[INNOCENTS WIN] First Anniversary Fanfic Mafia - Game Thread

[Negrek]

First Anniversary Fanfic Mafia

Player List

qva (Lauchzelot)
Starlight Aurate (Yami Bakura)
Persephone (Genesis)
Namohysip (Diyem)
Dragonfree (Dave Ambrose)
DawningWinds (Professor Finnar)
Tanuki (Desper)
NonAnalogue (Fiametta Fortunata)
Sike Saner (Ntairow Fade)
Windskull (Nip)
Equitia (Jen)
elyvorg (Tefiren)
Chibi Pika (Chibi)
SparklingEspeon (Espurr)
​

The featureless plane stretches on in all directions, perfectly flat and even and made of some thoroughly nondescript substance, firm to the touch and a milky sort of white. The sky overhead is grayish, lit by a bland, directionless light, and no more can be said about it, really. Here and there a flicker of color races across the smooth surface of the ground; now and again it twitches, starting to bunch up and take a new shape as it's teased at by someone's thoughts. A couple of people have already managed to construct rough hovels that, if nothing else, give them some protection from the glare of the endless, empty sky.

Most are still grappling with what's happened, though, too overwhelmed by the strangeness of the place and the other people in it to even think of constructing somewhere safe to sleep. Pokémon find themselves confronted by strange new species, while humans remain wary of the talking pokémon. Desper pokes curiously at a phone whose screen fills with increasingly annoyed lines of text asking him to please stop doing that. Still, while the mood is tense, most people seem optimistic. With all of them working together, surely they can find a way to get back home.

Dave is the only one who has any idea what to expect when the directionless glow overhead winks out, and it's not like he's going to waste his time trying to convince anyone of the danger. The lot of them are going to see for themselves soon enough.

Night 0 has now begun. All role PM's have been sent--if you didn't receive one, please contact me immediately!

Night 0 will last for 48 hours (until 2:30 PM EST/6:30 PM UTC Monday, May 4th) or until all players with night actions have sent theirs in.

Good luck, everyone!

 

[Negrek]

The morning dawns as abruptly as night fell, glow rapidly spreading across the blank sky overhead. The spot where the travelers had gathered is now littered with shelters of varying levels of . As people filter back out into the open, Diyem takes charge with a roll call to make sure everyone's assembled. "All right, all right. Who's here? Espurr? Yeah. Sirfetch'd? Okay, okay, no need to shout. Now, you humans..."

Professor Stands off to one side, more interested in observing than getting to know her fellow dimensional travelers. The talking pokémon are fascinating enough, but then there are the ones she doesn't even recognize. A grovyle-like creature perches above the rest of the group, head moving in small jerks while he repeatedly scans his surroundings. Near the middle of the crowd is something wobbuffet-like but raised up on spiderish legs, two long black tails curved up towards her shoulders. Finnar tilts her head, considering, and ignores Diyem as he verbally marks her present. All questions about Ultra Space aside, she'd love to get some time to study those two.

"Where's the cranky guy?" Diyem mumbles. "Cranky guy, sneasel, where is--oh, there." Nip scowls back at him from his spot in Ntairow's shadow, easy to miss beside the towering kwazai. "Okay, it looks like we're all here, so let's get started. Now, does anyone have any information about what's going on, here?"

Dave blinks, abruptly pulled back from unhappy thoughts. We're all here? A quick count of his own confirms that everyone's accounted for. Well, things did start off quiet last time, too...

No one has been eliminated. Discussion is now open for Day 1 and will continue until 6:30 PM UTC/2:30 PM EST May 6.

A quick reminder: please don't post the role PM I sent you, whole or in part, in the discussion thread. You can allude to its contents, but please don't post it verbatim.

