elyvorg
somewhat backwards
- Pronouns
- she/they
- Partners
-
Tefiren's cocked his head further and further as he listened with interest to the messy Human loudly and forcefully explaining his thinking. Hm. He'd been thinking a lot harder about this than Tefiren had been imagining. It was really that he'd been expecting Tefiren to have a different sort of plan - one that would still have been a clever one! And all of it made sense as something a not-Mafia would think.
"Okay," he said. "Never mind." And he scampered off to go figure out something else.
[[ @Dragonfree , whoops, guess we both just accidentally galaxy-brained too hard, heh.
I did actually realise just a few hours before the day started that WAIT actually, by "nullify" Dave might have meant roleblocking. But I'd not heard of roleblockers blocking passive abilities, and I checked it on mafiascum to confirm that, so I'm glad you brought up that roleblockers work differently in the games you're used to GMing otherwise I might have accidentally been side-eying you for that too, aaaa.
For some reason the idea of strongman completely left my head despite it being such a discussed thing last game. I don't think I tend to think hard enough about the role powers the mafia might have beyond vanilla killing; should work on that.
Anyway, yes, good! Glad you're still probably not mafia, this has increased my good feeling about you because this'd be a lot of reasoning to fake, especially relatively quickly while in need of bed.]]
Tefiren stared in puzzlement as the Human with the stick looked right at him and... thanked him? For telling her she was right about something that she'd been right about? That wasn't on him; that was on her, for being right that time. He'd just been pointing it out. There was no reason to thank him for that.
He broke into a grin just a second later. "Of course I'm enjoying this game!" he said. "Just like everyone else should be! You'll never win the game if you can't have fun with it."
This Human... unlike almost everyone else here, she knew Tefiren was good at this game. She looked up to him for it. She even seemed to appreciate the way he was having fun.
Just like--
He shook down his crest leaves and paced around near the spot on the ground where the signs of a scuffle had been, listening as the Human (or, was it her voice? It didn't matter) said something about how she thought they were these "psychic marks" people had been talking about the Arsonist using.
"Are they that?" he said. "We don't even know if the marks are psychic, just that the fox thinks they are, but she might be wrong. But even if she's right, I don't think that has to be it. They just looked like signs of a fight."
He paced some more, looking at the Human with the stick, feeling like he wanted to explain this to her for some reason. "More important than that! The marks on the ground - it was just one mark. They were both caught together. The Arsonist can't have caught two people this quickly. If one was the Arsonist and the other the mafia, there wouldn't only have been one mark.
"This wasn't the Arsonist, see? It doesn't make sense. There's only one mark for both of them, and, the Arsonist would wait longer to catch more people at once, if they were clever! And they should be clever, if they're playing this game all for themselves."
[[Some further explanation, since, Seren, you might not have thought about the optimal way the arsonist should play this.
Imagine you're the arsonist, and your goal is to kill literally everyone. Every night you can either douse a person, or ignite everyone you've doused - but not both at once. If you go douse, ignite, douse, ignite, you only get an average of 0.5 kills per night. If you go douse, douse, ignite, that's increased to an average of 0.66 kills per night. Every night you douse and hold off from igniting, you're increasing your overall kills-per-night - provided you do eventually get to ignite before you're otherwise killed off. It's not optimal for an arsonist to kill someone this soon.]]
"The Mafia can only catch one person at night," Tefiren went on, feeling himself get more excited as he figured it all out. "But if two people were together, it'd be different. They could catch them both at once."
But why were the Tyrunt and the fun Human together? Nobody should be with someone else in their hiding place. That wasn't-- that wasn't the smart way to play the game. That only gave Them - the Mafia - an advantage over you. It just made you more likely to lose.
The fun Human would have known that much, Tefiren was sure. But maybe the Tyrunt didn't? He thought back to what she'd been doing yesterday - she'd mostly been friendly-battling with that other Human, the one with the funny arm... but at some points, she'd been looking over at the fun Human instead, with a sort of glint in her eyes, like she wanted to battle him, too.
(She'd really enjoyed battling, that Tyrunt. Like she barely even realised there was a far more fun game going on. Just battling. Nothing else.)
(Tefiren had never thought much about battling while being in this game, or in a long time at all. Were these Humans good at battling too? They were all so different - this one with him right now had her huge stick, a clever trick to fight with! Maybe they'd provide a fun and unpredictable challenge in a battle, not like most of the usual Pokémon back home on his island before he'd evolved that'd been easy to beat.)
He shook his leaves down again. He was getting distracted.
"That Tyrunt..." he told the Human with the stick, still not sure why he was telling this to her specifically. "She looked like she wanted to battle the fun Human. Maybe she didn't know what this game is really about, so she went to his hiding place at night to try to battle him, and... And she got caught along with him."
(Battling was fun, but it was a bad move to get caught up in that in a game like this. The Tyrunt... she'd been stupid. She shouldn't have done that. She should have realised how much more fun the real game was, instead, and focused on that. You couldn't let your guard down, not ever.)
