinking the conversation would get very lively when we included the dead again, but apparently the dead aren't restless.” -Sekundaari
… suspicions (of Destrocus), Denubis’ good choices, miraculous survival of Abnaxis …
“So we had no traitor at all in the League? Denubis really did a good job. I constantly suspected Max (until the third assassin got lynched)... [...] I think the assassins were really desperate at the end. [...] they got some of the most suspicious aristocrats out of the way instead of letting them get lynched [...] If they had taken Denubis' inital list as a basis they could have put some real pressure on us. [...] Abnaxis must have had a really good time. Managing to be the last man standing while the assassins were offing suspected traitors is quite an achievement. How could he survive? We actually recruited an assassin and he managed to keep Destrocus and himself alive? What the hell? [...] I noticed the League was not in danger and the assassins went down at a fast pace so there was no real suspense.” -Manny
League members openly suspicious of Destrocus: 6
“What is it with everyone suspecting me? Before Denubis got killed and withdrew from the game I was his first ally [...] He collected enough data to create a small group of trustworthy players and I was gladly a part of it. Made things more interesting.” -Destrocus
“Sorry, Max, but I had you on a shortlist too - but I was never assassinated, so Bentley's notes never came to light. [...] I can tell you why the suspicion, at least in my case, though - it had to do with you always being very quick to say 'I'm sure it's a coincidence' back in the days when League members were being popped off night after night. You also promoted Nova to the group as a possible inductee, then turned around and said she was a bad choice due to her inactivity [...]” -BenD
“[...] That "it's all just a coincidence" talk was actually an attempt to calm everyone down a bit, but I can see how that actually made me look suspicious. And about Nova... I'm a little miffed she never continued our little e-mail exchange.” -Destrocus
“[...]I believe I already explained why you were suspicious in my eyes, even briefly pointing at you on... must have been day 2 [...] You seemed to be overacting the role of an aristocrat... It seems pretty much everyone else suspected you, too. You must be some kind of RL miller.” -Sekundaari
… disappointment, missed opportunities, what-if scenarios …
“One thing that bugs me is that we, the League, didn't really accomplish anything. Our only success was establishing contact with Abnaxis, and even that would have been a failure would he not have been a traitor. Well, at least we didn't kill each other so...there's that.” -Someone
“We, like, totally called it on Inyssius, though. That's gotta count for something.” -bucaneer
“We called it on Abnaxis too, after some time [...] and Dyrian Ryans, I believe. With the wagon-racing. Also, without the League, I think at least 7 or so more aristocrats would have understood little of the endgame.” -Sekundaari
“Without the League, there wouldn't have been an endgame - just a ridiculous sniper-hunt among assassins. I would like to believe Ruts structured things as he did because of the League and would have done something else otherwise.” -BenD
“I don't know about that. Figure the early game would play out the same, with slightly different pointless bandwagons up until Abnaxis contacted us. Those of us he contacted would start bandwagons, take out a few assassins, then die horribly. The question is whether or not those few assassins would tip the balance, and whether or not Abnaxis could contact other people after his initial contacts died. [...] I think that with Abnaxis, even without the League, we had a shot. [...] And since I saw names being discussed earlier, mine is a reference to Mrs. White(the maid) from Clue.” -Vikor
… more suspicions and non-suspicions …
“I admit I've had a persistent suspicion of Freshmaker. [...] the infrequent comments tended to be at least slightly off-beat, which was enough to keep paranoia running. Curiously [...] I never thought of Destrocus or Viktor as suspicious [...] And conversely, BenD, Sekundaari and Someone have been on my "definitely not suspicious" list since pretty much the founding of the League - if any of you turned out to be an assassin, I'd never trust anybody ever again. [...] I'm rather surprised I managed to get through the game completely dry - no lynch votes, no assassination attempts and no declarations of suspicion yet (well, apart from that Sekundaari post re: conversation with Tuck) Even putting aside my increasingly wolflike attitude within the League, I thought there were enough similarities between my IC posts and League letters to raise some flags among the general populace [...] Anyway, big kudos to Denubis for managing to assemble 10 real aristocrats on Day 2 (!), without having any special powers. Good job.” -bucaneer
“I was rather unscathed too - KremlinLaptop voted for me on Day 1 [...], but withdrew it quickly.
