[MAFIA WIN] Second Anniversary Fanfic Mafia - Game Thread

[elyvorg]

[[Yeah so some of my morning wallposts are feeling potentially obsolete right now so I'll shelve that for the time being until everyone's done panicking about doctors. For now, here's the one that's about the doctor issue! Or most of it, at any rate.

So Dave's main reason for suspecting Mewtwo is that he didn't claim overdose when he first claimed, and yet he later said he suspected it was overdose all along.

Mewtwo's narration in his roleclaim post yesterday morning included the words "somehow" and "How" when talking about his protection being thwarted. That sure does sound like Equitial very deliberately wanted to make people think that he didn't know that overdose was the likely explanation, despite that he suspected at that point that Wes was also a doctor who'd healed Arctozolt.

However, Equitial said something yesterday evening about how he didn't want to outright claim overdose just in case Wes wasn't actually a doctor, in order to keep the knowledge of overdose hidden from the mafia, because of... something about roleblockers?

For me, I'm not sure how good or bad it'd be in terms of mafia roleblockers for them to know about overdoses. If they knew, maybe they'd be less likely to block claimed doctors to leave a chance of overdose? Which on the one hand is good for town because functional doctors, but on the other hand is bad for town because higher chance of overdose. I feel like it goes either way. So, I think it might be fairly reasonable to assume Mewtwo could at least in theory have had town interests in mind when hiding this. @Equitial , can you elaborate on what your thinking was on this?

Mewtwo also pointed out that he wouldn't have claimed at all if he didn't know expect things to probably go the way of revealing the overdose, which is fair, I think. Why risk yourself for a vague intent of "bonding with Wes over both failing to protect someone"? Doesn't seem like that would have achieved much, as mafia!Mewtwo.

- Mewtwo's softclaim from D1 was something I'd been wanting to look at again, so it was nice to see elyvorg ask about it. Mewtwo's explanation isn't completely implausible but it just felt kind of flaily? Just, oh, I don't think doctors are that useful, and uh I just didn't realize actually trying to get doctors not to target me was actually a worse idea. This was kind of the spark at me wanting to look into Mewtwo better

If Mewtwo's explanation was a lying flail, then what was the motive behind pretending to do a clumsy bulletproof gambit? Especially given that I'd already softclaimed bulletproof myself at that point. If you're a mafia doctor, you know you can just claim doctor later on and look fine, so no need to set up a vague ambiguous softclaim that can potentially be interpreted as a few things but definitely not doctor.

This whole softclaim thing makes me believe Mewtwo more, not less, I think. And it makes sense, if he was thinking about fakeclaiming bulletproof in order to not get N1-killed as is apparently a thing for him, he'd have bulletproof on the brain and would find it easier to guess my role.

My verdict: I agree that a few things about Mewtwo look circumstantially suspicious, but I don't think any of them are any worse than the circumstantially suspicious things about Wes. I trust Wes now after the claiming and shenanigans yesterday evening - it all felt very genuine - and meanwhile Mewtwo's felt very towny to me for most of this time (for reasons that aren't just the playstyle thing; honestly it's a good point that I shouldn't have hard-town'd him at the start just for that). So I'm willing to buy that both of them are on our side, for now. Currently putting them both on soft town.

It'd be weird if these were the only two doctors, and Mewtwo was a mafia doctor specifically designed to cause overdose with... a town doctor who's only 50% likely to even become a doctor at all? I don't think it's unreasonable for town to have one and a half doctors, for possible accidental town overdose, and for the mafia to have one doctor, for attempted deliberate overdose. Really, if we believe both Wes and Mewtwo, there almost certainly is a mafia doctor, because why have overdose as a mechanic if there might not even end up being two doctors in the game? So there's probably another unknown doctor in play, and that one might well be our mafia doctor. (Maybe this unknown mafia doctor also healed Arctozolt and they were incidentally super-overdosed to death?)

I, uh, was going to ask Dragonfree to tell us more about the Reluctant part of Dave's power, but welp, scratch that.

However, assuming Dave's power was the same as Wes's in that it becomes usable on N2 no matter what, I am... kind of side-eyeing Nefari a bit for her power working differently. (Why couldn't one dependent on innocent deaths be scum-aligned? That's something scum has the most control over, after all.) Buuuut also all her posts in last night's rush felt very towny. That said, maybe I should be side-eyeing a towny DawningWinds for actually seeming towny to me, considering last game where I scumread them like hell and whoops that was a mislynch. Like Chibi said on D1, their metric is that if they disagree with DW, they're town, if they agree, they're mafia. Chibi and I disagreed with them on that first day about the no-lynch debate, as usual, but... I've been starting to agree with DW more now? I worry about that. I realise this is a completely backwards basis for suspecting someone, but. That thought niggles at me.

