Cthulu Mafia - TOWN (drunk) WIN, MADNESS SOMEWHAT AVERTED

[Chiaki]

....wait, I read that wrong. Again.

You want to nightkill me if Nikolai flips town? Okay, now I'm not so much in favor of the plan. If we mislynch today it's 4:2 going into Night 5. The scumkill on you kicks in, it's 3:2. If I die on top of that, it's 2:2 and we lose. Instead of getting to Day 6 with 3:2, when we can lynch and have the nightkill in reserve in case we're wrong? What's the advantage there?

[Chiaki]

Just to be clear, the only reason I don't have the same objection for a nightkill targeted at Samuel in that situation is because if Nikolai is town then I know Samuel is scum, by simple process of elimination. Looking it at it from the perspective of not knowing whether or not I'm town, I don't see the percentage in risking the game tonight.

[Princess Leia]

Right, no putting this off any longer; I've done a full reread of suspects and flipped scum. Plenty on Daniels wrt play and voting, but no point bringing that up given that even he agrees his play is bad; if people think he's cleared on roles there's no arguing with that.

Daniels: It's not power X itself that makes me think my role results clear Kolmogorov more than you, it's the fact that he just has three seemingly-random powers. Returning "Vanilla" to rolecops seems a sensible role. Returning ZOMG ALL THE ROLES EVAR, as it seems Kyle did, makes sense. Returning an arbitrary sprinkling of three seems utterly insane. But I accept that's no longer a good enough reason to rule anything out.

One minor, very WIFOMy point against Andrews comes from O'Malley's:

He's talking about what Hellsnake should have known.  Now, what I find interesting is that what Martin seems to feel that scumsnake should know isn't Bike's alignment, but his role.  Specifically, he should have a better idea of what Bike's role is than if he were town, which implies that Scum know more than was stated publically. Which raises the question, if scum do know this, then how does Martin know that scum know this?

Andrews quickly refutes this, of course; he hadn't actually made such a slip. The reason this is interesting is it makes more sense for O'Malley to be confused if he had reason to believe Andrews had slipped, because Andrews was scum, than if Andrews was town.
More seriously we have the end of day 3. Here he strongly implies Hayles will be top of his scumlist; then here, no mention of Hayles at all, he's on Handley, with the added irony that it's for dropping his case on his #1 suspect.
End of day 4 also looks bad; Andrews umms and aahs about O'Malley right up to here, before finally voting him very late on.

Start of day 4, Andrews goes after three townies. But the interesting thing is he's right; until Peyton hammered, there were three town on Kolmogorov, with four scum alive, in potential LYLO. It seems astonishing that scum would not have lynched Kolmogorov at that point, unless he was one of their own.

I still think Nikolai's contributions were better than Andrews', at least when he was making them, but that's not proof, and his failure to deliver his promised wall was poor. Another thing is that even though he's managed to force Andrews into a roleclaim with it, I don't recall us ever getting any proof that Nikolai actually has role results. Most importantly, back on day 2, Kolmogorov puts Hellsnake to L-1 because he finds bulletproof miller reviver too implausible a role; given Nikolai's own role, that looks very bad. The only reason I'm not outright declaring him scum for this is that Pietro was actually town too so it's a stupid scum move.

Finally, there's the fact that Nikolai has said he's fine with being lynched today. Which I can't see being the case if he were really what he seemed; I may be missing something, but to my eyes power X becomes far more useful at LYLO than at any other time. So at this point I think we give him what he asks for. ##UnFoS, ##FoS: Nikolai Kolmogorov.

Short post to follow on the fastkill, I've already spent hours on this. 7 ninjas, will read them next.

[Princess Leia]

Ok. I'm willing to protect myself (it's not like there's anyone left to investigate, unless the scumteam is Nikolai/Martin, which is our easiest possible state of affairs - and in that case then having Dale clear me is probably more useful than a role result from me on Martin, since I'm not cleared). I'm not willing to commit to not protecting myself unless there's a plan that gives us a guaranteed win.

If Nikolai is town then the X factor complicates things; I think it pushes us back in favour of not fastkilling anyone. So I'd request Bike to explain as clearly - and with as few assumptions - as possible, the basis on which Mei-Fan should decide whether to kill tonight; I'm not confident of my own reasoning here, and she'll have to make the decision quite quickly and under pressure.