May I ask why I was "definately not suspicious"? Was it my wild suggestions, puns or just plain ol' being Rutskarn? I might end up playing this game another time, and not looking suspicious would be helpful, no matter which side I would play... [...]” -Sekundaari
“Probably more of a hunch than anything, but staying rational, always stating your arguments and acknowledging different perspectives without jumping to conclusions early [...] 'Course, pulling that off as an assassin would be quite a feat. // Though puns never (always) hurt, either.” -bucaneer
“Rational arguments and acknowledging others' views? Oh man, that's just my personality, that would be easy to do as a bad guy... though I'm probably a bad liar.” -Sekundaari
“Logical structure of arguments and proper rhetoric is not that hard, but making sense when your actual agenda is to promote something that is not rational for your opponents is the tricky bit. The whole point of acting rationally is to show that your actions are the best possible for a real villager/aristocrat, with little ground left for lies[...], and as wolf you'd want to act closer to the worst possible... “ -bucaneer
… BenD’s newly shared notes of epic paranoia and suspicions of Destrocus (“Is Max[well] just very, very weird, or is he suspicious?”) …
“I believe those paranoid ramblings should be, in some form, presented to the public to give the others a taste of our (hypothetical) backstage politics.” -Someone
“I read your notes for about two minutes and already my name pops up. As a possible traitor. I think I raised more suspicion among my allies about my person than among the rest of the players... // Okay, now that I've read the entire notes i have to say... Are you obsessed with me? That whole thing is practically about me!” -Destrocus
“Apparently I would have made an amazing assassin.” -The Freshmaker
“And apparently, I made a crappy ally...” -Destrocus
“[...] the fact that it was fuelled mostly with paranoia doesn't exactly give a properly balanced view.” -bucaneer
“For my part, I was suspicious of Max because of two things: 1) He accused me several times publicly on day 1.[...] // 2) He was incredebly chatty at the beginning and grew more quiet when assassins started to die. [...] Additionally, there was his somewhat gloating comment about my death on CH right after my assassination.” -Manny
“So no one suspected me? No one at all? Interesting. I actually thought I was acting suspicious throughout the game [...]” -Someone
… excuses for suspicions of Destrocus …
“[To Destrocus] In my mind, one could view you as a lightning rod and a fuse [...] at the same time[...]: Many of us were most suspicious of you, and otherwise a complex and volatile network of "most suspicious" accusations might have formed. This could have threatened the whole League [...] And if we had had one assassination too many in a row, [...] we would probably have ended up having you lynched.[...] with no more major suspicions of anyone, we would have not lynched another one of our own. [...] I don't think you were a "crappy" ally [...]” -Sekudaari
“[...] I meant crappy ally only in the sense that I acted so erratic that people had to assume that i was hiding something [...]” -Destrocus
… conversation of lies, further speculation on Abnaxis …
“What were the League's intern reactions when Tuck pointed out Abnaxis in public as a League recruit? I was dead, but I thought that it was the end for Abnaxis because I expected a night-kill. Now that we know that both were assassins, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Did Tuck try to make us believe that Abnaxis was not an assassin?” -Manny
“There were lots of interesting stuff going on at that time, summarised by Sekundaari (for Destrocus, who missed the show) thus: [summary]” -bucaneer
“Haha thanks, that's hilarious. Tuck didn't want to contact the League, but sent infos to 3 members nonetheless. And the mystery about Abnaxis not being killed still stands. I think the letters between bucaneer and Tuck are of public interest. And I would really like to hear about the assassins internal business.” -Manny
“Thanks! I suppose that Abnaxis [...] agreed to Tuck trying to sway the bandwagon in his direction, which would probably make one of them seem less suspicious to the general public [...] Or Tuck could have been alone in believing Abnaxis works against them [...] Or maybe, just maybe, he was another traitor [...] the whole show was meant to clear Abnaxis of any doubt by assassins, which would seem to have succeeded well enough. [...] agree with revealing that great conversation to all, but bucaneer should get Tuck's permission first. It was good play by both of them. [...] reminds me of a reason why I suspected Destrocus being a traitor[...] he didn't get nightkilled after he was apparently exposed to assassins. I suppose Tuck being a traitor could explain that [...]. I wonder how much the other assassins knew about Abnaxis' contact with the League... [...]” -Sekundaari