Meanwhile, one thing about Wes confuses me a bit. He had Nefari on his hard town list on D2. Then at some point earlier yesterday when doing reads, he said she was null because he wanted to check a post of hers. Then he moved her to soft town when he remembered that they were both potential firefighters. (How do you forget that?) @HelloYellow17 , mind elaborating on your thought process for all this? What post was it you meant? Why did your opinion of her change for the worse for a bit? Did you really temporarily forget the firefighter thing, or...?

But, well, the bottom line of this is that I'm willing to trust both Wes and Mewtwo well enough for now. I think there's a high chance that neither of them are mafia, and I am very scared that we could throw the game if we focus on lynching one of them - that is, evidently Mewtwo by the way you guys are talking - today.

And also - this part obviously not typed up last night - since I'm willing to believe in Mewtwo right now, I am rather side-eyeing Braixen for this. Coming in immediately claiming "oh hey guys I'm also a healer and oh no I almost tried to save Dave, how terrible" feels very like something that the doctor belonging to the mafia who'd just killed Dave to throw suspicion on Mewtwo would do.]]

 

[elyvorg]

"It looks to me," Tefiren went on, not caring if nobody was listening but really wishing they would, "that the Mafia used some kind of special trick to catch anybody no matter what. Nobody could get away from that."

(Except Tefiren, obviously. He could escape anything, even the ground tearing itself apart beneath his feet. He could just fly right above it! He could. He'd have been fine, if it'd been him.)

"The Mafia really wanted to be sure they caught the messy Human. They couldn't use their own healer to over-heal him in case none of the other healers went for him. They couldn't use their usual catching trick to get him in case one of the other healers did go for him. They wanted to be sure."

He turned to the others, scowling. "Would they really go that far if the think-talky one was one of them, and they just didn't want this Human trying to get rid of him today? Would they really be so stupid as to not realise that everyone else who's halfway clever and was listening to the messy Human last night would have kept doing the same thing? Catching him wouldn't have mattered to whether we went after the think-talky one today. They wouldn't have tried this hard.

"They tried this hard because they wanted to be sure that you'd all start doing exactly this. Can't you see? You're all idiots falling for their trick!"

 

[elyvorg]

"So..." Tefiren rounded on one member of the group in particular - that purple fox. "You. It doesn't matter that the thunder cat was innocent. That doesn't prove that you are too - it doesn't mean anything - because the fun Human was caught by the Arsonist anyway, not the Mafia. Nobody went for you - or the tiny Raichu, whatever - because you're not important enough."

He cocked his head at the fox threateningly. "And now? Telling everyone you're a healer? When we know the Mafia has one of those?" He laughed, a harsh, barking laugh, the tone totally different from one of his usual gleeful giggles. "You basically just told us you're a Mafia. You may be fooling everyone else, but you can't fool me. I'm getting rid of you today."

[[Vote: Braixen]]

 

[HelloYellow17]

Meanwhile, one thing about Wes confuses me a bit. He had Nefari on his hard town list on D2. Then at some point earlier yesterday when doing reads, he said she was null because he wanted to check a post of hers. Then he moved her to soft town when he remembered that they were both potential firefighters. (How do you forget that?) @HelloYellow17 , mind elaborating on your thought process for all this? What post was it you meant? Why did your opinion of her change for the worse for a bit? Did you really temporarily forget the firefighter thing, or...?

[[Couldn’t remember her exact phrasing and I couldn’t remember what other role she was given the option to choose between. I remember being very sus of her at first because she was so quick to claim right out the gate, which threw me for a loop especially since I didn’t realize we were allowed to mention what our role PMs said. That suspicion lingered until my post the other day in which I planned to go back and reread her claim to refresh my memory, but ran out of time. So TLDR: my suspicion was mostly due to my own inexperience and not being sure what to think of such an immediate roleclaim. I put her on null until I could go back and clarify things.]]