Spoiler: Player Pings

@qva @Starlight Aurate @Persephone @Namohysip @Dragonfree @DawningWinds @Tanuki @NonAnalogue @Sike Saner @windskull @Equitia @elyvorg @Chibi Pika @SparklingEspeon

 

[NonAnalogue]

-- Conversation initiated with WitchesBlue [FORTUNATA, FIAMETTA] --

[WB] huh
[WB] gotta say im a little surprised
[WB] and a lotta relieved
[WB] last night was
[WB] like
[WB] super ominous
[WB] so im glad nobody got eliminated
[WB] youd think the mafia would want to start gettin rid of folks
[WB] and quick
[WB] offin people like lightswitches
[WB] only not switchin em back on again afterwards
[WB] so offin people like lightswitches in an abandoned building or something
[WB] yknow cause theyre not gonna be turnin on lights in an abandoned building
[WB] anyway
[WB] im guessin this means we got real lucky last night

 

[DawningWinds]

However, to indicate that you're posting in-character, please surround any in-character text in double square brackets, [[like this]].

Quoting this now as a reminder to myself what double square brackets indicates.

A quick reminder: please don't post the role PM I sent you, whole or in part, in the discussion thread. You can allude to its contents, but please don't post it verbatim.

Are we allowed to claim the name of the ability listed in our role PMs?

 

[Negrek]

Are we allowed to claim the name of the ability listed in our role PMs?

You can, but you shouldn't post the PM itself to back up your statement.

 

[elyvorg]

[[Tefiren perched up in the funny white imitation of a tree that had grown out of nowhere as soon as he'd thought about wanting to climb one, peering down at the others.

He was grinning to himself a little. He hadn't been caught! Well, obviously not - nobody could catch him. But none of the others had been caught last night, either! Maybe they were better at this game than he'd thought at first glance yesterday.

It couldn't just be that They were slacking off, could it? Not when They'd gone out of their way to - finally - shake things up and make things more interesting, rather than just being Their same old hilariously predictable selves. This new variant on the game would be no fun if They weren't even trying.

(There'd been some other word used for Them when Tefiren had found himself here and learned how this new game was going to work - maff-something? - but that didn't matter. That must have just been some kind of attempt to misdirect him and make him let his guard down. Tefiren wasn't going to be so stupid as to fall for such an obvious trick. It had to be Them. It was always Them.)

It was a strange group of Pokémon here, not another Archopy in sight, and yet, these were all still somehow playing the same game? Strange... but still, that didn't really make a difference to things, did it? Or, it did, but only in that it'd make the game more interesting and fun, with all the different abilities they must have had. Such a thing usually wouldn't have mattered to Tefiren - he'd always used his own tricks, his own tactics that could never be beaten! - but it seemed like this game might be something that he couldn't quite beat on his own, for once. So if his fellow players had their own tricks that could help, all the better.

Someone among them must have pulled off some kind of clever trick to escape Their clutches last night. The thought of what sort of trick it must have been, what sort of other tricks the rest of them might have, filled Tefiren with a kind of curiosity that he wasn't used to having - he'd never been that interested in paying attention to others before. He scoured the different Pokémon, trying to figure out what kinds of things they might be able to do. There was a large orange one with a burning tail and big wings - could it fly like him? One of them looked a bit like the Pikachu he sometimes saw at home, but weird, like it had tricks of its own, too. And then a lot of them seemed to be all of the same species - Human, if he'd heard it right from one of the other Pokémon? - but they all looked so different to each other. Maybe these Humans were a very creative species of Pokémon. Maybe they had the best tricks of all - besides his, of course.

Tefiren had always played alone before (at least, he had, until--), but the tactic for this game, to work together with all these other Pokémon... Well, he was willing to give anything new a try at least once. The thought seemed more exciting now, seeing everyone here, than he'd expected it to when he'd encountered them all for the first time last night. Except that...

Tefiren stayed up there in his white tree, still watching, still scouring the group. Somewhere among them, They were lurking. They'd found a way to change Their shape, to pretend to be playing on the same side as him and hide the fact that They were the enemies. Inventive, for once - he'd give Them that - but it made this whole curious new "working together" approach seem just a little bit less inviting than he'd have liked it to be.]]

...You know, it never occurred to me that Tefiren has literally never had to grapple with the concepts of "deception" and "betrayal" until now. This will be interesting.