[Bardiche]

Mei-Fan Chen;

Without interference from Bike, and without knowing the killer aspect of my role, my own strategy would have been to check out Samuel for all intents and purposes.

I am not willing to act on Jack at all. He is pretty town to me.

I am willing to act on either Nathan or Samuel tonight, but not on Martin - call it a gut feeling, but I am more leery of either of these two. I still don't believe in excusing Nathan fully on accounts of his role, given that we don't know if he was restricted to reviving town or not, and if it really wasn't just a derpism on scum behalf. They've already proven they're not infallible, bussing an ally only to get lynched the day after.

THAT SAID, I am currently adapting this strategy:

IF Nikolai is Scum, THEN investigate Samuel.
IF Nikolai is Town, THEN investigate Nathan.
IF Nikolai is Scum with anti-informative role, THEN investigate Nathan.

Unless someone presents a compelling case on why Martin needs to die instead, I'll be following this course of action. Nathan has been really suspicious the entire game, and there's no guarantee of anything here.

If anything, a scum gambit where they revive town, then coincidentally they rolecopped the other sounds really fishy.

But you know what seals the deal for me? Martin says Doctors are bad juju. Chad is the dead doctor. Samuel is a Doctor, but according to Bike he knows Scum's secret. And Nathan is a Doctor.

This all assumes Martin is telling the truth, of course. Which is why Samuel should definitely check him out.

BY THE WAY:
Bike, on the night of dying, did you still get to use your role?

[Chiaki]

One minor, very WIFOMy point against Andrews comes from O'Malley's:
Andrews quickly refutes this, of course; he hadn't actually made such a slip. The reason this is interesting is it makes more sense for O'Malley to be confused if he had reason to believe Andrews had slipped, because Andrews was scum, than if Andrews was town.

Uh. Excal lied about me, which makes us more likely to be scumbuddies? Huh? Maybe I'm missing something, but the only way that looks bad for me is if scum are more likely to post specious arguments against each other than against town. That's kinda back-asswards.

More seriously we have the end of day 3. Here he strongly implies Hayles will be top of his scumlist; then here, no mention of Hayles at all, he's on Handley, with the added irony that it's for dropping his case on his #1 suspect.

What I said before on Kyle before stands, but his contributions in Day 3 have been mostly solid; the only one I can find a hole to poke in is his most recent post, which is one very abbreviated case on Ethan's play over the entire game, followed by a list of "hey you, say something" lines. Reading townier than he was before, but there's only so much a day of good play can do to erase two days of bad.

Nathan: Gotta agree with the crowd here; the only substantive analysis he's done is on roles. Getting bogged down in flavor and roles is a problem the whole game has had, to one degree or another, but he's been the worst. I can't knock him for posting frequency or shallowness of content, just the focus of that content but it's something.

..and now I'm getting yelled at to get my ass out the door. More later tonight or early tomorrow morning (gotta be on the road by eightish), probably on Hayles from the way things are going.

I said I'd probably put together a post about Hayles, because he was gathering votes. Never said he was my top suspect. Kyle still looked worst to me; I said Day 2 that I'd vote for him over Pietro and Hellsnake both if it stood a chance of making any difference, and noted in that post that everything I said about him on Day 2 stood. Like I said in the subsequent wall-o-text about Kyle, when I read more, I still found him to look scummier than anyone else, and devoted what little time and sanity I had to putting together a case against him. Yes, I ended up as the only one voting him, but when I made that post, there were two votes on Ethan to my one on Kyle. That's not exactly an overwhelming majority.

End of day 4 also looks bad; Andrews umms and aahs about O'Malley right up to here, before finally voting him very late on.

Given the choice between somebody I'd suspected since Day 1 and somebody who had only gathered serious suspicion that day, it was a tough choice to give up on my long-standing desire to see Sopko swing and instead lynch somebody else. How does this not make sense? My "umms and aahs" about O'Malley were one post where I laid out what I saw as the evidence for his scumminess, another post where I said I'd probably vote for him but I wanted to be sure and make the decision while awake (again, didn't want to give up on Sopko just like that; can you blame me?), and a third post where, hey, I voted for him like I said I probably would. Also, if I'm scum, that was an opportunity to tie up Kyle and Excal and potentially send the game into 5:3 LYLO the next day, just by voting for somebody I'd been pushing to lynch since Day 2, and had been suspicious of since my first post.

