[INNOCENTS WIN] First Anniversary Fanfic Mafia - Game Thread

[windskull]

I mean, I can understand him well enough, but I don't think I should be considered the norm here.

[["Oh, Yveltal, they're back again. Great."]]

 

[Tanuki]

[["See?" Desper spat. "Y'own's 'gainst ya, you slip-slidin' lil runt up all on a heifer's fresh-made pie."]]

Do you think I would get fired if I told my boss I didn't understand that one? I hope so.

 

[kyeugh]

[[ Despite the dramatic unfoldings of the night, Lauchs looked quite chuffed. “This is splendid!” he exclaims, chomping on a leek triumphantly. “I’m sorry to see the blue one go, but even still—we are winning! Joyful day!” He gave the glowering charizard a healthy pat on the back. “Well aimed, you great brute! Well aimed indeed!” ]]

nice, pretty much all my town reads are cemented now. i’m almost certain it’s one of windskull/equitia, so i’m going to go for windskull for now.

 

[kyeugh]

it’s really going to be something if windskull is mafia, because it means no matter who i picked from my/elyvorg’s/dragonfree’s suggestions d1, we would’ve hit scum.

 

[Tanuki]

I talked with my boss, and he just said he's really proud of my work. He's thinking of extending my internship. Nothing about paying me. Kill me.

we are winning! Joyful day!

[[Desper bit his tongue, gritting his teeth. "I 'preciate lookin' at the shine on a shoe, but th'underside's got 'nuff to reek a room."]]

Does anyone know the law on slave labor in Michigan? Oh, or unions. Do interns get unions?

[["We lost more'n'm willin' to let go," he said, looking over to Lauchs. "And I've got plenty more left to lay to rest." He walked over to Lauchs and took his hat off to kneel, head bowed. "I'm deeply sorry f'm'tackin' you. Got s'lost in m'own head, shot m'iron at a mirage. Hope we c'n work together 'spite my foolishness."]]

Fuck, right, Lauch, he's saying sorry for the attacks based on hypotheticals. Given what he knows now, he's pretty sure you're innocent and hopes you're willing to help him find the Mafia despite his behavior.

[[Desper paused a moment, then returned his hat to his head, brim tilted down to hide his face. "Switcher's gone, so's th'other 'tector. Just me in the way o' the Mafia's kills." He took a deep breath, and his bottle returned to him. "I got two trails in front o' me."

The bottle's base gazed at the sky, halfway gone before he put it down 'n' let it fill itself up. "They gon' kill me t'night or let y'all do it t'morrow." He sat against a poorly materialized rock behind him. "If I survive, They ain't got'ny reason to gun anyun else down. Som'n'else dyin's a noose 'round m'neck."

He soaked in those few precious seconds of inebriation 'fore his liver stole it away. A cup of water came t'lleviate his hangover. "Guess I gotta get 'em today."]]

I wish they let me drink. He's saying that they'll probably try to kill him tonight, but even if they don't, it'll make him look bad because they don't have a better target than the one who can stop their kills. That would mean he's probably guilty. So, his only choice is to find the last one today. Bold to assume there's only one left, but I think he's just trying to stay optimistic.

Oh, think they'd fire me if I started coming in drunk?

 

[Dragonfree]

[[Dave squeezed the phone with Fiametta's last messages on it tightly as he read through them, lips pressed together. Coerced. Made to play. Pleading.

Well, she was gone now. One more mafia member down. Good fucking riddance, he supposed.

He hurled the phone into the nearest wall. "Yeah. Awesome. Progress. Great."

He followed the discussion sourly for a little while, silent. Then: "So, uh, did anyone else notice the bit where the Archopy just said he's got a power to tell who's mafia, or are we all just ignoring that piece of information? Because for my parts I'd really fucking like him to, you know, actually tell us what he's found out."]]

 

[elyvorg]

[["Chibi's not one of Them. That's it. That's all I found out, on the day he was caught anyway, thanks to that stupid Human and her stupid swapping."

Tefiren tilted his head as the messy Human stared at him blankly. "What, you think I'd go and use the same trick twice? You think I'd be that predictable? Of course not! I'd never be so stupid. They'll be expecting it after the first time! That's how the game works!" He stopped and scowled. "At least, it's how my version of the game worked. The more fun one than this one."

He looked around at the rest of their increasingly-dwindling group. "All of you here, you all only know one trick each, and you just keep using it over and over - so predictable!" He giggled a little. "No wonder you all keep getting caught! You need lots of different tricks to win against Them - and I've still got so many more! So even though I can't risk using that one trick again, even though that stupid Human made me waste it, that doesn't change the fact that I'm going to win this game!