 

[Sike Saner]

[[Ntairow swept a gaze over the crowd, all members of whom remained accounted for and entirely unharmed--for now. The false eyes of her tail scanned the assembly in other, less mundane ways, trying to pick up on anyone feeling anything they shouldn't be. It seemed futile, as it had from the start. There was a lot of background noise in a situation like this, surrounded by so many people who were displaced and concerned for their well-being, same as she was. It made it hard to pinpoint potential biological telltales. But she kept scanning them regardless, even as she acknowledged this was likely more of a job for her head than for her tail.

Her arms folded in twin bars across her chest. She tilted her chin upward, peering down at the others down the length of her face. "So. We're still here," she said in a lilting voice. "Nothing has changed. But something will. Whoever, whatever brought us here has to have done so for a reason." Her tail flicked in distaste.

"They may be targeting the weakest among us first, if they want to take the easiest approach," she surmised aloud. "Or the strongest, if they want to take the smart approach. A person who could go either way in their eyes, someone they're really uncertain about... that person would be the first on their list."]]

So, first night. I doubt there was no elimination attempt at all (is declining to pick a target even allowed?); this was most likely a blocked kill.

 

[Namohysip]

[[

Strange inhabitants. Check.

Shapeless, malleable land. Check.

No clear means of escape. Check.

Amazing. He was in a null realm, or some variant. Wonderful. Fantastic.

While he had done his due duty of keeping a headcount, verifying that nobody had already disappeared, he didn't feel much motivation to do anything further. There was a nagging, vaguely feminine voice in the back of Diyem's mind saying that he should care, but that took effort, motivation, and emotional investment. Did he have that yet?

The Charizard's flame dimmed as he grew pensive. Was there anything better to do?

The sooner they took out the mafia, the sooner he could be done with this nonsense and rest again and not be bothered. The little, feminine voice said, and Diyem, don't forget, you should be enjoying yourself! It's part of your therapy!

Well, forget therapy, because that probably didn't apply here. Who needs therapy? Not him. He was moody and he wanted to be that way. He wanted nothing more than to find a bed, curl up, and sleep deep into the afternoon. Then, he would read the news, hope for something decently interesting, and then pray to whatever god that had stopped listening to keep people from bothering him.

He did not like to interact. He liked to watch. Observe. Silently judge and frown. But here, he was positive they would bother him. Talk to him. Offer cookies and hugs and love and support. Accuse him. Accuse each other. Oh they better not offer hugs. Cookies, perhaps. But not hugs.

Diyem realized he had been standing in place for too long and his legs felt stiff. Adjusting his stance, he sighed, puffing out an ember in resignation.

"Our first mystery," he said, his voice deep and rumbling, "is why nobody has fallen. I have a vague sense that we already have one too many people among us, suggesting someone was intercepted, saved, or anything else along those lines. Powers that block other powers. Powers that save individuals. I highly doubt this mafia intentionally withheld a strike. Unfortunately, as it stands, that also means we have no true information to go off of."

He felt it. It was coming. The suggestion. Would he wait for it, or ask for it himself? No. Agency. He would bring about his own destruction before the others had the chance. He had to perform... the dreaded ice breaker.

"...Perhaps introductions are in order," Diyem said. "My name is Diyem. I..." Think. What is an ice breaker? What is a good approach? How did he relate to others, again?! No. He spoke. They were still staring at him. His voice was too loud and too deep. Too late. Something. Think of something! "My favorite beverage is coffee. Black. No sweeteners."

No matter how long this lasted, it was going to feel like an eternity for him.

]]

tl;dr: Sup everyone, meet & greet? I'm assuming the same as Sike: A kill was blocked, based on what Negrek had said at the start. Which is... amazing luck, I think? Depending on how the roles... rolled out.

 

[SparklingEspeon]

[[The rules were simple, Espurr had been told, right before the entity had so politely dropped her on her face in... wherever this was. Survive until the end of game, with one player killed each night. Try to deduce the identity of the killers.

You are not one of the killers.