 

[HelloYellow17]

[[On that note, though...we REALLY need to figure out who this Arsonist is. And if Navar wasn’t the Arsonist, what was he?? What other third party roles are there?? Have we considered the possibility (however unlikely) that Nefari fake claimed and has been Arsonist all along...? Not that I’m sold on that one, I’m pretty sure she’s town, at this point I’m just throwing out theories because, uh, we’re on the verge of being screwed here lol.]]

 

[elyvorg]

[[read my first post from today, the arsonist is almost certainly Namco, they are not the priority for today because they can't kill anyone tonight, if we don't lynch a mafia today we might lose

Nefari can't be the arsonist because how could she have predicted the pick-one-of-two-roles-and-get-it-on-a-delay thing if she didn't actually have that?]]

 

[Inkedust]

“Looks like somebody panicked,” Altair sneered, voice venomous, in response to gash in the empty plain. The events of the prior day had left him livid. He looked down on the gathered crowd and downed another drink.

“Fucking imbicles. The lot of you,” he snarled. “Did any of you even stop to think that this was exactly what the Mafia wanted? Why do you think nobody came to her defence? Don’t you think that if she’d been Mafia, she’d have a few defenders because she’d have been a useful asset with her swapping? Couldn’t you even entertain the idea that she’d been blocked in some way?

“No. Of course you couldn’t. Wave me off because the luxio had to be guilty for Lexx’s death to make sense. Wave me off because her verdict could have told us something. Fine, but tell me: what priceless treasure of information did we learn from this? Was that information worth cutting down our numbers?” He was shouting now, pointing at the patch of ground that had swallowed the luxio.

“We’re one or two—three at most—Innocent deaths away from losing this entire thing. If you hadn’t been so careless—” He stopped his words in their tracks. His voice now low, “When I was trying to wrap my head around what’d happened that night, it made the most sense to me that her swapping had been interfered with in some way. We knew there is or was some kind of blocker in this game based on the delphox’s testimony on the first day.”

Altair shook his head. “You’ve all been severely underestimating the Mafia and look at where that led us. Of course, they would want Lexx dead. He was a threat to them. Why the fuck would they target the dedenne-turned-braixen? Who, may I remind you, had been doing fuck-all up till that point.”

“But there's something else that's off to me. Those marks where Miyako would've been. Don't they look eerily similar to the ones when the tyrunt died?“

[[So uhhh, I had a big ol' theory lined up here but I think I'm going to wait on it more to see if I'll post it or not because I might've been completely off the mark, so instead, Miyako's flavour. Isn't it eerily similar to Rascal's? I first attributed the latter's death to her being a Hider or something but I'm pretty sure that this isn't a coincidence. I'm also pretty sure that these two are unrelated to Lusamine's death N2, as the flavour is wildly different. So I'm thinking... could there be a Serial Killer in this game? It'd explain the random deaths on Rascal and Miyako as well as why their flavours are so similar. Just something that jumped out at me. Though the Arsonist could also be hanging around but that just begs the question of why they're being so damn inefficient :V]]

 

[HelloYellow17]

[[read my first post from today, the arsonist is almost certainly Namco, they are not the priority for today because they can't kill anyone tonight, if we don't lynch a mafia today we might lose

Nefari can't be the arsonist because how could she have predicted the pick-one-of-two-roles-and-get-it-on-a-delay thing if she didn't actually have that?]]

[[Hmm good point. I’m letting my paranoia get away from me 😅

Yeah definitely high-key suspicious of Namco. And you make a good point about Braixen...however, I’m still pretty wary of Mewtwo tbh. And Espy is in a difficult spot because she’s replacing an inactive player who may or may not have been involved enough to use their role up until this point—or, she was unable to start using her role until a specific night like me.

ALSO I think you’re onto something with the strongman theory. HMMM. We should pay close attention to that.]]

 

[Fusion]

After poking the tall blue tailed one to make him drop Miyako's stick--("That's not yours," he hissed")-- Tefiren dashed over to the group

Cold Fusion hardly paid Tefiren any mind until he was hissed at. "...True, but I can at least try to return it to her after this is all over." He didn't know why he bothered to say all that, Tefiren already left.

Speaking of, it might be a good time to address the concerns of everyone else. Everyone was already theorizing again, throwing ifs and buts at each other. Some of them still considered Mewtwo's innocence a plausibility. "If, and only if, we find evidence that Mewtwo is entirely innocent, I'll take my vote off of him. Until then, I will not give him a chance to trick us again."