"Are you hearing this, Them? Whichever one - or maybe two - of you are left?" His voice grew louder and fiercer as he directed his words at empty air. "What kind of other tricks could I have, hm? Maybe I can watch people and see things like the feline one can? Maybe I can protect people like the blue one and Chibi could? Maybe I can catch you like the fiery one can? You don't know! It could be anything! It could be something else, something so much cleverer than all of those tricks, something you'll never even think of! I'm so much more unpredictable than all of these other idiots here! I'm better at this game than any of them!"

]]

Gee, I was wondering when someone was going to notice that so I could RP out the rest of this. I realise this is a very unnecessary roleclaim, but Tefiren really wanted to feel important again after the mess that was yesterday.

To clarify: I am a jack-of-all-trades, meaning I get multiple different one-shot powers, which is hilariously, wonderfully perfect for Tefiren. All my compliments to the random number generator that gave me this role. I completely goddamn wasted my one-shot inspection on qva on N1, since it got swapped to Chibi and told me a dead person was innocent, great help. I'm not going to say what the rest of my powers are for reasons that I'm sure Tefiren has already made clear enough.

As much as Tefiren might be having fun with his ridiculous posturing right now, though, I agree with qva that it's almost certainly one of windskull or Equitia (or both of them if there's two left) unless something very unexpected pulls the rug out from under us, so we've probably got this in the bag anyway. But Tefiren doesn't want to feel like he contributed basically nothing to this win (especially since I think after the Finnar fiasco he might have stopped managing to convince himself it was him who voted for Genesis), so let's let him strut around feeling clever and powerful.

 

[elyvorg]

While I'm pretty sure I'm in the clear enough in people's eyes by now that I probably won't be getting side-eyed over an unnecessary-roleclaim-just-for-some-fun-RP, I might as well point out some little hints I dropped earlier. On the morning of Chibi's death, Tefiren stopped himself from wanting to blame Lauchszelot even though he would probably normally have been inclined to do so, which actually didn't have anything to do with how stupid They were or weren't and was instead because his inspection had told him Lauchs was in the clear (this was before he knew about the swap). Then part of the reason he was so annoyed to hear about the swap wasn't just because of Chibi's death, but also because he realised his trick was wasted. (I was pretty miffed, too.)

This is also why, during the voting shenanigans that evening, I was so unquestioningly trusting of qva despite the doubt that had been thrown on DawningWinds's swap - because even if DW was mafia and not a bus driver, that'd mean my inspection result was for qva and she was innocent anyway.

 

[SparklingEspeon]

Interrupting the convo briefly for Night action:

Watched: Windskull/Nip
Saw: Nothing

You may return to your regularly scheduled muder mystery now.

 

[windskull]

For the record: I'm too tired to finish putting coherent thoughts together right now, but I'll have a post tomorrow morning/early afternoon

 

[windskull]

[[Nip's expression soured as he heard the sirfetch'd call out his name as a potential suspect. Of course he would. Why wouldn't he? Nip had not exactly been quiet about his distate for the bird. Not that he had any reason to believe he was evil - he just found him insufferably smug.

"So, you would turn on me now, wouldn't you? Does it make you feel good, targeting the poor sneasel that has nothing but his own two paws to defend himself with? Maybe you got gifted with some super special skill by the gods of this nightmare dimension. Some of us were not blessed with special sight, or the power to protect others, or anything of the sort. I'll have you know that I've done nothing but stay in my den every single night."

He paused, glancing at the Espurr. If only her skill allowed her to see what he was doing, instead of what others did to him. Perhaps Yami could have backed him up, if he had been a tracker. All signs seemed to point to some sort of informative skill, but there was no way to know for sure exactly what the strange dragon-human could have told them.

Just thinking about his situation made his lip curl into a snarl. Is that it? Wasn't there anyone willing to vouch for him? "I have... tried to be helpful this entire time," he growled. "But unfortuantely I can only do so much with my limited abilities."]]

Haha... yeah, this probably isn't going to help my case much.

Before I get into the more meta part of this, I want to first say that I'm not mad, despite how Nip's pov might come across. If anything, I'm amused.

Anyways, yeah, I'm hardclaiming bulletproof. Don't really have anything left to lose, saying it. But that's a big part of why my posts more or less have boiled down to guesses and logic to the best of my ability as a first-time player, at least.

FWIW I might as well make a post of how I'm reading people at this point in the game, I guess.