And it seemed no-one had been killed yet. Even if it hadn't been for the large scoreboard (that definitely hadn't been there until she thought of it), the lack of uproar was a good indicator all the same.

Which either meant that the killers had failed to kill someone last night, or... they had purposefully not killed someone last night. Perhaps to instill a sense of security. Espurr wasn't sure which.

A thought occurred to her, as she glanced up at the giant floating scoreboard. It displayed the number of killed players, which was currently at zero (and empty as a result), but she wondered if she could make it display the killers. Silently, she wished for that.

A sudden headache flared up in her head, sending her reeling abckwards to the ground. It was gone as quickly as it left, and Espurr was left staring up at the still-empty scoreboard.

That wasn't allowed, apparently.]]

I'm not familiar with Mafia rules, at least not how they work on here. Is there some kind of rule sheet I can consult?

 

[Negrek]

So, first night. I doubt there was no elimination attempt at all (is declining to pick a target even allowed?); this was most likely a blocked kill.

The mafia has to try and eliminate someone every night.

I'm not familiar with Mafia rules, at least not how they work on here. Is there some kind of rule sheet I can consult?

There's a basic guide here. You can also look at last year's game to see how things play out in practice. Let me know if that's not the sort of thing you're looking for.

 

[windskull]

[[Rolecall had only just barely convinced Nip to slip out of the confines of his dugout shelter. The air around him was tense as the group gathered, uneasily waiting to see if anyone had been taken in the night. Yet, by some stroke of great fortune, no one seemed to be missing.
Who knew how long that luck would hold.

Fighting the urge to climb up into the tree that the grovyle-like creature was perched in - safely away from most of the other pokemon and the giant, mysterious humans alike - Nip instead stepped forward to speak with the others. Who among them could he trust? Any of them? Surely, if the rumors could be believed, several of them were waiting to turn on the rest at a moment's notice.

"I am Nip," he began in response to Diyem. "And I agree with your idea. We were lucky, tonight, but we can't expect that luck to hold." ]]

Hey all! I won't be super active for this introductory day due to finals, but I'll try to keep up. Anyways, like I said through Nip, I agree with Namo and Sike's assessment.

 

[Dragonfree]

[[Dave hadn't slept a wink. Probably a good thing, with the dreams he'd been having recently.

And so, with gray bags under his eyes, drinking the bland coffee this world had generated for him, he silently surveyed the crowd of players in the board game gods' sick new game. A bunch of talking fucking Pokémon, of course, again. Some people. A giant kinda Wobbuffet-looking alien monstrosity, sure, whatever, why not. Wonky-looking Pikachu (were those feathers?). And... was that an Archopy? The flying Grovyle evolution that went extinct like 120 million years ago?

...Okay, fuck, he was kinda curious about that one.

"Hi," he said with a stiff wave of his hand as the Charizard called for introductions. "Dave. I've done this before. I think. If that wasn't a fucking fever dream."]]

 

[Sike Saner]

[[There was a brief flare of psychic energy, followed by an external pain signal that was gone as quickly as it had come. Both seemed to originate from the nearby espurr. Ntairow's tail gave an involuntary flick at the readings; beyond that, she gave no reaction and little thought to them.

Meanwhile three of the others had formally introduced themselves. She supposed she ought to do the same. "My name is Ntairow," she said, "of the Fade clan. I have no specific home, but I prefer to be where I choose to be, not..." She gestured toward nothing in particular, indicating the whole of the largely barren surroundings. "...wherever this is. Wherever these faceless cowards have decided I should be."]]

 

[Equitial]

[[Jen crept out of the rough shelter he had slept in. He hadn’t been disappeared in the middle of the night, so that was good at least. Others were waking up as well, and he looked for the person who had been taken instead of him. But… there was no one? That seemed too good to believe, He checked again. Everyone was still accounted for. The Mafia’s target must have been protected somehow. No way they forewent picking someone off.

He edged his way closer to the others. He kept an unobtrusive distance and observed as introductions started.]]

 

[elyvorg]

[["Dave. I've done this before. I think. If that wasn't a fucking fever dream."]]