[[
Man that sure was some Detective Tefiren (with an impromptu sidekick) and some very relevant RP flavour for me to play with!
But all of this is to say: I think Rascal and Lexx really were together when they both died. Flyg0n appeared to have a very RP-based approach to their gameplay, so I wouldn't put it past them to have had Rascal target Lexx because she really did want to playfully bite him yesterday. Negrek's flavour is indicating to me that both died in the same spot, from the same cause.
(Flavour from people's individually-written death scenes shouldn't be taken as quite so indicative of the method of killing, since they're all written by different players and not kept consistent by Negrek. I can vouch that Tefiren saying he was "chased" is entirely me flavouring it in the way that fits him best, same as his kill on Nip last game - which was a vigkill and wouldn't look the same as a mafia kill anyway. The only thing to indicate killing method that we should take as meaningful is Negrek's flavour, not anybody else's.)
So, after a dive into the wiki, there's a couple of roles I can find that would lead someone to get killed along with their target. I'm pretty sure Rascal has to have been one of these roles.
Hider hides behind their target, avoiding anything targeted at themselves but getting killed if their target is killed. If Rascal hid behind Lexx and the mafia targeted Lexx, they'd both die.
Babysitter takes their target and hides them behind the babysitter, protecting the target from anything aimed at them but meaning that they both die if someone kills the babysitter. If Rascal babysat Lexx and the mafia targeted Rascal, they'd both die.
On the one hand, the Hider option seems more likely because Lexx is a far more likely target for the mafia to go after. On the other, Rascal's death flavour said she was protecting someone (quite likely Lexx), which would fit more with Babysitter. On the other other hand, maybe it's just in Rascal's character to deny that she was trying to hide and protect herself and she wanted to insist that no, she was the big fierce protector. Seems appropriate. On the other other other hand, Rascal hiding behind Lexx would be setting herself up to get potentially killed, because he was quite a juicy possible target. On the other other other other hand, maybe Flyg0n didn't take that into account and just had Rascal pick her hiding target for RP purposes.
In some ways it doesn't matter which one Rascal was (and this is assuming I'm right about this at all), because either way they both ended up dead. But whose "house" the kill happened at may make a difference if we later get some watching/tracking/bus driving etc info about what went down here.
I'm pretty sure I'm onto something here. All of the flavour hints - Rascal's fondness of Lexx in general, her death flavour about protecting someone, Negrek's kill flavour implying they died together - point right to it.
]]
"Okay," he said. "Never mind." And he scampered off to go figure out something else.
[[ @Dragonfree , whoops, guess we both just accidentally galaxy-brained too hard, heh.
I did actually realise just a few hours before the day started that WAIT actually, by "nullify" Dave might have meant roleblocking. But I'd not heard of roleblockers blocking passive abilities, and I checked it on mafiascum to confirm that, so I'm glad you brought up that roleblockers work differently in the games you're used to GMing otherwise I might have accidentally been side-eying you for that too, aaaa.
For some reason the idea of strongman completely left my head despite it being such a discussed thing last game. I don't think I tend to think hard enough about the role powers the mafia might have beyond vanilla killing; should work on that.
Anyway, yes, good! Glad you're still probably not mafia, this has increased my good feeling about you because this'd be a lot of reasoning to fake, especially relatively quickly while in need of bed.]]
Tefiren stared in puzzlement as the Human with the stick looked right at him and... thanked him? For telling her she was right about something that she'd been right about? That wasn't on him; that was on her, for being right that time. He'd just been pointing it out. There was no reason to thank him for that.
He broke into a grin just a second later. "Of course I'm enjoying this game!" he said. "Just like everyone else should be! You'll never win the game if you can't have fun with it."
This Human... unlike almost everyone else here, she knew Tefiren was good at this game. She looked up to him for it. She even seemed to appreciate the way he was having fun.
Just like--
He shook down his crest leaves and paced around near the spot on the ground where the signs of a scuffle had been, listening as the Human (or, was it her voice? It didn't matter) said something about how she thought they were these "psychic marks" people had been talking about the Arsonist using.
"Are they that?" he said. "We don't even know if the marks are psychic, just that the fox thinks they are, but she might be wrong. But even if she's right, I don't think that has to be it. They just looked like signs of a fight."
He paced some more, looking at the Human with the stick, feeling like he wanted to explain this to her for some reason. "More important than that! The marks on the ground - it was just one mark. They were both caught together. The Arsonist can't have caught two people this quickly. If one was the Arsonist and the other the mafia, there wouldn't only have been one mark.
"This wasn't the Arsonist, see? It doesn't make sense. There's only one mark for both of them, and, the Arsonist would wait longer to catch more people at once, if they were clever! And they should be clever, if they're playing this game all for themselves."
[[Some further explanation, since, Seren, you might not have thought about the optimal way the arsonist should play this.