“Now that I think about it, if the assassins were killing their own trying to flush out the traitors, that whole "I helped kill bbot" angle wasn't a lie.” -Someone
… Denubis showing up, waiting for final post by Rutskarn, more speculation …
“Thanks :). I'm glad my efforts weren't totally wasted.” -Denubis
“[...] I feel sharing this with Ruts and the entire community would be puntastic. Maybe even puntacular. And it would definitely show everyone that it was all ABnaxis work while we took the credit” -Destrocus
“We really should have given him more credit, maybe mention his name in some announcement...” -Sekundaari
“Yeah, we were practically twiddling our thumbs while waiting for him to give us another certain KO. At some point, we abandoned our primary function, being a reasonable and trustworthy group of nobles who dedicate themselves to indentifying possiblke assassin scum, and completely concentrated on our secondary function, being an instant voting bloc.“ -Destrocus
“Hey, the voting bloc was *designed* in” -Denubis
“I wouldn't say identifying assassins was abandoned - quite the opposite, in fact [...] It's just that we never got a chance to put our independently acquired knowledge into action [...]” -bucaneer
“[...] We weren't just some cargo cult. I was actually expecting Abnaxis to betray us [...], leading to us lynching him. Then we would identify the rest of the assassins/traitors via old-fashioned means and hunt them down on horseback, like men once did... “ -Sekundaari
… newly compiled version of conversation of lies for the benefit of those who missed it, resumed conversation with Tuck and the assortment of stuff about assassin’s side of the game learned from it …
“Holy cow! I'm sure I would have messed up the roleplaying half way through the conversation. Well played bucaneer!” -Manny
“Tuck has no problem with us sharing the conversation, and apparently even sent his own log of it to Rutskarn after he died. Also, he's very notably reactionless toward the fact that I'm a League member.” -bucaneer
“So he wasn't a traitor? Abnaxis must have been doing something insane to keep himself and all the leaked members alive.” -Someone. As we later found out, it involved some clever forgery.
“Oh man, now I feel sad for them. And now I realize his bluff of "If I live, I'll kill another assassin tonight" could actually have worked. Good one. [...] You should mention we have some 1600 mails between us [...] to be fair, you should mention a large part of those are puns, Fallout, point'n'click, claims of secretly being Rutskarns, what have you and mindless paranoia (he should feel good about that last one). And we were hand-picked from the less suspicious people + Destrocus, which means we didn't get so many silent players. [...] ” -Sekundaari
“I already mentioned/explained League activity (specifically, "somewhere around 1500 messages", "pun-off", Fallout, paranoia, and "fooling around" were among the terms used). [...]” -bucaneer
“I guess that makes Abnaxis the MVP of this game. Really, he probably showed the best actual play among all of the participants. The second place goes to Denubis and the third one to Rutskarn (aka bucaneer) for professional schizophrenia.” -Someone
“Wait, what? I'm Sekundaari now?” -bucaneer
“Come on man, bucaneer=Rutskarn=Sekundaari, it's simple logic.”-Sekundaari
“Or is it?” -Someone
“Well, it's either that or this. For my sanity, I prefer the former.” -Sekundaari
“[...] the realization that I am responsible for not updating Chocolate Hammer in any way that resembles a schedule will not let me sleep for a long time to come.” -bucaneer
“Don't worry, I feel the same way. (Duh.) Good night.” -Sekundaari
“I have started some kind of summary, but a) it's going to take time and b) I can't include every funny thing [...]” -Sekundaari
“If you need help with the summary (and what you have so far allows some sort of collaboration), I can give it a shot too. [...]” -bucaneer
“I think I can manage [...]” -Sekundaari. Wrong!
… and then, finally, the first draft of this summary by Sekundaari. Bucaneer created a Google document from it, so others could start working on the summary too.
To prevent excessive recursion, this concludes our story. This would be a place to congratulate you, the reader, for reading through the entire wall of text, but you probably reached here after scrolling down in search of the end. So congratulations, then, for attempting to read it at all, we hope you enjoyed it and our efforts were not entirely wasted.
Bring back Bootlord? Why, of course! I really should bring it back. Wonder why I haven’t done that yet...