On nightkills:

The reason not to fastkill anyone tonight if we mislynch is simple: from all evidence, today we have five townies alive and two scum. The only way to go from 5:2 to a loss is if three townies die and no scum do. That's one from the mislynch, one from the slowkill and one from the fastkill. If there's no fastkill tonight, we are mathematically certain to live to lynch another day.

...but now, working it out again, I see where my mistake was in that list of contingencies. If we mislynch today and tomorrow, we lose anyway, and the fastkill can't save us. With 3:2 alive, if we mislynch it becomes 2:2, and even if the nightkill hits scum, the slowkill (presumably) kicks in and makes it 1:1 the next day.

[Bardiche]

Mei-Fan Chen;

... with that math, yes, it seems that killing when a town bites it today isn't particularly in town's interest unless I surely hit scum. But... hrn. I've been keeping that "pLYLO that favours town" in my head too much.

Right, amendment: I'll act on Samuel if Nikolai flips town. Samuel, confirm you can protect yourself. I'm willing to take my gamble with your curse not shafting town.

[Princess Leia]

Yes, confirmed. I don't like being this public about what's going to happen, but sure.

[Nathan Greaves]

"Jeez, so many words and so little point to all of 'em.

Mei-Fan, it comes down to this. If you're confident about your case, then you do whatever the hell you feel like. The longer we sit arguing this, the more time scum gets to throw in bad ideas.

Nikolai finally showed up, but his post was just role setup speculation with no original analysis and a promise of yet another reread. Add the whole 'go ahead, lynch me' ethic he seems to be letting off, and it's coming to mind that maybe he's sitting back relying on that mysterious X of his.

As for his buddy...I suppose with all this playing up of the mysterious X Hargreaves looks rather bad, but after this docproof claim I could probably believe an Andrews scumbuddy as well. Hargreaves/Andrews...unlikely, but given everyone else is clear it's about the only thing that I'm willing to believe if Nikolai doesn't flip scum.

We can sit here arguing about who Mei-Fan should kill until we're blue in the face, but by now I think every possibility's been brought to the table. No point bickering over it now when we've already got all the information we'll have to work with, so I say we just run with finding scum. When this is all over and done with, I'm fine with voting Nikolai any time."

((Cut by more discussion. No complaints with the shooting Hargreaves plan.))

[Nathan Greaves]

EBWOP: Actually, if the discussion's over now:

Unvote, Vote: Nikolai

[Princess Leia]

You're right. It makes the most sense if Mei-Fan figures out who, if anyone, to go for herself. ##Unvote, ##Vote| Nikolai Kolmogorov

[Princess Leia]

##Unvote, ##Vote: Nikolai Kolmogorov, in case that didn't count. Derp.

[SnowFire]

Late to notice the hammer, I was off at a GOOD CHRISTIAN CHURCH not some HEATHEN PAGAN RITE like SOME PEOPLE here.  Flip to come shortly.

[SnowFire]

Final votecount.

Nikolai Kolmogorov [4]: Jack Daniels, Gershom Bike, Nathan Greaves, Samuel Hargreaves
Mei-Fan Chen (Bardiche) [ 0]: Samuel Hargreaves
SnowFire [1]: Mei-Fan Chen (Bardiche), Samuel Hargreaves, Nathan Greaves

---

"Feller from Manchester just got back to us.  They found Handley's actual abode.  Interesting place, it seems."  Deputy Webster stood with the telegram in his hand.  "Seems...   seems he moved around a lot.  And met with a bunch of shady characters, but also some politicians?  Guess he wasn't lying about being a merchant of information.  Weirder thing is, it looks like he was a Kraut!  Spent a lot of his childhood in America, which explains the lack of accent, I guess.  But he had a giant portrait of, whasshisface, von Bismarck in his home, along with a big portrait of Jesus and another of Caesar.  Then he's got this even bigger portrait of the great Kyle Handley!  He was a strange one.  So, uh, any ideas on who killed him?"