[[Tefiren suddenly stuck his head out below the white tree's canopy as the Human spoke. What everyone else had been saying so far didn't matter, but this?

"You! The messy Human. Did you mean you've played the game - this version of it, I mean - before?" His face lit up into an expectant grin. "How did you win? Tell us! It's okay to do that, right? You wouldn't be stupid and predictable enough to use the same trick twice, not if you've won before."]]


(ayyy Tefiren and Dave having reasons to be interested in each other! This will not last, will it.)

I should clarify that Tefiren's musing in the previous post concluded that They definitely attempted to kill someone and it was someone's power that stopped it, so, yeah, I'm of the same assumption as everyone else so far.

 

[Chibi Pika]

[[

A Pikachu slowly stepped forward into the featureless room, glancing around apprehensively around at the others--a wide assortment of both humans and Pokemon. Some of the Pokemon seemed confused or amazed by the humans in their midst. That fact intrigued him. He couldn't imagine what it was like living life without knowing about humans.

A part of him couldn't help but be instinctively suspicious of the humans. Were they the ones responsible for this? Trapping all of them there? Setting up this sick game? All the suffering in his life--it had always been humans. But... no. He couldn't let himself think like that. Not anymore. Anyone in this room was a potential threat--human or Pokemon. He couldn't trust any of them. But... escaping from this place would require cooperating with the others. Which meant that he had to find out who to trust, and fast.

From what he could tell, something had gone wrong last night--no one had been eliminated. In other words, the mafia had screwed up. The Pikachu couldn't help smirking to himself. He'd figure out a way to make them regret that mistake.

The others started to introduce themselves. Part of him didn't want to say anything, but the faster he could learn who everyone was, the faster he could figure out which of them were traitors. When there seemed to be a suitable gap, the Pikachu stood up, nodded curtly to the others and said, "You can call me Chibi."

]]

 

[NonAnalogue]

-- Conversation initiated with WitchesBlue [FORTUNATA, FIAMETTA] --
[WB] oh yeah i guess i should introduce myself too
[WB] my names fiametta
[WB] yalls speech to text is comin in loud and clear
[WB] and i hope mine is too
[WB] guess axsis got the jump on all of us
[WB] which
[WB] to put it bluntly
[WB] mega sucks
[WB] were talkin incredible suckage here
[WB] a couple levels past black hole suckage
[WB] which is already pretty bad
[WB] so
[WB] yeah
[WB] hi
[WB] i guess this was a pretty bad introduction

 

[Namohysip]

[[

Diyem stared at the phone. Interesting. A talking device, yet not necessarily a Pokemon. This one must be from an advanced world. He wondered if it had any good apps...

]]

 

[Dragonfree]

[[Tefiren suddenly stuck his head out below the white tree's canopy as the Human spoke. What everyone else had been saying so far didn't matter, but this?

"You! The messy Human. Did you mean you've played the game - this version of it, I mean - before?" His face lit up into an expectant grin. "How did you win? Tell us! It's okay to do that, right? You wouldn't be stupid and predictable enough to use the same trick twice, not if you've won before."]]

[[Dave scowled. "I mean, as far as I'm concerned the only way to win is not to play the fucking game. Except even then they'll just play it for you anyway, so what's the fucking point. There is no winning when all-powerful fucking party game deities are involved. All you can do is play along with their bullshit until it's over."]]

 

[Sike Saner]

[[Ntairow strode closer to Dave, contemplating his claims that he'd been through all this before. Four possibilities crossed her mind. One, he was lying about being involved in this sort of thing. Two, something had misled him to believe he had been. Three, he had survived because the enemy had been taken down in time. Or four, he'd survived precisely because the enemy had prevailed.

She scowled, but opted to reserve judgment for the time being. More information was needed. Good thing the humans seemed able to understand pokémon, for whatever reason.

"You say you've been in this situation before," she said. "Would you mind telling us exactly how you survived?"]]

She might vaguely suspect him, but that's just her pouncing on potential leads because she wants to do something. I don't suspect anyone at all yet. Too little info.