Imagine you're the arsonist, and your goal is to kill literally everyone. Every night you can either douse a person, or ignite everyone you've doused - but not both at once. If you go douse, ignite, douse, ignite, you only get an average of 0.5 kills per night. If you go douse, douse, ignite, that's increased to an average of 0.66 kills per night. Every night you douse and hold off from igniting, you're increasing your overall kills-per-night - provided you do eventually get to ignite before you're otherwise killed off. It's not optimal for an arsonist to kill someone this soon.]]
"The Mafia can only catch one person at night," Tefiren went on, feeling himself get more excited as he figured it all out. "But if two people were together, it'd be different. They could catch them both at once."
But why were the Tyrunt and the fun Human together? Nobody should be with someone else in their hiding place. That wasn't-- that wasn't the smart way to play the game. That only gave Them - the Mafia - an advantage over you. It just made you more likely to lose.
The fun Human would have known that much, Tefiren was sure. But maybe the Tyrunt didn't? He thought back to what she'd been doing yesterday - she'd mostly been friendly-battling with that other Human, the one with the funny arm... but at some points, she'd been looking over at the fun Human instead, with a sort of glint in her eyes, like she wanted to battle him, too.
(She'd really enjoyed battling, that Tyrunt. Like she barely even realised there was a far more fun game going on. Just battling. Nothing else.)
(Tefiren had never thought much about battling while being in this game, or in a long time at all. Were these Humans good at battling too? They were all so different - this one with him right now had her huge stick, a clever trick to fight with! Maybe they'd provide a fun and unpredictable challenge in a battle, not like most of the usual Pokémon back home on his island before he'd evolved that'd been easy to beat.)
He shook his leaves down again. He was getting distracted.
"That Tyrunt..." he told the Human with the stick, still not sure why he was telling this to her specifically. "She looked like she wanted to battle the fun Human. Maybe she didn't know what this game is really about, so she went to his hiding place at night to try to battle him, and... And she got caught along with him."
(Battling was fun, but it was a bad move to get caught up in that in a game like this. The Tyrunt... she'd been stupid. She shouldn't have done that. She should have realised how much more fun the real game was, instead, and focused on that. You couldn't let your guard down, not ever.)
[[
Man that sure was some Detective Tefiren (with an impromptu sidekick) and some very relevant RP flavour for me to play with!
But all of this is to say: I think Rascal and Lexx really were together when they both died. Flyg0n appeared to have a very RP-based approach to their gameplay, so I wouldn't put it past them to have had Rascal target Lexx because she really did want to playfully bite him yesterday. Negrek's flavour is indicating to me that both died in the same spot, from the same cause.
(Flavour from people's individually-written death scenes shouldn't be taken as quite so indicative of the method of killing, since they're all written by different players and not kept consistent by Negrek. I can vouch that Tefiren saying he was "chased" is entirely me flavouring it in the way that fits him best, same as his kill on Nip last game - which was a vigkill and wouldn't look the same as a mafia kill anyway. The only thing to indicate killing method that we should take as meaningful is Negrek's flavour, not anybody else's.)
So, after a dive into the wiki, there's a couple of roles I can find that would lead someone to get killed along with their target. I'm pretty sure Rascal has to have been one of these roles.
Hider hides behind their target, avoiding anything targeted at themselves but getting killed if their target is killed. If Rascal hid behind Lexx and the mafia targeted Lexx, they'd both die.
Babysitter takes their target and hides them behind the babysitter, protecting the target from anything aimed at them but meaning that they both die if someone kills the babysitter. If Rascal babysat Lexx and the mafia targeted Rascal, they'd both die.
On the one hand, the Hider option seems more likely because Lexx is a far more likely target for the mafia to go after. On the other, Rascal's death flavour said she was protecting someone (quite likely Lexx), which would fit more with Babysitter. On the other other hand, maybe it's just in Rascal's character to deny that she was trying to hide and protect herself and she wanted to insist that no, she was the big fierce protector. Seems appropriate. On the other other other hand, Rascal hiding behind Lexx would be setting herself up to get potentially killed, because he was quite a juicy possible target. On the other other other other hand, maybe Flyg0n didn't take that into account and just had Rascal pick her hiding target for RP purposes.
In some ways it doesn't matter which one Rascal was (and this is assuming I'm right about this at all), because either way they both ended up dead. But whose "house" the kill happened at may make a difference if we later get some watching/tracking/bus driving etc info about what went down here.
I'm pretty sure I'm onto something here. All of the flavour hints - Rascal's fondness of Lexx in general, her death flavour about protecting someone, Negrek's kill flavour implying they died together - point right to it.
You appear to have been ninja'd by me on this too, and I more or less talked about this in my post responding to Namo. In short: yeah, I was never completely safe and guaranteed not to die, due to my dayposting skills. But the point is that me claiming what I did was never going to put me in more danger, so I felt confident enough to do so.
]]