Sheriff Hutchison just sighed.  "I've taken to not even observing the discussion & interrogation sessions.  Every time I poke my head in, it just sounds stranger.  The novelist fellow's started babbling in Chinese, Gershom's acting like he knows everything Moses did, the journalist claims to be working for a secret society out of Chicago...  the only sane one seems the Russkie.  He at least keeps quiet."

As if on cue, veterinarian Hargreaves poked his head out the door.  "We're finished, sir!  Got done early!  The Russian Kolmogorov, he's gotta be guilty!"

---

Strangely enough, Kolmogorov did not seem overly troubled by the rope being placed around his neck.  "My faith sustains me.  The old-time faith!  We Russians, we know something about the afterlife.  It's like pi or e, humanity keeps on expanding indefinitely, deeper and deeper into the spiral of the galaxy...  I can sing a song about it, if you like."

Reverend Jones ignored the crazed ramblings and said his brief invocation.  The handle was pulled, and once more the thud- the crack - the shattering explosion?  Shards of some glass or crystal flew about the base of the gallows as a here-to-fore unseen pendant hanging around his neck exploded.  No one was hurt, though people with a good view could have sworn the pendant glowed an unearthly blue as it exploded.

Dr. Gottlieb took the event in good humor.  "A little prank played on us by the departing mathematician!  Vonderful!  Well, he's definitely dead.  Let me take the body away.  Fellow sounds familiar, but can't really place it."

Nikolai Kolmogorov, Town Miller Rolecop (?) Self-Reviver, was lynched!  (Returns 'scum' to sane cops and 'town' to insane cops.  Can rolecop others, though warned results can be flaky.  If killed normally or lynched, returns to play on the next Day.)

It is now Night 5.  You have 24 hours to submit your orders.

[Nathan Greaves]

Nathan Greaves Guest Report - Special Edition

Today's executed suspect was Nikolai Kolmogorov, a quiet Russian mathematician. I don't know why, but seeing him hang somehow inspired me to write a little something about the whole investigation. Hopefully it'll lighten the mood in the midst of all this, well, killing.

First Ty got the lynch, and that was bad,
He flipped as Townie, we'd been had,
Then Billy got the lynch, it sealed his doom
'cause the roach in his head made him KABOOM.
Who's next?

Ethan got the lynch, but don't you grieve
'cause he was dreaming (I believe)
Seamus got the lynch, but have no fears
The cultists won't arrive for at least five years.
Who's next?

Then Ronald Dale claimed that he
Was really a woman openly
Plus Andrews cannot be docced, that's right,
Don't even try to help him tonight.
Who's next?

Ruskie's finally been lynched too
Could have worked with you-know-who
So, Nikolai goes to hang
Leaves us all with a bang
The Russian's a dead man, says the quack
But Snowfire's said 'You're gonna get him back'.
Who's next?

Kyle would have had to pay
But Dale shot him yesterday
We'll try to stay relaxed and cool
When Bike drops from the player pool
Who's next?
Who's next?
Who's next?
Who's next?

[SnowFire]

Marbury was somewhat prepared for Gershom's eventual breakdown.  The hunted look in his eyes, his strange appearance in town, his warnings that his time here was short...  when he strode in in the morning ranting, it was not entirely a surprise.

"I understand now.  You!    I'll not be their slave!  No, there has to be a way out... I won't accept this...  not again...  I'll take oblivion over that...  damn it....  on my own terms, and no!"

Rather than jumping into a lake, the younger Bike opted merely to put a revolver to his head, then pull the trigger.

Tragic, but as noted, not a surprise.  Obviously the Bike family was not entirely stable.

What WAS a surprise was the new visitors who showed up, walking down the road from the Sanitarium.  A new visitor... who looked... strangely like Nikolai Kolmogorov?  Even wearing the same clothes as him?

The stranger quickly moved to explain himself to Sheriff Hutchison.

"Здравствуйте, товаришь! I'm Nikolai Kolmogorov, and I heard about the execution you held yesterday, and I need to clear some things up about the whole deal, and the sooner the better. See, what you need to do is change the name on the execution slips and the записы. You see, the person you executed was not the real Nikolai Kolmogorov - rather, you managed to execute my impostor instead."