"Yes, Dave dying after he put Mewtwo under the spotlight could have been a trick by the mafia to get us to bandwagon against Mewtwo. But, and lets be honest, Dave and that cowboy were probably the two most experienced players of this "game," and now both of them are dead. What does the Mafia have to worry about now? A group willing to kill innocents on their own? They could do anything they want at this point and I..." Fusion bit his lip, then exhaled. "And we could do fuck all about it."

 

[HelloYellow17]

"Yes, Dave dying after he put Mewtwo under the spotlight could have been a trick by the mafia to get us to bandwagon against Mewtwo. But, and lets be honest, Dave and that cowboy were probably the two most experienced players of this "game," and now both of them are dead. What does the Mafia have to worry about now? A group willing to kill innocents on their own? They could do anything they want at this point and I..." Fusion bit his lip, then exhaled. "And we could do fuck all about it."

“Precisely,” Wes said. He ran a hand through his hair. Gods, he was tired. Tired of failing. Tired of feeling so useless. Just tired.

He narrowed his eyes at the spot where Miyako had disappeared. Could she have died the same way Rascal had? But—even more disturbing—was someone out there blocking their abilities?

“What if...the Lugia is a role blocker of some sort?”

 

[Fusion]

"What makes you think it's the Lugia specifically?" Fusion asked, glancing over at the giant... bird, dragon, thing. "Other than its silence, nothing else is suspect."

"Then again... we still don't know the roles of everyone at this point. Perhaps we can get lucky, vote out the Lugia after the Mewtwo, and have this headache over and done with."

 

[elyvorg]

“Fucking imbicles. The lot of you,” he snarled. “Did any of you even stop to think that this was exactly what the Mafia wanted?"

Tefiren perked up for a moment as he heard the big dark bird say exactly what he'd been thinking - finally, someone else who made sense! - except then he paused as he listened to the rest of what the bird had to say. He was talking about the thunder cat. He was saying how obviously wrong Tefiren had been about her, how this was all his fault.

Tefiren hissed in fury and rounded on the big dark bird, his front blades glowing. "I never heard you trying to tell me I was wrong about it yesterday! You didn't want to get rid of the thunder cat, sure, but you never tried to stop us! If you actually thought it was wrong, that it'd be this bad, you should have said something! You should have tried to convince us! This is your fault, too!"

He took a moment to breathe, calming down just a little bit and letting the energy out of his blades, his breaths still hissing through his teeth. "And the fun Human wasn't caught by the Mafia anyway. Didn't you hear the messy Human yesterday? Since everyone here seems to think he was right about everything, even though he wasn't, they need to listen to this thing he said too: if the thunder cat is innocent, the fun Human was caught by the Arsonist."

He pointed emphatically over at the empty spot on the ground where Miyako's broken stick lay. "We know that now, because those are the marks the Arsonist leaves. Why would the Arsonist go for the Tyrunt? She wasn't good at the game, but the fun Human was!

"And the Tyrunt?" Tefiren paused, still catching his breath, thinking - because it didn't make any sense for the Mafia to go for her, either. She wasn't important.

He thought about that Tyrunt more. She'd seemed like the type to enjoy battling - not just battling, fighting. She was the type to fight her enemies, not to run away. (She was insane.)

"The Tyrunt was protecting someone more important than her," Tefiren said. "It couldn't have been the fun Human, because of the swap. Someone else. And she let herself get caught by the Mafia instead of them so that they could... they could stay here."

He trailed off towards the end, staring fixedly at the ground, as the thought of what the Tyrunt had done sunk in. Protecting someone else, to the point of deliberately letting yourself get caught killed instead, just so that the other person could go free. Ridiculous. Nonsensical. Utterly backwards. Anyone who played the game like that was just asking to lose.

There was no way Tefiren would ever do anything that stupid. Never.

[[

hello yes, this was going to be the point of my Tefiren-Miyako RP post, I copied over a few bits from that into here (though that original one was not going to involve Tefiren admitting he got this theory from Dave) - Lexx was killed by arson, Rascal bodyguarded someone prominent who isn't Lexx. The arson part of this is basically confirmed now by Miyako's death.

also Tefiren is very angry for a lot of reasons right now, don't mind him

(honestly it's pretty delightful to write, Tefiren doesn't usually ever get angry about anything at all)]]

 

[Disco]

((Yoooo-

Now this is the story all about how
My life got flipped, turned upside down
And I'd like to take a minute, just sit right there, I'll tell you how I became the prince of a town called Bel-Air. In West Philadelphia born and raised! On the playground is where I spent most of my days. Chilling out, maxing, relaxing all cool (And all shooting some b-ball outside of the school).