I think we can all agree that qva, Namo, and SparklingEspeon are either mechanically or metatextually confirmed innocent, so I'm not going to waste my time going into that. As for the remainder of the players...

Elyvorg - Has overall read innocent up through today, but the fact that they were one of the main people gunning for dawningwinds yesterday, I am a tad suspicious.

Dragonfree - extremely null feeling on her. From what I can remember, pretty much the entire defense towards Dragonfree so far has been meta-based. Just people vouching for her based on feeling like she's playing differently than she would if she was Mafia. Which... maybe you're right? I dunno, I only have knowledge of last year's game to go by, but meta feels like a dangerous excuse for defense. It's worth pointing out also that Dragonfree is one of the few players that hasn't claimed a role. Maybe for good reason? I dunno.

Equita - Also a very null feeling here. All of their posts seem thought out, but like Dragonfree, also hasn't claimed any skill yet. Obviously some skills are better left unsaid for as long as possible, but still.

Tanuki - Still very mixed feelings on him, but considering Non was the person most gunning for him... I dunno.

And of course, I've already stated my case.

 

[Dragonfree]

[["Yeah? Here's a fucking thought for you: maybe if I were the mafia, I'd have not suddenly stepped in to try to stop the wagon on the doctor on day two and instead swung it towards one of my own teammates that nobody else was suspecting, twenty minutes before the deadline. Just a thought."]]

As for Dave's power... I am actually pretty ready to claim, but I'd really like to see Equitia claim first.

...Which sounds kind of suspect, but this is not to give me room to know what to fakeclaim without being counterclaimed. I am the custom role (or one of them, if there are multiple, but to be honest I doubt it). I'd just rather not divulge the details just yet because there's a chance if Equitia is mafia their claim might contradict something I know, and knowing the nature of my role would give a pretty significant hint towards what that might be.

So: Equitia, please tell us what your role is.

 

[Dragonfree]

It kind of gives me pause that jack-of-all-trades is not on Negrek's list of roles; the way she phrased that implied to me that the roles in the game would be either on that list or custom, and JOAT is neither. Maybe it counts as "some variant on" the different one-shot powers, but it does seem kind of odd.

Hypothetically, claiming a role that's not on the list would be an easy way to avoid counterclaims, of course. It vaguely occurs to me that she really could be RPing Tefiren as honestly believing he's rooting out the mafia, while the strange intuitions from elyvorg influencing his decisions have a mafia agenda unknown to him - I believe she brought up the possibility when I said her RP seemed towny. The hints she's pointed out she's been dropping make a lot of sense (I remember being a little "huh" at just how determined she was to trust qva in particular on D2), but could have been faked - I dropped hints about the fakeclaim I was planning into my RPing last time before I actually made the claim.

Buuuut I don't think I really believe this at this stage; I thought her push on DawningWinds and subsequent frustration when people weren't entirely convinced seemed really genuine. It probably is windskull or Equitia, buuuut as usual I'd like to do some rereading. Hopefully without missing the deadline this time.

 

[kyeugh]

Anyways, yeah, I'm hardclaiming bulletproof. Don't really have anything left to lose, saying it. But that's a big part of why my posts more or less have boiled down to guesses and logic to the best of my ability as a first-time player, at least.

🤔 i’m bulletproof.

 

[Dragonfree]

I'm kind of excited about the possibility of mafia!elyvorg now because if it's true she's been playing amazingly and it'd be great

 

[Dragonfree]

(and Tefiren adamantly trying to dodge Them while unknowingly guided by a sinister spirit that's actually working for Them would be amazing)

 

[Dragonfree]

🤔 i’m bulletproof.

OH. That's why you asked healers not to target you D1, isn't it.

 

[windskull]

🤔 i’m bulletproof.

Not doubting your claim, because I have no reason to doubt it. But it is possible we have two bulletproof players, isn't it? There was something like that last game, albiet with one of them having a special condition.

 

[kyeugh]

Not doubting your claim, because I have no reason to doubt it. But it is possible we have two bulletproof players, isn't it? There was something like that last game, albiet with one of them having a special condition.

huh, there were two last time? do you have a special condition? i do not tbh.

OH. That's why you asked healers not to target you D1, isn't it.

yep. normally i wouldn’t really be gunning for a hit, but with this particular variant i get informed who targeted me, so i’ve been trying to bait it a bit. (another reason it’s a good thing namo didn’t fire on me.)

 

[kyeugh]

i can’t seem to find a second bulletproof in negrek’s role pm post from the last thread, unless i’m looking right over it.