Sheriff Hutchison would have responded with a stream of expletives had the incident occurred a week earlier, but by now he was resigned to the strangeness. "Uhhhhhh... go on."

"Nick Koupitoris...is the name familiar to you at all? No? Well, let me fill you in on the details~ He was supposed to be committed to the insane asylum y'all have here, but he somehow managed to escape! And since then he came here to this town and got a job at the inn and wreaked some havoc. I've heard rumours of this all happening here, and thus I, uh, I decided to come down here to check up on this Koupitoris fellow - just got here this morning, Это я удачно зашёл, so to speak. I'm not quite in the mood to have my name blackened from the crimes he committed in my name, and commit crimes he certainly seems to have done. He definitely should have been sent to the Sanitarium for all society's safety. And I'm certainly not him! A miserable failure like that... stuck as a cook working for his unimaginative brother... нет, нет, нет, I'm far too talented to be sentenced to a fate like that. Well, it's too bad he died, but at least now his legacy can be buried forever. Ну, да, "Nick" is dead, now only Nikolai lives! Ha ha!"

The response was silence.

"Uh...  sorry, didn't mean to speak ill of the dead.  So, uh, I assume there's a vacancy now at Rosie's Inn?  Perhaps I could resume his duties of playing the piano there?  I'll be far better than that impostor, I guarantee you."

--

The next visitors to Marbury weren't as strange as the new Nikolai, at least.  They simply bore strange tidings.  A woman in her late 50s, along with a younger couple, introduced herself to Sheriff Hutchison.

"Ruth Smith.  Ruth Bike Smith to be more clear, I suppose.  This is my son, Jonah, and his wife, Hannah.  We got the telegram...  it's a bit of a hassle, but we figured we owed it to him to collect the body and bring it back to Arkham.  Moses was a professor there and lived there for a number of years, you know.  He still has some old friends there that will come out to his funeral.  It's a shame about my brother's madness...  I wonder what came over him."

Sheriff Hutchison commiserated with her and shared some small talk before steeling himself for the next part of the conversation.  "Then you know Gershom already arrived here, then?  I have bad news about him as well, I'm afraid."

Ruth looked puzzled.  "Gershom?  Who's that?"

--

Moses's younger brother (?) Gershom Bike, Vanilla Town, went insane and shot himself!
Actually Nick Koupitoris, delusional Greek cook, Town Miller Rolecop (?) Self-Reviver, was the one lynched last night!
The "real" Nikolai Kolmogorov has joined the town?  Who wasn't around before, right, so couldn't be a criminal?

It is Day 6.  It is LYLO, so there is no deadline (technically potential LYLO, but.... yeah.).  With 6 investigators, it takes 4 to lynch.

[Tanaka]

Dangnabbit.  How fuckin' ridiculous.

Hoo.  Okay.  So, Nikolai's cleared.  And it's a dang good thing we done lynched him, cuz now the possible scum pool is smaller.   This does beg the question, however, of why Hargreaves was so dang skiddish 'bout lynchin' the feller.  If you KNEW he was a self-reviver, why, the only negative consequences we wouldda had from lynchin' him would-a been to cull down the pool o' suspects.  Granted, the last time Nikolai was on the block, we ended up lynchin' scum instead, so this infermation comin' out now ain't that bad. But... from the sounds o' it, if Nik had gotten hisself slowkil't the revival would have gone out the shitter.  Guess it were a good thing he played so scummy that scum would have had no reason to kill 'im.

I want to hear about the results of all the goin's on last night before I weigh in any further.

[Princess Leia]

Ok. But you're not going to like it.

The presence came and sought me out last night. It was angry, it was scared, but far from being calmed by me, on seeing me it became outraged. It began to lash out mentally, speaking of "purging" and "cleansing", and in a flash of insight I realised that it was not the protective being I had thought at all, but my enemy, and not only that, but the enemy of all townsfolk. Whether through accident or malice it had come to perceive its residents as practitioners of evil, and it would not stop until they were destroyed.