When a couple of guys, who were up to no good; Started making trouble in my neighbourhood... I got in one little fight and my mom got scared and said, "You're moving with your aunty and uncle in Bel-Air!" I begged and pleaded with her day after day, but she packed my suitcase and sent me on my way...
She gave me a kiss and then she gave me my ticket. I put my walkman on and said, "I might as well kick it! First class, yo this is bad- Drinking orange juice out of a champagne glass!? Is this what the people of Bel-Air are livin' like..? Hmm, this might be alright!"

I whistled for a cab and when it came near, The license plate said fresh, and had a dice in the mirror. If anything I could say that this cab was rare... But I thought, nah, forget it, yo holmes to Bel-Air!! I pulled up to a house about seven or eight- And I yelled to the cabby, "Yo, holmes smell you later!" Looked at my kingdom, I was finally there! To sit on my throne as the Prince of Bel-Air!!

break-dances softly into the night))

 

[Fusion]

"...Yeah, I'm ready to shoot the dumb bird."

 

[elyvorg]

"What makes you think it's the Lugia specifically?" Fusion asked, glancing over at the giant... bird, dragon, thing. "Other than its silence, nothing else is suspect."

"Then again... we still don't know the roles of everyone at this point. Perhaps we can get lucky, vote out the Lugia after the Mewtwo, and have this headache over and done with."

"The big white bird - everyone's suspicious of them. Everyone was ready to vote for them today, if this whole thing with the healers hadn't happened. That doesn't make sense if they're a Mafia, because then the other Mafias would at least be trying to go easy on them. They're not on the Mafia's side, but they're also really obviously not on our side. They've just been sitting there, watching, this whole time.

"And apparently they're this thing called a 'psychic'. The Arsonist uses 'psychic marks' to catch people, or at least that's what the small fox and the funny-arm Human say. I thought earlier that that wouldn't matter, that maybe the Arsonist wouldn't actually be a psychic just because of that, but now I think they might be. It makes sense."

Tefiren glared at the big white bird as they - or some voice near them, or something - started treating this like it was all some sort of joke. He glanced again at the broken stick on the ground and wished he hadn't, hissing at himself.

"It's obviously them, but we can't get rid of them today. We need to catch a Mafia today, or we might--"

He didn't finish that sentence.

"The way the Arsonist's trick works, they can't catch anyone tonight. So we can get rid of them tomorrow. Or maybe the Mafia will be worried enough about them that they'll do it for us."

 

[Fusion]

"The way the Arsonist's trick works, they can't catch anyone tonight. So we can get rid of them tomorrow. Or maybe the Mafia will be worried enough about them that they'll do it for us."

"Considering we've been doing the Mafia's job for them, they could at least give us that favor," Fusion grumbled. Of course they probably wouldn't, but... maybe? Hopefully?

 

[HelloYellow17]

“How do we know they’re an Arsonist?” Wes snapped. “What if they’re actually mafia?”

[[hello, yes, I’m not so sold on the arsonist theory. Namco is DEFINITELY sus but what if they’re a role blocker or strongman rather than an Arsonist?? I’ve asked twice now what Navar could have possibly been if not an arsonist and nobody has answered my question. Are we sure we are still dealing with an Arsonist here and not something else such as a Serial Killer like Inke suggested??

Also if someone could clarify what a Serial Killer does, that would be great because I don’t know off the top of my head what that entails.]]

 

[HelloYellow17]

[[Also the fact that Namco is still alive when they’ve been pretty suspiciously lurking AND the Mafia hasn’t targeted them makes me thing they are Mafia and not just third party]]

 

[Disco]

"I vote for Wes.", Namco replied, and leered at the human with a smile. "He's been a very suspicious character after all, hasn't he?"

 

[HelloYellow17]

"I vote for Wes.", Namco replied, and leered at the human with a smile. "He's been a very suspicious character after all, hasn't he?"

Wes jumped a little as the Lugia finally spoke up. Hell, he’d nearly forgetten they were actually capable of speech, aside from whatever strange...thing they’d been quoting earlier. He stared at them for a second, dumbfounded, then looked at everyone else and gestured vaguely at them.

“I think the damn bird just proved my point.”