It was old, and wise, but I am not without some skill, though this battle cost me dear. Still, I retained - barely - my sanity. In the end I resorted to the oldest trick in any kind of battle - an ambush. I let it think my mind was weak, offered up a part of myself, let it think it could possess me, and then bam! Closed the door, leaving it trapped in that small compartment. Rather than it controlling me, I would now control it.

It was conflicted, actually, so twisted and misguided its thoughts that I almost felt sorry for it. While it struggled to purge the unclean, another part of itself retained the illusion that it was doing this for the town, that it was the servant of the townsfolk. As such, it would only attack those who were second in the town's voting, and the decision on whether to kill would remain in my hands. It would cover me with its mantle, that of the righteous who had done its bidding centuries ago, when it really had protected Marbury - only this time, two conflicted parts of it were both sure of what its champion used to be called, so I would appear both as Town Cop and Town Vigilante.

...Yeah. I can only assume Dale is now Counsellor, as that's the only remotely sane thing to have happened. I'm honestly not sure what to think about alignments; this makes more sense as an SK-type role than anything else (not that it makes a lot of sense there), in which case Dale is now harmless (3P, maybe survivor but no killing power) and not worth wasting our time on over scum. ##Vote: SnowFire, full analysis to be done after work, but I figured I'd better get this out here.

[Princess Leia]

As to why I didn't want to lynch Nikolai, I thought he'd be extremely useful in the 4-player LYLO we seemed likely to end up in. Scum would break cover to lynch him, thinking they'd won, then he'd come back and give us the victory.

[Cotigo]

Mm.  I was expecting you to come back and tell me that he had come back to you as just a reviver, but this rationale satisfies me all the same, believe it or not.

There's... an unspecified number of variables I want set in stone before I say more, so I'll wait to pipe up more.  Considerin' it's 2AM my time now, and I got an exam at 12:30-2:30 tomorrah, this probably won't come for another 12 hours.  By then I should be ready to toss my weight around.

[Tanaka]

oh god damn it.  blah blah blah last posts blah blah blah post before me wrong account etc etc etc

[Bardiche]

Mei-Fan Chen;

I've become depressed and will die tonight.

Sam, are you 100% sure this is everything that has happened tonight? No other cryptic messages? Something peculiar happened to me tonight unrelated to role switching shenanigans.

[Nathan Greaves]

"OK...so. Nikolai's clear, Daniels is clear, Dale is almost definitely not scum with a killing role like that, and I know for a fact I'm Town. Therefore the only thing that makes sense to me right now is a Hargreaves/Andrews scumpair. What is it those detectives always call it? Process of elimination?
##Vote: Samuel Hargreaves, but really I'm fine with pushing for either of 'em today."

[Chiaki]

SK role-switching what is this I don't even madness is threatening to scramble what's left of my brain. But the process of elimination is pretty simple. Jack's town. Nikolai's town. I'm town. If Bard is scum SnowFire is getting punched. That leaves Hargreaves and Regular Greaves as the only possible options, which I must admit plays into my doctors-are-evil delusion nicely.

But then we have this latest development, and it potentially makes my head explode in a completely different way. Eagerly awaiting a full explanation from RonBardFen on what in the Sam Hill happened last night, and confirmation on whether his power really does work like that.

[Princess Leia]

At lunch.
Dale: Huh? Obviously I don't know everything that happened, but that was it from my perspective; I covered myself, and got this switching. Wasn't even given a role result on myself outside of that, though possibly that qualifies. I assume that was you targeting me, potentially you're also dying as a result of that (in which case you keeping your original role would also make a certain level of sense)? Guess we'll have to see if anyone else claims.
If you really are dying, care to tell us what your win condition was, and any other hints that might be useful? (Of course assuming you're 3P there's no reason you'd to want to help town any more than scum, so I'm not sure how much use anything you say will be, but you've got nothing to lose at this point by telling us, so I figure it's worth asking).

Greaves: would be nice if you'd think about your voting. This game has thrown plenty of surprises at us and I'm sure we're not done yet, so even when it looks like you've found a definite scumpair (which, for what it's worth, looks to be yourself and Andrews from where I'm standing), it's important to vote for the one who's actually scummiest. I don't like you taking an easy excuse to vote while giving no real reasons, though I can't be sure that's thought's not OMGUS-tinted.

Andrewsninja but my lunchbreak is ending.